← The Promised Podcast
The Promised Podcast
The “Gaza: Yesterday & Tomorrow” Edition
01:51:43
Linda Gradstein, Gilad Halpern and Noah Efron discuss (1) the 20th anniversary of the "disengagement plan" and the evacuation of 21 Jewish towns in Gaza, and its lasting impacts, and (2) the plan cooked up in the UN by 21 countries and organizations...
Loading summary
Transcript123 lines
- [00:01]
A
Today is day 671, which are 94 weeks and five days of the captivity of still 50 hostages, living and dead in Gaza.
- [00:15]
This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language.
- [00:27]
Foreign.
- [00:33]
To the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the City, where at the end of this week's city council meeting, an argument broke out when Hadass Ragolski, a feminist activist from my faction, actually that's what we call them here factions, took the mic and said that word had reached her that this week city inspectors had handed out 750 shekel fines to each of dozens and dozens of restaurants and bars that were open for business on the Evening of Tisha B'Av, by tradition the start of a fast day, and by law, an evening upon which, in Jewish cities and towns in the country anyway, it is illegal to serve food and drink. And it was her hope, she said, and her expectation. She insisted that the city would forgive all those fines because in what world should restaurants and bars be forced to be closed because of something a bunch of rabbis foisted on the rest of us? After Deputy Mayor Chaim Goren of the Religious Believers Party asked for the microphone and said that the Evening of Tisha B'Av, Saturday night was the evening after Hamas put out those heartbreaking videos of starved hostages of Yatar David and Rome Braslovsky, and it was a source of some comfort to him. He said that it was for everyone an evening of quiet contemplation and not an evening of parties and celebrations, and he was therefore disappointed to to learn that dozens and dozens of restaurants and bars had operated like it was any other night, to which Hadas Rogowski said, and I spent the evening reading the book of Lamentations with tens of thousands of other people at Hostage Square. But that was my choice. Others should have the choice too, to which Deputy Mayor Tzippy Brandt beckoned the microphone and said, in my Tel Aviv, there is room for the both for people who want to lose themselves in prayer and for people who want to find comfort in a meal or a drink with others. And then the microphone went to Rabbi Naftali Lubart, the Gur Hasid on the city council, who said, a Tisha B'Av in which the restaurants and bars are quiet. People, of course are free to do whatever they want in their homes. But a Tisha B'Av in which the restaurants and bars are quiet. This has been the law of the land in this country since there was a country 77 years ago, and it is our job to enforce the law. And after that, there was bedlam with people screaming, but isn't it also the law for people like you to enlist in the army? Do your people do that? And mostly people all over the room were broken off into little groups, arguing, one with the other, screaming one at the other, talking one at the other, poking one another in the chest, and all about each of our visions for a day, memorializing the destruction of the temple in our very untemplish city. And arguably, nothing captures the spirit of this city we love so well. Tel Aviv. Biafo better than finding yourself surrounded all of a sudden and with no warning, like spontaneous combustion, by a burning hot, angry argument about what thousands of years of Jewish tradition ought and ought not to mean to us today, which I will say, speaking for myself, is pretty close to all I ever wanted out of life and all I ever wanted out of a city in which I lived. With us Today, speaking from TLV1's flagship satellite studio in Jerusalem, is a woman who I think more than anyone else you are ever likely to meet, joins the profundities of piety with the pleasures of the prosaic and the profane. Rome, meet Jerusalem. Bringing together spirit and, well, spirits. I would say obviously that woman could only be Linda Gradstein. Linda Grazzine has long covered Israel, first for NPR and more recently for the Voice of America. Zahl Linda is also a lecturer in journalism at NYU Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University. And not too long ago at NYU Abu Dhabi, Linda has won an Overseas Press Club Award and an Alfred I. Dupont Award for Excellence in Broadcast journalism. Linda, how you doing?
- [04:38]
B
I'm okay. I'm actually speaking of spirits, getting ready to this evening attend the Jerusalem Wine Festival, which is at the Israel Museum. And it's always such a lovely evening. It's outside in, you know, the grounds of the Israel Museum. And there's live music and there's lots of good wine. And on one hand, you know, I kind of had this how given the fact that we are at, you know, as you said at the beginning, 660 whatever days, how is there a wine festival? And then on the other hand, that perhaps is a symbol of resilience, that life does go on.
- [05:16]
A
Yeah. How does it work, by the way? There are like little stands of the different wines.
- [05:20]
B
There are little stands of the different wineries. And often the winemakers come, which to me, you know, as a wine geek, that's part of the fun part.
- [05:29]
A
And you can talk em up and say, what did you do for this? How did you make this? What is this?
- [05:33]
B
Yeah. Although it gets very crowded. It's three nights, it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Tomorrow is always the most crowded. You pay one price. You get a wine glass at the beginning, which you can take home with you. And you just take your wine glass from stand to stand and sort of taste what they have. And they also, you can buy what you taste. They sort of have set up a wine store there. And it's a really good night for taxi drivers in Jerusalem. The taxi drivers all know that there will be a lot of, you know, slightly inebriated people needing rides home at the end of the festival, but especially the first part of the night when, you know, it's, you know, and then, you know, getting, as it gets later, the young people show up. But also the fact that the young people, what they're coming to is not a club and not a, you know, they're coming to a wine festival outdoors in the Israel Museum. I love seeing these young people.
- [06:28]
C
Are there any baophites.
- [06:31]
Or do people vomit on sculptures?
- [06:34]
B
And again, one of the big advantages of Jerusalem is the night really cools down because, you know, we're expecting this huge heat wave next this coming weekend.
- [06:42]
A
Yeah, I know. Also with us here in the underground vault that is the beautiful serenity studio beneath Lesser Ory street in Tel Aviv, and you just heard his unmistakable voice is a man who may not have much truck with old time religion, but after his fashion, he worships at the temple of Kultur with a capital K, art and music and literature and all those things that make life worth living. That man could be none other than Gilad Halpern. Gilad Halpern is the creator, showrunner and host of the brilliant TLV1 podcast, the tel Aviv Review, a show of incredible breadth and intelligence, as I always say. And Gilad Halpern is also an editor and founder of the brilliant literary journal, also called the Tel Aviv Review, a magazine, as I always say, of astounding breadth and intelligence. And when not podcasting and editing. Gilad Halpern is a research fellow at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, doing research of remarkable breadth and intelligence. Gilad was the managing editor of YNET News, News and current affairs editor here at TLV1, radio assignments, editor at Haaretz, copy editor at France 24, Paris correspondent of Ynet and a staff writer for Haaretz. He studied journalism in London, politics in Paris, and of course, communications at the University of Haifa. He speaks too many languages to count, and he Is, as they say in Boston, wicked smart. Gilad, how you doing?
- [08:08]
C
Yeah, I'm pretty well. I wish I could go to a wine festival in Jerusalem. Maybe I will. You know, it's not that far.
- [08:14]
B
It's not that far. Tell me if you're coming. Come join us. Really? Text me.
- [08:18]
C
Yeah, yeah, actually, that's a. That's a good idea. I might do that.
- [08:21]
A
Though I would say that they do have wine here in Tel Aviv.
- [08:24]
C
Tel Aviv as well. I was just going to say that I usually have my own wine festival at home, tasting all sorts of, you know, not having to drive back and all that. But, yeah, I might like to.
- [08:36]
A
Museum.
