← The Promised Podcast
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- [00:00]
Noah Ephron
This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language.
- [00:15]
Linda Gradstein
And
- [00:18]
Noah Ephron
welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city that is home to the Tel Aviv Art Museum, which just appeared as it has in each of the last seven years, on the prestigious and by universal acclamation, authoritative for such matters. Art Newspapers annual survey of the quote unquote World's hundred most visited art museums in 2025 this time, and this despite the fact that in 2025 the self same Tel Aviv Art Museum was closed hermetic or in part for dozens and dozens of days as when for instance the museum was shut down last June with the start of the 12 day war with Iran. During entire collection was moved to fortified safe rooms as the United States Air Force and the IAF in the American President's account, quote unquote obliterated Iran's nuclear program and destroyed its military capacities. This on top of the 104 days of the year that the museum was closed as a matter of course, the museum does not operate on Sundays or Mondays and most holidays though it is open on Shabbat plus and this matters there were basically no tourists here in 2025. There was war going on, then another war and then there was a third war and airlines were canceling flights willy nilly, though some experts insist that the proper characterization is higgledy piggledy. And in better days lots of the people you see wandering the cavernous rooms of the spectacular Tel Aviv Museum of Art are tourists. But despite all that, more people visited the Tel Aviv Museum than did the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or LACMA or the Whitney in New York or the Smithsonian American Art Museum, though of course many more people visited the Louvre nine times as many at 9 million visitors and also the Vatican Museum or the British Museum or the Met or the Tate Modern or the Hermitage or the Musee d' Orsay or Moma or the Pompidou, which had two and a half times what the Tel Aviv Art Museum had. But still the million visitors, million plus really, that the Tel Aviv Museum of Art had as a pretty astonishing number at a time when the square outside the museum was transformed into hostage square and to get to the museum you needed to wade through families of hostages and protesters and hostage posters and hostage art. It was a lot and still the place carried on and with the most wonderful surprising exhibits, some old like the sort of pop up Reuven Rubin exhibit they did after an Iranian missile hit the Reuven Rubin Museum over on Bialik street and all the art from the place was evacuated to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art for safekeeping. So lemons, Lemonade, an exhibit called Reuven Rubin, Be My Guest, was raised and it was spectacular. And there was the Judy Chicago exhibit called what if Women Ruled the World that she put on with Nadja Tolo Konikova, who founded the Russian band Pussy Riot. And there was the exhibit by Maria Salah Muhammad from Umm El Fakim called Peace of Mind that showed timeless images of horses, birds, women with flowing hair, quote, presented through images that attest to an aggression laden, violent reality, such as surveillance cameras, medical devices, bulldozers and weapons, end quote. Yowza. And there was my fave of faves, something called Motherland by an artist named Ruth Patir, who used a Babylonian fertility statue to dramatize in video the process of having her eggs extracted and frozen. It was mind blowing. And arguably nothing captures the molly, brownish unsinkability of this city we love so well, better than more than a million people wedging their way through a crowd of hostage sorts into a museum high temple of surprising, bracing, delightful, inspiring art, meshing high and low, rarefied and commonplace, challenging and enchanting, local and worldwide because, well, art is life and life is everything. With us Today, speaking from TLV1's flagship satellite studio in Jerusalem, is a woman who is a great genius of the ars vitae, the art of life, which Seneca called the very heart of philosoph. Philosophia est ars vitae, he said, and which an epicurean like Lucretius called, quote, the beginning and the end of a blessed life. And this woman who is with us from Jerusalem turns every meal, every voyage, every visit, every pour into a symbol and microcosm of her blessed life, which blessings spill over to all of us lucky enough to know her. Obviously, that woman could only be Linda Gradstein. Linda Gradstein has long covered Israel, first for NPR and most recently for the Voice of America, of blessed memory. Linda is also a lecturer in Germany 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 was your holiday?
