Gaza and the World's Greatest Bank Robber with Liel Leibovitz

Summary

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Podcast Summary

"Gaza and the World's Greatest Bank Robber with Liel Leibovitz"

Podcast: The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table
Date: February 27, 2025
Guest: Liel Leibovitz (Tablet Magazine editor, Hudson Institute fellow, and podcast host)
Main Theme: An engaging, wide-ranging discussion on Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the impact of October 7th, morality of war, cultural divides, and an astonishing story about Leibovitz’s father—one of Israel’s most famous bank robbers. The conversation traverses geopolitics, gun laws, American and Israeli identity, Trump, immigration, and the shifting tides of public sentiment.

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Guest Introduction & Tone Setting

• Dan Natterman introduces the cast: himself, Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman, author Periel Aschenbrand, and special guest Liel Leibovitz.
• Banter sets an irreverent, witty—but sharply intellectual—tone throughout.
• Liel jokes about guns and antisemitism, immediately blending personal narrative and big themes.

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Segment 1: The World's Greatest Bank Robber — Liel's Father (00:30–14:35)

• Liel Leibovitz recounts the wild saga of his father, once Israel’s most infamous, non-violent bank robber, who became a folk hero.
  • Story Highlights:
    • His father, from a wealthy family, decided to "follow his passion" for robbing banks—successfully, methodically, and without violence.
    • Used a motorcycle and van for getaways; would brazenly return to the bank to deposit stolen money amid responding police.
    • Community saw him as a Robin Hood figure; police were oblivious for years.
    • Eventually, his father "wanted to get caught," returned the money, and served over a decade in Israeli prison—visitation included family “weekend furloughs” (08:13).
    • Liel describes dressing up as his dad for Purim before knowing the truth. The story is “funny… until it’s not. But parts of it are hilarious.” (Liel Leibovitz, 10:06)
    • After prison, Liel’s father became a celebrity and did advertisements in Israel.
  • Cultural Note: The tale is set against a uniquely Israeli background—lack of gun access, prison reform focus, and a lightly chaotic legal system.
• Notable Quotes:
  • “He was kind of a folk hero. The guy who did it, though no one knew it, was my father.” (Liel, 06:07)
  • “Visiting him in prison was my childhood. Prison in Israel is the funniest thing you have ever seen... bring your kid to jail day, which is my absolute favorite day of the year.” (Liel, 08:12)

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Segment 2: Gun Ownership in Israel vs. America (14:26–16:10)

• Discussion about strict Israeli gun laws versus American gun culture.
• Liel’s View: Supports strict licensing and training. “If you want to get a gun in Israel, it requires a whole lot of licensing, training, and ongoing renewal... That's what we need.” (Liel, 15:09)
• Contrast: Hosts joke about what "true gun nuts" want in the U.S. (total freedom) compared to Liel’s “responsible” position.

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Segment 3: Gaza, October 7th, and the Palestinian Question (16:13–41:24)

Liel's Evolution & Hardline Thesis (16:44–19:56)

• Liel explains his shift from Israeli leftist to advocate of "pulling out all the stops" post-October 7th.

• Recounts Israeli euphoria at Oslo accords; describes the shock and optimism of early 1990s peace efforts.

• Notable Quote:
  “Maybe you were disillusioned at some point along the way, but if you weren’t, I think certainly October 7th did the trick.” (Liel, 17:32)

• Palestinian Polling:

  • Post-October 7th, support for Hamas actions in Gaza rose from ~30% to 60%+.
  • Cites polling: significant percentage want “all Israelis dead” or expelled (18:23).

Israeli Restraint & PR, Moral Limits of War (21:39–24:46)

• Israel’s care for human life is asserted: “No one in their right mind in the state of Israel has ever even remotely advocated [total war]. This war is being fought with the utmost care for human life...” (Liel, 21:42)
• Host pushes back: Israel has “lost the PR war” and public perception does not reflect these claims. (23:13)

"Why Do Gaza Civilians Support Hamas?" — Deep Cultural Divide (25:37–29:12)

• The Fey Fallacy:
  • Liel argues it’s Western "arrogance" to assume all people desire peace over glory/religious fulfillment. Draws provocative religious/civilizational analogies.
  • Claims Palestinian society’s defining goal is “the eradication of the Jewish invader. Nothing else brings them joy. … Maybe let's listen to them and believe them.” (Liel, 27:40)

Morality of Population Movements, "Denazification" & Historical Parallels (32:04–34:00)

• Liel floats "repopulation" (population transfer) as a historical, if grim, option—cites Sudeten Germans post-WWII as precedent.

• Notable Quote:
  “There are not a lot of options. I think this one of repopulation…is something we have seen happen again and again… to make sure you do not have a bloodbath on your hands.” (Liel, 32:04)

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Segment 4: Solutions for the West Bank, Nationhood & Federation Concepts (33:57–44:15)

• Liel distinguishes between Gaza and the West Bank, noting the latter’s clan-based, not national, structure (per scholar Mordechai Kedar).
• Suggests a federation of local “emirates” might be more realistic than an independent state.
• Skepticism from hosts: “Why would they accept that?” (Dan, 39:07)
• Liel: “If they want to continue fighting, no problem, we'll continue to fight them. … October 7th must change everything.” (39:55)
• Discussion of federation with Jordan, and why this isn’t feasible due to Jordan’s political anxieties.

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Segment 5: Trump, American Foreign Policy, and “Covenant Nations” (44:15–59:44)

• Liel sees Trump as a “plague… a divine force sent to us to teach us the error of our ways.” (45:43)
• Praises Trump’s unpredictability and instincts, especially regarding Israel and the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
• Hosts and Liel debate Trump’s erratic, cavalier deportment—useful for shaking up stale policies, but dangerous in matters of war. (48:36)
• Liel defends Trump’s “American spirit,” drawing comparisons to Reagan and the value of disrupting broken norms.
• Sincere concerns about score-settling, “loyalist” administration appointments, and pardoning January 6th defendants.
• Liel remains optimistic, arguing some of Trump’s appointees are “serious people” and that a “fresh” approach is required.

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Segment 6: The Bibas Family/Hostages – Morality, Negotiation, and Grief (59:53–67:46)

• Context: Bibas family, kidnapped on October 7, murdered by Hamas according to Israel. Periel provides moving, detailed context about their lives and the brutality.
• Dan asks: Why would Hamas kill hostages valuable for future exchanges?
  • Liel: For Hamas, a dead hostage is nearly as valuable as a living one due to Israel’s determination to retrieve even bodies.
  • Broad consensus among the group: Israeli society pays a steep psychological price in negotiating for hostages.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "The thought of not having a grave is the most inhumane, just mind boggling thing that could be imagined." (Liel, 63:05)
  • Debate: Should Israel exchange prisoners for dead bodies? Liel reluctantly agrees the answer is complex and heart-rending.

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Segment 7: Morality, Celebratory Violence, & the Irreconcilable Divide (67:18–73:59)

• Hosts and Liel draw a stark moral line:
  • “I can process any human anywhere being sadistic. I cannot process the culture that cheers this, that celebrates it, that is exalted and rapturous in their response…” (Host 2, 67:27)
• Group ponders how diaspora Palestinians, living in the West, often shed this aspect of group dehumanization and violence.

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Segment 8: Unpacking Hamas Support, Polls, Social Structure (70:22–74:55)

• Periel pushes a counter-narrative: most Palestinians just want to “eat a sandwich” and live peacefully—oppressed into supporting Hamas by violence.
• Liel disagrees: other Arab societies have overthrown tyrants; Gazans, by polling, have shown increasing support for violence and Hamas.

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Segment 9: American & Israeli Identity, Immigration, and The Fate of the West (75:01–81:43)

• Liel and Noam discuss what binds nations together.
• Liel offers the theory that America and Israel are “covenantal nations,” founded on ideas and divine mission, not just ethnicity.
• Concern is voiced that new waves of American immigrants may not share the deep, almost mythic American identity and reverence for the “founding fathers” common to earlier waves.
• Liel: “If this administration does nothing else, the border is the single most important thing that they could do.” (79:34)

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Segment 10: Right-Wing Populism, Tucker Carlson, & MAGA (82:05–End)

• Rising concerns about the "woke right"—MAGA, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens—and its effect on support for Jews/Israel.
• Liel: “The woke right is not better than the woke left. … Trump is not MAGA. In MAGA, when you see Tucker interviewing this human … my heart sinks.” (82:08)
• Dan jokes about being blocked on Twitter by right-wing pundits.
• Liel and hosts agree: politics is now extremely unpredictable; both left and right can turn against Israel.
• Ending on a sober, humorous note: “On that we could agree—everyone hates the Jews.” (Liel, 84:01)

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Notable Quotes

• “He was well-known in the community because he fucked the banks over, which everyone was very delighted with. And he never hurt anybody. So he was kind of a folk hero.”
  – Liel Leibovitz (06:07)

• “I grew up in the warm bosom of the Israeli left... but if you weren’t [disillusioned], I think certainly October 7th did the trick.”
  – Liel Leibovitz (17:14)

• “Maybe let's listen to them and believe them... Their goal is the eradication of the Jewish invader. Nothing else brings them joy.”
  – Liel Leibovitz (27:40)

• “I cannot process the culture that cheers this, that celebrates it, that is exalted and rapturous in their response to [violence]…”
  – Host 2 (67:27)

• “Trump is not maga… the woke right is not better than the woke left.”
  – Liel Leibovitz (82:08)

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Timestamps Key Segments

• 00:30–14:35: Liel’s father: Israel’s bank robber folk hero; childhood, prison visits
• 14:26–16:10: Guns in Israel vs. America; licensing and responsibility
• 16:13–41:24: Gaza, October 7th, and hardline Israeli perspectives on Hamas, civilian support, and morality of war
• 44:15–59:44: Trump, American policy, immigration, identity, MAGA, and media
• 59:53–67:46: Hostages, the Bibas family, negotiation, grief, and morality
• 67:18–73:59: Cultural divides around violence, celebration, and empathy
• 75:01–81:43: American/Israeli identity, immigrant integration, “covenantal nations”
• 82:05–End: Populism, right-wing media, and the unpredictability of future alliances

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

• The conversation balances dark geopolitics and tough criticism with comic timing and family anecdotes.
• Liel’s blend of personal story and grand political theory is unique—combining Israeli folk history, rigorous analysis, and provocative, sometimes controversial, proposals.
• The Comedy Cellar hosts keep discussion lively—probing, skeptical, at times challenging, but always sharp and incisive.
• Above all, the episode is a snapshot of contemporary anxieties about Israel-Palestine, American politics, immigration, and the shifting sands of Western identity.