- [08:37]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [08:39]
A
Now, as for me, my name is Noah Ephron, and I don't mean to boast, but this week my Apple phone asked if I wanted, and this is completely true, if I wanted to do a mental health check. And obviously I said, sure, I'm not made out of stone. And there were 16 questions, including, how often do you feel anxious? Nearly every day, most days, a few days a week, hardly at all. How often do you worry? Same answers. How often do you have trouble relaxing? How often do you worry about different things? How often are you afraid that something awful might happen? And obviously, my answer to all of those questions was nearly every day. And there were also questions like, do you find yourself overeating? How often do you feel tired? Do you ever feel despondent? And obviously my answer to all those questions was nearly every day. Though, on the other hand, the question, how often do you fail to find pleasure in doing things? I could answer, that has not happened to me. And how often do you have trouble sleeping? And that has never happened to me. And how often do you have trouble concentrating on tv? To which my answer was, TV is like the only thing I can concentrate on. And when I was done, my phone told me that, quote, unquote, my anxiety risk is severe, while my depression risk is only moderate. And my phone counseled that I get professional help as soon as possible. Phone telling me, which I am sure would do me good, though I think that ending the war and bringing home all the hostages might be a cheaper way of getting my numbers right back up. And please believe me when I say that I am not bragging, gosh, my parents always made a point of me not getting too big for my britches. But I think you can tell a lot about a person by the kinds of caring and concerned relationships that person maintains. And as for me, at this moment, even my telephone is really, really worried about me. Today we got two topics of both eminent and preeminent importance. But first, we have this matter in memoriam. We buried on Friday at Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv. The country's greatest ever, I think, graphic artist. His name was David Tartakover. His nickname was Tarta. The funeral was like a who's who of the now aging Israeli left. People you used to see together at political gatherings and around the stage at demonstrations. But who these days, when you see lots and lots of them together, it means you're probably at a funeral like David Tartakover's. David Tartakover's work is everywhere. He was a revered professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. And you can see David Tartakova in the work of lots of the people that he taught. So you feel David Tartakover, his way of seeing things, his way of saying things, what seems like everywhere. And David Tartakover had, for almost all of its 30 year run, a weekly panel in the local underground ISH Village Voice, ISH Tel Aviv paper Hair the City, which if you ask me, was the greatest paper I have ever seen. That's an indefensible statement that I believe with all my heart. And the greatness of the paper owes something to David Tartakover like it does to other political artists like Dudu Geva and Ilana Zafran. And David Tartakover, all through the years, made posters that would all at once show up on the fences and bus stops and Morris columns and kiosks and walls of the city. And once you saw one of these posters, you knew right away that it was his. Even if you did not know just how and why, you knew this. And once you saw one of them, you usually could not forget it. And so, in thinking back on the career of David Tartakover, we all of us faced the problem of the profusion of there being so many images that meant something to so many of us through so many years. Though we are maybe helped to make some order among the multitude of images. Well, I am helped anyway by the fact that of the thousands of them, five stand out from all the rest. Well, five stand out from all the rest, for me anyway. And these five, they tell you something about David Tartakova. And I think they tell you something about the rest of us too. Here is how David Tartakova came to make in 1978, the image he is surely most known for by most of us. Just a few months before, in November 1977, Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, had come to Jerusalem and given a speech about peace in the Knesset. And there was great excitement. Everyone was sure that peace was here. I was on year course then, and I got at the shook a T shirt with a picture of Sadat and Menachem begin hugging. And it said on the bottom, drop the gun, it's time for fun. And it really did seem like a time for celebrating something that seemed so sure to happen. It was like it had already happened. But then long months went by filled with niggling peace negotiations that more often than not seemed to be going nowhere. On March 7, 1978, when almost six months after Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, it looked to all the world like negotiations were spent exhausted. Over 348 reserve soldiers hand delivered a letter to Prime Minister Menachem Begin that said, we see ourselves as obligated to call upon you to not take steps that may mean generations of tragedy for our people in our state. We write to you out of deep fear. A government that prefers the borders of Greater Israel over the existence of peace, with good neighborly relations with Egypt, raises for us grave doubts. Government policy that leads to the continuation of our rule over a million Arabs is liable to harm the Jewish democratic character of the state. And it will make it harder for us to identify with the path of the State of Israel. We know that true security will be attained only with the arrival of peace. The strength of the IDF lies in the identification of its citizen soldiers with the path of the State of Israel. Three and a half weeks after they handed their letter to the Prime Minister, the activist soldiers and reservists behind the thing held a demonstration in Kings of Israel Square. What would be renamed Rabin Square after that Prime Minister was murdered there, and 40,000 people came to this demonstration. The demonstration turned the letter into a movement. Thousands and thousands signed a petition supporting the original letter and repeating its demands. Two groups of activists, one of students and teachers at Tel Aviv University and the other of students and teachers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, held meetings late into the night, each on their own campus, trying to figure out what to do next to persuade the Prime Minister to make peace with Egypt. The two groups, groups often disagreed. But one thing they saw eye to eye about was about asking David Tartakover, then a 34 year old Bezalel Academy professor, to make a logo that they could both use. A logo that would turn the two groups into one group, that would bring thousands and thousands more to join them, which was a lot to Hope for from a logo. The thing that David Tartakover designed had two Shalom.
- [16:13]
Peace. Now the word Shalom peace was in black in a font called Koren. Koren was designed in 1940 by a typographer and printer named Eliahu Koren. His publishing house to this day is called Koren. Eliahu Koren wrote, quote, in recognition of the fact that in this period of national resurrection of our people, thought has yet to be given to providing for the public a Tanakh, a Hebrew Bible that will truly be Hebrew. And out of a feeling that I could contribute to this matter, I took this matter upon myself. I knew well the enormity of the undertaking I was taking upon myself, printing a renewed Tanakh for a renewed people. I knew that I was entering the interiority of holiness and evaluating and refashioning it aesthetically and technically. The task was enormous and I had to start literally from Aleph. I had to develop a typeface for the Aleph bet, for the Hebrew Alphabet, end quote. The typeface that Eliyahu Koren created was based on ancient Sephardim manuscripts. It had ornament, but it was also clean. It felt traditional and ancient and yet somehow new. It was different from the typeface most often used for Hebrew Bibles that was called Vilna and was based on a centuries old typeface used by the Ram brothers printings of the Talmud in the Lithuanian capital that gave the typeface its name, Vilna. Eliyahu Koren's Tanakh is still on shelves in stores and chuls and homes today. And it is a beautiful thing. The Tanakh that the army gave me at my swearing in ceremony at the end of basic training at the Western Wall. It is a Koren Tanakh. To most of us I think Karen is simply the way that a Tanakh looks. None of this was lost on David Tartakover. His Shalom, his peace then had with it the weight of tradition. It had with it the weight of the Tanakh. It was like a commandment of God. Under the Shalom, David Tartakover added in candy apple red the word Ach Shav. Now using a font called Chaim, one of the first block fonts created by an early Zionist graphic artist named Pesach IR Shai and named for the national poetry Chaim Nachman Bayalek. Pesach Ir Shai learned architecture in Budapest in the 1920s and he was enchanted by Bauhaus and his letters stripped away all ornament. They rebelled against the adorned letters of the Holy Books. They were Square. And they were functional like the squat apartment blocks in Tel Aviv. The typeface Chaim was the typeface of the wall posters in Jewish Palestine in the late 20s and 30s and 40s. It was the typeface of the posters calling people in 1948, join in the defense of the country. In his Peace now poster with Letraset, David Tartakover married religious and secular, traditional and revolutionary, establishment and subversive. The urgency of Zionism. Build, build, build, plant, sow, reap with the stillness and calm of eternity. Who could argue with this? Who could oppose Peace Now? Mosi Raz, a beloved mensch who led Peace now through most of the 1990s before becoming a legendary merits member of Knesset, said of Tartakova's creation, I cannot imagine Peace now without it. In truth, there was more to all of this than one sees in the logo itself. Just months before the young people of Peace now asked him to design their logo, David Tartakover had designed the official poster commemorating the 30th anniversary of Israel's establishment. Each year the government put out an Independence Day poster. And for the 30th, following Anwar Sadat's visit, what Tartakover made had cumulus white on the bottom, with bright azure sky above, in which suspended floats the word Shalom, Peace also in Koren, all in black, save for the letter lamed, which in Hebrew numerology has a value of 30. The anniversary Israel was celebrating, the lamed was in gray. What David Tartakova did was to enlist in the cause of peace. The country's official Independence Day poster, the one hanging in every post office and every government building, the most national of national symbols. This 30th Independence Day poster, Peace poised between heaven and earth. It is the second of the five images David Tartakover is probably best known for the images that to me most say Tartakova. The third image I first saw in December 1986, in the papers and posters around the city, in advertisements for a screening and for a conference. The French director Claude Lanzman would be in Tel Aviv at the art Museum on December 17th and 18th, 1986, and each of the two days at noontime, half of his nine and a half hour movie Choa would be screened, and then after a break for dinner on each day, there would be a symposium at night. Thirteen years before, in 1973, Alouf Harevin, the director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, had gotten the thing underway, pressing Claude Lansmand to make a movie about the Holocaust. From quote unquote the viewpoint of the Jews making them. This is what Alouf Haraven told Claude Lanzmann, making them the subjects instead of the objects of a camera's gaze. Alouf Haraven said that the Foreign Ministry would give money for the thing which he imagined would be 90 minutes long, like all movies. But soon Lanzmann was off, and not long after that, Lanzmann was off the rails. Researching Claude Lanzmann reached the conclusion that what was most important was missing the gas chambers. Death in the gas chambers from which no one had returned to report. The day I realized that this was missing, I knew that the subject of my film would be death itself. Death rather than survival. End quote. When the movie was finally done in 1985, Shoah was hailed as a masterpiece most everywhere else in the world, save for Poland, where it was decried as a calumny. But in Israel it was met with icy ambivalence. The Ministry of Culture refused to support the movie here. And a nine and a half hour movie about death in the Holocaust is not a commercial thing. And the movie just wasn't shown here until the Tel Aviv Museum took it on. I got a ticket and when I got there, a grad student in my 20s, I was maybe the youngest person in the sellout crowd. Lots of people had pale blue numbers.