- [05:24]
Linda Gradstein
Well, my holiday was very nice, and I decided that I really wanted to go to a Mimouna, which is the Moroccan festival that ends Passover, which started actually when Jews would give the Muslim neighbors in Morocco their flower during Pesach, and then they would give it back and they would have a party together. And I actually got invited to one. And I was really excited and I got. And they had all. They had muffleta, the crepes, kind of, and all the traditional food. And it was someone who I didn't know very well and I said, oh, I didn't know you were Moroccan. And she said, we're not. We're actually Ashkenazi and Russian, but we really like all the food. So we do Mimouna.
- [06:01]
Noah Ephron
A different sort of authenticity there. Now, as for me, my name is Noah Ephron, and I do not mean to boast, but between the rumple of sleeping in the shelter and the fact that when you sleep in the shelter, you only sort of actually sleep in the shelter, and the fact that I stopped chilling for the omer, so the bags under my eyes are framed by stubble. Plus the fact that for overnights in the shelter, the cognoscenti wear sweatpants and sweatshirts, which all taken together have given me over the last while and very much so over the last week, I think a drifter, grifter sort of look. And I think that I have noticed while walking in the street or when I go to the store, mothers and fathers walking towards me, putting their arms on the shoulders of their young kids and pulling them in close as I walk by with a gesture that I think is universally known to me mean, maya, don't look at that man in the face. And please believe me when I say that I am not bragging. God knows my parents brought me up better than that. But I like to think that I have, with the years, learned to carry myself with a certain dignity, as befits someone who grew up, as I did, with every imaginable privilege. Today we've got two topics so deep and yet so wide that if these topics were a bomb shelter, they would be that bomb shelter I love. In the parking lot under the Wima Theater, where you can go six floors underground and you find their elaborate tent camps and people who have set up beds and box springs and grills and big TVs, big flat screen TVs, and that's how deep and wide these topics are. But first, we have this matter in memoriam. On Friday, the first day of Cholomoed Pesach, more than 500 people crowded into the reception pavilion at the Nachalat Yitzhak Cemetery to bury Asher Ruveni. It was a crowd so big that some spilled out of the big gazebo and stood carefully balanced among the graves. After the cemetery rabbi running the thing called family members up to the front of the pavilion to speak, one after another they stood in front of the microphone, staring into the phone they held in their hand, into which they had over the prior day, tap, tap, tapped the words. They said now. Asher Ruiveni's daughter Eleanor, the oldest of his five girls, they were Eleanor, Ronit, Shirley, Ortal and Daniel. Elinor said, You were always true to your principles, to your path which was yours alone. You were a people person. To our family events, a crazy mosaic of guests would come. The IDF chief of staff, the mayor, the head of the Histadrut labor union, football players, models, singers, artists, abba. How did you manage to touch all those people? You broke through every possible glass ceiling. The world of art and music would not exist like it does if not for your battle and your hard work. I do not know if it is true or not, but rumor is that Eleanor, when she was just five, was the inspiration for the name of one of Zohar Argove's first songs, produced and recorded by Asher Ruveni in the event at the now gone Tritone Studios that I love so much in Gikar Medina across from the old TLV1 studios. The name Eleanor, chosen after the woman Jackie MacKayton, wrote the song about a love song, ZFIA, that woman was called. She begged that her name be scrubbed from the song. She was, after all, marrying someone else. And the result was that when Zohar Argov recorded the song, his very first hit, it was now called Eleanor, according to the rumor, after Acheruveni's five year old old girl who was now 46 years later eulogizing her father, the song of which in its day, hundreds of thousands, maybe more than a million copies were sold. Nobody knows how many because Asheruveni and his brothers did not keep good records. And in any case, for every legitimate copy, who knows how many bootleg counterfeit copies were sold, the song went like this. And most everyone agrees that if not for Asheruveni, probably Zoargov never would have had a first hit record on a first hit album that sold hundreds of thousands of copies, maybe more than a million. More specifically, if not for the battle that Eleanor talked about in her eulogy for her