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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:10]
B
Let's start with. In your analysis, what was wrong with the old certainty? The. The story that we told that was.
- [00:20]
C
Inevitable, the conceptia was that they're too strong. This is unstoppable. Their nuclear program, their regional ambitions. The only thing you can do is try to essentially bribe them, which is another word for appeasement, and indulge them, meet them halfway. Now, of course, with bullies, there's no half.
- [00:54]
B
Foreign. Hi friends. This is Daniil Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Sholem Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, for heaven's sake. In collaboration with ARC Media. Our subject today is the only subject that we could talk about and that's Iran. Because our world is. I don't know if it's changing, but it's potentially changing. But we titled today's podcast Iran when the story changes. We don't know whether the current demonstrations are going to lead to regime change or not. I'm reading hundreds of articles. Turns out there's thousands of experts on when a regime changes, when you could overthrow a regime, right?
- [01:43]
C
What's the point of.
- [01:43]
B
What's the point of. What do you need? What are the criteria? Each one has between three to 17 criteria about when it's going to happen and how many are happening. All of the above we don't know. And we have to be careful to make sure that what we wish is not dictating. Because of course we wish. And maybe we'll talk about this because here in Israel to wish for an overthrow of an evil regime, of an Islamic regime which spews hatred and religious fundamentalism and terrorism and hatred towards Israel and hatred towards women and homophobic, the whole package. Like we look at it here and we're. It's a no brainer, okay? It's true. We are motivated by the fact that we're the primary people that they hate and that for some reason this regime gets up in the morning and says, how do I destroy Israel? So there is no doubt that that is our primary cause. And we don't necessarily look at other unjust regimes around the world or in Africa and don't take it as personally, but we look at it and it's a self evident issue. But it turns out that we'll talk about it, that it's not so self evident because a lot of people aren't talking about this in the world. It's not a self evident issue, something worthy to talk about. But what we wanted to focus on is not if the regime is going to change, but we know that the story is changing. We don't know when United States, if the United States will attack, will Iran back off and start now negotiating on the nuclear. Everything is being put out there. And everybody, you know, is an expert. There are some actually, who are very serious experts. But what we do know is that the way we looked at this is changing. And here y. Let's give credit and recognize this is something you've been thinking about for at least 20 years. It's not something exactly.
- [03:41]
C
Exactly 20 years.
- [03:42]
B
It's not something that I've been thinking about for 20 years. Not saying that I'm proud of it. I'm not making an ideology of my lack of reflectiveness on this, but my primary sense was that this was beyond our pay grade. This was something. Not this beyond what I could know, but that Iran had this almost superpower status. The Shiite fundamentalist regime was in total control, and there's nothing that we could do whether they were going to become nuclear, not become nuclear. Our job was to contain and to somehow survive in this universe. But watching the news and the coverage in Israel is 20 times more extensive than the coverage in mainstream North American media. We're sensing that it's not the Same now if 10,000 people get killed, if the Revolutionary Guard comes out, and what will be, we don't know. But there is a sense that we're not living in an inevitable time and change is at least possible. You could talk about it, the story of Iran being beyond our horizon, that it's just grow up life like, you know, again, I hope this is not shit happens. You happen to be in the area where. Where Iran is shitting. Was that too vulgar?
- [05:19]
C
You're good?
- [05:20]
B
I'm okay. I'm safe. Still, that's. That's not one of the words that you're not allowed to say, actually podcast.
- [05:25]
C
You'Re allowed to say. I think we determine what's allowed to say.
- [05:28]
B
It's like, you know, so we woke up, you know, we're like, we're in the promised land and we're in a cursed neighborhood. And, you know, and from time to time, it gets worse. And so.
- [05:36]
C
It'd be a great title for a book.
- [05:39]
B
Yeah. Someone else will write it, but Israelis are experiencing it.
- [05:42]
C
Yeah.
- [05:43]
B
So I want us to delve into what were some of the presuppositions that we had? What were the things that we were so certain about? And I know many of them. You must have felt very lonely because you kept on saying, do this, do that think this. And everybody was looking at you, you know, oh, this is Yossi. He used. He also used to be a Kahanist.
- [06:04]
C
Oh, exactly. And now he's still a warmonger.
