← The Promised Podcast
The Promised Podcast
The “Means, Ends & Mean Ends” Edition
01:43:59
Linda Gradstein, Gilad Halpern and Noah Efron discuss (1) What to make of the New York Times Magazine’s percussive essay called, “How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power,” and (2) The “humanitarian city” that Prime Minister...
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Today is day 650, which are 91 weeks and five days of the captivity of 50 hostages living and dead in Gaza.
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This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language.
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Welcome to the Promise Podcast, brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city, in which, as you may already know, if you happen to be on my Facebook this week at the monthly meeting of the City Council, something remarkable happened. A little background is needed. Yachad is an Orthodox community that makes its name by being especially inviting and welcoming to queer radio religious folks. Well, it's made its name for a lot of things. It is a beautiful, learned, probing, warm community. And one very important thing about it is that it is warmly open and seeks to be a spiritual home for people who might not find a warm, open home in other congregations. Go to Yahad's Facebook page and you will see that they describe themselves like this quote. The community opens its gates and welcomes every person and enables all who enter to take part as equals with respect and acceptance for each person's life path. All members of the community may take an active role in the community's spiritual life. The community sees value in the active participation of women, men and children in prayer and in spiritual life. And then it goes on like that. For some years, Yahad has met on Shabbat and holidays in a city school called Zeitlin. Lately the school has started renovations. The new school, when it's done, will have a room for Yahad with a separate entrance and everything that the community needs. But that won't be ready for maybe three years. In the meantime, the community needs a place to meet, pray, learn. Starting this week, there was a place for them that fell through and then another. And in short, the renovation started this week, but Yahya did not know where it would be meeting, even on this very Shabbat. So that is the background. At the end of the city council meeting on Monday night, Deputy Mayor Chaim Goren, who leads a party called Hama Aminim, the Believers, a two member faction that is a coalition of religious Zionists and Ashkenazi Haridim. The second council member in faction is a Gur Hasid named Rav Naftali. Lubart. Chaim Goren stood up and said this among other things about Yahad.
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With us here today is a crowd, friends from a very special community from Tel Aviv, Jaffo, that connects diverse and varied populations. We all need to mobilize to help this community find a permanent home in Tel Aviv Yafo. It is a community we can all be proud of. And we must do everything we can to help it continue to thrive here. After that route Nagar from my own faction, who along with Deputy Mayor Mitalahavi, holds municipal responsibility for the LGBTQIA community and is a member of Merits and who has been helping Yahad look for a new place. She took the microphone holding her four month old baby girl and said this and Gaia.
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Gaia.
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Masatiyama Dima.
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Today I brought Gaia with me. Gaia is my daughter, my firstborn. When Gaia was born, I found a home in the Yachad community. We were called up together to the Torah. We did a Misha Berach in that amazing community. We must find them a solution. We are with you, Chaim. A coalition of love. After this, Ruth Chaim and I found Segev Shavit, Mayor Ron Hodai's advisor and liaison to the city Council, who said, of course we will find a solution this week. We won't let a Shabbat go by in which Yachad does not have a place to pray. The next day, a place had been canvassed and a site visit had been made in a building the city owns, a building set aside for the municipal workers union or some such. And permissions were gotten. And there's still stuff that needs to be done as I speak, questions that need to be answered. Where will the Torah and the Siddurim be stowed during the week? Who will have the keys, et cetera, et cetera. It's all complicated giving a public building over on a day when it is closed to a group. But it is happening. After the meeting is over, I went out with Reut to speak to some of the people from Yahat who had come to the meeting. And someone said, why? Your girl was my kids, Madraka, my kids counselor in the youth movement. We love her. And a big tall man grabbed baby Gaia's tiny foot and said, hey Gaia, you remember me? I was one who announced your name for the very first time in public. You and me, kid, we have a big future together. And the reason why I mention this is if you did not know that that is what life is like here, you could not know that that is what life is like here. And arguably nothing captures the mostly live and let live, thrive and let thrive spirit of this city we love so well. Tel Aviv Yaffo better than most everyone, wall to wall, agreeing that whether you're as godless as a person can be or as piously Torah ish as a person can be, or any of the infinite shades in between, we richer, happier, better off in a city with a queer, friendly mignon. With us Today, speaking from TLV1's venerable satellite studio in Jerusalem, is a woman whose every smile, whose every kind remark, every appreciative comment, every warm glance is a further instantiation of her cheerful, gracious, curious, respectful acceptance of the humans, be they, whomever they may be. Obviously, that paragon of celebration of people, whomever they may be, could only be Linda Gradstein. Linda Gradstein has long covered Israel, first for NPR and most recently for the Voice of America. Sadly, presently now, something about which we can mostly speak in the past tense because it has undergone a radical muskification. Linda is also a lecturer and journalist 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?
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I'm doing fine. I actually was just thinking about coffee and how amazing coffee is and how it's a socially acceptable drug. And just before the podcast started, I was really kind of dragging, and I just came back from the gym and I was ready to take a nap and I had a cup of coffee and now I'm feeling perky and ready to go.
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That might be partly because of the caffeine that's in the coffee. I'm just saying I myself, before recording the podcast, took half of a caffeine pill because that's the kind of disgusting person I am. It's a habit that started in college. Here with us in the beautiful serenity studio here underground on Lesser Hori street in Tel Aviv, which studio our station manager, Itay Shellam, was kind enough to share with me this week. Sent to its clients during the little unpleasantness we had with Iran a few weeks back, an announcement that read, quote, during an alarm for the time being, we recommend that you remain inside the studio compound. The compound was in the past a bank vault, and it is constructed of reinforced concrete, much like a bomb shelter, which, if this show sounds rich, keep in mind that we are broadcasting from the vault. But I digress. With us in the vault, and we are so delighted, is 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 remarkable breadth and intelligence. Gilad Halpern is also an editor and founder of the brilliant literary journal, also called the Tel Aviv Review, a magazine of astounding breath and intelligence when not podcasting and editing. Dr. Gilad Halpern is a research fellow at the Ben Gurion University in the Negev, doing research of remarkable breadth and intelligence. You may be sensing a theme here. Gilad was in the past 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 Haifa. He is also a musician of remarkable talent, a master of how many languages? No one knows for sure. And he is, as we were just discussing, unnervingly tall, though shorter than one of his brothers, though taller than another one of his brothers right there in the middle. Gilad, how are you doing?
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I'm always in the middle. Going back to what you said about coffee, Linda, someone told me a very brilliant thing a while ago that a journalist is an organism that can to transform caffeine into words, and I'm sticking to that.
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Now. As for me, my name is Noah Efron and I don't mean to boast, but this week I pulled a muscle in my back lifting weights in the gym and it's the first time that I've ever had back pain of any sort. The kind of back pain that makes you go ouch, ouch, ouch while you are walking the dog. In all my life when people have excused themselves from something because their back was out, I never really knew what that was all about. But now I think I know. And please believe me when I say I am not bragging. That would be such a disappointment. Who always made a point of how I shouldn't do that, but where? I guess everyone has pockets of ignorance, things that most people know and understand but that somehow they never got the memo about. I have one of those Banana Republic utility vests just filled with pockets of ignorance all over. In some pockets they have their own pockets, and for me, like Robert Frost, that has made all the difference. Today we got two topics of league of their own importance, but first we have this matter in memoriam.
