B (5:08)

I'm doing okay and based on your introduction I think I've discovered my future in retirement. I'm going to open a Tel Aviv style wine bar for lawyers and various other types in Jerusalem.

A (5:19)

So obviously what the city needs, so obviously more lawyers and more drinking and more places to be. Now as for me, my name is Noah Efron and I do not mean to boast, but a site that collects and correlates such information just informed me that people who entered into Google the search terms Noah Ephron also searched for and these are the top six entries on the list. Noah Ephron Wikipedia, which makes sense. Noah Efron Age about which okay, then top 10 most intelligent races in the world, then famous smart Jews, then Jewish Intelligence Agency, then highest IQ groups. And please believe me when I say that I am not bragging. God knows my parents brought me up better than that. But I have apparently and unwittingly developed a very particular sort of skeevy public profile with weird eugenicist and maybe even slightly Nazi ish undertones. And I think you can just imagine my pride at all that I have accomplished in the one life that I have been given on this planet. Today we got two topics so profound and so weighty that you may wonder if you haven't accidentally tuned into one of those shows you listen to about continental philosophy. Like maybe the Pod Saves Phenomenology podcast, or Good Hang with Husserl and Heidegger, or the John Rawls Experience. But first we got this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series that we like to call the Promise. Podcast offers a salute to an acutely astute kid in Beirut who set out to recruit IDF brutes and galoots to transmute her school into rubble, a prank for which she got into trouble. Colonel Avichai Adra E is the head of the Arabic Language Media division of the IDF Spokespersons Unit. His YouTube channel has 249,000 followers, his Instagram account has 454,000 followers, his Twitter account has 872,900 followers, and his Facebook page has over 3,600,000 followers. Lots of these followers, most, they say as they got analytics, are young people from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the uae, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other places where Arabic is spoken. Which makes sense given that Colonel Avichai Adrai posts in Arabic. Some of these followers from around the Middle east come in order to hate Colonel Avichai Adrai and to troll him. Some probably come to learn to know better their enemies, to better vanquish them when the day comes. But if you read the comments, you find that some are there out of curiosity, and some are there because, like one Faisal Zaruni, they got a certain admiration for Israel for some reason. Faisal Zaruni, posting under a video from a couple of days ago of IDF soldiers UN booby trapping a pit stockpiled with Hezbollah guns and bombs, wrote, quote, may God give you a thousand healths. This is the right work for you to be doing. End quote. On his YouTube page, in a pinned post at the top, Colonel Avichai Adrai writes all the labels you give me won't change the reality. So to those gloating, you can call me whatever you like. I am avichayadraee, and I will be watching you closely, israelianproud, whether you like it or not. End quote. All of which makes it maybe less surprising than you might think. Than I thought. Anyway, that Colonel Avichai Adrai got this week an Instagram DM from a 12 year old schoolgirl in Beirut written in arabizi. Arabizi, being the hip young people Arabic dialect you see a lot on social media. Arabic words transliterated into Latin letters using numbers and symbols to fill in the gaps for Arabic sounds that are otherwise hard to represent in Latin letters or anyway in ASCII codes such that, for instance, the Arabic word khaleesna, meaning we're done, is spelled out in Arabizi as 5 a l e s n a 5 in Arabizi, standing in for the letter KHA, a uvular fricative that sounds like a chet in Hebrew. In a similar way, the Arabic word foo ua, meaning a bubble, is spelled in Arabizi as F2A 3A, the 2 standing for the letter Hamza and the 3 standing for the letter Ayn. But Arabizi is not just a way of doing Latinate transliteration. It is a method of transliteration with a sort of vibe. Like I said, it is young, it is hip, and it is. Anyway, the message that Colonel Avichai Adrai got through Instagram in Arabizi starts out with laek yache yahe, spelled Y A5E Like I said, which means something like hey man, or maybe hey my brother or yo, dude. And it goes on something like this quote, hey, my brother, I want to give you some very important information. In the Shuafat at National College School, there are Hezbollah weapons. There is a rocket launcher. Rockets are set up. That's the deal. There are shelters under the ground and in them are weapons. I wanted to give you this information. I am not involved, okay? End quote. Now, a little background might be helpful. The Shuafat National College school was started 140 years ago in 1886 in the Shuafat neighborhood in Beirut by a Protestant Lebanese teacher named Tanios Saad and an Irish Protestant missionary named Louisa Proctor. They set up their school in an old abandoned silk factory in Tchuafat near the compound where the Saad family lived, which compound was in time incorporated into the campus. The school was at first the school for girls. Among its main purposes was giving to girls rigorous education at a time and place when Few girls were taught even just to read. The Schuhat school earned for itself a reputation for excellence and a reputation for a certain cosmopolitanism. Its very best graduates would continue on to Oxford or to Yale, and it prided itself on giving its students a strong foundation in European languages, English and French. Above all, the great Lebanese novelist Emily Daoud Nasrallah was a graduate of the Shuafat National College School. She would eventually win the Goethe medal. There were lots more like her also who went forth into the world and did great things. The school prides itself on being non denominational and on being practical and on being flat out excellent, making their students serious citizens of the world. A picture at the school's website shows a big wall mural saying in English, quote, when you walk into this classroom, you are wonderful, strong, important, extraordinary, kind, resilient. And then there are many other such adjectives, but they are blocked from view in the picture by a big wreath of green and white balloons. So it was maybe in a way in the self empowered spirit of the Shuafat National College school that the 12 year old girl who wrote to Colonel Avichai Adrai acted, though it was in a very different way, not at all what the school administrators and teachers wanted and expected from their students. And when word got out, the school sent a harsh letter to all the parents instructing them to instruct their kids under no circumstance to contact the IDF with an implied request that the IDF bomb their school. They wrote, quote, any student who will be found to have been involved in defaming the school through any action or statement that abrogates the law or school regulation, including on social media, will be held legally responsible and put on trial in addition to whatever disciplinary actions the school may take. A Lebanese newspaper reporting on the event called it, quote, a childish action, the aim of which was to avoid an exam which was taken in earnest by the enemy, which added the school to its bank of targets and may attack it on the grounds that it is a weapons depot. End quote. It was soon after the paper got wind of the message sent to Colonel Avichai Adrai that another student, a friend of the girl who wrote the message, told her teachers who it was who did the thing everyone was talking about. And the question of what ought to be done with the girl was discussed in closed rooms, of course, but it was discussed also very much on social media. And it was around this time that Colonel Adrai tweeted