- [06:06]
B
He's still a warmonger. And he's like, you know, he's disconnected. You know, there's something about fundamentalism which doesn't have to be connected to reality. And so it was very easy to say, you know, that's Yossi. You know, it's like his thing. So first of all, it's not your thing anymore. Welcome back.
- [06:24]
C
I'm very happy to pass it on.
- [06:26]
B
Welcome back into the civilized universe. We've accepted you beforehand, but, you know, welcome back. But with Iran, there is a sense that you were saying things. And so we wanted to concentrate on what were the aspects of this old story. Let's start with, in your analysis, what was wrong with the old certainty, the story that we told that was inevitable.
- [06:52]
C
Right. So there's a wonderful Hebrew word which isn't, of course, a Hebrew word at all. Conceptia. Israelis think it's a Hebrew word, and conceptia has a very bad connotation in Israel. And conceptia means. Well, literally, it means kind of a worldview or an assumption. What it has come to mean colloquially is a wrong assumption. So it began with the Yom Kippur War, where the conceptia was, they'll never attack us because they're afraid of us. The next time the conceptia appeared was October 7th. Hamas, they're our weakest enemy. Of course they're not going to attack us. So liberals had a conceptia about Iran, and the conceptia was that they're too strong. This is unstoppable. Their nuclear program, their regional ambitions. The only thing you can do is try to essentially bribe them, which is another word for appeasement, and indulge them, meet them halfway. Now, of course, with bullies, there's no halfway. And the root of the conceptia is the Obama administration. Obama himself, Ben Rhodes, John Kerry. And I would listen to these people for years. And I was exploding, and it was so obvious to me. And I'm not an expert on Iran, I'm an amateur who is deeply interested. That's all. And I read what I could, and it was so clear to me that these people were either lying or deceiving themselves. And you can begin with the JCPOA, the Iran deal of 2015, whose basic conceptual. The conceptia behind the JCPOA is Iran is a regional player, and we have to accept that this regime has ambitions and we have to meet them halfway. And so we're not only going to give them a clear pathway to a nuclear bomb, we're going to slow it down. But at a certain point, what was called the sunset clause makes it inevitable, and then there are no sanctions.
- [09:22]
B
Explain the sunset clause. The sunset clause, that was the scariest part.
- [09:25]
C
Yes. After 10 years, 15 years, it depends how you, from when you were counting, the sanctions simply would evaporate and Iran would really face no serious repercussions for nuclear breakout. And meanwhile, they would have had 10 or 15 years to build up their nuclear capabilities for, quote, peaceful purposes. But there was something in some ways even worse, which is that along with the jcpoa, along with making a deal that allowed them to basically keep their nuclear capabilities, but slowing it down, they were rewarded with tens of billions of dollars. Now, this money, as we know now very clearly none of this money went into civilian infrastructure. It certainly didn't go into solving Iran's water problem, the severe economic problems. It went into funding Iran's regional ambitions. It went into Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis and the Assad regime and everything that this war that we've been fighting for the last two years has tried to undo. And in some ways, we can really put this at the doorstep of the Obama administration and this Conceptia. Who are the people who suffered most from the Conceptia? The Iranians themselves. Because rather than confront the regime, rather than try to coerce what turned out to be a deeply flawed, structurally flawed and weak regime, instead the Obama administration built them up.