- [23:03]
And when discussion in the symposium was open to questions, no matter what lecture had just been given, the audience hectored and lectured Lanzmann about what he'd gotten wrong, where he put too much emphasis and where he put too little. The rage in the posh, plush museum auditorium was unlike anything that I had ever seen. Claude Lanzmann had opened some sort of floodgate. People were mad that he made the Poles into human beings instead of the monsters that they were. People were mad that he wasn't Zionist and I enough people were just mad. The poster for the movie in Israel and for the conference, they were made by David Tartakover. On it, the word choa appears twice in thick black Teutonic letters. On the top in Hebrew and under that in Latin letters S H O A H. Only the aleph in the top row is different. Instead of black, it is the red of the Nazi flag, the Reich and national flaga and it is rotated 100 degrees. Uri Dasso, the great Tel Aviv and Ghent based curator, wrote of the image quote, the letter Aleph in the word choa is turned and becomes a swastika. And through this, without showing a graphic image that would only serve to limit the imagination. Tartakova presents us with a situation in which the foundations, the very Aleph, are shaken. And he presents us with the danger that Hebrew will disappear and become a swastika and the Jewish people will disappear. The danger becomes real without being depicted. End quote. For me, and I think for David Tartakover too, as 1986 was giving way to 1987, there was something more to an Aleph in the color of the Third Reich, shifting and bringing to mind the perfect symbol of perfect cruelty and violence. There was in this a suggestion, I think, that maybe there might be something of that cruelty and violence in us too. See, by now something had changed for David Tartakova. In 1988, a poster by Tartakova was suddenly everywhere. It is a picture that was in papers around the world. In Israel, it was in Yidiot. It was taken by an American war photographer in named Jim Hollander, of a soldier walking through the west bank, his hands in his pocket, with a vest of bullet cartridges, a gun under his arm, a helmet fastened to his belt. And he looks to his side, away from the camera, at an older woman in a black hijab standing in a darkened doorway. The picture is all contrast. The whites are washed out white and the blacks are deep voids. And across the middle of the picture, David Tartakover has added, stenciled, after the fashion of the armor, the word ima mother. And what you get from it is the woman, she is a mother. She could just as well be the soldier's mother. And what is going on in the west bank and Gaza, if you look at it in the abstract, he is saying, if you look at it in the abstract, you miss that boys with guns are now face to face with women who could be their mothers. And if you miss that about the occupation, David Tartakova was saying, you are simply not looking. This sort of thing had in the 1980s, become a big part of David Tartakova's art. A few years before, after the massacres at Sabra and Chatila, Tartakova made one of his posters of a picture of a woman from the camps crying out in anguish. And on top of that, the words from Psalms, Miya, Malel, gvurot, Yisrael, who will recount the mighty deeds of Israel. The last of the five images is the one that you are most likely to see today. One went up on Nordell Boulevard in front of our house, where I walk Lucy the dog every day. Just last week, David Tartakover made it in 1997 to announce the second annual memorial demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. On the top of the poster in blue, is a photograph of Rabin, his gaze fixed on you. At the bottom of the poster, in red and black, looking to the side, is a picture of then as now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in bold white letters. Over Rabin it says Lonishkach we will not forget. And over Netanyahu it says Wiloni Slach and We will not forgive. Eighteen years later, 20 years after the assassination, David Tartakover put out the poster again. Only this time the word low was scrawled out twice, so as to say we have forgotten, we have forgiven. Lately, a one time student of David Tartakover swapped out the picture of Rabin for a picture, all in red, of rows of bodies laid out on a kibbutz lawn after October 7, restoring the words we will not forget and the words we will not forgive on Benjamin Netanyahu's face. And the poster has new life again. For years now, I have struggled with Tartakovir, the Tartakova of the we will not forget and we will not forgive poster. Really the Tartakova of the past 30 years, since Rabin was murdered, or maybe almost 40, since the first intifada of sons with guns regarding mothers and dark alleyways. Or maybe the last 45 years, almost since the first Lebanon war, the Tartakova of who will recount the mighty deeds of Israel with a woman crying out over her lifeless children. It all seemed so harsh, so certain in its statements, this art by Tartakova, so confident in its judgments and so, so angry. This week, after David Tartakova died, another of his students, and probably the person who is most like Tartakova today, Lahav Halevi is his name, said of his mentor, quote. He felt that everything was already lost. He could not bear it anymore. He said he had nothing more to add and nothing left to say. End quote. For years now, David Tartakova has given us bold images, mostly of despair. David Tartakova's art was shocking, it was bracing, it was moving to the end, and if anything, it only got purer or stronger with time. But what he used his art to convey with the passing years became more and more about decay and corruption and loss. An article about David Tartakover in Haaretz magazine this week was headlined, David Tartakover's posters tell of a fall from elation to despair. A couple of years ago, an international design magazine called Dazed had an essay called Peace then and Peace now that ended with this. Tartakova's story is the story of Israel, by which the magazine meant a story of decline. For a long time now, I have thought Tartakova's story is the story of Israel's left, a story of growing tired and angry and disillusioned and convinced that all there is left for us to do is not to forget and not to forgive. But I was wrong about David Tartakover, just like I have been wrong about Israel's left. I spent this week looking at David Tartakova's books from the book of sketches he made as a soldier in the Yom Kippur War, a paratrooper, still in his 20s, pencil drawings of the people with him resting against the wheels of a jeep, sleeping in the sand, leaning over a gun to write a letter to his book of Hebrew movie posters from Palestine in the 1930s, to his lexicon of Israeli ads and objects, card games and cigarette cases, to the beautiful little book he put out just last year of sketches of the streets and buildings of Tel Aviv. And I came to see that he was something different, something more than I had ever seen before. In an interview in a glossy international art magazine, David Tartakover was asked, what is the best bit of graphic design you have ever seen? And he answered that it was when Mordechai Vanunu was abducted back to Israel to stand trial for divulging nuclear secrets. And he sharpied onto his palm his name and the fact that he was being. Being kidnapped by Israelis. And he held up his hand to the window of the car that was spiriting him away, and someone snapped a picture. And David Tartakover, he said, this is what graphic art is, the purest and simplest form of communication, of putting ink on a surface to pass on something that is mine to you and to you and to you. David Tartakova loved this place. Oh, God, he loved this place. He loved its card games and he loved its cigarette cases and its movie posters and its typefaces and its bibles and its dirty soldiers and torn clothes, hunched over letters to girlfriends and God, he loved this city, Tel Aviv, Yaffo. And loving it all became for him, inseparable from worrying that it could all be lost, that we could stop being who he wanted us to be, thought we could be and should be. He worried that our Alef was shifting, turning. And while I don't share all of those worries, I got some of them. And that's not even the point. The point is David Tartakover was a man who spent his life writing on his palm and Sharpie and holding it up to our window and saying there is something here, something urgent that I want, that I need for you to know. That is a beautiful thing to do, to say something urgent because it is important that we know it and for all my life until this past week, David Tartakover did it beautifully, with power and with passion. Yehi zichro Baruch.
- [32:57]
Today two topics topic one it was 20 years ago today as exactly 20 years ago last week by the Hebrew calendar and next week by the Gregorian calendar, 21 Jewish towns in Gaza and four in the west bank were forcibly evacuated in a unilateral withdrawal plan called the Hitnat Kut or disengagement plan, which turns out to be one of the most traumatic events in Israeli history and one the impact of which remains strong to this day. We will talk about what happened and what it meant and what it means today and Discussion two To state the obvious, with the two cleverly spelled tw O making the title work on oh so many levels as the United nations holds a a quote, high level international conference for the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and the implementation of the two state solution, end quote, sponsored by France, Saudi Arabia and 19 other countries and bodies, including the Arab League, setting out the terms and conditions for establishing very soon a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. We've read the plan and we'll talk about what it might lead to. And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters in our extra special special extra discussion, the link to which you can in our show Notes on your podcast app or at patreon.com promisepodcast on the world Wide Web, we will talk about both the storm und the Drang, admittedly with greater emphasis on the Drang, but we'll touch on the storm. We will over the artist's letter or artists petition which reads in its entirety, quote, israel's art and culture community speaks out. Stop the horror in Gaza. We members of Israel's art and culture community feel compelled to speak out against our values and will we find ourselves complicit in the horrific actions carried out by our government in Gaza, the killing of children and civilians, policies of starvation, mass displacement and the senseless destruction of entire cities. We call on those setting and executing these policies. Stop. Do not issue or follow illegal orders. Do not risk committing war crimes. Do not abandon the principles of human morality and the values of Judaism. Stop the war. Bring all hostages home now. End quote. Among the 1282 signatories are Chave Alberstein, Giddy Gov Chemi Rudner and lots more, though not Aviv Geffen, who said the letter is unfair to the idf, and not Idan Ahmedi who called the people who signed the letters zeros, and not Alon Olearchik, who, faced with losing a gig, took his name off the list. We will try to understand why so many people care about the actors, singers and painters while so few people care about the professors. Oh why, oh why don't people realize that professors can be zeros too? But before we get to any of that, please listen to this.
- [36:36]
C
Mother.
- [37:16]
A
That song is Shir Ahava Bedoui, performed here by Mashina off their wonderful new record Shirim Shel Akhirim. Other people's songs, the songs being songs of the seventies which the great British band lately put out to celebrate their own 40 years together. And about which record Yuval Banai said, who is in machina, of course, who is in many ways Mashina said, quote, in this time of trouble, pain and division, we in Mashina turn to the music that brought us together, music about love, hope and the beautiful sides of being Israeli. Other people's songs is our way to say that Israeli art and culture are the soul of the nation and we must protect them at any cost. This is an expression of pain over the damage of the war and a call for solidarity among humans. End quote. It is a record worth listening to. And now it is time for our first discussion. So, Linda, I know you reported on the disengagement exactly 20 years ago. It seemed then, and it still seems like a weird fever dream, at least to me. What do we make of it?