a long post in Arabic meditating on the affair, suggesting that there is a lot to be learned from it. First, that there are people in Lebanon, kids and also adults, who see Israel not as an aggressor, but as a solution to the problems they face. In this case, as the press was now reporting, the problem being a test that the girl had apparently failed to study for. Colonel Avichai Adrai wrote further that the affair showed, and let's face it, that everyone in Lebanon knows that Hezbollah is perfectly capable of using a school to stow its missiles. It says something that the girl's prank was so easy for everyone to take to be true. Both of these first points, that lots of people in Lebanon see that Israel is on their side and that everyone in Lebanon sees that Hezbollah really isn't on their side. These were mostly tendentious points, points made to score points. But after making them, Colonel Avichai Adrai addressed directly the administrators of the Shuafat National College school, writing, quote, do not go after the kid just to punish her. Base your discussions with the student on empathy, not punishment. Teach your students always to speak the truth. End quote. After that, Colonel Avi Khayad Ra' I addressed the young people directly, writing, and to the youth and children I say, yes, speak the truth and be bold in raising it, but report to your parents and the relevant authorities any danger or anything else that worries you. End quote. And why I tell you all of this is not to try with Colonel Avichai Adrai to score points saying, look, see, even young school kids in Lebanon know the terrible things that Hezbollah is doing to their country. This could be true, but I would guess one could just as well conclude from this, won't you please bomb my school message that in Beirut, even very young school kids know the terrible destruction that Israel is capable of bringing to their country and is in fact bringing. What I get from this story is something altogether different. And it is that alongside all the harsh, we will bomb you back to the stone age of our wars and the ideological and rigid black and white rhetoric of clashes of civilization and such of our recent wars. There is always, always a quiet, powerful register of human beings just being human beings. Whatever else this thing was, a 12 year old girl dming the IDF asking them to bomb her school so she can get out of a test that is as funny a joke or a prank or whatever it is as I think that I have ever heard. Though it is also obviously reckless and harebrained in a way that kids of a certain age often are, but still it is so funny. And you hear it and you think, that kid, keep an eye on her because she's gonna be doing something, she's gonna be going somewhere, she is gonna be someone. And I hope it is into politics that she goes, because I predict will be someone you can negotiate peace with. Colonel Avichai Adrai too, writing to the principal of the Shuafat National College School to say, hey, go easy on the kid. For all that he's doing his job and just scoring points. And for all that, there is obviously some condescension there too. There is also something human to that too. Kids are kids. Sometimes they want enemy armies to blow up their school, you know, because kids will be kids. Just after we record today, there is a big all day peace conference. It's called the People's Peace Summit over in the Expo, the Tel Aviv exposition grounds across from Hararchon Park. And the place is big, it is cavernous, it holds literally tens of thousands of people for big gatherings. I was at a conference there that had 15,000 people just a couple of months ago. And so I did not bother to rush to get my ticket for the thing, because how many people are gonna come to spend a day talking about peace? These when peace seems so far and so foreign and so abstract and so implausible. But when I finally got around to ordering my ticket last week after I came back from the States, the People's Peace Summit was all sold out and I will have to watch the thing livestreamed in my home instead of being there. Which is okay, though I am disappointed. But it hit me that selling out a peace conference more than a week in advance these days, when it has tens of thousands of places selling it out, there is something good there. And maybe one reason why so many people think, yeah, now is still a time to talk about peace is because we know that it is true now. Because it is always true that on both sides of every border there are people who get it. There are people who see what's wonderful, strong, important, extraordinary, kind, resilient and whatever other adjectives are blocked by those balloons. That it is all these things. And also that it is just funny, just humanly funny. The idea of a kid tap, tap, tapping an Arabizi to the IDF to ask them if they wouldn't mind putting her school out of business for a bit ahead of test day. And there are people on both sides of the border who get that. There are people on both sides of the fence who are brilliant and wry and waggish and mischievous and reckless and harebrained and funny. Which is to say that there are people on both sides of the fence who are human and that therein lies all the reason you will ever need for hope that the time will come when we will, all of us see the humanity in each other, which is how living together when it comes to pass, will come to pass. Today, two discussions. Our first discussion beg your pardon as President Yitzhak Boci Herzog finally responds to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's November letter asking the President to do him a solid and pardon him for the crimes he did not commit and in any case will not admit which request for a pardon American President Donald Trump has repeated and amplified, calling President Herzog disgraceful, weak and pathetic and full of crap when it comes to the fake indictments of his high iq. Prime Minister, President Herzog's response was no can do. But I will host the prosecutors and the defendant to try to massage everyone towards a plea bargain, a split the baby decision that seems to have pleased no one. And we will try to figure out whether or not there was wisdom to the President's middle of the road. Answer, non answer. And our second discussion, this feeling is called hope, which is what opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said at the press conference he held this week together with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, wherein the two men announced the formation of a new union of their two parties under Bennett's leadership, aiming to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu in the elections that will take place than six months from right now is hope. The thing that we are feeling, we will wonder 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 talk about what we expect, what we hope for and what we worry about from the upcoming elections. Now that the Bennett Lapid announcement, exactly six months to the day before the last possible day the election's gonna be scheduled, pretty much the opening bell to the campaign season. I know that I for one am a very tightly wound ball of anxieties, fears and hopes ahead of this campaign season, which I worry is going to be kind of ugly. I will turn to Linda as so often for insight and for psychotherapy. But before we get to any of that, please listen to this. Kumos. That song is La Chazor La Chigra by Nunu with words written by First Sergeant Noam Bitan of blessed memory, who was killed at 20 in southern Gaza almost two years ago. This song is part of a Gali Sahal IDF Radio project called I Hear your Voices. New songs by some of our best musicians, based on texts written by folks who have lately fallen. We will listen to songs from the I Hear your Voices project over the course of the show. And now it is time for our first discussion. So, Linda, it took President Herzog five months to reply to the Prime Minister's letter asking for a pardon. What did he come up with after all that time?