- [11:08]
B
Built them up. You know, when you use the word concepcia, it was a very helpful thing in an internal Israeli context. And the link between October 7th as a conceptia and Iran is, I think, another part of at least a story that I think I need to change. See, what was the conception of October 7th? That here it is, there is this group of people who are saying they want to kill you, they're digging in order to defend themselves against you, and building missiles and acquiring and really perverting their society in a total way. Everybody's saying they want to kill you. And our notion was we could manage them. One of the core conceptions that I have, and I choose to live my life this way, is that I'm living in a civilized universe. But that doesn't mean that everybody is good, but that everybody has a self interest that I could understand, just like my self interest. And therefore, once we understand each other's self interests, we could find a way to function. And I Think the Conceptia with Iran, very similar to Hamas. You know, if we just give you money, like it's not going to be in your interest because your leadership seems to want to have private jets. You want to be billionaires, you want to have the nicest watches and suits and villas all over the world. You know what, I'll give it to you if that's what you want. You have a self interest with Iran. A similar. I remember the conversation, they're not suicidal, they're not crazy. They might be evil, but they're not crazy. And therefore are they really going to use a nuclear weapon? All the things that they're acquiring, are they really going to use these missiles? Like for what? It's going to be the end of their society. And the notion was that there's a core rational self interest that we could assume and on the basis of which we could function in our universe. We could get up in the morning, walk in the street and no, this will happen, this won't happen. There might be some bumps and things in the meantime, but there's a sanity. And I think part of what we do when we assume this reasonable sanity is we belittle the quality of evil that certain ideologies have and that evil doesn't make sense to us because we don't know it. Like, do you know anybody? Have you meet someone who's pure evil? You know, so at war in movies we meet, you know, what is it, the guy in the Silence of the Lambs. Like, you know, we look and we watch it, but we don't account it as great insight. But with Iran, there is part of our old story, is that we understand them.
- [14:04]
C
It's a great insight. I think there's another element here which is I never thought they were crazy and I never thought they were suicidal. I thought they were deeply religious and I took their theology seriously and I read their theology. I bothered to read the speeches of the imams and I realized these guys are serious, they're true believers. And I respect that. I understand true believers, right?
- [14:33]
B
You know, see, but that's what's so interesting is that like you would think that after the Israel and the United States bombed, now they said, okay, come to the negotiating table. Like, I was always a little frustrated that the B2s didn't go a second or third time and just do more. Israeli army did as far as it could go. We couldn't have done it more on our own. We needed the United States. They took it further. But the idea was, is President Trump turned And said, okay, you see what we could do now? Are you going to be reasonable? Do you want this more now? Be reasonable now, come back to the negotiating table. And Khamenei and all of them said, what do you think? You're going to push me? You're going to push me? There was a self destructive dimension that religion, and this is embedded in religion, dying for your faith.
- [15:19]
C
If God is on your side, what do you have to worry about?
- [15:22]
B
But even if you don't have to worry, there's something. It is an ultimate expression of a nobility every religious tradition has, including the Jewish tradition, you know, Kiddush hashem, to sanctify God's name. There's many ways you can sanctify it, but at its core it's to be willing to sacrifice yourself at the moment when your faith demands that you overcome your self interest. And it's correct. People of faith, you have to take into account a different calculation. And I think our old story, that we could manage them, I think we all realize that we can't. And as we see this evolving, that's one of the dimensions of the old story. Are there other dimensions that you're thinking of?
- [16:09]
C
Yeah, but just to finish this, it's such an important point you're raising about recognizing evil. I think that a turning point for me that really focused my attention was the regime's obsession with Holocaust denial. Iran became the world center for Holocaust denial. They sponsored world international conferences. They sponsored a cartoon competition for Holocaust deniers. That of course was in response to Charlie Hebdo in Paris and drawing cartoons of the prophet. So their response was, ah, you're going to attack what's sacred to us. We're going to attack what's sacred to you. That's the Holocaust. And a regime that promotes Holocaust denial on multiple levels of society, educationally, internationally. This is a regime that I felt I needed to take seriously.
- [17:11]
B
Interesting. So why were you so alone? Even today if you just look, there's so many news sites that I cover on an ongoing basis that I read and learn from and watch Israel. Top news for what is it now? Two weeks. Top story, top story of the news. You look at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, cnn, Fox News. Either it's not reported or it's even in Fox News. It's like the fifth or sixth item. So it's not what is it? And I think the reasons are different. New York Times didn't report it at all. If it appears, it's the third, the fourth.
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C
Took them 10 days for their first the BBC 10 days before they actually put it on their side.
- [17:59]
B
So this lonely voice that you have, like, here it is. What story are they telling?
- [18:03]
C
It's a great question. I think that there are two components here. There's, let's say the Obama camp, which is, let's say the moderate camp, not die hard progressives, and then there's the ideological progressives. And each of them were operating on a different set of assumptions. The Obama camp was saying to people like me, you are going to lead us to war. And Obama said explicitly, anyone who opposes the JCPOA is a warmonger.
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B
That's right.