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Last Monday at 6 in the evening, maybe 75 people gathered among the old tall trees at the old cemetery at Kibbutz Ashtot Yaakov. Well, to be precise, there are two kibbutzim named Ashdot Yaakov, more or less side by side, not much below the Sea of Galilee. They split in 1953 in the Great civil war of the Kibbutz movement into Ashtot Yaakov Yehudah on the south and Ashdot Yaakov Miuchad on the north. But then they never did divide the cemetery, I guess, figuring that if the dispute over Stalin that divided them could not be buried for the living, maybe the dispute could be buried at least among those who were themselves being laid into the ground. And the shared cemetery is due east of the line that divides the two Ashdodya coves, maybe 500 meters from the Yarmouk river that, in that spot separates Israel from Jordan. And the 75 people assembled under the shade of the big old trees were there to lay to rest a man who had spent most of his childhood and a decade or two after that on Ashtot Yaakov Yichud, and who never really stopped thinking of it as his home or one of his homes. Shaikha Pikoff was his name, one of the country's great songwriters who died Last Week in 88. If your first thought like mine when the announcement came over the radio last week that Chaika Paikov had died, was he was until just now, still alive. I think you like, I hope me can be forgiven. Shaika Paikov seems like a figure from another time, when things were different. Under the eucalyptus trees, shading the ceremony, were other people who seemed to be from a different time, like Sarala Sharon, who grew up also at Ashtot Yaakovichu, to become probably the person who did the most to make Shirabatzibur public sing alongs into something like a national pastime here for decades. And when Chaika Paikoff's father, Sender Peikoff, died on Ashtot Yaakov Yehud, just before the holidays in 1989, 36 years ago, it was Sara Le Charon who eulogized him in the stenciled and mimeographed kibbutz newspaper with a poem with a complicated rhyme scheme that went in part. I saw daisies in the autumn. I saw sender in his suffering. I saw thirsty daisies. I saw Sender in his pain. I saw wilting daisies. I saw sender pass away. Sender, a man with a searching, piercing, burning gaze at the flowers, at suns, at the next generation, a man whose body grew frail but whose spirit stayed strong enough to walk at night, to work and to return home at strange hours, to go out into the garden, to the corner, to turn on the sprinkler, to stand facing the daisies and look with a searching, piercing, burning gaze at flowers, at suns, at the next generation. And what remains is the garden, the corner. Words and music and Chaika and Benny and Kuti, grandsons and granddaughters and many, many friends in Ashtotyakove. Go in peace. Sender signed Sarala Sharon. And now, this past week, here was Sarala Sharon at the microphone, and she said.
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Shaika was for me the music of the land of Israel. And then, standing in front of a pushcart with Shaikha Pekoff's body covered in a black shroud with a wreath on top of it, Saar la Sharon started to sing.
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And the song is by Shaikha Paikov, of course, and the lyrics go, All I have left is the flute, the nice little one. It cries on rainy days over the meadow, over the garden and the sound is sad because my heart has emptied of both pain and of joy because my heart is old. There were speeches at the funeral. Shaika Peikov's two girls, Ivan and Sigal, they had teary goodbyes. And after Shaikha Paikoff's body was laid into the ground and earth shoveled over it, chairs were placed between the stones and a microphone was hooked up to a battery operated amplifier. And the singer, Dudu Zakhai, sat down among the graves with his guitar and played a song that Chaika paikov wrote almost 50 years ago. Le Chof Yarden it is called. And after Dudu Zakay put it on a record in 1978, it became one of the songs people always asked him to play. But really it was one of Shaikha Paikoff's most personal songs, about the rivers there at Astiyot Yaakov, his rivers when he grew up, the Yarmouk and the Jordan just meters from the cemetery. And the lyrics go in part. To the banks of the Jordan I remember many years with you, my lovely one, my modest one and now I am with you. To the banks, to the banks of the Jordan Come the waves of my days like the twisting yarmouk so is the stream of my memories against the vistas of the Golan I will feel how the hand of time settles on my trembling shoulders With a wreath of my melodies, With a wreath of my melodies. Some years ago, when a radio host asked Sheika Paikoff what song he would like to be remembered by, there was no going back and forth, no considering, no thinking it was, he said right away.
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And now beneath the wreath, the smell of the yarmouk mixing with the smell of the eucalyptus trees. Duduzakai sang the song.
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And after that People stayed among the graves and sang Songs of the Land of Israel by Shaikha Pikov, like Gama Nirotira, La Kineret. I also want to sing about the Sea of Galilee. It was a hit back in 1973, but everyone over a certain age remembers it today.
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And the words go, some of them anyway. So many have written of the kinner at the Sea of Galilee before me. What can one more trembling admirer add? Only the hope that maybe you've saved for him a tiny place for just one more song.
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And I have spent the last week listening to the songs of Shaika Paikov, starting from songs he wrote on Kibbutz Hashtot Yaakov Yechud back in the 1950s. And so many of them are songs so familiar, so monumental, that it sort of surprised me to learn that they were written at all, that they weren't somehow instead given at Sinai songs like Eretz Yisroel, the Land of Israel is Beautiful, that was recorded a long time ago by the IDF Southern Command singing troupe.
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Or like the song Erets Erets Eretz, the land, the Land, the Land, that was recorded a long time ago by Elanita.
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These songs, like the song about the Kinneret or the song about the Jordan river, they are love songs to a place, not an abstract place, but to this place, these trees, these streams, these lakes, these mountains, mountains. And I see now that it was through singing these songs and other songs like them, love songs to the Land of Israel. It was by singing over and over again these songs in the youth movement that when I finally came here, it was all so familiar to me. The trees, the streams, the lakes, the mountains. Like how when you fall in love those first times when you're still a kid, it is all new. But it also isn't because you've heard about it all in all those songs. And now, now you're here, now it is you. So one thing that I got this past week from listening over and over again to the songs of Shaika Paikov is how besotted he was with this place, and how the besotment that I feel it owes something to Shaika Paikov's besotment and to the songs he wrote about it. Another thing I got from my Shiva of listening to Shaika Paikov this past week is how much these songs were born, not just of love, but of effort they were not given at Sinai Cender. Paikov grew up going to a K in Karasin in Poland, and when his musical talents were recognized. He was sent to study chazanut to become a cantor, going bad only when he found Zionism, leaving his family, his life, his religion behind at 20, and moving in 1932 to the agricultural setup in Mikveh Yisrael, where he worked in the orchards and where he married his wife, Jaffa, and they had Chaika. And after Jaffa was born, he moved to the kibbutz. And these songs of love of the land of Israel, they were part of a project and became the project of Shaika Paikov's life. The project of making a new culture here and of making that new culture old, of making it seem like it was given at Sinai, partly by writing the songs. This project, it was maybe the biggest project of Zionism, aside from making factories and farms and making hospitals and an army and a government. Beginning in the late 1960s, one of the most important things in Israeli music and Israeli culture in general were festivals. One of the festival, the biggest and the most important was the Zemer Ivri festival, the festival of Hebrew songs, for the sort of songs that people sang last week at Chaika Paikoff's funeral, the sort of songs that he spent most of his life writing. But there were other festivals too. There was an annual festival of children's songs, because a culture needs its own songs for its own children. Another was the annual festival of Hasidic songs. Another was the annual festival of Mizrahi or Sephardi music. And the idea behind each of these festivals was the same. It was the job of a Jewish state to take what there is of old diaspora Jewish culture and put it through the transformer and make it new, make it Israeli. Shaika Paikov, I think more than anyone else ever, he loved these festivals, and he made each of them his own. In 1971, the song that came in first place in the festival of Hasidic songs, and the song that came in first place in the festival of Mizrahi or Sephardi songs, and the song that came in first place in the festival of kids songs, they were all by Shaika Paikov. The song that won the kids song festival was called Endendino, and Yaffe Erkone sings it.
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The song that won the Hasidic song festival, you maybe know it from Shul, maybe from Simcha Torah, it is called.
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That song was performed by Sassi Keshet, a slickly handsome kid from Kibbutzkly Oyam, who'd maybe never actually laid eyes on a Khasi, though his parents had come from Russia. His given name was Sasson Kosovski, which is why it is maybe a surprise that it was Sassi Keshet who also performed the song that in that Same year, in 1971, came in first place in the festival of Mizrahi, or Sephardi songs, with a song by Shaikha Paikov of called Bonashir Achim. Let us sing, brothers.
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Him.