father, and if not for his breaking of glass ceilings, Zohar Argov probably would not have made that record. And if he had, someone like me, probably never would have heard it. But I've gotten ahead of myself. Asher Ruveni was born in a rough neighborhood in south tel Aviv in 1949, the seventh of a brood of kids that would become 10, five brothers and five sisters and Asha Ruveni did most of his growing up in a tiny two room apartment, one room for the parents and the other for all 10 kids, with a shower outside in the yard, his father, like his mother, an immigrant from Yemen, ran an orange juice stand, a rough wooden booth with a pile of fruit and a citrus press. The neighborhood was rough. There was crime and there was alcohol, and in time there were plenty of drugs too. And to keep the kids straight, the household was one of strict discipline. Before school, the boys helped at the juice stand, and after school too, a failure to do what you were supposed to do might result in a beating. Also, it was a matter of high principle that the Reuvenis, especially the five boys, view themselves as a unit and look out one for the other. When it came time for Asher Reuveni and his four brothers, Meyer, Dani, Dror and Elizor, to make a look logo for the business they ran together, it was two hands clasped together, 10 fingers intertwined for 10 children intertwined, Asha Reuveni said. The business that the Reuveni brothers ran was started in 1958 by Mayor Rouveni, the oldest of the children. It was at the beginning an electrical supply store. The storefront was on Hahagana street, facing the entrance of Shukhatikva, the Hatikva market, a loud bustling row of carts and stands selling vegetables, greens, fruit, chicken, beef, lamb, offal, fish, legumes, rice, nuts, olives, spices, pita, laffa, malawakh, lachuch, halva, lokum, loose tobacco, lighters, and more. Meir Rouveni had studied to be an electrician in the vocational school that most all the boys in Hatikva were sent to in those days, and he got Donny to help him set up the store at first with light bulbs and extension cords and fuses and such, but with time they started selling radios, record players and reel to reel tape recorders, just like all the boys had worked their father's juice sand. Soon enough all five boys were working at the electrical supplies and appliance store, and a sign was painted and hung above the window that read Hachim Ruveni the Reuveni brothers. And customers who came in might find any of the brothers there behind the counter, some of them not yet in their teens but ready to help them. As the years passed and the boys got older, each of them enlisted in the army in this or that combat unit, and when they got out, they each came back to Atikva and back to the store with them, each of them smart Kids, each of them ambitious kids. A certain youthful restlessness came to the store and slowly its nature changed. The boys had grown up on Yemeni music and also Greek, and after a time they started to stock their store with imported records. There were no Yemeni records to be had, but there were Greek records. And they had lots of fans in Hatikvah, though these fans did not, in truth, have lots of money for imported records. But there was enough of a clientele for a corner of the store to be given over to music. After the first cassette recorders were imported into Israel, starting in 1966, the Reuvenis experimented with making their own copies of the Greek records they sold and selling them the copies. A very small scale side hustle. When they started doing it in 1967, the most basic Philips EL3300 series mono cassette recorder went for 500 liras, which was more than an average month's salary. In Atikva, it might be two months salary, so not many people had the machine they needed to play cassettes. But over the next years, as they do with new technologies, prices went down and more and more of the people who came into Rouveni's brothers would look over the cassettes they offered. And as they did, the Reuveni brothers made more and more cassettes they could look over. These things, which took place slowly over years, had to happen in order for it to be possible for Asher Rouveni to change almost all at once, almost in a moment, the very course of the history of Israeli music and culture. This is how he described what happened. In the course of the Yom Kippur War. I was injured and my fiance's brother was killed in the Yom Kippur war. And I was supposed to have my wedding in Dahlia hall with the Greek singer Makis, for those who may remember. But mourning delayed the wedding, and in the end we just had a small wedding at the Rabbina, and a month later, maybe two, I ran into a friend, Chuki is his name, and he said, come on, I'll bring the big Oud band with Benmouch and Daklon to your home and we'll have a chaffle. On Friday night. It was