B (24:07)

Well, after months of deliberation about whether or not to give Prime Minister Netanyahu the pardon he asked for in a laconic letter dated November 30, 2025, as you said exactly five ago, President Yitzhak Herzog's office let it be known that the president will try to start some sort of mediation process with the hope of prosecutors and the Prime Minister's attorneys agreeing on a plea deal. He will not, however, grant a pardon to the Prime Minister. This despite US President Donald Trump's repeated demand that the Israeli president grant his friend Benjamin Netanyahu a pardon and, as you said, his recent social media post that called President Herzog disgraceful, weak and pathetic, and full of crap for not acquiescing right away. It should be said that when he got the Prime Minister's formal request for a pardon, the president immediately forwarded it to the Pardons Department of the Ministry of Justice for their legal opinion. Last month, the Pardons Department returned a detailed brief, the bottom line of which was that there is no legal basis for a pardon until the Prime Minister admits guilt and takes responsibility for his misdeeds. Depending on who you are, you might see in President Herzog's response a sort of elegant compromise or a willful refusal to end for the Prime Minister and the nation the long national nightmare of standing trial while commander in chiefing us through war on many complicated fronts, or a craven unwillingness to reject outright the Prime Minister's pardon? Maybe in a way, all three conflicting assessments have an element of truth. Noah what should we make of President Herzog's decision not to decide the fate of the Prime Minister, either by pardoning him or by calling a press conference and saying outright that no pardon will ever come and that the Prime Minister should resign? Also, where does President Herzog's decision not to decide leave us as we head into elections?

A (26:03)

We should make that he is, first of all between a rock and a hard place. That is a rock and a not Iraq and a hard place. And I think that of the three different possibilities that you described, what he did is closest to an elegant compromise. I think what he did was actually entirely pitch perfect. And I think that what we learned in this morning's news as we record that his people have actually now tried actively to get the prosecutors and the defendant and the defendant's lawyers into a room together to try to see if they can't work out some kind of compromise that would be acceptable to everyone is also just exactly the right thing to do. The chances of this succeeding in the sense of leading to a result that everyone will be happy with, are very, very close to non existent, it seems to me. Ben Sales has a nice piece in the Times of Israel setting this out. Why did Herzog do what he did? What is the upside and what is the downside where he he very nicely explains that if were this to work, it would be quite wonderful and then very decidedly explains that the chances of it working are just really, really slight. And that seems exactly right. But still it was the right thing to do. I mean, ultimately, what the President is not saying, in contradistinction to what the Supreme Court said this week in a slightly different context, what the President is not saying is we'll leave it to the voters. But in fact, I think that that he is doing, I think he's saying in as gentle a way as possible, I'm not going to give you a pardon in as gentle a way as possible. I also agree with what you and many others on both sides have said that this issue is causing terrible strife and damage in the country and it would be better for all of us if we could find some way through it quickly. And ultimately, I think what he's saying is there is no such way through it. So we will muddle until there are elections. And if the voters resoundingly bring you back into office, that will lead in one direction and if they throw you out of office, that will presumably lead in another direction. What do you think, Linda?

B (28:28)

Well, I'm certainly the farthest thing from a legal scholar, but first of all, my understanding is that a pardon can only come after there's been a conviction or an admission of guilt. So this idea of a pardon, while Netanyahu has refused to admit any guilt or express any remorse, I think is problematic. I'm not as big a fan of this whole thing as you are, cuz I think it's just kicking the can down the road. And I think but you don't think

A (28:56)

since down the road exactly six months from today at the latest, our elections, that it's reasonable to kick something down the Road at this particular moment, because

B (29:05)

things will change maybe at this particular moment. But I think we've seen over the past few years, first of all, the testimony keeps getting delayed frequently. Oh, he can't give testimony today because of this diplomatic situation. He can't give testimony today because of this diplomatic. During the war with Iran, which may or may not actually be finished, he couldn't give testimony. I mean, I think the whole setup of enabling a prime minister to continue being prime minister while he's under indictment for these kinds of things is just so problematic. And it's just, it's unprecedented and I think it's problematic. And I also think the message. But that's a different issue because that's already been decided. That's not my decision at this point. I think that this. My understanding is that Netanyahu was offered a plea bargain right at the beginning of his. And said if. That if he agrees to admit guilt and step down from politics, that he would get a plea pardon. This is going back five years now, and he turned it down. So I understand what Herzog is trying to do. At the other hand, given the situation that Israel is in right now, I think I would have preferred to see a decision one way or the other and not.

A (30:25)

So what do you think he should have said, the President?

B (30:29)

I think he should have said, a, I will not give you a pardon. B, I think you should step down and see that the trial. I think the trial has been sort of. So it's been delayed and it's been dragged out. And I just think it's. So it's just bad for Israeli citizens to continue to see this. So I think we should try to figure out a way to make a decision. I agree with you that I don't think this is going to do it.

A (31:01)

It. Right. I think that that's clear. And I. I think from the beginning, we knew that this trial would likely last until beyond whenever Prime Minister Netanyahu gets out of office, including if it's five more years from now, because it's not just the trial, it's the trial and the appeal. And so I think from the very beginning, the estimates were that if this goes all the way through as long as it can to the end of an appeal, that it would take seven to 10 years. And in the interim, we've had all these wars and we learned that for the past five months, the Prime Minister has been under treatment for prostate cancer. And that is another reason that we did not know of at the time, but the judges certainly knew when they were making their decisions to delay the trial. That's another reason why the trial was delayed as the prime Minister got radiation treatment for cancer, of which they now say he is 100% entirely, completely cancer free and cured. And thank God for that. So it doesn't seem as though there's any way for him, for the president to bring this matter to an end. I think that it's beyond him. I mean, he could offer, he could give a pardon, and I guess that that would bring it to an end after a fashion. But given the legal counsel that he's gotten and given his own predilections, and given, I think, how terribly, terribly alienating that would be for half the country, it didn't seem like a real option. So it seems to me that the only thing that the President could do, or alternatively could not do, is preserve the status of the presidency itself. And I think that that was the decision he made, is to do something that will piss off as few people as possible, as little as possible. And the solution that he got to, I think, makes everyone mad a little bit at the very least, but it still preserves the either myth or reality that the presidency is somehow above the immediate fray of politics. Were he to call for the prime Minister's resignation by virtue of having been indicted in a way that the prime Minister has long insisted and many others is unfair, I think that it would have just ripped the country in half. So to me, it's. And it also, I think would have just destroyed his presidency, certainly, but maybe the presidency in general. So to me, it seems like that's why he didn't do it.

