Early Shabbat afternoon, we were chatting with friends who asked, “Did you hear about Tel Aviv?” We hadn’t. As we were off the grid for Shabbat, we had no idea that the Houthis had fired a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv in the middle of the night, that the IDF had failed to shoot it down (but by sheer luck, it did relatively little damage) and that our kids and grandchildren had spent part of the night, once again, in a bomb shelter.

Later in the day, I was at Mincha, by which time everyone had heard. I made some remark to a person next to me about how absurd a way this is to live, to which he said,

“There’s no choice—Yemen needs to look like Gaza.”

I doubt that Yemen will end up looking like Gaza, but I also doubt that there’s much more Israeli patience for this. The headline above, from Sunday (the morning after) reads:

The interceptors that missed and the “learning curve race” against the Houthis. “There’s no defense that’s 100% effective—the only solution is to attack.”

The Houthis, though, are just a symptom of the larger problem—Iran. Rightly or wrongly, Israelis assume that if the Iran problem goes away, the Houthi problem goes away. And as I noted in a post last week, there is support—left, center and right—for an attack on Iran. Especially with Trump entering office and Iran at an unprecedented moment of weakness, many Israelis believe that this is the moment—and that another moment may not come in time.

Shortly after I’d posted those indicators of widespread support for an attack on Iran, which I suspected might strike people outside Israel as counterintuitive, the Jewish Federations of North America reached out and asked if I would have a conversation with Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of the JFNA, about why Israelis don’t want to end the war before this is done—and whether we realize how dangerous the play could be.

I readily agreed—speaking with Eric is always a delight, and I always leave our encounters thinking anew. I’m grateful to Eric and the leadership of the JFNA for permitting us to share the brief conversation. The video our our discussion is below, available to everyone.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Eric D. Fingerhut is the President and CEO of The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).

Prior to his appointment at JFNA, Mr. Fingerhut served as the President and CEO of Hillel International from 2013-19. At Hillel, he led the organization’s Drive to Excellence, which resulted in doubling the number of students engaged by Hillel each year to over 130,000 and the total funds raised each year to nearly $200M. His emphasis on recruiting, training and retaining top talent for the system, and on building a data and performance driven organization, have become models for the non-profit sector.

Mr. Fingerhut has also had a varied and distinguished career in public service and higher education. He served as Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents from early 2007 to 2011, leading Ohio’s system of public universities and colleges; as Ohio state senator from 1997 to 2006; and represented Ohio’s 19th congressional district in the U.S. Congress from 1993 to 1994. In 2004, he was the Democratic Party’s candidate for U.S. Senate.

Mr. Fingerhut received a juris doctorate from Stanford University Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. He and his wife Amy have two sons.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danielgordis.substack.com/subscribe

Exhausted by war, Israelis want one (or two) more front(s) addressed before it's over