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Transcript

[Dan Natterman]

This is Live from the Table, a podcast about God. Dan, should I do it again?

[Host 2]

No, he's all right.

[Dan Natterman]

It's also the official podcast of the comedy seller. This is Dan Natterman, comedy seller, comedian, with a unprecedented two spots this weekend. That's an unprecedented low.

[Host 2]

Well, we're closed on Friday.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, I have one on closed on Sunday. Not all the rooms are closed. All the rules closed because you're shooting a movie here. Okay.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

I mean, it still lowers the number of spots.

[Dan Natterman]

That explains it. I mean, that partially explains it. The other explanation is I'm being phased out. Anyway. We're here with Noam Dorman. He's the owner of the Comedy Cellar. And there's gonna be a new room opening at some point in the year 2025, someday, maybe early 2026, at the former McDonald's on 6th Avenue and West 3rd Street. It's gonna be called the. It's gonna be called the Menachem Dormant Comedy Theater, something like that, or something of that nature. Periel Aschenbrand joins us, author of the Only Wish I Trust Is My Own and On My Knees stories of her sexual awakening in New York.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

That's not what the book is about.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, then you should have found another title for it. And we have with us in person, Lyle Leibovitz. Leibovitz, Editor at large for Tablet magazine and host of its weekly podcast, Rootless, which I guess is a reference to the Wandering Jew, I suppose. A senior fellow at Hudson Institute. I guess that's a think tank.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It is. That's where I explore my sexual awakenings as well.

[Dan Natterman]

Okay. And his work focuses on thinking about antisemitism, which we've been thinking about on this podcast as a national security threat. Welcome Leel Leibovitz to our show.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

What a pleasure.

[Host 2]

Now, first question is, are you packing?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

This is New York, man. They make it very, very, very hard. So, no. But one day, inshallah, if we get things right, and we could be free like the rest of America and enjoy the Second Amendment guaranteed to us by the U.S. constitution. Yeah.

[Dan Natterman]

The problem with a gun, though, it's like, you know, you can't. I mean, you can't just use it because somebody, like, gets in your face and pushes you. Right. So you.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

You know, the point of the gun is never to use it.

[Dan Natterman]

Right.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

The more of them you have, the less likely you are to actually be in a position when you have to use it.

[Dan Natterman]

But I could see, like, you know, somebody starts with you, and then you have a gun and you might shoot Them and. But you're really not authorized to shoot them legally.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Look, I'll. I'll put it this way. When I was, I think five or six, I was walking around the house kind of with a toy gun, going like, bang, bang, bang, bang. And my dad just grabbed me. Something I remember very clearly till this day. He said, don't ever point a gun, even a toy gun, at something you don't fully intend to kill if you're a serious gun owner. And I'm happy to say most of us are. Most people in this kind of, you know, community of which are quite a few Americans, the seriousness with which you take your training, safety and stuff like that, it's no joke. We don't just walk around shooting people.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Well, now that you've opened this door as though we are in a court of law, I feel obligated for you to share with them who your father is.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

My father is someone who took his love of guns to the next level.

[Dan Natterman]

A rook. Goldstein.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

No, he came at it from a gentler, kinder perspective. Look, my father grew up at. He was the son of a wealthy Israeli family and kind of enjoyed a life of leisure. At some point, he was like, 35 or 36. We've all. I think most of us have been there, was summoned by his father and said, look, you can't just fuck around through life. You got to do something. You got to find a job. At which point my father said, well, that sounds highly unreasonable. I'll show him. And because he grew up in the 60s and it was all about, like, you know, do something you love, find your passion. He decided that his passion was robbing banks, a pursuit at which he was singularly increasing. Incredibly great. And so he robbed Clyde Leibovitz. No, no. Much, much better. Look, the Clyde nonsense was. Was. Was. Was like amateur out, right? It was like, walk in and shoot everyone. My dad would go in the bank, rob it, and out in, like, 37 seconds, which is about the time it takes me to get off the couch to go to the bathroom. Like, very, very impressive. Then he would hop back on his motorcycle, he would ride around the corner, up a ramp he had custom built onto a van, where he would stop and ask himself the sort of seminal question of bank robbing, which is, where is the last place you would ever look for a bank robber? The answer, of course, Noam, is the.

[Host 2]

Van right outside the bank.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

The answer, of course, is the bank itself.

[Host 2]

Oh, the bank itself.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

At which point he would tuck his gun in, he would take off his Helmet and his jacket and very calmly walk back to the bank, which at this point was already crawling with police officers.

[Dan Natterman]

Wait. But his face was not covered during the. Or was it during.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

During the robbery. He had a motorcycle helmet.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

He's very, very famous.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Off the robbery. He was just a middle aged man with a receding hairline, you know, and a beer belly.

[Dan Natterman]

Genius.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

And he walks in and the police officer says, sir, this is a crime scene, you gotta get out. And my dad says, well, my wife will kill me. Can I just make a quick deposit? I promise it'll only take a minute. And the police officer says, sure, go ahead. And so he goes ahead and deposits the money he had robbed two and a half minutes earlier. And this is before the 80s in computers, making everything virtually untrace while the police are setting up roadblocks like five miles down the highway. It worked very well. Until it didn't.

[Host 2]

This is why they hate us.

[Dan Natterman]

How much money would he deposit? It couldn't be enough to arouse suspicion.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Wasn't enough at all to arouse suspicion. Especially because this was a well known, affluent member of the community. So if he walks in with 30,000 shekels or whatever it was.

[Dan Natterman]

Oh, this was in Israel.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Not in this. In Israel.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Yeah, but this was like a craze. Like he, he was known as of no bank because in Hebrew a motorcycle is of Noah. So he, he was, it's like, it was like a. Like everybody knew that this was going on.

[Host 2]

So how did he get caught?

[Dan Natterman]

But, but he was also known, well known in the community because why.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

He was well known in the community because he fucked the banks over, which everyone was very delighted with. And he never hurt anybody. So he was kind of a folk hero. The guy who did it, though no one knew it, was my father. My father sort of lived a double life for.

[Dan Natterman]

But you said if he deposited a lot of money, it wouldn't have aroused suspicion.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Oh, because he was. He was one of the wealthiest people in Israel.

[Dan Natterman]

Oh, he was wealthy anyway.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yes.

[Dan Natterman]

He was driving banks just for fun.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Yeah. Did you miss the whole thing?

[Dan Natterman]

I'm just trying to get it all.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It was just like playboy rich kid who decided to, you know, I heard.

[Dan Natterman]

That, but then when I heard rob banks, I forgot about the property.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

How did he get caught?

[Host 2]

How did he get caught?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

He kind of wanted to get caught. By the way, Periel was not exaggerating. This has now been independently corroborated and reported. There were like female bank issuers who would like have a note like pre prepared with Their name and phone number. Kind of like in case he hits a bank, Please call me, I'm available. It's unbelievable shit. He at some point got tired of living a double life. I think he also got tired of not getting credit because it killed him to sit at like social settings and all the women were swooning like, oh my God, that bank robber must be so hot. And he's like sitting right here like.

[Host 2]

A superhero movie, right?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

And so he, he kind of let himself get caught eventually after doing it 20 for a year and a half. And he said, okay, look, I've kept every shekel. Here's what's going to happen now. I'm going to give you back the money and then you're going to let me go. And the police officer, this is not how any of this works. No, man, you're going away for a very long time. Like, he called us the day he was arrested. He said, I'll be back home, if not tomorrow, then by Monday. I was 13 and a half. I was like, my bet is anywhere from like 14 to 25 years from now. I was right on the money.

[Host 2]

And is he alive now?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Oh, yeah, he's a young guy.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

How long did he go to prison for?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

He went to. He was sentenced to 20. He appealed, got his sentence commuted to 14. I think he ended up spending 11 and a half. So visiting him in prison was my childhood. Prison in Israel is the fucking funniest thing you have ever seen. You don't think it vacations from prison in Israel, right?

[Dan Natterman]

No, certain people do, I imagine.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Well, most people do. Unless you're either a terrorist or like severe, like drug abuser. Here's the logic. First of all, social estate. So believe in, hey, let's be kind to everyone. Second of all, there's one airport which is pretty secure. Like, where are you going to go? Gaza, Lebanon, Syria? Go right ahead. There is no going out of this country. So I would sign up for dad Friday morning and I had to return him to the police station Sunday morning every three weeks or so.

[Dan Natterman]

But a murderer would not get that.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

No, a murderer would not get that.

[Host 2]

Because this is also part of the. They want to reform you. They want to.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yes, they want to rehabilitate you. They believe in you.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, here's a question though. If after every robbery he goes into the bank, this well known wealthy Israeli goes into the bank to deposit money, don't the police talk to each other? Like, yeah, there was this guy depositing. And then they're like, wait a minute, at every Robbery. The guy goes back in.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I'll do you one better.

[Dan Natterman]

Yeah.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

The gun was registered to his name, as was the motorcycle and the van. Like literally all they had to do was look at the list. That's Israeli police for you.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Were you guys shocked to find out after a year and a half? I mean, that must have.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

And I dressed up like him for Purim, like the porn before he was arrested. I went like him.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

No.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yes.