B (33:43)

I understand that. But why did it take five months? I mean, why do you think it took so long for him to respond? Because had he responded after a month, there would have been enough time maybe to do something. And now.

A (33:54)

Well, I think that that's exactly right. I think that he was doing exactly what you said. I think that he is trying to push this down, to kick it down the road, as you said, because I think he thinks that that is the best thing is to revisit this issue after elections. And so then you achieve that in part by waiting for some time before you say anything and then having what you say be indecisive and suggesting that you're going to enter into a process that will itself take time. And this is the way to, without making a statement in one direction or another, to keep this issue alive in a way that he thinks everyone can live with. He's being criticized for being Craven for being somehow. Somehow not as brave as he ought to have been. But in fact, I think that faced with the pressure from President Donald Trump, what he did has a kind of bravery of its own. The bravery of saying, I am strongly in the middle. I am a radical moderate. I am ideologically committed to not being ideological about this issue. All of those ironic things, I think, is what he was saying. I admire him for it. I also think that it's exactly his brand. It's exactly the kind of president he has tried to be during the most tumultuous period where anyone has ever been president of this country, with all of the protests and then the war, and then the protests in the war and over the war. And to me, it seems admirable, and it seems like Herzog, and it seems like the best thing he could do in an impossible situation.

B (35:36)

Maybe. I guess I just feel. I mean, first of all, there is a precedent for a pardon. By the way, when the Shin bet, the case, 300 were pardoned without any kind of acceptance of responsibility or guilt, and they were pardoned. So there is a precedent. I asked a few of my friends, by the way, about what do they think about, and none of them are supporters of Netanyahu, to say the least. And they said that basically anything that gets him out of politics, they would accept. Including a pardon, including anything else, just to sort of get him out. I also want to talk for a minute about President Trump and what he's done in terms of intervening in Israeli affairs. I remember when I was watching the Knesset speech, which went on forever, when Trump was here and when he called for the pardon, I just kind of, like, I stopped and I said, did I just hear that? Like, am I. Am I mishearing?

A (36:32)

He turned to Herzog, who was in the room and said, pardon him now, you over there.

B (36:37)

And he's just like, what? So I think things are just sort of so upside down. But I also feel. I don't know. First of all, I feel it's kind of incredible that Netanyahu still has so much support after everything, after the trial, after October 7, after the judicial protests, after Ben Gvir, how does Netanyahu still have so much support? Which I guess is one of the things we'll talk about in the next discussion. But I don't know, I just sort of feel like that the Netanyahu government has done everything it can to erode support for the Supreme Court, to erode the rule of law here on so many different levels. What's going on? I'm not even talking about the foreign policy stuff in Iran and Lebanon. I'm talking about crime. I'm talking about violence in Israeli society. What happened in Petah tikva when that young 21 year old guy was killed for asking kids not to spray Silly String in a Pizza Hut. And I just feel like, I mean, I guess I agree with you that Herzog is sort of trying to take a middle road and maybe let the electorate decide. But I would have just liked to see this whole thing finished one way or the other.

A (37:59)

Yeah, I want to see it finished one way or another by elections and by no other way. Not by the President, not by the Supreme Court. But we will see. And now listen to this. That song is I Hear your Voices, the top title song from the new Galaal collection of texts written by fallen soldiers, set to music and performed by some of our best, in this case Ishai Reibo. The words were written by Sergeant Major Aharon Farash of blessed memory, a 36 year old father of five who was killed at Orim on October 7th. And in those words that you heard is singing to his children and now it's time for our second discussion which we are calling this feeling is called hope. And here's why Social media is all a tizzy over the fact that Bennett and Lapid together Anagram to bald penitent. The implications are obvious and they are far reaching. Former Prime Minister and presumptive leading challenger of Benjamin Netanyahu for the premiership, Naftali Bennett is of course famously, follicularly challenged, a feature of his physiognomy that most political analysts agree lend him the gravitas of a telecivalis, a Dwayne the Rock Johnson, a Vin D, a Bill Slot, a Michael Jordan type. That is the bald part of the anagram. The penitent part is a transparent reference to the fact that Naftali Bennett this week recanted, or at the very least greatly revised long held positions, announcing that he supports allowing people to get married in a civil ceremony with no rabbis, imams, priests or ministers if that is what they want. People including men who want to marry men, women who want to marry women, and queer sorts who want to marry whomever they want to marry, and supports having buses and trains run on Shabbat in the cities that want them to run on Shabbat. These shifts in view reflect the fact that Naftali Bennett is in 2026, a different candidate than he has ever been before. Naftali Bennett, as you probably remember, started his political career as the head of the Yesha Council. Yesha is an acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the political arm of the settler movement. In 2013, he was first elected to the Knesset as the head of what was then called the Jewish Home Party, the party of the settlers, and more broadly, of Orthodox religious Zionists. In that first election under Bennett's leadership, the Jewish Home Party won an impressive 12 seats. For most of the next seven years, he served as a minister in governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud, serving as Minister of Economy, Minister of Religious Services, Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Minister of Education, and finally Minister of Defense, finally breaking with Netanyahu in 2020 and running against him in four successive elections. Repl. Netanyahu as premier in June 2021, a job he held for 12 and a half months. He did not run in the most recent election in a lead up to the forthcoming elections, which will be held in October at the latest. Poll after poll finds Naftali Bennett to be the most serious challenger to Benjamin Netanyahu's continued rule. Now, Yair Lapid's political career has from the start been quantumly entangled with that of Naftali Bennett. Quantum entanglement is, of course, the phenome where the quantum state of particles in a group cannot be described independently of the state of the other particles. Even when those particles are separated by a very large distance, they can be half a universe away and still somehow entangled, and they are quite different one from the next. And yes, that is a very, very good metaphor. You can tell that a metaphor is good when you have to explain it. But I digress. Yair Lapid also joined the Knesset for the first time in 2013 with his then new Yesh Atid Party, winning a whopping 19 seats. At the time, he and Naftali Bennett formed a negotiating bloc, what they called a Covenant of Brothers, which increased the concessions that each man and his party managed to extract from Prime Minister Netanyahu at the time. Yair Lapid served as Finance Minister in his first two years in the Knesset until Netanyahu fired him over all sorts of differences and Yair Lapid became the leader of the opposition, a position that he held until he formed a government with Bennett and under Bennett in 2021, serving first as foreign minister and months of the government's short tenure as its lame duck prime minister. Yair Lapid calls himself a centrist, and he is that. He is an advocate of market economy with a human face and strongly opposes influence of religion and religious institutions, on politics and on civic life here in Israel. This week, Yair Lapida Naftali Bennett convened this joint press conference that I mentioned that which they announced that they would run together in the upcoming election on a list that they call Together, or yahad in Hebrew. Naftali Bennett is the top banana in Together, and if it does well enough in the elections, he is the one who will replace Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister. It is too early to say with any confidence, though, whether the new list will do well. Over the last two weeks, Bennett's party has been polling at anything between 20 and 24 seats, while Lapid's party has polled at anywhere from five to seven seats. This week, in polls hastily taken after the press conference, the Joint Together Party is polling at 24 to 27 seats. Bennett and Lapid hoped that the sum of their union would be greater than the parts that may come to pass eventually. But so far it seems like the sum of their union is one and maybe a few seats lower than the parts taken separately. But that is only part of the picture. For one thing, both Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid eagerly invited former IDF chief of staff Ghaidi Ali Eisenkot to join together. And if he does, the nature and appeal of the list will change once again. But there is more. The union of Bennett and Lapid leaves Naftali Bennett the absolute presumptive leader of all the anti Netanyahu forces. It sort of pushes him irrevocably to the top of the pile. It also puts Yaish Atid's very substantial bank account at the service of Bennett. And there is more too, Linda, what should we make of Together? What does the this list stand for, such as it is? Is this union a step toward unseating Benjamin Netanyahu? In their press conference, Yair Lapid said charmingly, this feeling is called hope. Is hope what you are feeling and what we ought to be feeling?