- [38:20]
B
Yeah, no, I certainly agree. And by the way, I started reporting when I was five. I just want to get that out. But as you said 20 years ago, last week by the Hebrew calendar, or next week by the Gregorian calendar, Israeli soldiers started the grim job of evacuating 21 small Jewish settlements from Gaza. The biggest one, Nevada Kalim, had about 500 families, and altogether the 21 communities numbered about 8,8475 souls. And four Jewish settlements in Samaria in the west bank, which had 100 families between them, or 680 or so individuals. The evacuation took three days, and after that it took nine days for IDF bulldozers to destroy the 2,800 houses and public buildings in the settlement and 26 synagogues. Two of them were disassembled and rebuilt on the other side of the border during that time, the 48 graves in the Gush Katif cemetery were disinterred and the exhumed bodies were brought for reburial in Israel. A few days after that, the Shiratayam hotel was demolished. The entire operation took about three weeks. The wounds left by the thing for some have in the 20 years since never fully healed. The process by which the decision to withdraw from Gaza was made was haphazard. On December 18, 2003, 20 months before it was executed, then Prime Minister Ariel or Arik Sharon shocked the audience of the Herzliya Conference on National Security. And when word got out the rest of the country and the entire world when he announced what he called a disengagement plan to in Hebrew, which called for the unilateral relocation of settlements which will not be included in the State of Israel in the framework of any possible future permanent agreement with the Palestinians. In April, AH Sharon described his plan to US President George Bush, offering as its rationale the fact that there exists no Palestinian partner with whom to advance peacefully toward a settlement, leaving Israel no option other than acting on its own to separate from the Palestinians. Later, just before the plan was implemented, Ari Sharon said in a speech in Israel that we cannot hold on to Gaza forever. More than a million Palestinians live there and double their number with each generation. And today, in fact, the population is about 2.2 million Palestinians. Approval of the plan progressed erratically, fulfilling a promise he made to the Central Committee of his party, the Likud, which party he would later leave. ARIC Sharon promised to hold a party referendum on the disengagement plan. The referendum was held on May 2, 2004, and 65% of Likud voters rejected the disengagement plan, against around 30% who supported it. In response, Arik Sharon announced he would modify his plan, which he did in small ways. The new plan was never subjected to a repeat referendum, which few believe it could have survived. After Sharon fired two known opponents of the plan, Avigdor Lieberman and Benny Alon from his cabinet, the Cabinet approved the plan. 14, 7 As a result, two members of the National Religious Party quit the coalition, leaving Eric Sharon the head of a minority government. Although Labour Party head Amram Mitzna agreed to support the government, preventing its collapse, calls for a national referendum on the plan were ignored. On October 26, 2004, the Knesset voted to approve the plan in a preliminary reading, 67 to 45. It was soon after this, on November 11, that Palestinian President and PLO chief Yasser Arafat died. An Event that, according to Arik Sharon, created uncertainty that made his plan all the more essential. By the end of the year, the Labour Party officially joined the coalition, giving it back its majority, and Shimon Peres became vice premier. In February, the coalition voted to approve Eric Sharon's plan. At least two important things were absent from the political process of approving the disengagement. One was serious consultation with the security apparatus of the state, the IDF chief of staff. When Arik Sharon announced his plan, Moshe Bogiyalon opposed it and he was quietly replaced at the end of his four year term. But he was denied the customary fifth year because of his views on the disengaged. Heads of the security apparatus too were mostly unconsulted. The other thing missing from the process of approving the disengagement was public participation. Ah Sharon had been elected in a 6040 landslide in the direct election for prime minister against Ehud Barak. A lot of those voters no doubt voted for him because of his very staunch record advancing settlement in the occupied territories. Many voters believed they'd suffered a bait and switched. Many also believe that a big and painful concession of land and erasure of towns and villages is something that regular citizens should have a say in. 12 groups of plaintiffs filed petitions to the Supreme Court to stop the withdrawal until a more democratic procedure was devised and executed. But the High Court rejected them all. Polls showed that just under 7 in 10 Israelis believed that there ought to be a general referendum about the plan. But the courts did not agree. All sorts of Israelis from all walks of life opposed the disengagement plan. Although most Israelis, 50 to 60% according to polls, supported it. The group that opposed it most, and most obviously were national religious sorts. Modern Orthodox Zionists, including, but not at all limited to Gaza and West bank settlers. They were the main organizers and the beating heart of one of the most impressive and moving protest movements the country has ever seen. In the summer of 2004, they created a human chain of people holding hands that reached from Gaza to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a distance of 90 kilometers. In the fall of 2004, more than 100,000 marched in 100 cities around the country. The next summer, as the evacuations got closer, a quarter of a million people gathered twice on two consecutive nights, the first at the Western Wall and the second in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. Aviv organizers said the second of these demonstrations was the biggest in Israel's history. And maybe it was ahead of the actual evacuation. Tens of thousands of people, many of them young, slipped their way through army lines into the Gaza settlements so that when the appointed day came, there were maybe two outsiders to be dragged out for every resident. The actual evacuation of Gush Katif was hard and ugly and painful. Soldiers were given special training and some psychological preparation for the excruciating task of dragging families, including kids, babies, pregnant women, dogs and cats and hamsters out of their homes and into trucks and buses for deportation. People who lived in Gush Katif screamed and cried with unfeigned anguish. Some compared the soldiers to Kapos, some to Nazis. Some hugged the soldiers and said, look me in the eyes. How can you do this? Soldiers had to tear people away from the graves of their loved ones killed by terrorists. Even after all this time, videos and pictures of the thing are hard to watch. Watch though we did Khan has a new three part three hour documentary it calls Where Were youe in the Disengagement? Which goes through all this history and we saw it this week bringing back all of the memories. The show raises lots of questions. How did the disengagement come to happen? Why should the disengagement ever have happened? How could it have been handled better? And probably the biggest question is what has the lasting impact of the disengagement been with the show suggesting that everything we've been through in the past three years, the judicial reform, October 7, the war, none of it would have happened in the way it happened, save for the disengagement. Gilad, let's leave the big question of the long term impact of the thing aside for just a moment and try to answer the more immediately historical question. How and why did the disengagement happen? How could it have happened better and should it have happened at all?
- [46:47]
C
Yeah, well, it's not a small question at all. And the main reason.
- [46:54]
I think it happened was that that.
- [46:58]
The Israeli government at the time headed by Ariel Sharon, was looking for unilateral ways to make progress vis a vis the the Palestinians. Unlike the current government, which at, at, at the time it seemed like the worst solution. But compared to the current government that tries to maintain the status quo at any cost, it may have been a lot better. But moving forward in this way, of course didn't make any sense at all. Now people from across the board.
- [47:35]
Actually not across the board, but people on the right and people on the left treat the disengagement as a historical mistake. Actually quite a few people from the center supported it at the time, still supported as the lesser of all evils. And I think there's some, some room Some. Some legitimacy to that. But I think that whereas the opposition on the right is being heard, has been heard since, and of course is being amplified and in a way vindicated, at least in their own eyes, thanks to the current government, there's a lot of room to mention the opposition to it on the left that is somewhat forgotten and I think of course, deliberately as well. There were many people on the left in the press. I can think of people like Akiva Alda, who was a prominent.
- [48:29]
Columnist for Haaretz at the time, people like Uri Avneri, who was also a prominent left wing journalist, and other politicians like Yossi Beylin, who was the leader of Meretz at the time, who said that unilateralism is bound to fail.
- [48:46]
Who said that the only, of course they weren't against withdrawal from the occupied territories, but a unilateral one would be a mistake. And it took Jose Beren a long time to give his support to the disengagement plan. He opposed it in the beginning, but then at the end of the day, he said, well, I cannot in good confidence vote against.
- [49:10]
An Israeli withdrawal from at least part of the occupied territories. So he gave it his support. However, people often forget that the Arab parties abstained. They saw it as a Zionist ploy to redraw the boundaries in a way that would benefit Israel. And that is, I mean, it's at least one interpretation of what Sharon was trying to do. Now, the thing about Sharon is Uevnelli that I mentioned earlier said something very true about it, was he was referring to his role in the first Lebanon War that led to this terrible debacle. He said that Chon was a brilliant tactician and a terrible strategist. And I think that this is very true, especially with regard to the disengagement, that in the long term, of course, it was a terrible strategic decision, but probably tactically it made sense at the time. And the person who turned it into this strategic disaster, who actually turned it into a strategy, as we said, Sharon wasn't really a strategist, was Netanyahu, Because Sharon was really dividing the Palestinian territories, the west bank on the one hand and the Gaza Strip on the other. And Netanyahu made it his flagship foreign policy vis a vis the Palestinians that led to this awful strategic.
- [50:34]
A
They made what his flagship policy?
- [50:37]
C
The separation between the Gaza Strip and the west bank, with a view to prevent.
- [50:45]
At least the legitimacy of a Palestinian state on all the occupied territories, including the Gaza Strip.
- [50:53]
And the West Bank.
- [50:56]
A
I'll first say that 20 years ago today I was on vacation. We took an annual vacation up north in Kibbutz Sassa with several families together every year. And our kids, you know, basically grew up in part of the summer on that, that kibbutz. It was a very lovely thing. And so we were, we were all together, we were all.