[Dan Natterman]

Wait, that you didn't know was him.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

No, it was going on, it was like my hero. I'm like a 13 year old boy. Of course my hero is the guy fucking over the bank.

[Host 2]

This is literally like a superhero hero plot where they, where the, the, the sun is, you know, the super doesn't know that's my son.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It's the first Spider man writing this.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Movie we've talked about.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yeah, this is working on it.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Okay, well, working.

[Dan Natterman]

I was taking you so long. It's happened decades ago, you know. Okay.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

You need one. One needs the time in the gin to reflect.

[Dan Natterman]

This is like a very funny. This could be a very funny movie.

[Host 2]

A screenplay. This is a screenplay.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Very, very funny. I mean, until it's not. But parts of it are hilarious.

[Dan Natterman]

And he didn't hurt anybody, which everybody loves a bank robber that doesn't hurt anyone.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Look, I'm telling you, if you talk.

[Dan Natterman]

Yeah, I know you told me from Israel. But we have to move it from Israel to America because we want the movie to sell, we want a big audience.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Except for some things will never work in America because, for example, visiting him in prison, it was so sweet. The warden did his best. There was bring your kid to jail day, which is my absolute favorite day of the year. Because the warden would be like, your fathers are all guests here of the government. It's like, dude, I'm 14, I'm not retarded. I know that my father robbed a lot of banks and he's here because of that. But then you sit around and there's like, you know, serial killers sitting right next to you. Like so you.

[Dan Natterman]

You know what? A limited series. I'm thinking a limited series and you can have it take place in Israel because, you know, nowadays limited series can be anywhere, you know.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Right. Maybe the kid could be American. Maybe it could be a family.

[Host 2]

I think you should move it to Korea. Those things are very popular now. It's very timely. We don't know anything.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It's believable, but at some point, some, some really, really schlocky kind of TR show. This is like 15 years ago did an episode about this, but they were too cheap to shoot in Israel, so they shot in Canada. And all the actors are Arabs now, you know, look at me. They just got a bunch of Arabs because they figured it's the same exact thing. Who cares? So first of all, you see the streets and, like, you see, like, you know, literally, you see like a moose in one of the. Like, it's.

[Host 2]

It's French, right?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Tim Hortons. It's unbelievable how Canadian is, like, back in sunny Israel, you know, he was preparing, and then you see some, like, Egyptian swarthy guy sweat. It's like, guys, nice. Nice effort. But that ain't us.

[Host 2]

All right? Can we talk about. This is a great story. How come we didn't talk about this? You knew this the last time he was on. What the hell's the matter with you?

[Periel Aschenbrand]

It's better in person, isn't it?

[Host 2]

You didn't know we were gonna see him again. How could you not have hope?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Hope springs eternal.

[Host 2]

It's one of the greatest stories I've.

[Dan Natterman]

Ever heard in my life. The idea that your son is dressing up as you and you're itching to be. To get the credit, which is, of course, very common with, you know, criminals.

[Host 2]

But just before. Just before it's Israel. What was your mother's reaction when she found out?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Exactly what you would imagine, Noel.

[Host 2]

Tell me. Tell me.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It was a complete breakdown. You know, imagine that betrayal. I mean, for me, it was one thing. I mean, my story is also crazier because I was home alone when this shit happened.

[Host 2]

Was she angry with him?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

She was devastated.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

No, she was thrilled.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

She was like, you know what? I think this takes our marriage to a whole new level. She was very angry with him. They divorced shortly thereafter.

[Host 2]

He must have been nutty already in some way. I mean, you just don't.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I think. Yeah, I think so.

[Host 2]

I mean, like, she's already living with this nutty man, and she probably, like, until this happened, she thought she had stories, right? Now, all the stories seem very, very lame, but I'm sure she had stories.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

The nutty guy who is just a sort of, like, you know, happy go, lucky boy, like, fucks around. And then there's the bank robber who just went away to prison for the.

[Dan Natterman]

Rest of, well, 11 years, which seems like.

[Host 2]

Well, he didn't know how long.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

He was 20, though, right? He was sentenced to 20.

[Dan Natterman]

And he lives now in Israel.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

He lives in Israel.

[Dan Natterman]

Okay.

[Host 2]

Conjugal visits.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

He's very happy. He's remarried.

[Dan Natterman]

And does he still have, you Know when people still know who he is?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Oh, absolutely. He's a major celebrity. He does ads for like, what's his name? Ronnie Leibowitz. You can look him up. He literally does ad.

[Host 2]

You even tell me this story. Well, first of all, what is the matter with you?

[Periel Aschenbrand]

It's because it's like having.

[Host 2]

Talking to Mike.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Yeah, I am talking Mike. That's the only time he's ever told me to talk in the mic, by the way. I mean, it's like having, like Bob Dylan's son come in who does something in his own right. I don't like making Leo talk about his dad if that's not like he prepared for it. He opened the door.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

My family story, who cares?

[Dan Natterman]

Well, I think. Didn't you say, do you know who his father is?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Didn't you?

[Periel Aschenbrand]

No, because he said he started telling a story about his father. And I said, if you're going to tell that, then you have to tell us who your father is.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Is it any wonder that I was raised with guns? I mean, come on. That's the guy.

[Host 2]

That's right. I mean, it's so this is an amazing story.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Why don't you give me credit for breaking up now?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I give you credit.

[Dan Natterman]

Contrary to popular belief, by the way, if I could just add this one thing is Israel, if you're in the army, of course you have guns. But it's not that easy to get a gun as a private citizen in Israel.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

We're working on it. It's getting easier and easier, but that.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Is true, historically speaking, nobody had guns. If you're, if you're, if you're not.

[Dan Natterman]

In the army, usually you can get one.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Some people did. You could get one. But here's the thing. Israel has measures that I support as a gun nut, right? As a maniac, I support totally. If you want to get a gun in Israel, it requires a whole lot of licensing, training and ongoing renewal that is dependent on your ability to actually prove that you could operate a firearm. That's exactly what I advocate for. That's what we need.

[Dan Natterman]

You want this gun, but that's not what the true gun nuts advocate. You call yourself a gun nut, but really you're not the true gun nuts. Want a free for all?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I would say it's a chicken and AR15 type of situation, because I think a lot of what our community. Can I call us a community? I mean a community of well armed, our militia believes. Look, when all you hear on the other end of this debate is why do you even need a gun? Why do you Even need an AR15? We're going to take it away. Then your emotional natural response as an American is, fuck you. I don't want anything. And my opening gambit is, I want. I want to compromise nothing.

[Host 2]

Let the record show, when he made that remark, he was scrunching his face like an Upper west side liberal Jew.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Correct? Correct. It's very hard to take AR15 like.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

A machine gun, though.

[Dan Natterman]

No, it's semi automatic.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Who needs that? Why can't you just. Why do you need that?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Unless you're in my QED Women. Point, Point. Point proven.

[Host 2]

Why do you need that? Why do you need a bigger computer?

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Okay, let's talk about, please.

[Host 2]

So Lielle has an article in Tablet, Tablet magazine, where Periel used to work. And the. The article essentially is like. It's very. It's very a hard line. I don't want to treat it with levity because it's qu. But. Well, I'll let you say. But it's basically, we've had enough of this and now we're pulling. You advocate for pulling out all the stops and annexing the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, as you put it in the article. So you want to give us a little overview of that position for those.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Listeners who still do not think that I'm a complete nut job. Sure. Look, this is the kind of article that nobody wants to write and I think nobody wants to read. I grew up in the warm bosom of the Israeli left. I was, I think, what, 15 or 16 when the Oslo Accords were signed. I was on a plane coming back from the United States, and the captain came. I'll never, you know, never forget that. Came on the sort of, you know, kind of PA system and said, you're not going to believe this, but we have peace with the Palestinians. And the whole plane was like stunned silence. Like, it was, like, virtually unthinkable. A happy silence, A very happy silence. But it was so far out of the realm of the possible and imaginable that people. Like how? Like, that's not what anything, you know, anyone expected ever.

[Host 2]

Because it is an important data point. Because we often presume that people understand this history, that at that point. This is early 90s. When was it?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

This is 93.

[Host 2]

93. It was the very, very commonplace position of almost all Israelis that this was a good thing. Peace with the Palestinians is a dream that we want hugely.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Look, my generation grew up our kind of, like, foundational memories. My probably earliest memory is sitting in a swimming pool in the summer and then my father returning from the first Lebanon War after. I haven't seen him for Lord knows how many months. Then the intifada, the Palestinian uprising starts. The entire childhood was all about violence, war, conflict, strife. And the assumption was, this is going to go on forever. So when someone opens the door and said, no, there's a different way, all but the real kind of bearded zealots at that point, alas, turned out to be completely right. Said, this is incredible. We have to give this a chance. And here's the thing. Maybe you were disillusioned at some point along the way, but if you weren't, I think certainly October 7th did the trick. The point that I raised in my article is that every available metric at our disposable, at our disposal shows that the population in Gaza is ecstatically supportive of what Hamas is doing. We have both Palestinian polling and sort of international polling from, you know, Harvard University, Cambridge University and elsewhere that shows that while support was somewhere in the 30% mark before October 7th, it shot up all the way to past the 60% mark and only kind of dipped a little when these guys were losing the war. When you ask Palestinians what they actually want to do with Israelis, something like 47% said, all of them need to die. 20% are kinder. Said, well, no, they don't have. You don't have to kill them. You know, we could expel them. And 17% said, well, they could live here as our slaves in a Sharia state. This is not a good situation. This is a highly, highly, highly religious, fundamentalist, Islamist community of people. To the extent that you can't pull a sort of, you know, denazification a la Germany, because, you know, Nazism is one thing and religion is a very different thing. It's a much, much deeper belief. Which leaves you with this kind of really difficult question. What do you do?

[Dan Natterman]

And also the German population, probably those percentages were not. Did not correspond with the number of Germans.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

No.