a 60 meter home and 70 people came into an apartment that was maybe 50 or 60 meters big, one on top of the other. At one in the morning, the police came and stopped the celebration. It was our good luck that we recorded the evening, just so we'd have a keepsake. We would sell cassettes, you can call them pirated of Greek Music, in short, we brought a big akai reel to reel recorder and made a tape. When I left the apartment after the police stopped the music, I saw a few neighbors sitting on the stoop listening. And they said, why did you stop? And they were Ashkenazim, hardcore Ashkenazim. And I said, what can I do? It's the police. A week or two later, people started to come into the store, people who heard about the party, some who were at the party, and they said, we want a cassette of the party. They were willing to pay 100 lira just for me to give them a copy. I said, they're willing to pay. We will make cassettes. And the thing started to roll. End quote. To fill in some of the details that Asher Rouveni left out, the brother of Asher Reuveni's fiance, Ilana Tzvi was the fiance's name. The brother, he was named Eliyahu or Eli Zvi. He was a carpenter who also grew up in Atikva. He was a soldier in Golani, and when he was killed by Syrian artillery in the Golan Heights during the war, he, 29 years old, called up in the reserves, the father of two little boys. A chafla is a traditional blowout with alcohol and music and dance. Benmush and Daklon were two of the greatest of the chaflut players, famous in their circles. 100 lira was, like I said, just under a week's salary. And maybe the most important bit of background was that music, like the music at Asher ruveni's Kafla in 1974. The only way to hear it was at a hafla in South Tel Aviv or in Ramla or in Beersheva, or anywhere where there were enough people who came from Yemen or Iraq or Syria or North Africa for there to be bands that hired themselves out to entertain at weddings or parties. You could not hear that kind of music on the radio, which was run by people who came from or whose parents came from Europe and who, as a rule, had no taste for Eastern music. In the 1980s, the Voice of Israel broadcast eight hours of Western music each day alongside exactly 15 minutes of Mizrahi or Western or Arabic music. Insult to injury, some of the pieces presented in this quarter hour were in fact written by European Jews with Oriental trills added on the side. And it wasn't just the radio. Israel had four big record companies, and none of them would print records with the sort of music that you got at the chaflut, which to their ears did not sound like serious music, and often to their ears, not like music at all, save for live at a party there was in Israel in the 1970s, no way to hear this music at all. After hundreds, then thousands of people told him that they would pay a week's salary for a cassette of kafla music. Asher Reuveni saw right away that the time had come for all of this to change. These were the days of the Black Panther protests, when kids of immigrant parents from North Africa or the Middle east, who had taken years of hardships and humiliations is somehow inevitable or worse as something they somehow deserved, started to ask out loud why it was that they seemed always to end up with less than kids of immigrant parents from Europe or the Americas. And part of the less that they ended up with was less of their own music, the music they grew up with and loved. On the radio and in the stores. Asher Rouveni put out word that he was looking for talented singers. And he started going to the clubs in South Tel Aviv and in Ramla and in Or Yehuda and other spots were late at night you could hear Sfaradi or Mizrachi music. He got to know a kid named Jackie MacKayton who wrote songs and played and sang in a band called Slil Ha', Ood, the Sound of the Ood. Jackie Makitan was in a wheelchair. He had polio when he was a kid, and Netanya. He was a boy of aging immigrant parents from Yemen. And he was a prodigious talent. He was the one who wrote the song Eleanor. But that was only one of dozens and dozens of hit songs he would eventually write. Jackie Makitin introduced Acheruveni to Zohar Argov, who was his Jackie Makitin's driver just out of prison. And Zoar Argov sang for him. And Asher Rouveni heard right away that Zoar Argov had what he called a voice you hear once every 50 years. The Reuveni brothers launched a record company, Reuveni Music, and they made records for Jackie Makitin and Zohar Argov and dozens of others. And they sent the records they made to the radio time and again and time and again. None of them ever got played on the air. Asher Uveni's oldest brother, Meir, told this story. One day I went to the Voice of Israel with at least eight new LPs, a few heavy packages I take to the Voice of Israel in Jerusalem. I come to the man