- [51:21]
Leftists. No one was, no one among us super radical, but people who voted for the Labor Party or for Merit. I occasionally voted for Hadash, but. And I remember, you know, every night we would watch on television what had happened in that day, in the days leading immediately up to the withdrawal, which were just before Tisha B'Av and on Tisha B'Av, the withdrawal was on the 10th of AV, which is still.
- [51:58]
A day that is regnant of the destruction of the, the temple.
- [52:04]
C
It's a Jewish Boxing day.
- [52:06]
A
It's, it's. I mean that's, there are some parts of the, some parts of the. The Tanakh say that the temples were destroyed in or of the Talmud say that the temples were destroyed on the 9th of AV, but some say the 10th of AV. So it's still a, it's a significant day for the people who felt as though their lives were being destroyed on that day. It's something. So we were watching the TV on the days leading up to, and then the three days with all those horrible upsetting images of people spitting at each other and screaming at each other and crying, crying, crying, crying. And I watched all that with a great sense of satisfaction that something good was happening. And there was an odd coalition that was formed between that portion of the right that supported Sharon. Like you said, Gilad, there were people then and there are more people now who, who hypothesized that Sharon's motivation, which he never fully described himself, that his motivation was to achieve a peace, to end all peace, to have this withdrawal happen. Israel has demonstrated to the world that in principle it's willing to make a withdrawal, but have it be so painful and so failed, abjectly failed, that no one would ask them to do the same thing on the West Bank. I don't, nobody knows if that's true. I don't know if that's true. But at the time there was a coalition between right wing sorts who thought that that could be a good thing and people like me, left wing sorts, who thought that this might be a step towards something. And in any instance, there are a million people living in Gaza. And I will add that as a soldier I was occasionally called to.
- [53:52]
To do patrols in Gaza. And it was terrible. I mean I spent almost all of my reserve duty in Hebron, which in some ways was even worse. But those times in Gaza, it just felt like.
- [54:09]
There were these lovely green Jewish towns.
- [54:16]
Inside, high fences guarded by soldiers like me with guns, surrounded by hundreds of thousands, I mean, literally more than a million Palestinians who wanted nothing more than for those Jews to be gone from this place. And so all of that together made me feel like, ah, this is maybe not the best way to do a thing, but maybe it's the only way to do a thing. And I'm glad that it's being done now. Looking back, I see all the things I had to overlook to have that. That overly confident, overly peaceful, you know, leftist like, self confidence that. That this, if I think that this is good, it must be good. Including, by the way, the real genuine pain and suffering of the people who were being evacuated from their homes. But then beyond that, and maybe most important now in retrospect, like the fact that Sharon ran so roughshod over public participation, over democracy, basically, he had this idea, he invented this idea, he jammed it through. It never stood for a vote among the people. His own voters felt as though many of them felt as though they had been utterly tricked, that there had been a bait and switch. And because I, at the moment, like the outcome, the idea that the democracy wasn't taken so seriously seemed to me to be a price worth paying. But looking back at where we stand today, I would never be able to say that again. It seems to me to clearly not have been a price worth paying. And I wish that the Supreme Court had been also more serious about.
- [56:06]
Addressing the grievances that were put in front of them in these 12 cases. And I don't know the law of it, but my feeling at the time was it was just sort of pro forma that the Supreme Court was supporting the government because it was the government, and also because it was a policy that I imagine matched many of the worldviews of the people on the Supreme Court. Like it matched my worldview. Linda, what do you think and how did you experience it then? You were a journalist?
- [56:31]
B
Yeah, yeah, I was a journalist. I mean, first of all, I think one of the problems with it was that there was no coordination with the Palestinians. They just said, said they just decided they're leaving and they left. And then that is, I think, what eventually led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Had there been some sort of negotiated process in which the Palestinian Authority, which was in charge of Gaza at the time, could have taken over, it might.
- [56:57]
C
Have been different, but it was on purpose. That's what Israel was trying to avoid. I mean, it wasn't just negligence. I mean, they did it on purpose.
- [57:04]
B
But I think it was a mistake.
- [57:05]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [57:06]
B
I remember I drove down there on Tishaba Av and I was fasting, and Cliff, my husband, was really worried because it was very, very hot. And he said, you're gonna be standing in the sun reporting, and I'm afraid you're gonna pass out. And he made me take a bottle of water and promise that if I really thought I was gonna pass out, I would drink some water. And I drove right to the cemetery in Gush Katif. And I'll never forget this because there was a big. There were thousands of people in the cemetery, and they were davening to the dead people, saying.
- [57:40]
Please talk to God. Make sure this doesn't happen. You can stop this. You are holy souls and you can stop this. And it was just macabre. And then I had rented. I had gotten in touch. I was in Moshev, and I had rented a chicken coop to sleep in with a few other journalists. And it was boiling hot.
- [58:04]
And it was in the late afternoon, and I had been fasting. And so I knocked on the door of the family's house and I said to them, I'm really sorry, but I'm fasting. Could I please sit in your air conditioning for a little while? And they couldn't believe that there was a journalist who was actually fasting. And by that night, I had moved into the living room and was sleeping in the living room of their house and broadcasting from there. And so I got to experience the disengagement with this family.
- [58:35]
And they had teenage and young adults, adult children, including one who was in the army at the time but had gotten a leave because he said his commander said, we can't ask you as someone living there to actually participate. And the parents of this family, he was a pepper farmer and she worked in education. And they were just sort of these lovely salt of the earth type people. And the night before, they. And they said, we're not going to fight the soldiers at what in that documentary, what we saw of the.
- [59:14]
Physical and verbal confrontations between the soldiers. But in some ways, for me, it was stronger because they said. And so the kids said, we want to do a barbecue at 2 in the morning. The night before, they would have to leave.
- [59:29]
And they did this barbecue. And then a couple of the kids took sticks and started breaking the window of the house and said, if we can't live here, we don't want anyone to live here. And the mother of the family stopped them and said, look, we think this is a bad government decision, but maybe we're wrong. And if it would lead to peace, I would rather see a Palestinian family in this house than for you to destroy it. And she would not let the kids damage the house. And I actually went with them in their minivan to the. Their temporary accommodations in Nisan. And the last thing they did was to dig up the trees that they had planted in Gush Katif. And the first thing they did in their new accommodations was to replant the trees.
- [60:19]
A
That's beautiful.
- [60:20]
B
So it was actually. And they went with the Sefer Torah that they had, you know, and so they didn't fight, but they waited till the very last minute. And then when the soldiers said, you have to leave. And it was very, very painful. And I remember at one point, and then a different day, I was in Neveh de Kalim and watching some of this violence, and I just started to cry. And I said, this is not what Jews are supposed to be doing. And one of the things, the documentary, I thought, was very well done, and it just shows the tremendous amount of pain that's happening. And I think, though, looking now, given what happened with Hamas, I think a lot of people, especially those on the right, are saying, see, we should never have left Gaza. If we had stayed there, Hamas would have never been able to do what they did. On October 7th.
- [61:17]
A
Gilada, I want to hear what you have to say. I just have a couple of comments. I mean, thank you, Linda. That was very illuminating and also very moving and beautiful. A few comments. First of all, I don't even know how one found a chicken coop before the days of the app air CNC for chicken coops, because, I mean, back in. I don't remember how we found chicken coops when we needed them. Another thing is the cemetery that you talked about had 48 graves. And I understand that no one, none of those 48 people died a natural death. Every single one of them were killed by violence in Gaza, which made it a very particular sort of cemetery and made the appeals to them very particular and made leaving, you know, them leaving this land that they had in the eyes of some of their brothers and sisters and parents and children died for this piece of land more difficult. And then the last thing I'd say you mentioned a couple of times the issues of the soldiers. One of the things that was most. That was most moving and painful to me in watching the documentary And I remember this a little from the time is just how terrible it was. I mean, they mostly tried to get Miluim Nikim, who were in their 20s and maybe even in their 30s to do this. But there were a lot of people who are 19 years old and 20 years old whose job it was to take a mother who is breastfeeding her baby and drag her out of her house. And the documentary shows this one case of a person, of a soldier committing suicide, just leaving his tent with a gun and shooting himself in the head and leaving a note saying I never knew that the world could be so ugly a place. Meaning this experience that he had just had or referring to this experience. And I think that it was a scar for so many of, of the soldiers.
- [63:21]
Who didn't ask for this, who may or may not have shared the politics or had any political identity at all. And all of a sudden they're being spat at and called Nazis, which makes the settlers sound terrible. But another thing you get from this documentary is how many of the settlers were also trying to be concerned, including concern for the soldiers. So they would call them Nazis and then they would say, we know that you're victims here. It's just humanly such a complicated thing.
- [63:51]
C
Yeah, no, I was thinking throughout the documentary, well, as I said before, of course I opposed to the disengagement because it was done unilaterally. But there was one reason why I did support it and that is that it could have set a precedent of evacuating.
- [64:09]
Settlements and the sky wouldn't fall. I mean, it was something that I think was an important precedent. And.
- [64:18]
It also went against this.