[Dan Natterman]

That were down with the Nazi program, I would assume.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Plus, look, there are so many other data points we have seen over the last 10, 15 years. Popular uprisings everywhere in the Arab world. We've seen it in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Syria, in Libya, everywhere. People stood up to the dictators oppressing them and said, enough. We want freedom. We want the opportunity for a better life everywhere. That is but one place. We have not seen a single Palestinian step forward despite so many efforts, including huge financial rewards and promises of safety and security from the Israelis. Step up and say, I'm sorry. But the smothering of nine month old babies with bare hands, that's not an act of heroism. Raping of 14 year old girls, that is not national liberation. We have not seen one. That is all the data I think that you need. Plus, if that wasn't grim enough, we now have the tales of the Israeli hostages who are held largely by quote, unquote, civilians giving lie to, you know, to the, I think assertion that there are many innocent kind of families out there in Gaza. Leery Elbagh, for example, one of the female IDF soldiers was held for 37 days without being allowed a shower by a family who taunted her as they made her prepare food that she was not allowed to eat as she was quietly starving away. We're looking at a very different reality here. So the question is, what do you do with people who declare that the only point of their life and existence is to end yours?

[Dan Natterman]

You're talking about annexing the West Bank.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Hold on, hold on. Let's answer this question one step at a time. So the obvious kind of brutish answer is be like, well, you know, a total war of annihilation, which is something that thankfully Jewish ethics does not permit and something that no one in their right mind in the state of Israel has ever even remotely advocated for or considered. This war is being fought with the utmost care for human life, which is why we don't use certain kind of weapons and put our own soldiers at risk in ways that are very detrimental to us. So that's off the table. What else could you do? Well, maybe we could get someone else to be in charge, but sadly the PLO is just a slightly frillier version of the same genocidal rage. So we can't really replace A with B. I think that President Trump's option, and I think it really kind of like shuffled the cards to find these people a nice sustainable place to live in dignity and respect and give them a chance that honestly, they don't really deserve. The people who held Leary Elbug without a shower for 37 days do not deserve a nice apartment in Abu Dhabi. But I think that, that all other options considered, if you truly want sustainable long term cessation of violence in the region, that is a very good and perhaps even the only option we have on the table.

[Host 2]

So just a few things. First of all, you say that Israel's fought the war with the utmost care. I just want to register that Israel has not done, has lost that PR war in terms of making that case to the world.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I don't care about PR at all.

[Host 2]

No, no. I just want to say, and I blame the Biden administration to some extent for that also, but also Israel. And even to me, at times I've seen things which have made me worry that that was. I don't think Israel is a barbarian nation, but I don't think America is a barbarian nation. And from time to time we hear horror stories about things that the American army has done. And it's made me from time to time worry that, that that's almost like a party line. But I do in my heart believe that Israel is run by decent people. And every time there's been articles by people who were skeptical of what was going on in Israel, then they actually embedded themselves in the decision making process. To my knowledge, they came away saying, no. I have to admit their procedures are very good there. And of course you have rogue soldiers and whatever it is. But I know that some people, when they hear you say that will. They'll be like, what's the utmost care? Didn't you see how many people are dying? So I just want to mention that. The second thing is, I also want to mention that one of the pillars of like the center left, Tom friedmanites, and I think this also includes the Biden administration, is that. No, Friedman was sure that once the Palestinians emerged from their tunnels and saw what Sinwar had wrought upon Gaza, they would turn upon him and run him out on a rail. You remember these columns?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Oh, yes.

[Host 2]

And what you're saying is he was 100% wrong, that they rallied behind his.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Cause even more as he had always been about every single issue.

[Host 2]

Which brings me to something and I've always struggled with this. We don't understand them. And I can't understand it because how could you have that amount of death and destruction, lose your loved ones as surely they have, suffering, not knowing. I don't think they're starving. But not knowing where your next meal, not having a private bathroom, all the things that we take for granted as far as the eye can see, you're gonna live this way. And yet you're double in your commitment to this cause rather than the obvious alternative is like, hey, they've offered us deals before. Why don't we say, you know what? Can we revisit one of those deals?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

That's an amazing question. I think the answer to this question involves something I like to call the Fay Fallacy. After the great Tina Fey who had this really kind of hilarious but, but, but also pathetically wrong riff. I think in 30 Rock in which he says, you know, all that anyone anywhere ever wants is just to sit down in peace and eat a sandwich. You know, we look at these people and we assume that because we want nothing, but they're just like, you know, pay our mortgage, live quietly, have our kids go to a good school, enjoy, survive, have our kids live, have them go somewhere nice, have them have a future. Then all other cultures, all other people, all other belief systems must be the same. That to me, is the height of sort of, you know, Western cultural imperialist arrogance, because it's basically erases the possibility that other cultures may have other priorities. We're looking at an Islamist society that has a deep, deep sense. And look, I say this with as little criticism as I can muster. I understand this. They see the existence of the Jews next door to them in sites that they also consider holy, to be a huge bit of humiliation. They believe in the faith that, let's be really, really honest here and remember, is 700 years younger than Christianity. If we're grading them on a historical scale, they're about where Christians were when the Crusades were happening, right?

[Host 2]

They'd say they're the new, improved.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Sure. But it takes time for religions to sort of, kind of, you know, calm down, just like people. You know, teenagers are one thing. It takes you until you're 30, 40, 50, 60 or older to sort of finally chill and understand how life works. These people have a goal. Their goal is the eradication of the Jewish invader. Nothing else brings them joy. Nothing else makes any sense or brings them meaning. I totally understand. And furthermore, really respect that. And when they say this over and over and over again, I have a really simple solution. Maybe let's listen to them and believe them.

[Dan Natterman]

Can I just.

[Host 2]

I was gonna say just a distinction, probably without a difference, but I just wanna offer it. You say it's like arrogance that we think they're like us this way. I don't think it's arrogance because I think it comes from. And this is why we have trouble understanding it. We imagine that deep within all humans are the desires for their children to do well, to have. To be comfortable, to have ample food to eat. We imagine so somehow that culture is almost overriding what we regard as, like, the prime directives of being human. That's why it's so hard for us to understand.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Absolutely.

[Host 2]

Because not an arrogance like we expect them to have our taste in food or.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Point well taken, but.

[Host 2]

No, so, so understand my point.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yes, but, but, but, but if we're looking at the scale of it, Makes.

[Host 2]

It more remarkable if we're looking at.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

The scale of human needs.

[Host 2]

A suicide bomb, right?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

So, so is glory.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

So is heaven. Yeah. So is transcendence. So is afterlife. So is the belief that whatever we have here is but a trifle considering what awaits us on the other side. Those are very deeply human thing that really resonate very strongly in a lot of cultures that choose to move away from everything that we have here towards some kind of, you know, Valhalla that awaits on the other end. That is completely understandable. It is neither weird nor crazy. Except for if you've, you know, been. Your religious imagination has been blunted, which, sadly is the case for many of us, you know, deracinated Westerners who didn't really grow up with any kind of real rootedness in religion.

[Host 2]

Well, we had a little technical problem. You were saying, Dan.

[Dan Natterman]

I was saying that he mentioned not being able to shower. And I said, well, well, that's not. You know, if you're gonna talk about mistreatment of hostages, that's relatively benign. And then you said.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Because, anyway, I said, the point that I'm making is that according to our best estimates now only a third or so of the people who crossed over to Israel on October 7th were actual Hamas terrorists. The rest were just people, just civilians who came to partake in the looting, the raping, the killing, and the.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, I guess by definition, then, they were Hamas. I mean, depending how you define Hamas. I don't think there's like, a perfect.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Membership policy, but Israel exactly has that one reason, for example, and this makes my blood boil every time I say it, but it has the added disadvantage of being completely true. One reason why we did not act against the kidnappers of the Biba's mother and children was because they were not part of any registered, acknowledged terrorist organization. And so the Israeli court system said, I'm sorry, you do not have permission to go against these people. That's the level of kind of, you know, kind of meticulousness that Israel takes. That's the kind of care that we take.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

I would like to just go on record and say that today was the funeral of the Bibas family of Shiri Bibas, the mother and her two babies, Kfir, who was nine months old when he was kidnapped, and ariel, who was 4 years old. And the babies were murdered with by terrorists. Although Hamas put on this, like, clown ransom performance ceremony saying that the IDF had killed them, although we have international agreement that they were, I believe, strangled to death.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

And then they're forensically they were strangled and then bludgeoned so that it would.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Look like they were killed in some kind of strike. And then they sent the bodies back to Israel with keys, unlocked coffins with keys that did not open the coffins. And it wasn't even Shiri's body. Yeah, so. And Oded Lifshit, who was one of the founders of Niroz, which was one of the kibbutz that they all came from, who was an 84 year old peace activist and pianist and great grandfather used to drive children with cancer, Palestinian children from Gaza into Israel into hospitals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for treatment. So the people who were killed were the biggest peace activists. I mean the opposite of the position that you're taking is the point here. Right. So just so we have context comes.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Back to that, what do you do with a Nazi next door? There are not a lot of options. I think this one of repopulation, which again is neither that rare nor I think morally reprehensible. It is something that we have seen happen again and again and again. Historically. I could give as an example 2.3 I believe million Germans who are repopulated from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia after the war simply because they realized, hey, these people are going to get killed by everyone for very good reasons unless we get them out of there. I think 800,000 of them were taken to the Soviet Union and the rest to sort of like western controlled territories in Germany because it is a very good kind of like premeditative way of making sure you do not have a bloodbath on your hand.