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A son of Poles writing a quote unquote Mizrachi song sung by a son of Russians. And having that song take the first prize in the national festival of Mizrachi music was less unusual back then than it might seem now. In the first decades of the state, State radio broadcast just 15 minutes a day of Mizrahi music, the programming for which was done by European Jews and much of Mizrahi music itself back then. It too was written by European Jews who maybe added Oriental trills to it and such, and tended to write about people clapping each other on the shoulders and being brothers. Shaika Paikov was one of Ben Gurionish generation who took it as their calling to forge something here, to melt down the old Jewish cultures and to mold them into something new. Since he wrote his most famous songs, we have left that kind of thing behind. Nowadays, someone like Dudu Tassa, he finds in the Boydom, in the attic, a suitcase of music by his grandfather and his great uncle Daoud and Salah al Kuwaiti, who were stars in Iraq 75 years ago, beloved by King Fatima Faizal II. And he learns their instruments and makes a band to perform their music, making it his and making it ours. Hasidic music now, well, it's made mostly by Hasidim. And I love Shaikha Paikov and I love those people sitting in the white chairs with their white hair among the white stones in the cemetery of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov this past week singing those love songs to this place. And I am grateful for Shaikha Paikoff's genius and the beautiful songs that he left us. And I am grateful that the Kineret that he hoped had still a tiny place for just one more song has since then showed that there is place here for more voices and more songs than back then Shaika Paikov or any of the rest of us knew to hope or dare to imagine. May Shaikha Paikoff's memory be for a blessing.
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Today.
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Two topics, though, before I reveal them with Richard Nixon, let me say this about that. This morning as we record Al Jazeera reported that US President Donald Trump thanked special envoy Steve Witkoff for achieving or nearly achieving or being about to achieve a ceasefire agreement, which agreement may or may not be waiting in the printer tray at a Kinko's in Doha to be collected and taken to be signed. Also this morning it was announced that the old ultra Orthodox Shas Party is in stages joining the Torah Judaism party and leaving the government, maybe putting the coalition in some jeopardy. Also this morning it was announced that Israel bombed Damascus last night to get the Syrian government to stop killing off Druze in Suwayda across from the Israeli border. Any and all of these stories is either metaphorically or quite literally explosive. And by the time you're listening to this, you may rightly be wondering why we are not talking about this or that or that. And the reason is they are all stories at the moment that I speak these words about stuff that is gonna happen more than about stuff that is already happening. And with Ludwig Wittgenstein I say that of which we cannot speak, we must remain silent. Of course there is stuff of which we can speak. Two stuffs in particular, and they are these Discussion one Politics by other Means as the New York Times publishes a percussive essay in its weekend magazine called How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaz to Stay in Power, leading some to say perfidy and a total lack of journalistic worthity, it works, it works. And other people say forsooth, a ruthless telling of the truth, we will wonder why reactions to the aforementioned essay have tended to be framed in archaic English, and verily the answer will come anon. End Discussion 2. Charity Unit Mania, which title, as I do not need to tell you, obviously anagrams to Humanitarian City, which Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have lately offered as a solution to the hunger, homelessness and manifold miseries of Gazans, and mostly as a solution to the challenges the IDF faces fighting Hamas and places where civilians live. The construction of a, quote unquote, Humanitarian City on the rubble of Rafiyah, in which ultimately 2 million Gazans will live in tents and from which they will not be allowed to leave, save to emigrants from Gaza to some other countries. Why, we will ask, might smart men in smart suits think that this is a good idea? And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters in our extra special special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show Notes on your podcast app or at patreon.com promisepodcast on the world Wide Web. We will speak about the very vehement, virulently viral video of 3/4 of the famously menschly Patinkin Grody family. That's actor, singer Mandy Patinkin, playwright Katherine Grody and one of their two sons, Gideon Patinkin Grody, being interviewed by the Times and talking with great passion, anger and maybe frustration about Gaza, as when Mandy Patinkin says to allow this to happen to children and civilians of all ages in Gaza for whatever reason. Reason is unconscionable and unthinkable. And I ask you Jews everywhere, all over the world to spend some time alone and think how could it be done to you and your ancestors? And you turn around and you do it to someone else. We will wonder what to make of why and how from amongst the millions of things written and said every day about Israel, Hamas and Gaza, this voice somehow manages to rise above and be heard and discussed by so many people on all sides of the issue. But before we get to any of that, listen to this.
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J.
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That song is Ch' in Malagid by Talia Dantzik Lichtman and Yogev Glusman. More music of these times. And speaking of times, now it is time for our first discussion about the Times, the New York Times. So Linda, over on 8th Avenue in Manhattan, they're past asking whether Prime Minister Netanyahu prolonged the war to stay in power and onto the next question, asking how Prime Minister Netanyahu prolonged the war to stay in power. What should we make of it?
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Well, you're right. And the article that the New York Times published this week about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to stay in Power was big in every possible way. It was more than 11,000 words long. It was written by the Times leading three experts on Israel. It drew thousands of comments and it made headlines around the world. The authors are Patrick Kingsley, the Times Jerusalem bureau chief, and Nathan Odenheimer, another Jerusalem based staff writer who used to write for NPR and before that the national religious paper Makor Rishon and Ronane Bergman, whom some people, Noah is one of them, argue is the best political, military and security analyst we've got and who holds a Pulitzer Prize, is in support of that claim. The article poured over materials by and about Benjamin Netanyahu and what he has said and done over the past decade and a half and incorporated over 100 interviews with politicians, security people, soldiers, professors and journalists. The article says a lot. If you haven't read it, you might want to, which can be simmered down into five major claims. 1. That before October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly ignored warnings that Hamas might attack attack. In July 2023, three months before the attack, to pick the smokiest of the smoking guns, Netanyahu got a report saying that owing to the discord in Israel over the proposed judicial reform, Hamas was preparing an attack. He paid the report no attention. 2. That after October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to shift the blame for the attack to the army and the Mossad. This blame shifting started already on the morning of October 7, when Netanyahu got on the record that he had no prior intelligence about a possible attack. Since then, he insisted that crucial meetings go unrecorded, that documents be redacted and that soldiers and spymasters who might contradict his versions of events be discredited. 3. That Prime Minister Netanyahu slow walked and sometimes engineered the failure of ceasefire and hostage release negotiations to mollify his far, far right coalition partners Ben Gvir, Smotrich and the MKs and ministers in their parties. Already just a few months into the war, the Prime Minister was willing to end the fighting, but he changed his mind after gauging that the far right wing of his coalition would bolt if he did, toppling his government. Since then, he many times scuttled possible settlements for the sake of maintaining his coalition 4. That Saudi Arabia and the US were willing and even eager to enter a historic Saudi Israeli peace accord in May 2024. But Prime Minister Netanyahu was unwilling to end the war in order to achieve this and 5. That the successes in Lebanon, Syria and Iran not only increased the security of Israel, they also revived the possibility of a political future for Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Prime Minister's office responded to all this by saying it was a bunch of damnable misrepresentations of most everything that has happened here over the past years. In the spirit of fairness, I'll quote the Prime Minister's office's official statement at length, though still not in full. The New York Times article rehashes long discredited claims of Prime Minister Netanyahu's political opponents. It defames Israel, its brave people and soldiers and its Prime Minister. The strategic decisions made by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet led Israel to one of the greatest military comebacks in history. Prime Minister Netanyahu's leadership brought about the coveted detonation of Hezbollah's pagers, the destruction of its missile stockpiles, the destruction of Assad's armaments, the elimination of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist chiefs, and above all, the decisive action against the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile programs aimed at annihilating Israel. Israel. Further, Prime Minister Netanyahu's policy of applying military and diplomatic pressure on Hamas has so far secured the return of 205 hostages out of a total of 255. Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to return them all. Contrary to the article's claims, there was no visible deal last year that Prime Minister Netanyahu turned down. Hamas continued to insist that Israel leave God Gaza, enabling Hamas to regroup, rearm, and threaten Israel's security again and again. Prime Minister Netanyahu's refusal to accept these impossible conditions, against the advice of senior officials, was based on a disagreement on policy and not on coalition considerations. When the Prime Minister achieved hostage release deals he deemed acceptable, he pushed them through even when his coalition partners voted against them and bolted the government. Government. Prime Minister Netanyahu was never concerned with his political survival, but with his country's survival. He is carrying out his life's mission, securing the future of the one and only Jewish state. All of that is from the statement by the Prime Minister's office. So, Gilad, we have here a question both about all that has happened here over the past two years and also a question about how one very important newspaper, the New York Times, proposes we interpret all that has happened here over the past two years. Years. So I'll ask my questions in the broadest possible way. What should we make of the article? What should we make of our leader and our lives since October 7th?