B (46:12)

Well, I am feeling some hope in that there does seem to be a credible alternative to Netanyahu and I think, and that is Bennett. I'm kind of surprised at that. Yair Lapid is polling at five to seven seats. That's quite a downturn in what he's polling at. While the last poll that I saw showed that Yair Golan and the Democrats is polling at like nine or 10 seats, which is interesting, and they're obviously far more left than Yair Lapid is, I think that it might have been a mistake in terms of this uniting.

A (46:51)

Well, just to point out that at the moment they have 24 seats in the, the present Knesset. So that is a very, very big drop to, you know, 20% of what they were before.

B (47:03)

So that's which is really interesting as well. And I think that, you know, in Israel people vote mostly against something rather than for something. And things are very tribal here. And I think that at least some, I mean, these, the country has definitely moved towards the right, Right. And Naftali Bennett's positions are not that different from Netanyahu's positions on a lot of things. And I think for a lot of right wing Israelis, Lapid is seen as leftist. And so I think it might actually damage Naftali Bennett in that there might be people, dissatisfied Likudniks who were thinking of voting for Bennett, who will then say, wait a minute, minute. If I vote for Bennett, that means I'm getting Lapid and I'm probably getting the Arabs as well. I've been very disturbed by a lot of the political discourse over the last week or so, which is that. But first of all, both Bennett and Lapid saying, don't worry, we won't sit with the Arabs, no matter what happens, we won't sit with the Arabs, as if that's the worst thing. And I think it's important to say that in fact, the former government that Bennett headed and Lapid BR headed did have Mansoor Abbas, one of the Arab parties, as part of it. And Netanyahu had tried to get Mansour Abbas to join his party. But this idea that Arab parties in Israel who are full citizens of Israel and that they're somehow not part of the political discourse because they're not Zionist, whatever that means these days, I find very problematic. So what I don't quite understand is what advantage Bennett gets from joining with Lapid. Is it an attempt to appeal to the Israeli center? I mean, we've said for a long time that the majority of the population in Israel is centrist and that the current government doesn't really represent the majority of the population. But at least according to these original polls, the sum is not greater than the, you know, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, as you said. So I'm trying to figure, figure out what Naftali Bennett gains by partnering with Lapid. I know what he gains by partnering with Gadi Eisencott. And I'm also kind of surprised that Eisencott, who was the one pushing to join with Lapid and Bennett, hasn't agreed to do so and at least for now, is running Separately as well. If you join with Gadi Eisenkot, you get the whole military thing, you get the gaddy. Eisenhut also famously lost his son and few after October 7th. But I'm just not. What do you think Bennett gains from bringing Lapid in?

A (49:56)