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C
Now, confession time. Daniil. They were right. They were right because the only alternative to a negotiated capitulation, which was JCPLA in the end, would be war. And my camp had no good answer because we knew it was true. We felt that this is one of those moments where if you have power and you don't use it, then you might as well have no power at all. And they were right about something else. And here within the internal Israeli conversation, those who are warning against an Israeli strike were also right because they were saying, we don't have the capability. Now, I knew that I spoke to someone early on, someone very high up in our security establishment, who said, we can't do it. He said, the only ones who can do it are the Americans because they can dominate Iranian airspace uncontested. They can come back for repeated attacks. We have one shot. Now, that turned out not to be true.
- [19:39]
B
But we didn't have the bombs to take it out. We were missing something else. Right.
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C
So we didn't have the bombs to take it out. But what he was strongly implying, and this is someone who said we have to attack even though we can't do it, we have to do it, is if we do it and we do something, the hope will be that the Americans will then come in. We will entice them into coming, which is exactly what happened. Now, we entice the Americans to join us not by being weak, but by being strong because we dominated Iranian airspace. So Trump wanted to be part of.
- [20:15]
B
The victory and it was safer for American planes to go in also.
- [20:18]
C
That's exactly right.
- [20:19]
B
Like that part of the story doesn't get talked about a lot. So we paved the highway for the B2s.
- [20:25]
C
Yeah, that's right.
- [20:26]
B
So that's the.
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C
That's warmongering.
- [20:28]
B
Now, that's the progressive part.
- [20:29]
C
What's that? The progressives, they look at the constellation of forces. They see the principal supporter of The Palestinian cause, which is Iran, versus the main supporters of the opposition, which are the US and Israel, or to put a finer point on it, Trump and Netanyahu. So who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here?
- [20:58]
B
You mean the progressives right now since the demonstrations which are happening in this current political environment? Yes.
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C
They look at the constellation of forces and say, well, I may not like the fact that the regime is slaughtering hundreds or maybe thousands of their own people, and I may not be that comfortable with how they treat women or lgbtq, but the other forces are much worse. They're the forces of colonialism and apartheid and genocide. So I'm just going to be quiet. The silence of the lambs, as you put it earlier, the silence of the progressive lambs is stunning. Stunning. It's virtually wall to wall silence.
- [21:45]
B
Interesting. You know, as you're saying this, I'm thinking of a combination of the two points that you made, and I think this is a very Israeli move. We in Israel understand that power is not only necessary, it's also a moral force. That my right to live is a moral duty that has to obligate me, and that to live in the world, you have to use power. Power is not inherently evil. And I think you've done a lot.
- [22:22]
C
Of work on that in terms of the Judaic approach to power.
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B
The Judaic approach to power, which is a fascinating approach, and I don't know if I've mentioned it on this podcast, but in our tradition, to be created in the image of God means to have the power to rule the world and to master it.
- [22:38]
C
In other words, it means having power means having power.
- [22:41]
B
It means God says, I'm the creator God, but I don't want to run the stuff. God says, let's make men and women in our image. I'll fix the text a little bit. Let's make men and women in our image so that they shall rule. Because God's saying, I was creating, I might get involved, but I want a co ruler. And to be created in the image of God is not to be able to be moral. It's not to be able to think. It's to be able to shape your world. Now, our tradition is very ambivalent about power because as the Bible progresses, it shows that everybody uses it wrong. Cain kills Abel, even God destroys a world with the Flood. And then the Bible begins to create checks and balances on power. But the story of power is both the core feature.
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C
God imposes checks and balances on himself when he Says, there'll be no more flood. Exactly.