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Yeah, I think that first and foremost, it needs to be said that sometimes the mission of journalism is to put into word in a coherent manner something that we all sort of know because we have eyes to see and ears to hear here. And I think that anyone really in the right mind knows that there's more than a grain of truth in what the Times are saying. I had several years ago, I was talking to a gentleman, an older gentleman who is in his 70s, about the First Lebanon War. I was less than a year old when it started, but I, you know, of course, learned a lot about it and was interested in the. That sudden political development. And the one thing that is really in debate in Israel was the extent to which Ariel Sharon, then the Defense Minister, duped Menachem Begin, the Prime Minister. Whether Begin knew what Sharon's plans were and that all the gentlemen I was talking to said no, it was absolutely clear to everyone in the right Mind, you know, if you followed Zev Shiff in Haaretz at the time, these security analysts, you knew that this is where, where it was going, going. And this is how I feel about that.
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The, the New York Times story now telling in hindsight, something that was absolutely clear to all of us. I would say another thing that it's, it doesn't tell the whole picture. And I think that it's certainly true that Netanyahu did it to survive politically. But it's not the only thing. One thing that Netanyahu cares about more than his own political survival is not making any definitive decisions about the fate of Israel, leaving it open as much as he can, kicking the can down the road, dragging his feet, buying time. And this is what he's been doing up until the 7th of October, and to a larger extent afterwards, because there were several, as the New York Times expose is saying, there were several exit points, but they all required a certain decision making and a certain concession on the part of Israel, which is something that Netanyahu is not willing to do, because the way he is wired is always looking for a better situation, sometimes sometime down the road that never comes.
- [43:06]
A
Well, I'd like to be able to think of myself as in my right mind, but I'm not entirely sure that I entirely agree with you. And like you said, Linda, I really do revere Ronen Bergman. There's nothing in this reporting that doesn't seem to me to be careful and accurate. But what I object to is the broad framing, which, like you said, Gilad is really what this article adds. Like, there's not really that much. They interviewed 100 people. There's not really that much new information or new insight here. It's a synthetic piece, and there's great value in that. And I dislike that synthesis for the following reason. From the headline all the way through the way the article is structured to the conclusion of the article, the main claim really is that the reason with the definitive article, the Heyediya, the reason why Prime Minister Netanyahu has acted in the way that he has acted consistently, is in order to extend his political beginning on October 7th or October 8th, which is the low point of his political career, when it seems unlikely that he could survive for very long. So this is a story about how.
- [44:25]
Prime Minister Netanyahu used the circumstances that he found in order to craft this sort of rebirth of his career and resurgence.
- [44:37]
Of his popularity and his political viability. Now, I don't think that those things did not happen. I do not think that it's not true that Prime Minister Netanyahu was, at the lowest point in his career, concerned about his political future. I agree that he was. But the implicit kind of metaphysical view of this article is that you're one or the other. Either you're a pure leader whose only concern is what is good for the country and who acts, acts selflessly at all points, and at any point is ready to go home if it turns out that there's someone else who could do a better job of leading the country. Or you're a selfish son of a bitch who is just out to advance your own personal interests, whether it costs lives, whether it costs money, whether it jeopardizes the future of the country. And. And that metaphysical assumption, which I think is really stitched deep into this story, I think is exactly 100% wrong. Like what? Of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that he is the best person to lead the country at this moment. Of course he wants to go on because he wants to continue, but also because he thinks that the way to ensure the best future for Israel is for him to continue to be prime minister. So that if the government was toppled after, you know, a month after October 7th, you know, or, you know, on November 7th, the government fell and we were going to new elections. I think that Benjamin Netanyahu.
- [46:23]
Thinks, believes, and I'm not entirely sure that it's obvious that he's wrong, that the country would be worse off for that. We would be fighting amongst each other at exactly this point when we either. When we had to be fighting against Hamas, in his view, and the end would be that we would have, I don't know, Lapid would be Prime Minister, Gantz would be prime minister. Someone that Netanyahu believes is weak and overly compromising, lacks resolve that is needed to take the country where the country needs to go, and that we would be disastrously poorly off. So for Netanyahu, preserving his power and preserving the best possible future for the country are coterrancible. They overlap deeply, and that is the nature. Why does somebody get into politics? Because they think that they're the person to do the job. And so there's something like the implicit statement that there's something deeply cynical about this seems to me to be a profound misunderstanding of politicians and of politics, and particularly of Benjamin Netanyahu. So, of course, of course he wanted to extend his career, and of course he wanted to do what he thought was best for the country. He just does not think, like almost all politicians, he just does not think that those are two different things. He thinks that those things are, you know, those things go together and if you separate them, then we're worse off. Linda, what do you think?
- [47:57]
C
I'm not sure that I agree with you, Noah. I think that at least I'm pretty.
- [48:02]
A
Sure that you disagree based on our past experience.
- [48:06]
C
I think that he has shown himself to be an incredibly cynical politician and that even after the army is saying to him, we can't achieve any more military goals in Gaza, he is saying, no, no, we're going to destroy Hamas. We're going to, what the heck are we still doing there? I see him as, as very cynical, very self serving. I mean, I think you're right that he sort of convinced himself that he's the best thing for Israel. But I think beyond it's more important for him to be the first thing for Netanyahu. And I think that we've seen other Israeli military and intelligence leaders saying, I have responsibility for what happened on October 7th and stepping down. And he has consistently refused to accept any responsibility for what happened. And I think he's a cynical politician and he will do almost anything to stay.
- [49:10]
B
But no, I want to ask you, even if you're right and he's convinced himself that he is the best thing For Israel, isn't the 7th of October the best proof that he was wrong? And anyone would just say, okay, I was wrong, I should resign because everything that I've been doing for the sake of Israel proved to be disastrous to both of you.
- [49:28]
A
I'm saying something deeper than that. He has convinced himself that he's the best person for Israel. It's something that I'm sure you disagree with even more than that statement that Benjamin Netanyahu is in the psychological state of having persuaded himself against all evidence that he is the best person to lead Israel. I think that the case can be made if you are Benjamin Netanyahu or one of the, whatever it is, 40% of the country who do agree that he is the best person to lead the country, then you look at what happened and you say, look, nobody. And I'm sure the day will come when Benjamin Netanyahu himself will say that what happened on October 7th was an awful thing for which obviously he bears some responsibility. We'll see. Maybe he'll never say that, but I believe that he can say that. But then on October 8, he looked around and still continued to believe that he, he was and is the best person to lead Israel at this moment because he maintained this focus also on Lebanon and also on Iran, because He is capable of not caring at all about the world, thinking that he and his entire country are a bunch of, you know, genocidal, murderous maniacs, because he is capable of being very, very steadfast against pressure within Israel from the families of hostages whom we know 80% of Israelis are not unwilling to say that they're wrong. And he's willing to say, no, they're wrong. The lives of their now, you know, now 20 remaining lives out there, but before that it was, you know, 100 lives are less important than these goals. He's the only one, the only politician that he can see who could both be the leader of the country, plausibly, which is to say it's a small group. It could be Gantz, it could be Lapid, it could be Bennett, it could be him. I don't know who else Israel cats. He looks at this small group of people that could be leading the country and he says, obviously, I am the person who brings those traits, who brings that ability to say, fuck you, who brings that determination, who brings the experience, who brings the control over all the institutions of Israel. And so, so for me, I have a deep, deep political and moral disagreement with Benjamin Netanyahu. I don't need to feel as though all he's looking out for is himself. I believe that I could argue against him and come out feeling as though I am right, taking him to be someone who, who believes that what he's doing is for the good of the country. So I don't understand why discount that.
- [52:30]
B
But every politician believes that they're the right man or woman for the job. So why do politicians resign? What's the point of accountability?
- [52:40]
A
Well, I mean, I think that the case can well be made against Netanyahu that he ought to have already resigned because of the failure in October 7th or because of the way that the war has been waged since then. I can make that case for sure. But what I think is a mistake that we around the world, and especially on the left, make over and over again is reducing this to a statement of whether a question of whether or not Netanyahu is a cynical scumbag. I don't know why that's the argument that we ought to be having. I don't know why that's the case that the New York Times ought to be making with that.
- [53:19]
B
I agree, as I said.