Oh, I think he gains two very important things immediately. And one is because of the way that elections are funded. Existing parties get funding from the Knesset to run their elections based on the number of seats they hold. In the present Knesset, Naftali Bennett holds no seats in at all, but Yair Lapid holds 24, which is a very huge amount of money. There are very draconian election donation laws in Israel. It's difficult to raise money, really almost impossible to do it fully legally. And so having this money is hugely important and could be the difference between running a. A big flashy campaign that reaches everyone's eyes and ears and not being able to do that. That's one thing, but the other thing which is maybe even more important is that these all elections, but these elections even more than most, are really a contest between the two big blocs of voters, which in the past were defined as, as left versus right imperfectly, but that broadly you could call it that. But lately have been defined as pro Netanyahu and anti Netanyahu. So a lot of parties that are really more right wing and not that different, like you were saying, than Netanyahu are in the anti Netanyahu bloc for all sorts of reasons. And you are always running an election on two levels. One is to see that you are block gets enough votes to be able to be the bloc that forms the government. And then you're also running an election within the block to see that you're the leader of the block. Naftali Bennett is likely not going to get the. His party is likely not gonna get the biggest number of votes left unto itself in the block. It may have in polls. He was doing very, very well, but a lot of people, everyone basically expected that that number would go down. Began in earnest joining with Lapid and having Lapid declare from the outset that Naftali Bennett is as the leader of the opposition. I declare that Naftali Bennett is our candidate, our bloc's candidate to run against Netanyahu. I think it puts Bennett in what is close to an unassailable position as the leader of the bloc. Which means that by joining with the IR Lapid he has enjoyed, ensured that after the election, if it is not Benjamin Netanyahu who forms the government, it will be him. Bennett as opposed to in other scenarios. It's very possible that it would have been Gadi Eisenkot or maybe someone else. I mean, possibly Yair Golan from the Democrat team. But now he's sewn that up, more or less, unless something very unexpected happens. And so that's huge for him. Also, I would say he has promised to give 40% of the seats in the joint list to Yair Lapid. This is what Yair Lapid gets because he can now bring at least, you know, half of his, maybe as many as half of his sitting mks in this Knesset back, which he apparently wouldn't be able to do if they ran as a separate party. And Naftali Bennett has a terrible track record for choosing, for choosing Knesset members in his parties. The last government was toppled by Knesset members that he chose in his party who then moved over to supporting Netanyahu and they toppled the government. Yair Lapid has probably the best track record in Israeli history of choosing candidates who will support him through thick and thin for years. So in some ways, Naftali Bennett gets a bit better. Knesset list. And then finally for Naftali Bennett, who people on our side of the spectrum might fear as being potentially soft on the ultra Orthodox in the draft because he is, or just fear because he's just religious, because he has a very, very small kippah on his head. What Yair Lapid brings him is, is serious cred among secular Jews because Yair Lapid has now, for a decade and a half, been the, I think, uncontested leader of the secularists in Israeli politics. And I think that that's very valuable for Naftali Bennett as well.

B (54:46)

Okay. That, you know, that does make sense. I do think also that there are a lot of people who are disaffected either with Netanyahu or with his alliance with the ultraor Orthodox. And I think that by putting himself, I agree with you sort of firmly in the secularist camp and saying, I support civil marriage, I support the drafting of Haredim, which I personally think is not going to happen, but maybe. And I think Bennett and Lapid and I think if Eisenkot joins, are presenting sort of a clear, clear alternative to Netanyahu and the current government. And I sense, except for the Netanyahu's strong supporters who would follow him through thick and thin, I do sense people are really disaffected with this government for all kinds of reasons. And also just the way that Netanyahu's allies like Tali Gottlieb and people like that, who are just awful. And I feel like there is a serious alternative now. Whether or not they should have joined now or waited until after the elections and then been able to form a bloc is a different question. And I think that's something where maybe we'll have to look at and see if and when the elections happen. But I think the fact that there's a serious alternative is in itself something that we should welcome.

A (56:24)

Yes. And to the question of what this list stands for, I think that this list stands strongly for the statement that at this moment in Israeli history, politicians do not need to stand for very much, save for good governance and trying to lower the temperature in the discourse in Israeli politics. And this is what these men are about. There's something, I think, even for me, very attractive about, first of all about the fact that Yair Lapid, who also hoped for all of his political career and well before that as well, that one day he would be prime minister, and he has been prime minister for five months. For him to just give up on that hope at this moment is impressive. And for him to throw his support behind a man with whom he disagrees about important issues, but whom he clearly respects is an instantiation of the claim of both men that if we come into politics with Menschlishkeit and a desire simply to try to make things work about things that are more or less consensual, as they always say, the 80% of issues that almost everyone in Israel agrees about, the 80% that 80% of the people agree about, and there's something attractive about that, and they say we will bring in technocrats, we will bring in people who will work to just improve how government works. We will listen. We will not vilify anyone. We will not vilify the courts, and we will not vilify the ultra orthodox. But at the same time, we will ensure that everyone goes into the army, including the ultra orthodox. All of that is, on its face, somewhat attractive. It's funny. I mean, I would add that about the issues, I think that I did disagree really pretty much entirely with these guys about most everything. I think I disagree with them about economic issues where they are anti big government, and they are what in America would be sort of mainstream Republican or old mainstream Republican views of economics. I disagree with them about what you were talking about, about insisting that only Zionist parties be in the government, which is to say insisting that there not be an Arab party in the government. I disagree with them myself about drafting the way that they plan to draft the ultra orthodox I disagree with them about almost everything. And yet I think that they would be a huge step forward if they were running the government and subject to the influence within their coalition of someone like Yair Golan and someone like Gadia Aizenkot as well. At the same time, this thing, while it does in fact raise, like Yair Lapid said, raise in me hopes that we could have a calmer, more reasonable, more decent government in place in just six months, it also raises real fears because those votes that you were talking about that right now are anti Netanyahu, they are going to fly to a party that is now being formed in rooms. We will hear about it in a week or a month or two months of that is going to be like what they call Likud B Party, which is to say old people who left the Likud because they also think, they also claim that the time has come for Netanyahu's rule to end. But basically are Netanyahu, Aicha, they will end up taking a lot of the votes that right now seem to be going to Nefali Bennett, and then after the election, they will absolutely form a coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu. And so this is both the first step towards switching the Netanyahu government and it is clearly also the first step towards preserving the Netanyahu government. If when the history is written, I don't know which way it's going to go, it's going to go one of those two ways. And this moment that we saw, this is going to be the key moment in whatever unfolds. Either, you know, either towards ensuring that we have another five years of Netanyahu or ensuring that we never see him in the halls of the Knesset again. And it's impossible to know which direction we're going to go. I think. Now listen to this. That song is a Haftiotach by Noam Kleinstein with words by Major Hod Schreibman of blessed memory, who died on the first candle of Hanukkah 2024 in Jabalya. This too is from the special Gale Tsahal Project. I hear your voices, which you can find in all the usual places. And now it is time for our Vada country segment. This is the part of the show in which each of us describes something that may have surprised or amused, delighted or enchanted and sorceled, or possibly even fluged us as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while. Linda, what has your. Or what a country?