- [64:22]
Attempt to make all the settlement project and the disengagement a metaphysical thing that we are seeing now in the sense in the treatment of the 7th of October. Right. It's this divine punishment for this original sin that we committed.
- [64:40]
20 years ago. And in this sense the Khan documentary really feeds into the that whole framing of the debate that I think is utterly wrong and also counterproductive to anyone who doesn't want to promote the settlers agenda.
- [64:59]
A
So now you've moved us on to the last part of this conversation. What do you think the impact of what happened 20 years ago has been and remains today?
- [65:10]
C
Well, as I said, the root of evil all was how Israel treated Gaza ever since by giving financial and diplomatic support to Hamas. That of course spectacularly backfired. I think it wouldn't have happened if both the Gaza Strip and the west bank were still under the same government. And the thing that allowed the split was the disengagement and the decline of the PA's rule of Gaza. Another thing.
- [65:50]
Is that many people said that had Gush Katif and the Gaza settlements remained in place, the 7th of October wouldn't have happened. Now, of course this is all speculation, so we wouldn't know. Obviously Hamas would have been been able to run over the much smaller Gush Katif as it did so spectacularly in the Gaza envelope area of. So you know, there were tens of thousands of residents that were affected by it in Kibbutz Beri and all this surrounding kibbutzing. Why wouldn't 8,000 settlers be completely wiped out within a couple of hours? You wouldn't know. However, I think that there's some room to accept that assessment and that is that I'm going to put it crudely, but if there's one thing that the IDF does know is how to, to protect settlers, which it doesn't know, how to protect Israel's sovereign borders. And that is really where it all comes down to the long effect and the consequences of the disengagement. Because what it did mentally to Israelis was giving them the illusion that they could just switch the lock and throw away the key and Gaza will be, will descend. Two million Gazans will disappear behind those high walls. And of course it didn't happen. And while Israel was still there, Gaza was still a very tangible and real thing that the IDF could treat a lot better.
- [67:29]
A
Linda, what do you think the long term impact of this was?
- [67:32]
B
So I think that for people involved, you know, whether it was soldiers, whether it was the people who lived in Gush Katif, the people who lived in Gush Katif, the impact was tremendous. There were the family that I spoke about earlier, the father never kind of found himself again. He was a farmer in his blood and he never kind of recovered from the evacuation. Well, they're not, do you know, they're in Nissan. Yeah, I stayed in touch with them for a long time actually. And the kids, so, and I don't know about those kids specifically, but a lot of kids from Gush Katif had all kinds of issues in terms of drugs and sort of falling off the whatever, the right path, whatever you call it. And for me, what it was, I remember clearly at the time real fears that there would be a civil war and it was terror. That to me was the scariest part of the whole thing. Could there actually be a civil war? And then when you saw these kids throwing paint and throwing other things at soldiers and you know, I Actually, I think that the army handled it relatively well in terms of, you know, large numbers of people, like if you, you have six people to carry off each person.
- [69:00]
But it was very painful. And as we now are at a point where some of the issues I think facing Israel today, whether it's the judicial overhaul, the drafting of the ultra orthodox, I mean, these are issues that I think potentially could eventually cause a civil war. And I think, think what I would like to learn from Gush Katif is how can we disagree? How can we preserve Israeli democracy and make sure that there's never a threat of a civil war?
- [69:33]
A
The people who did the most to keep it from getting dramatically out of hand were leaders of the religious Zionists. There were different leaderships and some on the margins were, were radical and they were responsible for the people throwing paint, like you said, in some ways. But the heart of the leadership of religious Zionists were heartbroken. They felt as though they had once again been dissed in the worst way possible by the Israeli establishment. They felt as though they had done everything right, that they had come to this place to answer a call, that they had fulfilled like the most firmly held Zionist values, that they had very, very carefully acted in accord with democracy. They had put together the most impressive protest movement that Israel has ever seen. And it all added up to nothing because the Prime Minister had decided that this was what was going to be. And yet what they said is no civil war. No civil war. No civil war. That was as what they told their people. A couple of other things that occur to me about the long range impact of this. I think that without this we would not have the judicial reform that we have now. I think there was a deep, deep break, like this really profound distrust for the courts and for the establishment and for what today, unfortunately, we call the deep state that was developed at that moment. It was a moment when a big portion of Israeli society, like 20 or 30% of Israeli society lost such faith as it had in its institutions. I also think that the noarhot, those like kind of thuggish religious people who over the past weeks and months in the west bank have been beating people up and they're not actually the people who've been shooting people dead, but these very radical sort of anarchistic. We don't listen to any authority, we won't listen to even our rabbis, we won't listen to our leaders who do what they want. That whole culture, I think, has roots that reach back into this as well. And then the last thing that I would say is that I think that it's important to remember all of this could have, all of this could have developed differently. Like the, the response of Palestinians to Gaza being, you know, disengaged from by Israel could have been different than, than it was. It was, it was an opportunity to, to.
- [72:36]
To make a different sort of case for creating a Palestinian state by creating a small enclave that could act as a state and demonstrate that it could be something like peaceable or whatever. And that whole option of having Gaza develop in a positive way, it persisted for the year and a half until Hamas threw off the roofs the people from the Palestinian Authority and the people from the PLO and took over and made it into Hamas state. But it could have gone differently. It could have been the beginning of something that led to a real Palestinian state, including in the West Bank, I think. And that has nothing, I was about to say that has nothing to do with us. That's of course not true. It has a lot to do with us and a lot to do with the way that we administered the borders and things. But it was not, not an Israeli decision. It was to, to the degree that it was a decision at all. It was Palestinians. We've gone way, way over and there's so much left to talk about. But now listen.
- [73:54]
Sam.
- [75:00]
That song is Balada Shel Chedva ve' Shlomik, another song from the 70s sung now by Mashina. And now it is time for our second discussion. So, Gilad, might we just have seen the birth of the state of Palestine at Dag Amr's called Plaza?
- [75:16]
C
Of course we did. This past week the UN held the concisely titled High level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two state Solution. For some reason they did not give the meeting an acronym, but we will. It was an HLIC PSQ P I T ss.
- [75:38]
A
It's so helpful.
- [75:39]
C
Yes, which can be pronounced hlik pisk pits. Now I was asked by the Promise Podcast Legal Division to say that Promise Podcast doesn't insist on getting credit for that acronym. Just consider it our modest contribution to peace in the Middle East. But in any event, the conference was mandated by the UN General assembly decision a res 79821 adoption last December, which appointed France and Saudi Arabia as co chairs of the thing. France and Saudi Arabia appointed 19 countries and transnational bodies as co chairs, including the EU and the Arab League. The conference was scheduled for the end of June, but it was delayed because of the war with Iran when it finally took place last week. Its long speechified sessions were live cast on untv, including roundtable discussions like one called From Rubble to Renewal, Rebuilding Lives, Realizing the promise of Independence and a future of shared peace, security and prosperity. In the sessions and as you would imagine, there was a great deal of anguished concern for the safety of Gazans and anger and frustration with Israel's prosecution of the war. Alongside that, though, there was a surprising sort of suspension of disbelief and a kind of willingness to entertain the idea that a two state solution entered into now might in fact fact lead in the fullness of time to shared peace, security and prosperity. There was something a little 1993ish or maybe even 1978ish about the atmosphere of the thing. Alongside the rage at what some of the speakers took to be genocide in Gaza, there was a little all we are saying is give peace a chance to thing as well as if the 20th century called and wanted its international politics back. At the end of the conference, the 19 chairing countries and representative bodies drafted in seven pages that they called an outcome document. I will quote the document at length now, so bear with me and then I will ask you, Linda, what we ought to think about the document and about the gathering that produced used it. So here are the highlights of the report and I we Agreeing to take collective action to end the war in Gaza to achieve a just, peaceful and lasting settlement of the Israeli Palestinian conflict based on the effective implementation of the two State Solution. Absent decisive measures towards the two state solution, the conflict will deepen and regional peace will remain elusive. We reiterated our condemnation of all attacks by any party against civilians. We recall that the taking of hostages is prohibited under international law. We reaffirm our rejection of any actions leading to territorial or demographic changes. The implementation of the two state solution is the only way to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians and the best way to end violence in order to its forms. We have thus committed to taking tangible, time bound and irreversible steps for the implementation of the two state Solution to achieve through concrete actions as rapidly as possible, the realization of an independent, sovereign, economically viable and democratic state of Palestine living side by side in peace and security with Israel on the basis of the 1967 lines, including with regard to training Jerusalem. The war in Gaza must now end with a permanent end to hostilities, the release of all hostages, the exchange of Palestinian prisoners, the return of all remains and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Gaza is an integral part of a Palestinian state and must be unified with the West Bank. Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Palestinian Authority. We support the urgent implementation of the Arab Organization of Islamic Cooperation reconstruction plan to allow early recovery and reconstruction in the Gaza Strip while ensuring the Palestinians remain in the land. We support measures and programs combating radicalization, incitement, dehumanization, violent extremism conducive to terrorism, discrimination and hate speech in Israel and Paris. We welcome the ongoing efforts to modernize the Palestinian curriculum and call upon Israel to undertake a similar effort. We welcome Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas commitments to the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and the continued rejection of violence and terrorism. We reaffirm the need for the Palestinian Authority to continue implementing its credible reform agenda. We also welcome President Abbas's commitment to holding democratic and transparent current general elections within a year. We call on the Israeli leadership to issue a clear public commitment to the two state solution to immediately end violence and incitement against Palestinians, to immediately halt all settlement, land grabs and annexation activities, including in East Jerusalem. We agree to take tangible steps in promoting mutual recognition, peaceful coexistence and cooperation among all states in the region linked to irreversible implementation of the two state solution. And here I end the quote. In addition to all the outcome, document commits the UN member states to massive economic support of Palestine in building itself in the west bank and rebuilding itself in Gaza and to offering peacekeeping forces if asked by Palestine, and to a bunch of other things. Linda, what do you think we should make of all this? The conference, the statement, the whole deal, the two state solution?