[Host 2]

So you think they. It's all very difficult stuff. You think, first of all, I don't want to be a coward. I do think that a moral case can be made on behalf of the people being expelled as well. In other words, that if you have absolutely no Hope and after 100 years of this, we have every reason to think there's no hope after a hundred years. It's never been worse, that this is going to just mean death and destruction till the end of time. There is a moral case to be made. This is what Benny Morris got in trouble for saying many years ago of clearing the land. Of course for that to be moral they would have to have some serious option of passing on some sort of end of the conflict, which they of course will. But that would have to say, listen, we're going to do this. This is your last chance. But my question beyond Gaza is do you also want to expel the Palestinians from the West Bank?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

No, I think this is a much more complicated solution or problem. I think that if we think creatively about this one, we could come to really interesting ideas. Here's one that I happen to be fond of. There is a very good Israeli scholar by the name of Dr. Mordechai Keydal. I think he teaches at Bar Ilan University. A very long time ago he made a very good student, completely true observation that all this talk about Palestinians is ridiculous. These are not people who have a sort of cohesive national kind of mentality. They do not see themselves as belonging to something called the Palestinian people. They see themselves as belonging to hamulahs, like little family based clans that each live in a different city in the west bank and don't necessarily love each other or share anything that they could see as a history. Kedal's idea, which I think is very, very good, is to say something like, look, Israel could annex the west bank all it likes. A overwhelming majority of Palestinians in the west bank live in these cities. Each one of these cities could become an emirate. It could become a completely independent, self sustainable, self governing kind of municipality, a la Monaco, if you will. We could connect all of them in a series of roads that aren't that difficult to build because it's a pretty small territory. We could give them access through Jordan to all the international travel that they want. And then again, they could have their choice. Do they want to live in peace and just manage their own affairs? That's terrific. If they on the other hand, choose to once again take all the resources and turn it towards death, mayhem, murder and destruction, that's a totally different story.

[Host 2]

Now how come? I mean, I've known quite a few Palestinians my life. No Palestinian has ever defined himself to me in terms of these clans that you're describing there.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Of course not. Look, if you look at the whole history of Palestine, and I say this with, with not an ounce of sort of glee or machismo, but if you look at the whole history of Palestine, it is a completely fabricated construct that came to be in 1964 when an Egyptian con man by the name of Yasser Arafat realized that there was a lot of money and support to be had because of the Cold War, because of Western sympathies, because of a lot of other reasons, from creating this counter narrative to the Jews called the Palestinians. The Palestinian Liberation movement was founded three years in 1964, three years before the alleged occupation of the west bank began. That only happened in 1967. The Palestinians now understand at least a vast Majority of them understand that they have the Wonka golden ticket. They could be as sort of obdurate as they want. They could say no to any and every peace deal. And at every turn, instead of saying, okay, you said no, now suffer the consequences. They then claim, no, no, no, no, let's go back, let's roll back the clock. Let's go back to square one and start negotiating as if nothing had happened. They could launch as many intifadas as they want and then say, okay, well, you know, I'm saying, uncle, let's start afresh.

[Host 2]

But isn't this idea that there's not really a Palestinian nation, There's a lot of echoes of Ukraine and Russia here, right? But you know, to whatever extent that they were simply people who defined themselves in terms of their resistance to Israel at this point, there seems to be such a common history that they've had and experience that a national feeling, a legitimate national feeling has been forged among these people. In the same way we see these people, there's Ukrainians, I'm told, who were actually quite sympathetic to Russia, who are now firmly Ukrainians because of the experience.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

But here's the thing. We offered them the dream, right? We offered them the Palestinian state not once, not twice, not three times. We've offered it again and again and again under all sorts of permutations. Bill Clinton is very, very clear on what was on the table and what was rejected. Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli Prime Minister.

[Host 2]

Just this week, Olmert came out with.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Presented the plan like, everyone continues to kind of beg these people to please accept some kind of measure of responsibility for their own well being. And they keep on investing every shekel they have in the murder of Jews. The Palestinian Authority still diverts enormous resources to the pay program. Everyone who wants to kill a Jew and kills a Jew receives a huge, huge, huge, huge financial settlement. The list of Israeli, of Palestinian terrorists that Israel released because of all this hostage negotiations contains 325 millionaires. Think about this number. 325 people who'd done nothing in their lives except for murdered Jews and are worth more than $1 million. It's mind boggling. These people keep on making the choice. At some point, hey man, there got to be consequences.

[Dan Natterman]

Can I ask why? If you're willing to give them autonomy through a system of Emirates, as you put it, why not just give them the whole territory as a state?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

How many times have we tried that?

[Dan Natterman]

But why would they accept this other plan if they didn't accept, you know, omer's plan, the color plan that you're describing. They're not going to accept that. They're certainly not going to accept that.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Let's call it the fuck around, find out principle, because that is now off the table. Because they need to learn at some point that you can't just go on killing people and then expect people to succumb to your demands, which, sadly, is what Israel has done. Believing naively, beautifully, but stupidly, that eventually, if you only beg them enough, they'll say, you know what? Fine, I'll take a state and start caring for the future of my own children.

[Dan Natterman]

But how are you gonna put this Emirates idea on its feet?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I'm not gonna put anything on its feet. I'd be like, that's the offer on the table. Do you want this cool? Do you not want this great. We could have other solutions, too.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, they're gonna say no. So then what?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Well, I say it again. The tenor of the question already assumes this kind of imbalance between people with agency on one side and kind of completely helpless children on the other side. This is not how I see the Palestinians. I see them with the utmost dignity and respect. I see them as people with agency, just as I see the Israelis and myself. Right? If they want to say no, if they want to continue fighting, no problem, we'll continue to fight them. The one thing that they have to realize that October 7th must change everything in a way that we won't keep on coming to the same starting point. Be like, no, no, no, no, Please, please, please want to live in peace with us. You don't want to. That's great. We have other means, too.

[Host 2]

What happened to the idea? You know, sometimes these ideas, they don't work. And then you look back, what was wrong with that idea again? What happened to the idea of a federation with Jordan? That's just.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

You should ask the king of Jordan that, because he'll be absolutely terrified because the absolute majority of his state is Palestinians. You know, it is completely true to say that there already is a thriving.

[Host 2]

Palestinian and he already had a close.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Call when they, you know, rebelled against this king's father. The father in what is known as blacks and them are slaughtered. I believe something like 15,000 of them, you know, was far, far less forthcoming than the Israelis were. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. You want to put them all in Jordan? Fine by me. I don't care. The point is that they need to learn that this kind of genocidal behavior has consequences.

[Host 2]

The. Listen, they need to Learn construction. I don't sign off on. Not because I'm offended by one word, because it's not. It's not actually truth. Like we. What we want is a solution. Not to teach them a lesson, but.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

That'S a solution right there. No, literally every war in the history of mankind ended exactly the same way. One side was the aggressor, one side was the winner. The winner made the loser pay the price for the consequences. Except for the Palestinians.

[Host 2]

Sharon was on the road to unilateral withdrawal.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Sharon unilaterally withdrew.

[Host 2]

Well, by the way, he started Gaza.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

And then he had forcefully misplacing 9,000 Israeli families, which no one talks about as we cry for the poor population.

[Host 2]

She won't shut up about it.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

We did this in Gaza. We took 9,000 Israelis, uprooted them forcefully without their consent.

[Host 2]

Great psychological cakewalk compared to what Israel would go through, uprooting the people on the West Bank. But Sharon was ready to do it. I meant on the road, because obviously his next. His next stop was some or all of the West Bank.

[Dan Natterman]

He was going to leave, I assume, the larger settlements intact. I can't imagine he was going to.

[Host 2]

Yeah, keep some of the settlements, the land swaps, whatever. But he. In other words, he wasn't planning to teach them a lesson. He would just say, listen, let's just get out of here. And yes, they're going to be dangerous, but better to deal with that danger when it arises than deal with the administration of this terrorist.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I've had the privilege of knowing this man, Ariel Sharon. Yes, during. During, you know, the later years of his life, this man I hold in the utmost esteem. I think that he, like Ehud Bak, like Ehud Olmert, like virtually almost every Israeli prime minister, with very few exceptions, felt the enormous pressure of the American administration saying, no, the only conceivable, acceptable, permittable framework is Oslo. The only solution, the only equation is you leave, you give them territory for peace. I think October 7th laid all of that to rest. That is no longer the paradigm. That must never again be the paradigm. If they want to come on with some other Dan. Exactly as you said, if they want to come and be like, you know what? Okay, we learned a sort of lesson. We're ready now to do something else. I think there's really no end to how much goodwill they will find on the Israeli side, because Israelis, again, want nothing more than to live in some kind of peace. If Yechiel Sinwar's brother, who now leads Hamas today, rose up and said, guys, okay, mistakes were made. We're releasing all the hostages. We understand that there's a lot of bad blood. I'm being obviously kind of naive and loopy, but can we return to the negotiations table? I'm willing to guarantee that something like 70% of the Israelis would say short.

[Host 2]

I agree with you 1,000%. I've said this, I've said it for years. People don't understand that about the Israelis. All they want is peace. And the people think, well, when they see polls and Israel opposes the two state solution, they think that's the mirror image of the Arab objection. Two state solution. It's completely different. The Arabs don't want two states on principle. The Israelis don't want two states because they don't trust it, because they don't believe it'll actually end there. They believe it's just a step by step process completely.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Which, by the way, is why this is like incredible for me to. It's like really kind of dispiriting. You see President Trump come out with this plan, which if nothing else, is a kind of bold new way of approaching this problem, and immediately the so called hardliners in Bibi Netanyahu's government were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't mean this. Seriously, this is not real. Don't think about this. Like, guys, why, like, here's the American president finally coming up and saying, okay, let's solve this problem to your advantage. And the Israelis are like, we can't even imagine winning.

[Host 2]

So where are you on. I'm actually not happy with President Trump. On the whole, he's much worse. I suspected, everybody knows who listens to the show, that the big risks of Trump were how he'd behave erratically in foreign policy and how he would try to settle scores, settle scores domestically. But on both those counts, he's worse than I imagined he would be. What are your thoughts?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I see and acknowledge the premise of your statement. I understand it. I don't share it. I think, look, I said, after Trump was elected the first time I said that I do not treat him as a person or a politician or a political figure. I treat him as a plague. I treat him as a sort of divine force sent to us to teach us the error of our ways. He's a sort of a hugely kind of consequential force that is here to change and uproot.