B (63:07)

Well, last Friday I attended a meeting at Ein Feshah in Arabic or Ainot Sukim, which is the lowest nature reserve in the world along the shores of the Dead Sea. And it's this beautiful kind of escape oasis where it's in Area C, so it's in the west bank, but it's someplace that can be accessed by both Israelis and Palestinians. Area C, of course, is just over 60% of the west bank that is under complete Israeli control. And I went for a meeting of an organization called Sulha. Sulha means reconciliation. And it's an organization that brings Israelis and Palestinians together really, just to listen to each other, to get to know each other, to really try to understand each other. And I've been to a few other sort of Israeli Palestinian groups, And often there's 90% Israelis and 10% Palestinians. And first of all, this meeting was the opposite. It was maybe 60% Palestinians, 40% Israelis. And the Palestinians came from all over the west bank, from Beitz Hafafa, which is a neighborhood in Jerusalem, which is kind of bougie. And some of these women had beautiful makeup and were dressed quite beautifully. And the Israelis were dressed kind of for a day at the beach. And the Israelis tend to be kind of a little more. Were hippie, dippy and whatever. It was quite an interesting. And the other interesting thing was there were quite a few young people, young men from the Fawar refugee camp from Hebron. It was a whole sort of a whole day meeting at this lovely place. And we started with circles of like, you know, four or five people. And each circle needed a translator from Arabic to Hebrew and from Hebrew to Arabic. And I volunteered to translate. My problem is that I translate everything through English. So in my head. So I was sort of double translating everything. And the question that we were asked to consider was a memory of your childhood. And interestingly, there was an older man, older Palestinian man from Bethlehem, Munir, who Talked about the 1967 war and the fear that he felt sort of hiding under a table. And then there was an Israeli woman who's a professor at Hebrew University, who talked about her fear during the 1967 war and what it was like when she was a child and they didn't know what was happening. And then some soldiers came and gave her a doll, and she said, wait, that means that there are people making dolls and selling dolls on the other side and how it was her first. And then there was a young woman in her 20s who's studying at the David Yaleen College, a Palestinian woman from the Shuafat refugee. And first of all, I didn't know that you can study at David Aleen all in Arabic. Did you know that? And wow. No, I didn't know. There's a whole, you know, a whole. And she's studying to be a primary school teacher, 26 year old young woman. And she talked about how when she was 9 or 10, her brother was at a. Got arrested or detained at an Israeli checkpoint and he'd get for. And he was beaten and then taken to jail or were a police station and then two days later sent home beaten up, but with no accusations against him or anything else. And I think what kind of came through in these encounters was the pain that both sides have and the fear that each side has of the other. And I think it's, you know, Palestinians look at Israelis as soldiers and as representatives of the strongest army in the world and how can you be afraid? And Israelis look at Palestinians as potential terrorists. And is this person next to me on the bus going to stab me and just sort of getting to talk on a human level? And then the next part was we had different workshops and I went and there was a workshop of dance and there was one of drawing and there was one in creative writing. And I went to one on reflection with a very impressive young Palestinian doctor from. From Ramallah. And again we were divided into groups of four and the first person was supposed to tell a story. The next person was to tell. Supposed to tell the same story without any emotions, just the facts of what happened. The third person was supposed to tell just the emotions. And the fourth person was to try to kind of come up with some sort of new synthesis. And then we all changed. So everybody got to tell a story and it was just this idea of, I mean, I know a lot of Palestinians, I've spent time with Palestinians and I think it's so important for Israelis and Palestinians to just meet on a human level. And I brought two friends with me. My friend Mish Hammer Kasoy, who is an Orthodox rabbi and who said that she feels like she had to do something given the current reaction, reality and that this kind of was the best thing she can do in the circumstances, which is just getting to know Palestinians on a human level. And another friend of mine who was Yafeshira, who was a teacher at the Hand in Hand school for a long time and speaks some Arabic. And what was also so nice was that at Ein Fasha, at Einot Sukim, it was a Friday morning and there were. The place was packed and with ultra orthodox Jewish families and Palestinian families and the kids were all going There are these natural pools there, and the kids were all in the pools and people were sitting at these long tables and eating. And it wasn't like they weren't actually talking to each other. The other people who were there, not who weren't there for Sulha, but at least they were all in the same place at the same time with no violence, with no entire, and just sort of accepting the other. And that, to me, gave me some hope.

A (69:24)