- [53:20]
C
Yeah, well, because first of all, I think that it's a really well reported piece piece, and, you know, a lot of us here in Israel know a lot of this, but I think that, you know, other people who haven't lived this day by day over the past, you know, 21 months don't necessarily know some of these things. And I think I agree with Gilad that had he said something like, I was responsible, I'm willing to resign, or I'm willing to go to elections, or I'm willing to talk about a possibility for the day after in Gaza, the fact that 21 months of on, as far as I know, there haven't been really serious discussions about who's going to run Gaza because he has completely refused to consider anything, any kind of report by the Palestinian Authority. I think I would respect him more if he stood up and said, I am just as responsible as the Shin Bet. And he immediately tried to.
- [54:23]
And in that article, it shows how he basically immediately started talking about, about I didn't get any intelligence. I wasn't woken up. Had I been woken up, the situation would have been very different. When it's clear that he ignored, like everybody else, warnings. But to me, it shows a certain integrity to say, I am responsible, I made a mistake. There should be a commission of inquiry. And I think that would, to me, show that he really does care about Israel and thinks that he's the best person to lead Israel rather than only caring about staying.
- [54:56]
A
I get, I guess my point is that.
- [55:01]
Time and again, making this a question of Prime Minister Netanyahu's integrity, which I think any observer would say is weak and lacking, you know, not what we would wish for, I don't think that. I'm sure that if you asked his wife, she would say everyone would say that the man lacks integrity. But instead of making this, this, making this entire issue about the integrity of the Prime Minister, make it about the wisdom and justice of the positions that he's advanced. So the, the reason, I agree with you that while we in Israel all know the stuff that was in this very well reported article in which I found nothing that seemed to me to not be factually accurate, and it seemed to me to be balanced and moderate in its presentation of all of the facts. I have no criticism of the article itself, except for everything about it in the following sense. Everyone else who knows less than us read the article and came away with the storyline that everything that happened in Gaza is because Israel is ruled by a Chachesko kind of figure who, who captured the government and is now manipulating it in order to advance just his own selfish ends. And I think that that is just not the story that went on here. In a way, you know, in A way it would be easier to live with if that was the story and none of us were implicated. We're all victims of Netanyahu. We're all manipulated by Netanyahu. But in fact, there's something deeper here because he represents, he represents a view of how this war ought to be waged, that almost half the country agrees with that view. If not the man behind it has an integrity. And I don't know why we're so scared to face up to that. I don't know why it always ends up being about.
- [57:01]
The scumbag who has just manipulated all of us.
- [57:06]
B
I mean, it's certainly a big part of the story, but not the whole story. I think that generally you and I agree, Noah. It's just that you're for some reason a lot more generous when it comes to Netanyahu than I am. Because I think that as we said, you said he should have resigned at some point. And so then you ask yourself why hasn't he resigned yet? And is there a better explanation than he is this self centered, power hungry man who thinks that Israel would collapse if you, he, if he stands down? I think the answer is probably yes.
- [57:43]
A
And I think that he should have resigned because he represents a particular view that I think is wrong and terrifying frankly, that this war ought to be waged without taking into any account the price that civilian guy are paying for it. He has this kind of non euclidean geometry of the morality of this war where we'll take into account everything except the lives and the miseries of Gazan civilians. So I think that that's why he should have resigned.
- [58:20]
Not because he's doing this to pursue his interests. He's doing this to pursue something else that I disagree with, that I disagree with more.
- [58:28]
B
But he has a resigned.
- [58:30]
A
I know, but that's a political fight that I want to have. I do not want to have a political fight about whether Netanyahu is a scumbag and whether Netanyahu. That's not a fight that makes any sense to me to have when there's so much more important.
- [58:45]
B
Yeah, but the Times piece is not a political manifesto. It's not a politician arguing another point. It's just a newspaper article trying to describe like a descriptive newspaper article.
- [58:57]
A
Well, I mean, I wouldn't want to see this on the front page of the Times. But if the New York Times had an article that was headlined how Netanyahu prolonged the war in Gaza because he believes that the future of the Jewish people requires that at this moment we completely ignore the miseries and lives or deaths of Gazan civilians, then I would think, okay, that is a framing that makes sense to me as a person, as a person involved in political life in Israel, as a citizen who bears responsible, not surely.
- [59:30]
C
I just want to add, Noah, I used to agree with you for the first maybe six months of the war. And I said, okay, this isn't what I would like to see or hear, but he really believes that he is doing what's right for the Jewish people and that he is the leader who can get rid of Hamas in a way that nobody else can. And I have changed my mind in the past after that because I think that as time has gone on and as it has been become clear that the Israeli public doesn't support this war anymore, he has prolonged the war, I think, for personal rather than his, rather, because he really believes that this is what's best. So I disagree with you and I think that the New York Times piece is spot on.
- [60:14]
A
Now listen to this.
- [61:46]
That song is Animist by Nadav Hanzis. And now it's time for our second discussion. So, Gilad, a humanitarian city. What could be wrong with that?
- [61:54]
B
Oh, what can be wrong with that? Yeah. So Defense Minister Israel Katz announced last week that he has plans to build what he called a humanitarian city in Gaza on the ruins of Rafah, the city in the south of the Gaza Strip that has been reduced to Russia rubble. Like a fish stick, which is neither a stick nor comprising anything actually identifiable as fish katas, humanitarian city would not be a city, but instead a massive tent camp. Nor would it be anything actually identifiable as humanitarian. Wherein, of course, lies the rub, Israel. Cutz described his plan for the city in big picture terms. He said that while it would start with several hundred thousand of Gazans whose homes were destroyed, and eventually it would become home to the entire population of Gaza, more than 2 million people. These people would be carefully screened at entrance points to the humanitarian city, which two words, by the way, every time I say them, should be pictured in quotes. And that is to ensure that they carried no weapons and that they have no affiliation with Hamas. Inside the humanitarian city quotes again, there will be distribution centers for food and other very basic human needs, medicine and clothes. Presumably, some semi permanent communal structures will be built, though individuals and families will live in tents. Plumbing will be constructed for water distribution and basic sanitation systems. People who enter to the humanitarian city will be allowed to leave it, only to emigrate by choice to a country beyond Israel's borders willing to absorb them. One of the features of the humanitarian city, in Minister Katz's view, is that its bare bones provision of human needs would encourage its residents to, here again in quotes, voluntarily emigrate. Other advantages of the humanitarian city, from the Defence Minister's point of view is that it it would separate Gazan civilians from Hamas fighters, allowing the IDF to operate with an even freer hand than it already does in the cities and towns of Gaza that have proven to be Hamas strongholds. Also, it would allow Gazan civilians to safely receive the food and medicine that they need without worry that Hamas will commandeer aid and use its proceeds to support attacks against Israelis. Still, Israel Katz's plans for a humanitarian city were the object of immediate and harsh criticism within Israel and around the world. The IDF Advocate General's unit, the army's lawyers, warned that a humanitarian city of the sort Israel Katz described would be a legal nightmare. First of all, by confining Gazans to a fenced in perimeter, Israel would implicitly take upon itself responsibility not just to feed and home them, but also to provide all sorts of social services and to educate the kids. Israel would need to provide civilian policing too. Plus, not allowing residents of the humanitarian city to come and go as they please is almost certainly a human rights abuse. Human rights groups said that the scheme was a cocktail of human rights abuses and because it denies people the ability to return to their homes, also ethnic cleansing and probably genocide. A bunch of Israeli experts in international law wrote to Katz and to IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zemist that having soldiers round up Gazans into the humanitarian city amounts to an illegal order that according to Israeli legal tradition, the same soldiers are required to refuse. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmet said flatly on CNN that it is a concentration camp. I am sorry.
- [65:56]
5,000 Israelis signed a petition entitled. Entitled to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no. To establishing a concentration camp in Gaza.
- [66:06]
The petition starts with.
- [66:11]
Have the power to make a decision entirely different from the one proposed by the Minister of Defence regarding the so called Humanitarian city. As the son of a historian, did no association arise in your mind from the not so distant past of the Jewish people? Humanitarian city is Orwellian language for a concentration camp. You, Mr. Prime Minister, are about to order the establishment of a concentration camp. Is that truly what you want to do? To be remembered in history alongside the worst and most morally bankrupt of the world's leaders?