- [23:32]
B
God says, oops, I have to create a covenant, I can't use my power. And the checks and balances on human power starts. Murder becomes explicitly forbidden. There's a whole system of rights and, and an understanding that power is one of these double edged swords, that it's what defines your mission in the world. Without it, you have no mission, it's nothing. And at the same time, we know that there's an inevitable failure to it. Now on this spectrum, we in Israel know the failures and maybe the thing that sometimes saves us is that when we use power, it's our kids who are using it. Doesn't mean we always use it justly. But the hope is, at least in the Israeli story prior to the war in Gaza, we prefer other options. We fight short wars, we stop them, etc. Etc. But we understand that without that power, we're not here. So we have a much more natural relationship to power. All of us have served in the army, all of us have guns. This whole world is not alien to us. But when you look at Iran and you look at a problem that could only be solved through power, if you don't have comfort with power, then you're either gonna try to find other solutions because you don't want to use power, or you're gonna ignore the problem because you think you're too embedded in the corruption that power brings. And I think part of the story that's changing with Iran as we see, we saw it through Israel's, the 12 Day War, through Israel, through the United States participation, the power, also soft power, the significance of embargoing and economic sanctions, there's something falling apart. And that wouldn't have fallen apart if we just said to them, you know, you'll be nice, I'll be nice. We have to find a way to live together. Power, whether hard or soft, was necessary. And I think some of the ambivalence is that not everybody in the world is comfortable with that power. And one last point, and that is the MAGA group. If you look at Fox News, they're not so comfortable. They want to talk about the Somalians and the ice shooting and the.
- [25:49]
C
No, they're focused on making America great like this.
- [25:52]
B
This dimension of Trump's worldview. And it is a worldview which says that as a superpower, I have power and I have to find a way. Maybe I'm not going to try regime change, I'm not going to put boots on the ground, but power can be a constructive vehicle and in that, it much more resonates to the Israeli story.
- [26:11]
C
So another way to put what you're saying, Daniil, is there are two aspects of Tikkun olam. When American Jews speak about Tikkun olam, they're really talking about enhancing the good, empowering the good, through, of course, social action, political action. When Israelis think about Tikkun olam, we think about constricting evil.
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B
Yeah, interesting.
- [26:40]
C
We don't use the language of Tikkun olam, but that's the mindset. Ask any Israeli about the last two years and they'll tell you, well, of course, this was a moral necessity. We're fighting evil. And what I feel this moment is offering Israel, the Jewish people, is an extraordinary opportunity to reclaim our narrative from the devastation of the last two years. It's one of those rare moments that come along and suddenly everything becomes clear, or many things become clear. One of the things that should become clear, and I'm sensing a change of tone in social media. I'm seeing a change in tone in some of the democratic politicians who are now finally speaking about Iran and speaking about Hamas in a much stronger, unequivocal way. This is a clarifying moment that what Israel has been fighting for the last two years, not always effectively, not always in the right way. You and I agree the war in Gaza should have ended a year earlier, but we have been fighting a war against radical Islamist evil. And in that war we have been on the right side. And the war that began, I said this a couple weeks ago on one of our podcasts. The war that began on October 7th was the Israeli Iranian war. And that war had three stages. The first stage was Israel destroying what we called the Ring of Fire on our borders, which were the proxies that Iran had brilliantly succeeded in surrounding our borders with. And we succeeded in an extraordinary way. The second stage of the Iranian Israeli war happened in June. That was the attempt to stop the nuclear program. We're now in the third phase, which is bringing this holocaust denying regime that has declared war against the existence of Israel and against its own people, bringing this regime down.
- [28:54]
B
The only element that I have a slight disagreement with you on, I agree with your analysis, and I think it's really helpful, is that I don't think we're going to be able to reclaim a narrative without showing that our version of Tikkun Olam doesn't only involve use of power. It has to also be very important, has to be also spreading good when people reconnect to Israel. Also as a Spreader of good, not just as a fighter of evil. I think it might be easier.
- [29:28]
C
Yes. And I would also make the point even sharper, which is, when you are fighting evil in the name of good, you need to be doubly and truly triply certain that your means are as pure as they can be given the circumstances, and that you don't allow evil to penetrate your camp. And we have allowed evil to penetrate our camp. We have forces in the people of Israel today who are, frankly, genocidal.
- [29:57]
B
Right? And when you use antisemitism to quiet all criticism, then people look at you and just say, okay, you know, you're just. You're drunk with power. Which then leads us to the last really frame issue that we have time to deal with today. And that is, what does this mean for Israelis? Like, we're here, we're reporting it, we're watching it. So as you look at this changing story, and we still, we really don't know, you know, is it going to be snuffed out? Is it America going to join? What are the consequences for us? For us, it's very personal from the perspective of our belly buttons. Let's not forget we're not talking about Iranians, and we're not talking about justice. We're not talking about the world. We're talking about our own little inner story. What do you hear?