Yeah. Yeah. That is nice. That's lovely. So for me, every morning around six, I go out for a walk with Lucy the dog. Around six, because it is at two or three minutes before six that on the radio they play the legendary radio announcer Moshe Chavav. He died almost 40 years ago ago, but still you hear him every morning reading the Shema. And I like to hear this when I'm on my way out of the house with Lucy because it puts me in a mood and also because I think of these morning walks as Lucy's Shacharit, her morning devotions in particular, because after cutting through the yards of my building complex, first crossing Nahum street and then Hayer Kon and continuing on to Nakshon street, there on the porch of the Taal Hotel, there is almost always a man whom Lucy loves. In particular, she just shudders with anticipation, starting 20 or 30 meters before the hotel, even before she sees the guy. And he must work at the hotel because he is there every morning on the porch sitting at one of the tables they have set out there, sometimes with a cigarette and sometimes with a cup of coffee. And he's waiting for Lucy. And when he sees Lucy coming, he gets up and he comes over to the steps and she jumps up and she licks his face and licks his face and licks his face. And he gives her a big hug and he laughs. And I don't know anything about this guy, not his name or anything. In truth, we have never spoken. And this is, from my perspective anyway, in part out of respect for Lucy. He is her thing, and this is her morning ritual. And it means something to her, as I guess it probably does to the man. After a bit, we keep walking toward the beach. On the last house on Nakshon Street, I notice that there's one of those plaques on the wall. It says the author Amalia Kahana Carmon lived in this house. Now, Amalia Kahane Carmon became famous as a writer of what's called the generation of 1948, or the Palmach Generation, the Palmach being the commandos of the Haganah the Jewish militia that rose during the British Mandate. And she was 22 when the war of Independence started. And she fits the profile. She was born on Kibbutzein Harod, though she moved to Tel Aviv as a kid and she went to Gimnazi Herzliya, where these days my Chavura Davens and the Pamaq generation writers are known for writing as we and not so much as I, though that oversimplifies things, and it includes people like Chaim Ghouri and Dan Ben Amotes and Tsamchizar, and they wrote a lot about war and about men. Women are always at the edges of their writing, if at all. And Amalia Akana Carmon, she was different. Women are at the center of them. And there is more I than we in her writing. And starting in the 1970s, after she read Simone de Beauvoir, she wrote some of the first essays critical of the stuff that her generation wrote on the grounds that they got gender all wrong. And then she went to a conference and she met Frantz Fanon and started writing more about race. And I came to know her through reading those critical essays when I was in school, before I ever read any of her fiction. And it's nice to think of her putting down her pen and going off to the beach, which presently Lucy and I did, walking south on Mitissim beach. And I saw that on the electrical box over near the outdoors showers, someone had stuck a big sticker in the shape of a hand, a hamsa with the words Ein Gdolim, ein Kthanim Kulam Chaverim. There are no great people, there are no small people. Everyone is a comrade or friend. Which made me smile because it is a bit of Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav Apocrypha. It is Pseudo Nachmaniana, in fact, the tzadik of Yavneel Rav Eliezer Shlomo Schick wrote a scorching letter maybe 10 years ago about how, quote, the moment a person equates the small with the great, it is a sign that his head is filled with excrement and filth. Thus this slogan borders not only on mockery, but also on heresy and apostasy. End quote. Rabi Nachman of Bratzlaw never said such a thing, but it seemed plausible enough. On the beach at 6:15 in the morning, on the bench just across the path from that sticker, someone had stuck another sticker onto the bench that read, and you should love your neighbor as yourself. From there I walk past the fenced off area of the religious beach with a sign near the door that under the Hebrew has English text that reads, quote, welcome to an authorized There is no H that makes it authorized Gender Alternative beach. About which I thought, oh, it's cool that radically gender fluid sorts have finally got a place of their own. On the sign someone had stuck a big sticker reading draft of orders We've grown tired of you. Which sticker someone else had tried to take off with only partial success. Beyond that, the city's culture department had put up, framed on the wood fence of the ultra Orthodox swimming area, a bunch of poems as part of a project that they call Shirathayam Poems of the Sea, after the biblical verses describing Moses and the children of Israel leaving Egypt through the Red Sea and I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed with glory, horse and rider he cast into the sea. And so on, which words we say each morning in Psukei d' Zimra in Shaharit. And after that there are a dozen or so poems on the fence at intervals by Nathan Zach and by Nathan Alterman and Leah Goldberg and Meir Wiesentier and Chaim Ghori, and I stop in front of a poem by Ehud Manor, lyrics, really, that he wrote for Yarom Gaon that go, go and look for your answer in the Torah or in a quote Duba in a sorrowful owl. Maybe on the seashore streams flow towards the sea, and in the sea every path comes to an end. Even the sun falls asleep there. Don't ask me why. Go and look for God in gardens and stones and leaves and pollen. Maybe on the seashore. I go up the stairs then to Independence Park. It's past 6:30 by now and two women are standing swaying in the grass overlooking the sea where windsurfers are windsurfing, and the women have sidarim in their hand and they are praying at the bus stop on Haryarkon. On my way home there is a poster for the Tel Aviv Poetry Festival that is on these days in bars across the city. It says the slogan on the poster says tonight we read poems. I am starting to feel my to do list. The sun is up by now and it's time to get home and to get the day started. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks Hui Tai Shellam, our station manager, without whom there would be none of this, who continually works all sorts of miracles to keep this thing on the air. Thanks to Hashiboli, 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. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going, it keeps the station going, it keeps us moved and grateful and very much in your debt. And we would like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen your very valuable time. We'd like to ask you to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer and after you do that go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this the Promise podcast brings to mind a strange little book by Edward Gorey called the Doubtful Guest. Especially the part at the very end that's so memorable goes it came 17 years ago and to this day it has shown no intention of going away. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today as we record on April 30th we celebrate International Jazz Day, so stipulated at the 36th session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Awards organization in document 187ex decision 46 building upon feasibility study 187inf.10 as prepared by the Secretariat declaring that quote In a letter dated 28 July 2010, the Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of the United nations to UNESCO transmitted to the Chairperson of the Executive Board the proposal by the United States and 17 other member states to establish an International Jazz Day. This proposal invited the Director General to conduct a feasibility study, including an indication of the expected results and an assurance that there will be no additional financial implications for the regular budget of UNESCO on the celebration of an International Jazz Day and to report to the Executive Board on the matter at the 187th session. In light of the above, the proclamation of an annual International Jazz Day by UNESCO will encourage the celebration worldwide in its member States, it being understood that the scope of the activities would depend entirely on the availability of extra budgetary funds. End quote. And it goes on like that with the poetical language of the UN resolution capturing I feel the very spirit of jazz itself and I am absolutely adore International Jazz Day to the full extent that the available extra budgetary funds allow me to it is probably my favorite day of the entire year for so many reasons, including the fact that and did you know this the UNESCO appointed Goodwill Ambassador with Ambassadorial oversight of International Jazz Day is, and this is true, Herbie Hancock, the 86 year old jazz genius who made his name right out of school, playing in the Miles David Davis Quintet and who, not all that long after that, wrote the soundtrack for the primetime cartoon television special hey, hey, hey, It's Fat Albert, which even when I was a kid I could tell how crazy good it is. Still you, Even though it is not even halfway over, I can't help but feel wistful that soon International Jazz Day will be over. Rather like hey, hey, hey, it's Fat Albert itself, which you can't put on television anymore, ever since the genius behind the characters was canceled in an if ever anyone ought to be canceled, this is the guy who ought to be canceled sort of way, surely never to return. Not so the Promised Podcast. We will be back for you next week and most every week, reminding you that while for some things, like the great jazz trumpeter and saxomophonist Ornette Coleman put it, the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time, which is charming. For other things, you can have different topics every single week, and still it all ends up somehow sounding cloyingly, annoyingly, mystifyingly, and frustratingly the same. On this the Promised Podcast, Sam.