- [66:48]
Soon after this petition went live, it was announced that the cost of the humanitarian city will likely be upwards of 20 billion shekels. That is a lot of money. Now Linda, right now, the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence still both support building a humanitarian city and say that it has to happen and will happen. I guess my first question is, why do you think they think this? In what world or in what worldview.
- [67:17]
Is what they imagine a good idea, and why the hell.
- [67:23]
C
I think this is a terrible idea. And I find it very hard, hard to understand why they think this is a good idea. I mean, first of all, does Israel really want responsibility for 2 million Gazans who were incredibly poor, on the verge of malnutrition? The UN said this week that 1 out of 10 children they're seeing in clinics in Gaza is malnourished. Israel wants to take control of Gaza. I mean, I think there's two possibilities of why they are supporting this. One is that Netanyahu is trying to make sure that his, you know, the far right, Smotrich and Ben gvir, who want Israel to annex as much of Gaza as possible. And what this basically does is it concentrates the population in Rafah in the southern part of Gaza, the part near Egypt, and then leaves Israel free to annex the northern part of Gaza, or really like two thirds of Gaza, except for Rafah, and. And if Smotrich and Ben GVIR have their way to rebuild the Jewish settlements that used to exist in Gaza. So that's possibly one thing. The other possible thing is that it's really meant as a way of pressuring Hamas to come to some sort of an agreement on a ceasefire. And there are again renewed voices today that Israel and Hamas are moving closer to some kind of a ceasefire deal.
- [68:55]
And it's a way of pressuring Hamas by saying, if you don't agree to a deal, this is the alternative. But I think it's just an awful plan. I think the fact that what former Prime Minister Olmert said and what these Israeli human rights people have said, and I think that one of the things. Netanyahu doesn't care what the world says or thinks. And I think that a lot of damage has been done to Israel in terms of Israel's position in the world, and Israel is losing, you know, American Jews. That's something we're going to talk about in the Patreon. But I think that, you know, doing something like this, I think for a lot of American Jews or international Jews, would be the last straw of any connection to Israel. And they will say, I don't want to have. Have a relationship with a country that could do something like this.
- [69:51]
A
Yeah, that could well be true. I think that will happen. Around us whether this plan comes to pass or not. But.
- [70:02]
I at first really objected, and I still really object to calling this a concentration camp, though I will say in, you know, understanding of the people who, who say this, a concentration camp historically never was a death camp, but since then, we imagine the two to be conflated. And I. I feel like a lot of the people who are saying this, and a lot of people are hearing Israel setting up a concentration camp being said by, for instance, the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on American TV in English. What they're imagining is that. That Benjamin Netanyahu is setting up an Auschwitz in Gaza. And so I don't see why we really need to go there. I agree with you. But I also agree that this is like, patently terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible idea, just having so many people in so small a space living intense. What the idea reminds me of most of all are Ma', Abarot, the kinds of transit camps that in the early 1950s, Israel set up for immigrants from Northern Africa mostly, and from elsewhere in the Middle east mostly, though there were also Holocaust survivors who lived in them. And these were tent camps where they lived in kind of corrugated aluminum huts that were sweltering in the summer and wet throughout the winter. And some people lived in them for three, four, five years. It's still a scar on the country. And I'm sure that whatever they build in Rafah will be much, much worse than the worst Ma' Abara was. So we ought to know better, even if it's that there are so many reasons. It will obviously be a place where disease will thrive. It will obviously be a place where young people will have nothing to do and will get up to no good. It will obviously be just a place of. Of the infinity of miseries that human beings know how to create one for the other. Plus, you know, it's just like an unthinkably bad idea. So how did someone think this? One thing about Yisrael Katz that I've often for a long time been intrigued about is he is a person who loves engineering or technological or. Or architectural solution to a problem. You'll probably remember, he suggested this elaborate and very interesting, also crazy idea for building an island off of Gaza well before the war. This island, which would have an airport and would have a connection for Gaza in the world, and there would be a very, very thin road that drones could be patrolling. They could make sure that way the Gazans would have an airport. They'd have access to the world. But the IDF could oversee what was happening and make sure they weren't bringing weapons in through this airport anyway. And when he was Minister of Transportation for many years, he was also a very, very big technological solution guy. He's part of the reason why we're getting now a metro in Tel Aviv and light rail. He really believes, like many people did in the middle of the 20th century, that that the solution to social and political problems is through better technology. And I wonder if he doesn't see this as kind of an architectural solution to the problem that he takes to be the most fundamental problem of the army, which is that we cannot kill Hamas people when they can so easily hide among civilians. So we need to separate the civilians from Hamas. How do you do it? The only solution is having something like this humanitarian city where you do this great filtering very carefully, separate out all the civilians, put them in a place, and then you can kill everybody else. And I think that that's really the story behind this, that this is a solution to the problem. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't actually have a solution. It's a terrible solution. And if he wanted to try to imagine something better, then he would be building decent places to live outside of Gaza, on the border around those kibbutzim that were attacked for 2 million Gazans, temporarily, until he could rebuild, or someone could rebuild all of Gaza or something. It's just the combination of.
- [74:42]
Technological utopian thinking and lazy thinking without having actual concern about the real lives of gaze. Put those three things together and you get this idea. That's what I've come up with. Gilad, what do you think?
- [74:54]
B
I'm constantly reminded of the British comedy from the 80s, Blackadder, with Roman Atkinson, if you remember.
- [75:01]
A
Oh, I remember that, yeah.
- [75:02]
B
So he had this, it was a historical comedy about this.
- [75:08]
Gentleman.
- [75:11]
Of some nobility and his long suffering and dim witted servant Baldrick, who had this recurrent line saying, sir, I have a cunning plan, right? Every time he came up with this outlandish plan that was really stupid and disconnected from reality, he said, I have this cunning plan. So I'm imagining Bibi and Israel Cat as bald as Blackadder and Baldrick and S. Cat's saying, sir, I have this cunning plan. And this cunning plan is meant not just this cunning plan, but other cunning plans, plans that we've heard about throughout the last two years is meant to avoid the very simple reality that the only way to do away with Hamas is a diplomatic one and not a military one, and that is to erect in some form of another, an alternative government to theirs. And this is something that necessarily Netanyahu and the government, each for their own reason are deliberately avoiding Smotrich and Ben GV for obvious reasons, but also Netanyahu because it really. And that's, this is also going back to a previous discussion about what was reported in the New York Times.
- [76:27]
Because it basically deflates his life work and that is to have, have a government, a rejectionist government, a weakened rejectionist government in Gaza. And Hamas played that role faithfully for a very long time until the 7th of October. And I think Netanyahu hasn't really overcome that crisis that Hamas stopped playing the role he ascribed to them. And he's sort of trying to bring them back in somehow in all forms of like weakening them to the extent extent that it can be manageable. And you know, whatever the legal repercussions of it, whatever the humanitarian repercussions of it, he is still and the government, not just Netanyahu, the government in general are trying to square that circle. And I think that this humanitarian city is another attempt that I think is terribly unrealistic. And be that only for the tremendous cost, not just financial, but also as Linda said, that Israel would have to go more than knee deep into running civilian lives in Gaza of more than 2 million people is something that is a non starter.
- [77:46]
For Israel. And it's just all sorts of cunning plans that are being constantly brought up to deflect attention from that basic truism that Hamas have to be pushed away.
- [77:59]
A
Depending on.
- [78:01]
What do you think Linda does? As in so many things as Mr. Bean hold the key.
- [78:07]
C
Definitely. That's definitely what I live my life by. No, And I think that Israel should be trying to get out of Gaza, not trying to find a way to stay. I mean it just.
- [78:18]
I don't even have words to say like what a bad idea it is. And when you talk about Roman running municipal services, you know, picking up the garbage schools, I mean Israel's going to run schools in Gaza. I think it's also just important to say that Palestinian children in Gaza have now not been in School for 21 months, which is just horrible. And I just think that this idea of trying to create a way that Israel will remain responsible for the population in Gaza is so, so bad and a huge mistake. Mistake.
- [78:51]
A
Now listen to this.
- [79:16]
B
Sam omd.
- [80:23]
A
That song is.