- [82:00]
B
Yeah, well, that's the question is, is the two state solution even viable at this point? And I'm really not sure. You know, you have 500,000 Israelis living in the west bank, not counting East Jerusalem, so you know you're gonna move 500,000 people or even 300,000 people. But first of all, I think it's an important document and I think it's very important that these countries are talking about Hamas demilitarizing the release of all of the hostages.
- [82:34]
I think that there's a lot of things in there that are things that Israel has been demanding since the beginning of the war. In fact, if the two goals of the war, which is now more than 21 months old, were to make sure that Hamas won't pose a military threat to Israel and the release of the hostages, that basically both of those goals are assured in this document. That said.
- [83:00]
I don't know what effect it's going to have. I Mean, it seems kind of, I felt like in some ways I was living in the Oslo times, right when we were talking about an independent Palestinian state next to Israel. Given the current Israeli government and the current public sentiment after October 7th, is there really any kind of chance that Israel would agree to a Palestinian state that would put.
- [83:27]
A Palestinian, some kind of police force within shooting distance of Ben Gurion Airport in the West Bank? I mean, it just seems to me that the diplomatic, the international community has not been very helpful in terms of this war. This war has basically been a war between Israel and Hamas. I mean, obviously, except for perhaps President Trump who of course has given a lot, a lot of military aid to Israel and President Biden before him. But it seems to me that I think most Israelis and Palestinians don't really take the international community all that seriously. Noah, what do you think?
- [84:08]
A
Well, it matters that the Arab League was part of this and Saudi Arabia was one of the leaders. I think think Gidon Sar went to the U.N. i think yesterday as we record and he said that this was a terrible thing that they'd had this conference at all. And what their proposal ended up being was absolutely terrible because it all amounted to giving a great prize to Hamas for October 7th and for holding the hostages for so long and in fact, even for all the damage that it has done within Gaza. So said our foreign minister, and that's been the response of many of the people in the coalition to this. But I think that that narrowly construed is exactly wrong for Hamas. This is their worst nightmare if this were to come to pass. This is exactly what they most feared and that what they're like deeply committed to preventing. It's this is why after the Oslo Accords were signed, you know, Oslo 1 and Oslo 2, there was the greatest spate of terror attacks on Israel in the country's history that were orchestrated by Hamas because they were so eager to destroy the chances of this two state solution taking shape and they succeeded in doing that. So to me this seems like.
- [85:40]
I like this because it is a response that is equally.
- [85:48]
I think, profoundly critical of the worldviews of Benjamin Netanyahu on the one hand and of such leaders as remain of Hamas on the other hand.
- [86:02]
And I like the idea of European energy and world energy going into, to advancing something like this, into seeing this as the proper response to the horrors that we've seen in Gaza. I like that. That said, what both of you have said until now of this feeling of unreality about the thing at this particular moment, it's so profound. It just makes you roll your eyes a little reading this. I would love for this to happen. I think this is a perfect vision. It matches my worldview entirely. You know, all we are saying is give peace a chance. But it seems like at this moment we need to say something more than all we are saying is give peace a chance.
- [86:43]
C
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that the main obstacle towards making this into something remotely tangible is, of course, the cooperation of Israel and the United States, which is not on the table at the moment. However, that might change at some point and only for that. The fact that there's such a, a unified front of Europeans and European countries and Arab countries speaking in one voice says a lot because. Well, first of all, there's a great sea change that we're seeing, some of it now. I mean, it's like a big iceberg in America.
- [87:27]
You don't know what American foreign policy would look like after 2028, which is just three years away. I mean, there's a great sea change, certainly among Democrats, but also among younger Republicans than the demographic that is most associated with Trump and his administration. So you don't know what America will make of that past 2028 and the.
- [87:52]
A
Same under President Ocasio Cortez.
- [87:55]
C
I don't know whoever, and even I can't think of any, any other names, but even someone from a younger generation of the. I don't know about J.D. vance, but, you know, a younger generation of both the Republican and Democratic mainstream might have a wholly different foreign policy than we see we saw now under Trump and Biden. I mean, sure, come to think of, you know, looking at what they've done vis a vis Israel and Gaza, they're not that different.
- [88:26]
A
It's inevitable that there'll be something dramatically different because President Trump doesn't exactly have something that could be called a foreign.
- [88:33]
C
Policy per se or a legacy, anything to pass on to someone who's not him. And the same for Israel, by the way. I mean, you said, Linda, that the two state solution is probably not viable. That may be the case. But if you're looking at Israel's interest, the two state solution is probably the worst solution, barring all the other alternatives. And so if, you know, a responsible Israeli leader comes to the helm, responsible is probably the last thing you can say about Netanyahu alongside many other bad words. But when they have to make a decision and say, okay, what would best ensure the longevity of the Zionist enterprise, it's probably not going to be a binational state. It's probably not going to be. Be a formalized apartheid. So what is it going to be? A two stage solution of some of some kind.
- [89:34]
And.
- [89:36]
When that, if that happens, when all the stars are aligned, it's a good thing that they've got. They had gotten everybody else on board already and drafted even a completely outlandish at the moment, some sort of like pathway, what do they call it back in the, in the early 2000s? Roadmap. Roadmap to. A roadmap to peace. I mean, it's become also almost a cliche, right? A roadmap to peace is basically a euphemism for doing nothing. But having some sort of political horizon has a value in and of itself.
- [90:17]
A
Hear, hear. Now listen to this.
- [90:21]
Sam.
- [91:14]
Shatima.
- [92:13]
That song is San Francisco Alamayim, the old Arik Einstein song performed here by Machina off their great new record Shirim Shel Acherim. You can find it in all the usual places. And now it is time for our VOD a Country segment. This is the part of the show in which each of us describes something that maybe brought us some sense as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while. Or possibly something that surprised and amused, delighted and enchanted and sorceled or could be even fluged us as we did that wending. So Gilad, what is your. What a country.
- [92:43]
C
Yeah. So one thing that I think I've lost to aging is my addiction to cinema. In my teens and my twenties, I used to watch three, four films. Films in a week easily. And also in high school I had a young adult membership for the cinema Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Oh, cool. Which at the time cost something ridiculous like 150 shekels a year. And you could just walk in whatever you wanted. And of course I did that and it became my second home.
- [93:17]
And on this note, I would add that as a proud Tel Avivan, I'm absolutely ashamed by the fact that the Jerusalem cinematic tech is infinitely superior to ours. But that's another issue. And maybe Noah, as a city representative, you can do something about that at some point.
- [93:33]
A
I want to hear how it is. Yes.
- [93:36]
C
So an obligatory stop on this journey at the time was the annual Jerusalem Film Festival. That at the time was a world class event. I used to go up every summer and spend a few days attending events. I remember going to master classes with people like British director Stephen Frears and American screenwriter David Mamet and also others that I. That I have forgotten and going to screenings on a double blind basis. I would just Go see whatever's on. Sometimes three movies back to back, just whatever is on. And they were usually all excellent. I almost never regretted seeing anything, any of them. But then I sort of grew out of it. I don't know if it was my attention span that deteriorated or the quality of the program, but after one too many disappointments, I stopped going. And then my kids were born and I had less time for fun in general. And about a couple of years ago, I decided to give it another go and my old passion was really restored. And again then I went last month and watched two wonderful films. One was a British German co production called Islands, a beautiful and beautifully understated drama set on the canary island of Huertaventura and telling the story of a love triangle between an expatriated tennis coach who works on one of the hotels and a holidaying couple trying to save their money.
- [95:12]
The other film that I saw was a cute American romantic comedy called the Baltimorons, about the unlikely relationship between a failed comedian and recovered alcoholic and a much older dentist who happened to be the only dentist on call on Christmas Eve in the whole city of Baltimore. Now, the theaters were packed in both instances, which was a faint but much welcome sign of normality in these troubled times. And of course, going to Jerusalem to breathe mountain air is always fun coming from Tel Aviv. And Linda, I might do it again tonight for the wine festival.
- [95:50]
B
I hope you will.
- [95:51]
C
Yeah, just for the mountain air, not so much for the wine. As Noah said, there's wine in Tel Aviv as well. So the festival now is. It's a fun event, but it's sort of a lackluster version of its old self and, well, honestly, so am I, of my old self. But it was still a cultural break that I much need, needed amid all the barbarism.