[Host 2]

Now, do you mean that literally, that there's actually a divine force or you mean as.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Oh, no, no, I mean this very literally. I'm a Little Yid, you know, I believe in Hashem, I believe in his ways and is an intervention in the world. I think that Trump in foreign policy is proving again an uncanny, unbelievable, blessed ability to walk right in two years of sort of held kind of perceived common wisdom and say, guys, this is absolutely wrong and kind of evil. We're gonna try something new. We saw this, for example, when generations of American presidents say, you cannot move the embassy to Jerusalem because they will start World War iii. And Trump said, nah, that's not going to happen. The Arabs will never sign peace with Israel without the Palestinians. Like, yeah, actually no one fucking cares about the Palestinians in the Arab world. Everyone thinks they're horrible. He's doing the same thing right now. He's giving us the sort of courage and vision that we lack precisely because of this erratic comfort with taking very big risks. And I love it and I think it's absolutely necessary and I'm incredibly grateful.

[Host 2]

I do agree with you that he lean let's leave Ukraine aside for a second. But he leans absolutely in the right direction on a lot of things. Just on a common sense gut basis, you don't have to be a genius. All you really have to do is take the opposite side of what the left has stood for on almost any issue over the last 10 years, which he does just as a matter of being contrary. And you're usually on firm ground. But he's. He's what? He's cavalier and unserious and joking about these matters of the utmost importance. He's trolling with these videos where he's kicking back. I know you like it, I love it.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It's the American spirit as far as I'm concerned.

[Host 2]

And these are, these are matters of, as I said, the utmost seriousness. Life and death, people's homes, people's children. And as much as I'm happy that he's changing the conversation and changing the psychology around the whole issue, I cannot sign off and deny that I do not respect that kind of ill considered behavior. That is not the way leaders should behave. And it's not to his advantage. He would do much better with these ideas if he presented them the way you would present them.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I hear you. And yet, and yet I think part of the reason that he needed to present them the way that it presented him when you had to jump right into the minefield here, a whole administration that held that we must now be locked and kept captive in our homes and succumb to completely like demonstrably insane, quote unquote, public health restrictions because that is the serious hashtag science thing to do. If that is respectability and leadership, I think you now need a very strong course correction, because we've been going down a really bad path. I think what won when Trump won is the sort of, like, indefatigable, undefeatable American spirit. Look, I'm an immigrant to this country. I love it unreasonably and beyond, kind of like any kind of rational measure. Periel knows this about me. Big Reagan fan. Periel's favorite human in the world.

[Host 2]

Well, Reagan is a good example of what I'm actually referring to. Reagan was similar in terms of breaking the mold on things, but as you.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Remember, everyone called Reagan a clown, too. When he said, oh, the evil empire is like, he's quoting from a movie. He's so unserious. This will lead to war with Russia. He was completely morally correct, and I think President Trump is completely morally correct to say, guys, we have a really big problem here, and here's how we're gonna face it. We're gonna face it with common sense. We're gonna face it with dignity. We're gonna face it with American power, which is the only currency in this world that I believe in.

[Host 2]

They called him a clown, but he won 49 states. No, no, he.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

He. Trump wasn't that far.

[Host 2]

Some people, you know, the. The elite liberal reporters called him a clown, but the country adored him.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Well, you know, you could argue, I think Trump's pretty. Pretty loved Trump.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

I mean, there are people.

[Host 2]

Go ahead. You're taking the Trump side now? What happened?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

No, she's a huge Trump.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

I'm not taking the Trump side, but I've told you on air and off that I think you can't. If you want to. If you don't want to be intellectually dishonest, you have to look at it and tell the truth. And what. My personal feelings about Trump aside, people are obsessed with him. All you have to do is drive through the United States of America. I was in South Dakota this summer. There were shrines on the roadside to this lunatic who. I mean, really. So I can't explain. I mean, I can.

[Host 2]

So look at him in Ukraine. I mean, and we're being run now by the podcast group, you know, all the people who go on Rogan and Dave Smith and Tucker Carlson and, you know, Tulsi Gabbard and all the people who trade conspiracy, RFK Jr. This scares the shit out of me.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I'm very glad that we added Ukraine to the mix, because Gaza really wasn't controversial enough. I Feel this was a.

[Host 2]

You're on Trump's side about Ukraine, too.

[Dan Natterman]

You know, it's when Ukraine comes up, that's when I.

[Host 2]

No, but I want to hear what he says.

[Dan Natterman]

This is interesting because we had Aaron Mate on it. I was all set and excited for discussion about Israel. Ten minutes in, Noam says, nope, Ukraine, Ukraine. And then I just tuned out because I don't know anything about it.

[Host 2]

Well, you have two months to learn something.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, I didn't know. I hear mates coming on. I thought Israel.

[Host 2]

I'm sorry. Now, go ahead.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I'll put it this way. I, at least have, I hope, have tried to feign the intellectual humility to say, whereas I have very strong feelings about Ukraine that match yours completely, I am willing to take a step back and see what this administration is doing, because this administration has a way of being very correct about a lot of things. I'll give you an example. Vice President Vance's speech in Munich, to me, was one of the greatest instances of American leadership and oration I have seen in a very long time. There's a person coming and saying, guys, understand what your problems are. None of these things happen in a. In a. In a vacuum. Right. They all happen in a context. You want to be a serious continent. You want to be partners in. In, you know, kind of like reasserting the west and fighting a host of very, very real dangers that you could see every day on the streets of your. My family, you know, my daughter and my wife were just in. In Berlin six hours before they arrived at the visit to the Holocaust Memorial. There's another stabbing there. None of that is sustainable, and no one in that benighted continent is talking about it. This is what American leadership looks like. Do I agree with Ukraine? No, I don't. Am I willing to sit back and watch how this thing plays out? Sure. Because I don't think anything else that we have done to date really delivered a kind of stunning change.

[Host 2]

I agree. I'm hoping that basically what you're saying is that. That beyond all the bluster and beyond his personal peak and whatever he. I mean, look, Ukraine is signing a mineral deal now, and I don't like the fact that we are extorting the minerals out of. Out of Ukraine. But I do recognize that Trump is accomplishing what he set out to do, and you have to acknowledge that he was effective.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

The bluster part is really, I've had the pleasure of, in the summer, to be summoned, if I may, to an audience, a pretty intimate gathering with him. And I Expected a lot of the bullshit. I expected a lot of the greatest president ever. A lot of people expecting a lot of that. Kind of like, you know, what you see if you are fed by a diet of the New York Times and cnn. His command of details in pretty kind of intricate national security related matters was sort of stunning. Did he get the number of warheads down to three? No. But he was very aware of where all the pieces were on the board and his analysis was completely correct. And most importantly, he was clearly not trying to appease or ingratiate himself to anyone in the room. He just said very hard things that a lot of people are like. There's no way you just said that. I think he's much, much more serious. And in fact, knowing a lot of people on his team, these are much more serious people than the sort of common perception among us Upper west side denizens give them credit for being. I feel so much safer and so much more secure and so much cheerful for America knowing that this is my president than I did, you know, prior to January 20th.

[Host 2]

Well, we're gonna see. But it has all the earmarks. 51 intelligence. His behavior has all the earmarks of someone who is not considering things in a careful way. Who's, who's. Perhaps it's gone to his head that his gut is. Has some sort of divine or just. It's just something that he should just respect his own gut because he's been right so many times before.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Maybe.

[Host 2]

But look, pride comes before a fall. And I just, you know, I mean, I've been in business a long time. The way he's acting, the way he talks, it just seems to me that it's gonna blow up in his face. But I hope it doesn't.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I think this is certainly the case the first time around. I think the first time around is a very classic textbook example of pride cometh before the fall. I think he bungled it. He was completely unprepared and got played any which way. But just the number that you mentioned right now, 51 intelligence officials. The fact that we have 51 intelligence officials in this country who knowingly lied three weeks before an election about a matter of absolutely crucial national security. The fact that then technology companies kind of muzzled White House official accounts from sharing the news and all of that was sort of completely silenced. In fact, Pulitzer Prizes were given to those who lied about it. And then all of a sudden this man comes up and says, yeah, all these people need to go right now. And we treat this as a kind of vindictive personal vendetta. No, it's not. This is priority number one. Priority number one is cleanse this country from the people who for too many years ran it like a deep shtetl. Right? Like this kind of junta of people who are not kind of, who are above the law in their own eyes and actually restore kind of yes and no operation capacity.

[Host 2]

So the reason I was worried about a score settling and part of the way I formulated at the time was because his anger is righteous. Remember I said he's, he's going to. I know he's going to want to settle scores, and I get the feeling because they deserve to have. But I understand sweeping out the people that you're describing, but he's replacing it with loyalists. He's creating an atmosphere of people were selling their loyalty to him, obviously before our eyes, to get jobs. He. Pardoning these January 6th assaulters of police. I can't. I would love to be able to say, no, no, he's doing the right thing, but I have to be honest. I see what's going on. He's not just resetting the scales to where they belong, he's putting them in the other direction. And there's excesses there, and they're dangerous.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Look, I know it's only been. I know these agree with me. Very eventful couple of weeks. Yeah, but it's only been a couple of weeks, I think, at the very least. And again, I'm, I'm personally incredibly kind of optimistic about some of his more high level appointments, including Pete Hegseth, including Cash Patel, which I think is an unbelievably important and great appointment. Marco Rubio, I think is terrific. Like, I'm very happy to give it. I'm by no means a sort of, you know, blind loyalist to this administration. I'm very grateful for some of the fresh thinking and some of the fresh acknowledgement of real concrete problems. But at the very least, I'm very happy to give them as much credit as they need to really get something.

[Host 2]

I mean, I'm hoping for the best.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

And I just love anybody who comes on and turns you into, like a lefty.