- [30:40]
C
So I'll give you my most intimate little story, which is my home yesterday, Sarah, my wife, ordered supplies. Because if Trump hits Iran, Iran hits us, we go back into the air raid shelters. And I was thinking about something you'd said the other day, Daniil, in one of our recent podcasts. You were saying, you know, people talk about Gaza, they talk about the Middle east in an abstract way. This is my life. I wake up in the morning. This is my daily life. And so we talk about Iraq and the world debates, should Trump hit, should.
- [31:16]
B
And were they right, and why didn't they know?
- [31:18]
C
And here we are. I would guess that the sentiment in Israel wants Trump to hit Iran hard. We know the first people who will pay the most immediate price will be the Israelis running into shelters. The second wave will be the Iranian people themselves. But we will get the first brunt. And yet here we are speaking as if we're living thousands of miles away and speculating, well, should he do that? And there's something about our reality, Daniil, that's crazy. There's no filter between events and their repercussions for us in the most immediate way.
- [32:02]
B
And you're living in Ground zero. All the time.
- [32:04]
C
All the time. All the time. Oh, did you hear the news? Time to place an order with supersoul. How much water do we need? Well, you.
- [32:15]
B
I think this latest development is focusing on really a paradox in Israeli life vis a vis Iran and vis a vis our engagement in war with him. On the one hand, we tell the story of the great victory, the Hanukkah story, you know, the forces of light defeated the forces of darkness. And the miracles, the miracles of being able to fly in the skies of Tehran and Iran unimpeded, day after day. We always thought we had a day and now we discovered we had 12 days. So we could have a 12 day holiday. A whole story. All we're missing is food. We didn't come up with food. Like, what's going to be the food for the holiday? That's still the only thing we didn't. But like.
- [33:05]
C
Okay, that was actually very funny.
- [33:06]
B
I didn't mean to be funny. It just came out.
- [33:09]
C
Oops.
- [33:10]
B
Okay, I'll take it. But it's like this.
- [33:12]
C
It was like, you know, the miraculous story.
- [33:14]
B
And we had, and we were great and Netanyahu was phenomenal and we showed them and we defeated them and all of the above. That's one story. The great victory. But Israelis know, and this wasn't reported anywhere in depth in the world and also not in Israeli press, the price we paid the Iranian missile capability is something to be fearful of. The notion that we just defeated them and brought them to their knees. We Israelis know that that's not true. They were able to penetrate. And especially as the war progressed and whether that's because we don't know, because you're not allowed to talk about it, we had less Iron Dome or arrow missiles, or whether it's because they developed a system to bypass our defense systems, but they were able to more or less hit us almost at will.
- [34:09]
C
And look, you know, we're speaking as if this is behind us. We could wake up tomorrow morning and find that we have been hit in a way that we could have never imagined.
- [34:18]
B
And now deep down, leave all the ideology aside, in your gut. Israelis know that Iran is powerful. They're not a paper tiger and they have a capacity with all of our might and all of our successes. You know, this wasn't the beepers that decapacitated Hezbollah. They're alive, they're kicking, they're powerful, they're dangerous. And we have two stories. There's the story of our victory and there's the story of our vulnerability. And like, and I saw it with Adina, you know, she just came running downstairs the other day and says, what again?
- [34:54]
C
Right?
- [34:54]
B
Like, are we going to come back to this again? It's real and it's raw. It's this. We're living with this unbelievable sense of the gift of power. And many of us know the limitations and the vulnerabilities that we still live with. Each story is the right story. You can't combine them. It's not like, okay, you know, let's find, you know, the Aristotelian golden mean. Let's balance between them.
- [35:19]
C
No, no.
- [35:19]
B
They're almost two different stories, and each one has to be told. And each one has its own rituals. Like Sarah buying food, you know, stocking up, worrying about where people are thinking about your upcoming trips. Because when are the airlines gonna shut down? What areas in Israel are more dangerous or less dangerous? Hospitals? Are we really as powerful? A little article in the newspaper which says Israel hasn't yet succeeded in restocking its arrow missile capabilities. It all just sits there and we're watching this story and there's another dimension. A last thought. Yossi.