- [80:26]
By Yoni Ganut and his boy Lavi Ganut. More troubled music of our troubled times. And you can find all the songs you heard today in all the usual places and now it is time for our Vada country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us described something that maybe brought us some solace as we weathered our way through our worlds over the last little while. Or possibly surprised and amused, delighted and enchanted and torcelled. Or maybe even fluged us as we did that self same. Wending Gilad what is your Voda Country?
- [80:54]
B
I have to say that I'm not very lucky with the International Communication association, the biggest academic association of communication media scholars such as myself itself. Their annual extravaganza, numbering thousands of participants, brings together everyone who is someone in the world of communication research, as well as someones who are no ones from all over the world. It is truly an international event, which is pretty rare in the largely American centric academia. And it's pretty selective too. In order to even apply, you have to submit a full paper rather than a 300 word abstract as required at most conferences.
- [81:35]
A
That's crazy.
- [81:35]
B
It is crazy. So you've actually. You actually have to do some work before. Who's heard of that? Yeah. Anyway, so as I said, I don't have a lot of luck there. And my Misfortune with the ICA began in 2022. Actually it started on a high note when my paper was accepted also back then and to a conference that that year was held in Paris no less. But it was when the world was pulling out of COVID and they were testing all sorts of remote and hybrid options. You can probably see where this is going. I didn't go to Paris because my panel was an online one and to add insult to injury, it was pre recorded, so without anyone in audience and also had to accommodate the different speakers who were spread across the globe. So one panelist was in China and I was based in California at the time time. So the only time that could work for all of us was very early in the morning for me and very late at night for her and all the Europeans comfortably in between. So I ended up delivering a paper at 6am in the in my pajamas. And the result was exactly what you think it was. So fast forward.
- [82:47]
A
Delightfully informal.
- [82:48]
B
Absolutely. So yeah, it was a dreamy presentation. So Fast forward to June 2025. This time the conference is in Denver, Colorado. My paper is accepted again, God bless and I get to travel. It is an overwhelming experience, just like everyone said it would be. Dozens of panels about every possible aspect of communication research. Just the program is 300 pages long, about 2500 participants, around 30 or 40 of them are from Israel. On the first night there's a cocktail party allowing people to meet and socialize, which is really the point of conferences. And just as I walk in, I get a WhatsApp message from my friend Eric who is based in D.C. saying I hope you and your family are okay. He didn't know I was away and thought that Israel's strike on Iran that night caught me sleeping in my bed together with millions of Israelis. I don't need to tell you the details, but I was one of some 150,000 Israel Israelis who were stranded abroad. Not knowing how long for, one of the Israeli participants started a WhatsApp group and called it Gole ICA, the ICA emigrese where people shared the shreds of information that were available about travel options and when to expect the so called rescue flights, a feat of Orwellian newspeak if there ever was one that would take us back to a war zone. So the conference ended five days later with still no news in sight. I had a scheduled layover in Athens anyway, so I decided to go there and wait while I heed the wise words of Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who in her first statement after the war started, addressed the stranded Israelis and said, don't panic, you are abroad. Have fun. Needless to say, I wasn't the only Israeli in Athens, which was slated to be the main hub of the so called rescue flights. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more Israelis than Greeks in Athens during those days. I went to lunch in a tiny taverna somewhere not central at all, and there were seven tables in total and at least three of them were occupied by Israelis. I could stay put in Athens, but nobody knew how long it would last. It was rumored that the whole operation would take weeks, and even though my preteen kids were in Israel with their mother and mine, mine was not an emergency case. I had no dependents or a business that required my presence. My good friend Omri suggested that I speak to his Athenian friend, also called Gilad, and I did. But Gilad's parents were also stuck after a trip in Bulgaria and were looking for a place to stay. So they ended up taking his apartment. Not knowing what to do, I called my friend Guy, who exactly a year ago packed his bags and and moved with his family to Tuscany where he now lives in a small town called Colle del Val Delza, tucked between San Germinano and Siena. I was planning to visit him at some point and the opportunity arose sooner than anyone expected. He gave me an open invitation to sleep in their living room for as long as I needed. So while the rest of you were running to the bomb shelter every night, I was sleeping on a mattress or on the floor of a 16th century Tuscan house, praying for the war to never end. And as you know, Noah, God is a proponent of justice sometimes because he gave me a horrendous food poisoning that lasted throughout much of my stay there. So just think of all the uneaten pasta and undrunk wine that was left unused.
- [86:41]
C
Oh, no.
- [86:42]
B
I guess I will have to go back this time in peacetime, in inshallah.
- [86:46]
A
Oh, totally. Wow. What a story. Linda, what is your water country?
- [86:51]
C
Well, last week I came to Tel Aviv, where it's quite hot, by the way, for a show at Habima called the Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. And nyu, as you had. And this actually connects very well with what you started the podcast with, Noah. So the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a 1994 Australian road comedy film that follows two drag queens and a transgender woman as they journeyed across the Australian outback on a tour bus named Priscilla. And it became this kind of unexpected hit at the. It was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, and it became a hit partly because of its positive portrayal of LGBTQ individuals. And it was one of the ways that these gay themes were introduced to major mainstream audiences. And nyu, where I teach, got some kind of a grant to do some sort of whatever, work event and decided to get us all tickets to this show at Habima. And. And so it was, first of all, we've been on Zoom the last few years since Corona, so it was nice to get together with my colleagues and whatever. And we had very good seats, like ninth row center. And the first thing that happened was one of the actors in full drag came out and said, we would like to take a moment to pray for the release of the hostage hostages and hoping that we'll have a peace agreement soon and a ceasefire. And then he said, if there is a siren, the ushers will take you, you know, show you where to go to the protected area. And I thought, okay, this is probably the only showing of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. First of all, that's in Hebrew. And secondly, that starts with a moment of remembering the hostage, you know, remembering and calling for the release of the hostages and telling people what to do in case there's a siren. And the costumes and the staging and the music was amazing. There was a live orchestra behind the scenes, which was kind of cool. And.
- [89:18]
While the Dialogue was in Hebrew, the songs were mostly in English. And it was just, just this wonderful sort of hour and a half of escapism and this sort of, you know, with just great music and great acting. And the last song is Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive. And everybody stood up in their seats and, you know, just started dancing to the song. And obviously it had, for I assume all of us there it was I will survive, survive the I will survive Hamas, I will survive Iran, I will survive this crazy country of ours. And yet we just sort of walked out with this feeling of, you know, yes, Israel will survive. Israel is resilient. And the fact that a drag show can be shown in Tel Aviv at the Habima Theater that can get everybody dancing after war, I just thought shows something special about Israel.
- [90:24]
A
We want you always to be in Tel Aviv with us, Linda. So here's mine. Last week, Bill Slott and I got a WhatsApp from our old best friend and bandmate Alon Tal, whose birthday was coming up and whose wife Robin is in America. So to mark the day, Alon wrote, quote, I have decided to take a four day hike in solidarity with the Galila Lyon, the upper Galaxy.