[Host 2]

No, listen, I've always, I've always felt this way about Trump going back to 2016. I said he's erratic. I don't respect that in a leader. We've never, that's never been something you say. Yeah, we need a leader who's more erratic. Like, it's never, it's always been like, just an assumption. And that's a bad Quality in a leader. To be vindictive is a bad quality in a leader. Lincoln was the opposite of those things, which is why we consider him the greatest president ever. That doesn't mean in the end that the results will be bad, because as I started to say before, in the end, and perhaps even on Ukraine, where we don't exactly know what he wants, but if he wants some sort of a fair settlement there, he's pulling in the right direction on almost every issue that he's pursuing in his erratic way.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Can we all agree that he. No matter where we stand politically, he achieved probably the greatest thing that an American president will achieve in the last 75 years? Getting rid of paper straws. Yes. Which was just a blight.

[Host 2]

Getting in the back of me. Getting back. Oh, paper straws. Yes.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

They're now. They're now outlawed. Thank you.

[Dan Natterman]

Paper straws are not outlawed.

[Host 2]

No, no. Getting rid of. He's allowing plastic straws to come. Right.

[Dan Natterman]

Allowing.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Well, for now, I really hope that outlawing paper straws is the next. The next step.

[Dan Natterman]

Can I ask a question, Executive order, about the Bibas family, if I may?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Sure.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, I. Because we had shifted a bit to Ukraine. What motivation did Hamas or whoever was holding them have. Have to kill them, given that they were so valuable as hostages to be exchanged for hundreds, maybe thousands of Palestinians that were incarcerated? Because there's a lot of people that don't believe that they were killed. They believe that they were killed by the Israelis, and they bring this up, and it's a valid question. I believe that they were killed by Hamas because that's what the evidence suggests. But what motivation was there to kill them?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I think the answer is simple and sad. The answer is that Hamas knows that Israel will negotiate just as fiercely for the bodies of soldiers as it would for live people. Israelis need to bring people home to burial. So as far as Hamas is concerned, can we keep them alive? Can we kill him? Does it really matter to these animals? It doesn't.

[Dan Natterman]

But they kept some of them alive, and some of them.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Well, I mean, I think it's.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I had pure quite.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

If they kill Hirsch, I mean, you could make that same case is pure, pure, pure.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I think. I think it's luck of the draw. At some point, there was some, you know, maniacal, genocidal terrorist who decided, hey, no, I want them alive because it is my pleasure to, you know, abuse them. And by the way, I gave the example of the shower. But we know of far, far, far more horrendous torture that. That these hostages were hung upside down. Exactly. By the way, one maniac likes to torture his people alive. Another likes to smother a nine month old baby.

[Host 2]

I want to ask you.

[Dan Natterman]

There was no, there was no cohesive policy coming from the top. It's just in your mind, which, whoever was holding them, they all had their own vision.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I think we know enough by now to know that there was absolutely no cohesive policy coming from the top. I think, as I said, because only a third of the actual combatants that day, if you will accept that term, were actual armed terrorists and the rest were civilians. It was just a free fall at some point. I actually do believe that Hamas didn't even know where some of these people were being held.

[Host 2]

I have a question. I was wondering this. Has there been any talk about the following. I could completely imagine if my father were held hostage and I knew he was dead and now Israel had to release 400 murderers for his body. I would say my father wouldn't want 400 murderers to be released for his dead body. Keep the body. Hopefully we'll get it back someday. I understand, but not for a dead body. Do I want more live Israelis? How come no one has said that? Yes, we want the corpses back, but not at the cost of knowing that living people will die, as they surely will.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Listen from these releases, Noam, it is part of the reason why this campaign of terrorism is so successful is because. Because it forces Israelis to ask these gut wrenching, heartbreaking questions exactly like the one you did. There are quite a few families of the hostages who do feel this way.

[Host 2]

Oh, they've said that.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Well, but again, they also take great care to watch what they say and how they say it because they understand that there are so many families in so many different positions and a lot of families, a lot of families feel like, like I, for example, have gotten to know very well the incredible Goldin family. Hussein Hadal was killed and kidnapped to Gaza long before October 7th. I mean, they went on a very long kind of public struggle to demand that Israel pressure Hamas to bring their son's body home. Because the thought of not having a grave is the most inhumane, kind of just mind boggling thing that could be imagined.

[Host 2]

But am I not right? In Jewish law, life supersedes everything. And if I were the prime minister of Israel, I would say, you know what, we are not going to release prisoners for dead bodies because we value life more than death and we know that this will lead to more death of innocence. And I think that's. That aligns with Jewish Law and Jewish priority citizens will accept.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

You're absolutely right. Except for in the larger context in which you already have to negotiate with these people because there are hundreds of. Of living people.

[Host 2]

Of the living people, yes.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Then at that point you just wanna make the deal and bring everybody back home, which is what Israel is. Look, I wrote somewhat strongly against this deal. I opposed it from the beginning. But I'm telling you right now, if I was a member of the Israeli cabinet and this deal came for a vote, I would vote for it. No doubt in my mind. As much as I abhor it, as much as it drives me crazy, I would just. Just raise my hand and vote for it and feel like the world has ended.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

I think that there's also. Dan, to your point that there's something to be said for like the psychological torture also, you know, they forced Yarden Bibas to make a video. They told him that his family had been killed. And then this is quite some months ago. And then they told him actually that they were alive. So when he was released after 500 days of being held hostage, he was expecting for his family to be alive in Tel Aviv.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Another one of the hostages was told on stage in one of those humiliating ceremonies that they have when they release Israeli hostages, was told that his family was alive and waiting for him. And he gave the speech like, oh, I love you so much. I can't wait to see you. And you could watch this online. You could see sheriff laughing hysterically, being like, ha, ha, we murdered and raped your wife seven months ago. I keep coming back.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

He came out and found out that his two teenage daughter, his wife and his family dog, by the way, had all been killed. And they told him on stage exactly what you said. There's a. There's another hostage right now, Alon Ohel. I believe his name is Alon Oel. He. We. We know these stories.

[Dan Natterman]

You know, Hel Tent, by the way.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Oh, Hel does mean tent.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Shackled in the dark with a severe injury to his eyes alone.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

And, and we know that from other hostages who have been released. So I have a naive question, if you'll allow me.

[Host 2]

And I just hold. I want you to say. But I just want to say, because I know people are thinking to themselves, they hear the stories about, you know, and I think some of them are true of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and things like this. But that's horrible also. Yeah, but it is horrible. But there is something. It goes back to something we said before, but I've never been able to understand It. Yes. In every society that has prisons and police and people in positions of power over other people, like in our own country, we've seen abuses and horrible abuses, but you've never seen the country celebrate them. They've always been something which, when they came out, were overwhelming, a matter of shame and reverberated through the culture and the society in a way that demanded reform and accountability. What I can't. I can process any human anywhere being sadistic. I cannot process the culture that cheers this, that celebrates it, that. That is exalted and rapturous in their, in their response to.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

There you have it.

[Host 2]

I can't understand it.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

There you have it.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

I think it's a good thing.

[Host 2]

I want to understand.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

No, you don't.

[Host 2]

Because. Because I know I have, I have friends. I've had this conversation with people that we've all know and I've said that, listen, I understand every. I understand the grievances. I, I. God damn it, I, I understand it must be humiliating to go through checkpoints. Even if the checkpoints I like, I, Even if they're necessary, you know, I, I can understand all the anger. I. That's the one thing I can't. I can put myself in other people's shoes for all those things and understand the anger and the hatred. I cannot understand the, the rapturous joy in seeing these children die.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

There you have it. That's the society.

[Host 2]

Yeah. And that is the Gulf. That's the thing we can't cross.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

People like to talk about the Israeli Palestinian conflict as this really complex, intractable thing. It's actually become incredibly simple. If you want to choose sides, this is what you're choosing. You're choosing between a society that venerates death and murder and a society that does whatever it can to prevent it. It's really that straight up.

[Host 2]

And yet when Palestinian, Arab people come to America very quickly, they seem to shed that aspect. Something does seem to change. I mean, much more seldom here. Maybe you have more in Europe. Very seldom do I hear that kind of talk.

[Dan Natterman]

I don't think I've ever met somebody from Gaza here in the United States, I suppose.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Avenue, Listen, I think it's very important to say that there are people in Gaza and who are Palestinian who do not espouse these beliefs.

[Host 2]

I hope much fewer than we thought.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Well, I mean, I was seeing one.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Speak publicly would be sure nice right.

[Host 2]

About now, they're scared of getting killed.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Well, so there's, I mean, you can look up Hamza Howidi. He is a Palestinian from Gaza, who made his way to Germany. And he is incredibly outspoken and very brave and was tortured by Hamas, as were his friends. I mean, I think that this was my naive, perhaps question is that I come from, as you know, you've known me for, you know, I don't know, 20 years maybe, from quite the far left. I have always been a sort of starry eyed peace activist for the Israeli Palestinian movement. I still somehow believe that if Hamas were taken away that, I mean, what I've always said is that 90 something percent of the Palestinian people just want to be left alone and eat a sandwich. I think that in the same way that you see the hostages hugging Hamas and thanking them, I think because they have guns to their heads, that the Palestinian people, a lot of them are living under that same wrath. Right.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Let'S unpack that. As we say in academia, let's assume for a second that this was true.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Why don't you mansplain us if this was true?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I will certainly do that. This is Trump's America, baby. We mansplain. It's back. We could say retard. We could do whatever you want if this was true. First of all, it still doesn't explain why equally or greater oppressive societies, again, Gaddafi's Libya, Assad's Syria, had successful revolutions. This is literally the only Arab population that never rose against tyranny. That fact cannot be stated enough, number one. Number two, you look at the polls, the polls don't support your theory because if what you said was correct. Correct. Then all the polling that you would see would have something like 100% support for Hamas. In fact, we see low percentage of support for Hamas before the war and very high percentage support for Hamas. Hamas remained the same. Hamas, the support didn't change because Hamas one day is like, guys, we're no longer a peaceable organization. We're kind of like switching around.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

They're living in like a land of destruction. Who else are they going to blame? Like they're gonna blame you.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

How about their leaders? Because again, literally every other Arab population did it over the last six years. That strikes me as a pretty good alternative.