- [96:14]
A
Oh, wow. We once before the girl was born, when Susan was pregnant, we got a hotel room in Jerusalem so that we could go see from 10 in the morning until 2 in the morning. Just movie after movie after movie at the Jerusalem Film Festival. One of my favorite memories of all time.
- [96:32]
C
Yeah, that's what I used to do.
- [96:34]
A
Linda, what is your Watta country?
- [96:36]
B
Well, as you mentioned, Noah, that It was Tisha Bav this week and I live about a 10 minute from the Tayelet, which is this very pretty boardwalk with beautiful views of the old city. And there are thousands of people who come to read Megillad Ekha on the Tayelet, where you have a beautiful view of the old city and of the dome of the rock. You know, of the mosque all lit up. And I have very mixed feelings about Tisha B'Av. I'm not sure that I really want there to be another Beit Hamikdash, and not sure what that means. And so I sort of try to focus more on the issue of, you know, they say the Second Temple was destroyed because of Sinat Chinam, because of baseless hatred. And I try to sort of concentrate on that. But. So we went, my entire family, to the. To the Tayalit. And right after Shabbat ended. One of the things that's weird, by the way, is you start fasting while it's still Shabbat, which I just find very strange.
- [97:40]
A
Yeah, it seems wrong somehow.
- [97:41]
B
Yeah, it somehow seems wrong. But there were groups of people all along the Tayala, different synagogues, different groups. And the group that we read with, which I think is a combination of the Conservative shul and another shul, actually, you walk straight down the steps. So we were kind of isolated from all of the other groups reading. So, so we walked down about 60 steps, and we were in a stone circle overlooking the old city of Jerusalem, where all of this happened.
- [98:20]
And there was quite a bit of security. There were dozens of policemen. There were policemen on horses.
- [98:27]
But where we were was actually pretty isolated. And as we start the second chapter, as we started Parak Bet, the Muslim call to prayer started echoing around us. Right at the same time that we were reading echa, they were doing the call to prayer. And it started with one call to prayer, and then other ones joined in with a few seconds delay sometimes. So there were, I don't know, six or seven calls to prayer echoing around us as we were sitting on the ground reading Megillat Echa. And my first reaction actually was that it was a little bit thrilled. You know, that call to prayer, which I heard was, you know, is it saying kill the Jews? And, you know, are we safe where we are? And my son, one of my sons, is here from America doing me louim. And he had his gun with him, and I actually saw him grip his gun. You know, there was something kind of vaguely scary about it. And then I thought, I'm going to change the way that I think about this. And instead of thinking about it as something scary, I'm going to think about it as something amazing that just as we are reading Megillat Echa, which talks about, you know, the tragedy for the Jewish people, they are calling the faithful to prayer. And that maybe religion, rather than being a force for division between us, could actually be a Force for coexistence. And that just like we have respect for our history and our sources, could we learn to have respect for their history and their sources. And, of course, vice versa. And somehow, after I made that mental switch, the call to prayer, instead of sounding menacing, actually sounded very beautiful as it merged with our reading of Echa.
- [100:32]
A
Oh, how wonderful. Mine is also about Tisha BAV here, which was in some ways the same and in some ways so very different than what you were just describing. So as soon as our chavurah was done reading echa on Tisha B'Av, which was itself a beautiful thing, and Miriam Hershlag read, and the girl who was here for a short visit, she read the last chapter, chapter, chapter five, ending with all of us chanting together, bring us back, God, that we may come back. Renew our days as of old. Which this year, as I said the words, I could feel them. Renew our days as of old. I'd like that. Which I. I don't always feel them. And as soon as it was over, before the lecture and the discussion that our Chavara had lined up for the evening, I biked over to Hasid Square because it felt like a thing to do. And the regular after Shabbat demonstration, it was over by the time I got there. But the Tisha Bav thing that they were having in the square, that was just starting. And I came to the square, like always, from the back through Dubinov park, up past the opera, and I locked my bike in the back of the library. And as I walked into the square, I was surprised by how very crowded it was. Tens of thousands of people. And on stage there were five young men in jeans and black T shirts singing that. That old song by Naomi Shemer that says, among other things, you know, watch over our baby girl, our home, the fire burning, the clear water, the person returning home from far away. Watch over all these things. God. Don't uproot what's been planted. Don't forget hope. This is what those five guys, and then the rest of us singing with them sounded like.
- [102:42]
Anata konatua, anata sa.
- [103:15]
And after the singing, a rabbi and doctor of Jewish philosophy named Tamir Granot took the microphone. He's the head of a yeshiva. Though probably the reason why most of us know him is because his kid, Amitay Zvi Gronaut, was killed in the second week of the war on October 15. He was a captain in the tank corps. And after that, Rav Granot kind of gave himself over to trying to bring together people from different backgrounds from different worlds. And on that night, he said, our enemies have caused us to doubt that there can be peace. And there are people among us and who can blame them who doubt that there can be peace even among ourselves? But there can be, he said. Tonight is a proof of that. And then he sat down on a low, low chair on the stage and he took out his reading glasses and he started to read from Echa, Echa.
- [104:07]
Yeshva.
- [104:25]
And when Rav Granot started to read, most everyone sat down on the ground like the tradition says. And lots of people took off their shoes like the tradition says. And I look around and it was a site that I've by now seen lots and lots of times, but every time I see it, then it still moves me in some way. There were lots of people with kids in their laps, and there were women with tichels, those headscarves, and there were men covered with tattoos, and there were women with bare midriffs and men in kipot. It was just like everyone. Everyone was all there together, feeling the day, feeling the sad trope of Echa, I think feeling something like history. And I doubt that there is a single belief that was shared by all the thousands and thousands of people sitting on the ground one next to the other. Not about politics and not about God and not about the war. There is no song, I bet, that we, all of us have on our phone. There's no book that we, all of us love. What there was, all there was, was a wish that we shared on that sad night to be sitting on the ground in this place with these people.
- [105:34]
And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itai Shalem, our station manager, without whom there would be none of this. Thanks to Hashibolim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Natalie. Thank you, Gilad. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and the station going and it keeps us moved and grateful and in your. Your debt. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and ask you to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer eventually. Worst case, send the line again and we will answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this. With this episode. The Promise podcast finishes our 14th season. That's 14 full years of week in week out episodes, and we begin our 15th. Similarly, it took 14 years to build the Sydney Opera House, leading us to the obvious inevitable conclusion that the two are accomplishments of equal weight and importance to human culture. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that the week that is now beginning to draw to a close. The first week in August is International Clown Week, so stipulated way back in 1966 by Ray Bickford, then the president of the Clown Club of America, who prevailed upon his organization's membership to bring the full force of their gravitas to bear writing to their congressmen and senators demanding that a presidential proclamation making International Clown Week an official part of the official calendar of the United States be passed. A delegation of clowns traveled to Washington, where they met with Arkansas Senator John McClellan, who chaired the powerful Senate Subcommittee on Observances and holidays. And Senator McClellan got the thing done, naming Clown Club of America founding member Bill Boom Boom bailey as the US chairman of now National Clown Week. It was not until 1970, though, that both houses of Congress passed PL 91 443JJ 26 and sent the law to President Richard Nixon, who signed it on August 2, 1971, and proclaimed as he did, quote, whoever has heard the laughter of a child or seen sudden delight on the face of a lonely old man, man has understood in those brief moments, mysteries deeper than love. All men are indebted to those who bring such moments of quiet splendor, who redeem sickness and pain with joy. All across America, good men in putty noses and baggy trousers, following a tradition as old as man's need to touch gently the lives of his fellow man go to orphanages and children's hospitals, homes for the elderly and for the give of themselves. Today, as always, clown and the spirit they represent are as vital to the maintenance of our humanity as the builders and growers and as the governors. End quote. And it goes on like that for some time, explaining why I think Richard Nixon is presumably remembered as one of the great presidents in American history. But I digress. Of course, all this emphasis on American clown analia might understandably give you the impression that International Clown Week is really just an American affair. But boy, oh boy, is that impression wrong. For one thing, the two biggest international clowning organizations, the World Clown association and Clowns International, hold back to back conventions every year in Bognor Regis, England. Then, of course, there is Clowns Without Borders International, or CWBI, that operates from 13 chapters in 124 countries and their headquarters are based in Barcelona, Spain. And don't get me started about French clowns. And I am pretty sure I don't need to tell you that I I love International Clown Week. It must be my favorite week of the entire year because. Well, obviously because of the joyful sounds that clowns make like this.
- [109:44]
Or like this.
- [110:09]
Still, even though we give over a whole week to the celebration of International Clowns, which is fully seven times as long as we devote to the UN sanctioned International Day of Peace, because world clowns are seven times as important as world peace. And even the though that whole week is only 2/3 over. Still, already I know that all too soon International Clown Day will be over. Much like after Cuckold. Kanio, after stabbing Netta to death and then doing the same to Silvio, comes to center stage, his hands dripping with blood, then says.
- [110:58]
Not so. The Promised Podcast Kista Commedio non phoenicia mai. We will be back for you next week and every week, reminding you that while you can go to some places like the circus, and see clowns for an hour or two and then just go back to your clownless life, there are other places where tropical. Try as you might, you'll never escape clowns expressing their clownish opinions in their clownish way on this the Promise podcast.