- [35:58]
C
You know, I want to end with gratitude. I had partners throughout these last two decades that were just extraordinary. And I want to give a shout out to some of them briefly.
- [36:11]
B
Go for it.
- [36:12]
C
Michael Oren, the former ambassador. Michael and I started writing together about Iran literally 20 years ago. We published our first piece in the New Republic saying that if the Jewish state allows this enemy with those intentions to go nuclear, we have lost our legitimacy. Very strong language. And that was the emotional guide for the two of us all these years. Michael wrote a book in 2015, just before the JCPOA came out. He had finished his term as ambassador, sat down and wrote a book in a frenzy about what his experiences were with the Obama administration in Iran. And he wrote this to try to stop the deal. It was the last warning. And he knew when he was writing it that he was burning his bridges with the democratic establishment. He became Persona non grata. He did it anyway. It was one of the most courageous acts that I've seen from people in a public position. And aipac, the much maligned aipac, which fought courageously. Obama called them warmongers, use that word, and they didn't flinch. And the foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a lesser known organization, but crucial behind the scenes, the FDD was one of the main forces bringing the Iranian issue to the forefront. In the last days, I've been watching Iranian expat tv, Tusi TV T O U S I I started watching Tusi TV the moment the upheavals began, the moment the revolution began. And they were calling it a revolution from the beginning, when most of the mainstream media was ignoring it. They were saying exactly where this is leading. So they've been terrific. And finally, tremendous gratitude to the Iranian people and awe and reverence and prayers and prayers. You know, we talk about, we send prayers and we mean it in a declarative sense. But I want to mean it as a religious person. I want to mean it literally to send prayers. And I would ask any of our listeners who are people of prayer who believe in the power of prayer when you light Shabbat candles, when you bless the wine for Shabbat, and at other moments pray for the people of Iran because they are carrying the future of the Middle east and God be with them.
- [38:54]
B
Amen. Yossi, thank you. It's a pleasure being with you.
- [38:57]
C
Great to be with you.
- [38:59]
D
Imagine a gap year that's not a detour but a launchpad at the Shalom Hartman Institute's Chavuta Gap Year program, students spend a year after high school in Detroit, Heart of Jerusalem, immersed in serious Beit Midrash learning with Hartman's world class faculty, including leaders such as Daniel Hartman, Tal Becker and Ilana Steinhane. Blending community leadership and rigorous learning, Tavuta pushes students from North America and Israel to grapple with the most significant questions facing the Jewish people and a Jewish and democratic Israel. If you're looking for a gap year where you're challenged, grounded and ready for campus and beyond, learn more and apply@shalomhartman.org.
- [39:39]
A
Gap year here are some other things that are happening at the Shalom Hartman Institute as part of our Pathways to Hope initiative to inspire a brighter future for Israel, three young Israeli changemakers from our Hazon program traveled to Toronto, Boston and other cities in North America. You can hear about their experiences in Hazon and how they have embraced today's realities with vision and courage on the Canadian Jewish Network's North Star Podcast stream or download now at thecjn CA north for more about Jewish life, politics, culture and breaking news across Canada, check out the Canadian Jewish News at thecjn ca. This week, the staff of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America is gathering in our Beit Midrash in New York for our annual staff retreat. Our wonderful team of 60 from across North America is strengthening our community and our commitment to our mission to enrich the moral, intellectual and spiritual life of Israel and the Jewish people. Stay tuned for Hartman Happenings to keep learning about the exciting work ahead.
- [40:39]
E
For Heaven's Sake is a product of the Shalom Hartman Institute and ARC Media. It is produced by me, Daniel Goodman, with help from Miriam Jacobs, Adar Taylor Schechter, and Aviva Katmanaur, and studio support from Go Live Media. Our episode was edited by Seth Stein, Natal Friedman is our executive producer, and our music was composed by Yuval Sama. Past episodes can be found@arcmedia.org where you can explore more of Arc Media's podcasts. You can watch the video versions of our episodes on our YouTube channel. Follow the YouTube link in the Show Notes. Also, to receive updates on new episodes, please follow the link to arcmedia.org and subscribe to Arc Media's weekly newsletter. For more ideas from the Shalom Harmony Institute, visit our website@shalomhartman.org.