[Dan Natterman]

If you look at, although I've never been there, if you look at like the west bank, like Ramallah, I don't think that's an impoverished place.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Neither is Gaza.

[Dan Natterman]

Yeah, I mean, Ramallah is actually a fairly, I think, upscale town.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

It is. So is Gaza, but not anymore.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

The south is.

[Host 2]

Which I should have said, let's give more credit to the Palestinian people who continue to support Hamas in the following sense the world has taken their side. This has been a tremendous success for the Palestinian cause. And up and right through what they saw the American president vacillating and indecisive and obviously afraid of anybody from his left who might accuse him of being not sufficiently care, caring about the policy people. So they, they, they do see success from.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

You're right.

[Host 2]

And if that rallies and if we hadn't allowed that success, if we, if Trump had been president, then maybe they wouldn't be.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

So if Trump had been present, then October 7th would not have happened. That I believe firmly. But the point, the point I think you're making, you're making a far more grim point than I think you intended to. Because if I'm a Palestinian and I'm like, hey, you know, everyone in the world seems to be on my side. So that smothering of a nine year old infant and the raping and then, you know, shooting of a 14 year old girl, yeah, kind of cool, then I'm doubly the moral monster than I would have been because at that point what do I care about then? I care about nothing. That I'm a complete, you know, empty nihilist who is not fit for human consumption.

[Dan Natterman]

How much of the world really is on the Palestinian side? I suppose it's a lot. But take the developed countries. Do you think that overwhelmingly that a majority.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Look, this brings us back to J.

[Dan Natterman]

The majority of Americans support Israel according.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

To all the polls, because we're normal. But if you look again at the dying, if not already dead continents, Europe, which is committing kind of like slow suicide in so many interesting, fascinating ways. These people have found their cause. They have united themselves or aligned themselves with these destructors of humanity and civilizations, the Palestinians, because that's exactly what they imagine for their own continent. They have no attachment to their roots, to their history, to their religion, to their well being. They have nothing motivating them except for some kind of lunatic belief in some ethereal notion of like, oh, we need to be virtuous and therefore we need to side up with people who we think are oppressed and everyone just wants to live in peace. Even though we're seeing grooming gangs, raping 14 year old girls all over this country. It's sheer lunacy and it will destroy this continent. Not, not a moment too soon.

[Host 2]

Look, we're, we're.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, you, you. But not in a moment too soon. Just to be clear, you're not a, you're not celebrating the destruction of Europe.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I'm deeply, deeply saddened by it. But at this point, I think they've made their choice and that's what's coming to them.

[Host 2]

I think when you say that we support Israel because we're normal, obviously the reasons we support Israel are much more complex than that. And it may be more fragile than we'd like to think.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

How so?

[Host 2]

Well, obviously the left doesn't support Israel, especially under a certain. I can't remember where the polls are, but under the age of like 35, it's completely different than over 50. And then, although Trump, we've said before on the show, I think, is a quite reliable friend of the Jewish people. Maga is not correct. And post Trump, Maga, absolutely correct. All you need is one of these Tucker Carlson, who is their North Star, they will turn against Israel just like they're turning against Ukraine.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

That's right. Right.

[Host 2]

And then what? So it's, it's, you know, I'm, I don't. I'm.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

But my belief, my belief grows deeper. And this is when we get real crazy. Because up until now, it's just been like the amuse bouche of crazy. Now it's the stake of crazy. Look, I believe that America and Israel are different. They're different than any other country in the world because they are covenantal nations. The name for the United States in Hebrew is the Lands of the Covenant. These are two nations that are predicated not on the coincidence of living in a contiguous territory for long enough to call it France or Belgium or Germany or whatever, but on an idea wrought by words that we can make a change, that we could bring God's light of freedom and liberty into this world. I think that is the reason why the Hebrew Bible is as much America's founding moral document as the Constitution is America's founding political document. And I think this is why the words of the prophets resonate from anyone from Sojourner Truth to Martin Luther King. I think that this is so deeply embedded in the DNA of this country that we are different from Europe for that reason. We're a godly country. And I don't mean this in a shallow, stupid way, televangelist type of way. And I think that though we now have a problem that is very much the result of. Of very bad higher education, I'm not worried. I actually think we're looking at an incredible American renaissance happening quite soon because again, we're renewing a covenant. Unlike a contract, it's something you need to renew every generation or so. We're renewing it.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

The Tucker Carlson's and the Kansas.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I'm very worried about the Tucker Carlson.

[Host 2]

And I'm also worried about what I agree with everything you said and I've worried about immigration for a long time because I detected that the immigrants of my father's generation, the sentiments that you express of this hyper appreciation and love for America, of leaving the old country behind and kissing the ground. And this makes you very receptive to this idea that America is a nation built on an idea, because that's what brought you here and that's what you appreciate. But we can't pretend that the recent immigrants to this country feel that way about this country. They don't.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Correct.

[Host 2]

And so they will not, I don't think be as. They will not treat it as so holy. This idea of America having a covenant and all this mumbo jumbo that is in our DNA. You're probably like me, like my father was this way. He saw George Washington as his forefather Jew from Israel in the 30s. Right. He's like, yeah, George Washington, these are my, you know that. That's an incredible fiction that was common among all immigrants. But if you talk to like the Mexican guys who work for me who are, don't, don't, don't send me letters, I love them. They're the best employees I have the. But just they would not be angry to hear me say if you ask them, how do you feel about George Washington? I don't give a. About George Washington. That's not my ancestor. I didn't come here to become a descendant of George Washington. And that's different. And that's uncharted territory. And that might lead us to become more like these other countries.

[Dan Natterman]

Well, how important is. I think it's crucial is that is this sort of civil religion of the founding fathers.

[Host 2]

How important for a nation that has no genetic commonality, Nothing else.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

There's nothing else matters. And by the way, on immigration alone, one should fully throatedly support Donald Johnson.

[Host 2]

Yes.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Full throated.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds the most important. Well, it's his sexual education and it's Queens. You know, they do things differently there. I hear that if this administration does nothing else, the border is the single most important thing that they could do. And they're doing it pretty freaking well.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

You know, we went to the same high school.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

You and Trump.

[Dan Natterman]

I went to the same high school as Candace Owens. No, certainly did. I mean, she came years later, but Stanford High School, the Black Knights. Go, go Black Knights.

[Host 2]

So she's a problem. All right. This is. You're a terrific guess. What better to have you in person than, you know.

[Dan Natterman]

I do have a question.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Very much. I will take that.

[Dan Natterman]

I do have a question.

[Host 2]

It was to him, not to you.

[Dan Natterman]

You know, you're obviously very, very patriotic American, but you're also a very patriotic Israeli, it seems to me. Do you envision a possibility of returning to Israel or you're making your stand with America and that's it?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

That is an incredible and incredibly difficult question. I think about this every day. I again cannot overemphasize how much I love this country and how grateful I am for it. I also realize increasingly that my motherland of Israel, as opposed to my fatherland of America, is going through a lot right now and needs a lot of help and a lot of energy and a lot of investment and a lot of brainpower and brawn. I don't know is the only honest answer. I think there's a lot of work to be done in both societies. I only take great comfort in knowing that though decisions may take me to very different corners of the world, the project is honestly the same project. Because these nations share something very, very important. This is the sort of backbone of the West. This is something that whereas you implement it in Israel or in America, you're doing something which is for the benefit of entire Western civilization. It's not a competition between these two nations.

[Host 2]

Which is why it's so disturbing to hear Trump and his people around him talking as if they regret the entire notion of the Marshall Plan and rebuilding Europe and every like. You hear them talking about post war order, as if this was all a big mistake when it's been the only good thing that's ever happened on planet Earth. Practically.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

We have our work cut out for us.

[Host 2]

You agree with me, right?

[Lyle Leibovitz]

Yes. But again, I mean, look, I think you said something very astute, which is Trump is not maga. In maga, when you see Tucker interviewing this human, who I don't want to name, who calls himself an historian cuz he admits that he read 21 books in World War II and then concludes that Hitler was the poor kind of one who was aggressed upon and Churchill was the real aggressor because, you know, some people who control all the money made him do it. When I say we know who, you're.

[Host 2]

Referring to Daryl Cooper, who I actually have a relationship with and I have a soft spot for him, maybe a blind spot for him, but I know some of that backstory. I'll tell you off, off the air.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

I would love that. My heart sinks when I hear that.

[Host 2]

But it has to be.

[Dan Natterman]

Daryl blocked me on Twitter. Like, I can't respond to his tweets anymore.

[Host 2]

In my opinion, Tucker is by far the bad guy in all this.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

When you see Tucker, when you see Candace, when you see the sort of deeply unserious and deeply wild and deeply un American look, here's the thing. The woke right is not better than the woke left. No, we have a real woke right problem on our hands, and that's something we'll have to deal with as well. And Trump, by virtue of being this kind of, you know, demonic force of nature, he's one man. You know, can J.D. vance become a good, sensible custodian for this movement? I really strongly believe that he could.

[Host 2]

It's a right that nobody saw coming. Like. Like they used to say, mitt Romney's gonna put you back in chains. And Reagan's Hillary, don't you miss him? Now the Tucker Carlson wing didn't even exist, and now it's dominating. So when I used to dismiss the threat of the right, people say, oh, now you're sorry for that? Well, no, because that right didn't even exist.

[Lyle Leibovitz]

On that we could agree everyone hates the Jews.

[Host 2]

Yes. All right, on that note, okay, thank you very much, Leo. Listen, this is a terrific. I hope you'll come on semi regularly because this is fantastic. Okay, thanks, everybody.

[Periel Aschenbrand]

Good night.