- [90:49]
Starting July 10th. Nothing fancy, just the first four segments of the newly designed Shephield Yisrael Israel Trail. All sorts of folks may be joining for different days or multiple days. If you have a window and would like to join, that would be terrific, end quote. And I haven't learned all that much in this lifetime, but one thing I have learned solid is when life gives you a window, you jump out of it with alone. But my calendar had lots of things on it that were hard to miss. And that is how I came to rent a cart to go starting from 2:45am on the night between last Thursday and Friday, so I could arrive by a quarter to six in the morning at what would be the end point of our day's hike, the big statue of a lion at the cemetery at Tel Chai, where Alon would meet me with his car and take me back to the starting point of our day's hike at the Banya Springs. So he'd have a car at the end of the 26km between the two spots to take us back toward the end of the day alone to his car and me to Tel Aviv before Shabbat dinner in the event, because there is no traffic to speak of at around three in the morning, I got to the cemetery at Tel Chai half an hour early at 5:15, which I was glad for as I love cemeteries, and this is my third favorite cemetery in the country, the first is at King Kineret, obviously, and the second being the old Trumpledore cemetery in Tel Aviv. And this one, which is on the spot where Trumpledore himself, Yosef Trumpledore, was killed on Yud aleph Adar Tafreshpay, March 1, 1920. He was killed protecting Tel Chai from a militia down from Lebanon. His dying words either being or not being, depending on who you ask, quote, unquote, it is good to die for your land. Which is a quote I remember hating even when I was a kid and heard the story for the first time. And the cemetery was set aside at first for graduates of the Shomer the Guard, a Jewish militia that operated from 1907 to 1920, protecting Jewish settlements in the area. And if you walked around and there are hundreds of graves of people who died from the 1920s all, all the way through the 2000s, when the people must have been almost 100 years old. And many of the names are familiar, but most are not. And you see in marble how this thing that they'd done at the beginning of the 20th century, when they were young, when they were so young, taking up guns, learning to shoot to protect Jews, making farms and collective settlements, how that moment was a big part of who these people were for as long as they lived. And then too, I guess, after they took died near the big statue of the lion, which is dedicated to the eight people who died on that day in 1920 at Tel Chai, I saw that someone had set up an Israeli flag with a big yellow ribbon for the people taken hostage into Gaza. 103 years, 5 months and 6 days after Trumpledor and the 7 others had died protecting Tel Chai, Alon was there right on time to collect me. And he drove me back to Banyas, where we met up with my old young Judea friend, Deb Housen, and also with Daniel or Orenstein, an environmental planning professor at the Taglion who's become a friend, even though back in the day he was in Habonim. And the four of us started to hike on the trail, following as best we could, the white, blue and orange markings painted onto rocks and posts saying that we're still on the Israel Trail. And we chatted as one does on a hike. Deb, who is a fancy lawyer and lots of other things besides, she was telling how lately she had developed a problem practice focusing on outer space law, setting up arbitration and mediation agreements ahead of, say, when countries or companies start mining operations on the moon and Mars, which as soon as she says it, you can see, of course, we need space lawyers. And down the trail a bit, Danny is telling how an international environmental consortium that he's worked for for years now, they seem to be shying away from anything having to do with Israel. And we're talking about this and that while walking for a time along the oil trail, which follows an oil pipeline built in the 1940s to take oil from Saudi Arabia up to Sidon in Lebanon. And it now instead takes water from where to where, I don't know. And everywhere you look, there are old army bunkers, signs of how until 1967. The place where we're walking is a place where Syrian soldiers watched and shot at Israeli soldiers and vice versa. And the hike is spectacular, taking us along and across several rivers and streams. Nahal, Hermon, Nachalsar, Nachalachziv, Nahaldan, Nahalchatzbani or Sneer. The Jordan River. There's lots of water. At some point, Alon and Danny went into the water and I watched the stream burble by. And along the way, Alon told us some about the political battles of local environmentalists here and there. To say save this or that river or this or that stand of trees alone has been kind of the beating heart of the environmental movement here in Israel since he started the Israel Union for Environmental Defense back in the 1990s. And the sun got hotter and hotter as we walked, and people. It was so beautiful, just this land. And making our way through it with old friends, that was beautiful, too. And at one point I forgot exactly where our lone stopped and said, you remember the last time we were both here? And I said, no. And Alon said it was when we were on year course. And he was right. We'd hiked the same trail when I was 18 and he was 17. And years have gone by and it all, the back then of it and the now of it, it all seemed just splendid. At the last bit of the hike, we were going up the hill from Kiryatchmona to tell Chai someone there had affixed to boulders on the side of the path, tiles engraved with the lyrics to old songs. Some a adoring like Yoram Tarlev's. Our tiny land that goes. Our tiny little land, Our beautiful land A homeland with no tunic, A barefoot homeland. Accept me into your songs, O lovely bride Open your gates to me through them I'll enter and give thanks to God.
- [97:13]
And then on the boulders there were some songs that Were melancholy like Elimor's Shior Molede civics class that ends with quote. And so in our imagination wonders multiplied. The hammers made music, the ploughs sang, There were farmers and there were vintners. A land of shepherds. That is how it appeared in our childhood, which was beautiful.
- [97:39]
Which melancholy reached its high pitch with the words by Jonathan Geffen to the Areric Einstein song. Maybe it's over they go. They say it was joyful here before I was born and everything was simply wonderful until I came. A Hebrew guard on a white horse in the dark of night Trumpledore was a hero on the shores of the Kinneret little Tel Aviv Red sands, Bialik two sycamore trees, Beautiful people full of dreams. And we came to this land to build and to be rebuilt by it. Because this land, this land, this land is ours. Here where you see the grass there were once mosquitoes and so swamps. They say it was once a beautiful dream here. But when I came to see, I found nothing at all. Maybe it's over, maybe it's over. But on this day with Alon, on Alon's birthday I wasn't having.
- [98:32]
Is all still underway. And the melancholy and the worry, they're part of it too, sure. But speaking for myself, we have built and we will build and rebuild and I know that I. And anyway, I have been rebuilt by it and I am a better person for it all. When we got to tell Chai, we found that my car had a flat tire. And after 26km we got out, the spare bent down. And while we did the work, we sang. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itay Shelim, our station manager, without which there would be none of this. Thanks to Ashibolim, my favorite band from Kibotskeva. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Natalie. Thank you, Gila. God. 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 debt. We'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and we'd like to ask you to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer eventually. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this. As far as we know, the Promise podcast has never done anything to piss off Mandy Patinkin. Da, da, da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today, as we record on July 17, we celebrate world Emoji Day. So stipulated way back in 2014 by Samuel Burja, the Australian emoji historian, the founder and chief emoji officer or CEO of Emojipedia, Samuel Burja. Choosing this particular date because the calendar emoji, if you look at it real close, actually Sundays on it July 17. An emoji, of course, is a pictogram or a logogram or an ideogram used in digital text to add emotional cues that written language sometimes lacks on its own. Emojis are overseen by a somewhat secretive Illuminati sort of group called the Unicode Technical Committee, or the Unicode Consortium, which has nine members, one each a representative from Adobe, Apple, Meta, or Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, and sapse. That's eight companies plus. And this is God's truth, a representative of the Ministry of Endowments and Religious affairs of the Sultanate of Oman. For some reason, as one learns from the site WorldEmoji Day.com Six billion emojis are sent each and every day, the most popular of which is the yellow happy face laughing so hard that tears are coming out of both eyes. Its official name being face with tears of joy. Which emoji, by the way, and this is true, was selected by by the Oxford English Dictionary people as the word of the year in 2015. The Word of the year. An emoji. Who would have ever thought, And I am pretty sure I don't need to tell you that I love World Emoji Day. It must be my favorite day of the entire year, making me feel, well, throbbing red heart emoji, face with tears of joy emoji, smiley face with heart shaped eyes emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji, emoji, sparkle emoji, namaste, hands emoji. And you know what? Throw in a maracas emoji and I am spending the day sending emojis hither and yon, remembering that it is also David Hasselhoff's birthday. That is too auspicious to be a coincidence. And of course, singing Jonathan Mann's anthem, everyone uses emojis. Bleeding face and pinching hand. Red heart, white heart, map of Japan. You're definitely check mark and rainbow, raised fist and a banjo, T. Rex and an orangutan, cute otter and a dodo bird. You are emoji royalty. If emoji day's the same day as your birth, don't let your loved ones go. Red Rose yes no Elf, vampire and zombie super villain or rock star Everybody uses a mov Chinese Everybody uses emojis. Emojis are for all of us. Everybody uses emojis. Emojis are for all of us. Everybody uses emojis. Emojis are for all of us. Everybody uses emojis. Emojis are for all of us.
- [102:50]
And even though it is not yet half over already, I know that all too soon World Emoji Day will be gone over. Rather like the Taiwan flag emoji that you won't find on your computer or your phone if you happen to live in Hong Kong or Macau, or the Ukrainian flag if you happen to live in Russia. Not so the Promised Podcast. We will be back for you next week and every week reminding you that it's not all faced with tears of joys and maracas. You can also find lots of uses for disappointed faces emoji crying face emoji, crying cat emoji, downcast face with sweat emoji, loudly crying face with streams of tears emoji weary face emoji confounded face emoji frowning face emoji anguished face emoji face with rolling eyes emoji androgynous person face palming emoji and broken heart emoji on this the Promise Podcast.
- [103:44]
B
Sam.