I'm there to see. And they tell me, he's in a meeting. Wait on the porch. On the porch there were two big trash cans. They would throw unwanted records into the trash bins. I started to route through the trash cans, and I discovered there all the greats of the Mediterranean singers, especially our singers that we represented in those days. Daklon, Zohar, whomever you want. My soul dropped to my feet. Not just that you don't play us, but you throw us in the trash. That is where we belong. It was for me, like getting cracked over the head with a police nightstick, the condescension, I am in the trash. End quote. That day, Mayor Rouveni told the program manager at the Voice of Israel that the Rouveni brothers were done with state run radio. Going home from Jerusalem in a dark mood, Mayor Rouveni stopped at the old bus station in Tel Aviv, which in those days was used by almost a million people a day. Watching people go this way and that, stopping along the way to shop at the storefronts behind the terminals, Mayor Rouveni had a revelation. In front of him was a man selling lemonade in a stand like his father's. 30 agote a glass. I thought, why can't he sell cassettes? I went to the store and came back with 200 cassettes. I went to a stand and I said, chalom, chalom, would you like to sell recordings? The guy said, how much for? I said, eight lirot, you get 10%. And he was happy. After that, the thing spread like wildfire. End quote. What the Rouveni brothers did was create at the central bus station an alternative both to the radio and to the record companies. The people running the stands and carts in the bus station, they blasted morning to night the music the Rouveni brothers recorded. And a million people a day heard it. And if the record companies wouldn't make and distribute the records, cassettes were cheaper and faster anyway. Soon the bus stations in Beersheva, Jerusalem, Haifa, Kiryat, Shmona, Eilat, they were all one version or another of the bus station in Tel Aviv. Probably the most popular music in Israel in those years, from the middle of the 1970s on, was music that you would never hear on the radio, but that you would always hear when you took the bus from the central bus station. The music of the cassettes. And everyone took buses from the central bus station. Asher Rauveni kept going to the clubs and finding new talents. Chaim, Moshe, Margalitsa, Anani. And after a few years passed, and the singers Asheruveni Managed to fill up bigger clubs and still bigger clubs. Finally, here and there, an invitation came to perform on television and a second generation of Mizrahi singers, Ofer Khaza, probably most of all, they finally had a chance to break through and the radio in the 1980s finally agreed to play them. And music a yam ti khonit Mediterranean music became first finally acceptable and then beloved. And finally it became what people think of when they think of Israeli music. In 1995, Dana International, who grew up the son of Yemeni parents named Jaron Cohen in Hatikva, exactly where Asher Rouveni was fighting the battles he was fighting and bringing breaking the glass ceilings he was breaking. In 1995, Dana International, now a trans woman from Hatikvah, won the Eurovision Song Contest, becoming one of the most beloved singers, not just in Israel, but all around the world. And all of this would not have happened, could not have happened without Asher Rouveni, who saw in a wheelchair bound Jackie Makitan, a genius and a star and who saw in just out of prison drug using Zohar Argov, a genius and a star and who believed that his kid's music ought to be some version of his parents music. Things did not go easily for Acher Reuveni and for the Reuveni brothers. Just like they started by pirating cassettes of records imported from Greece, every record that they put out as an LP or on a cassette was pirated too. There was enough money in the thing that the mafia soon got involved. And one day in the early 1980s, after Acheruveni loaded Eleanor into the back of his Subaru to take her to nursery school and turned the key to the ignition, a grenade went off under his hood. It was a sort of miracle that father and daughter were not killed. They were not even hurt. In 1987 Zohar Argove hung himself in prison where he awaited trial for stealing a gun from a police station and for rape and for a bunch of drug charges. Jackie Makitin found religion and mostly stopped recording. A fire broke out in the Ruveni brothers warehouse, the insurance on which was by mistake let to lapse and millions of dollars in lost inventory all but ruined them. Then the brothers fought over royalties for old music and for years Asher and Elitor were on the out with Mayer and Dani and Dror. There is a trial underway right now over royalties for decades old recordings that remain valuable because the records remain beloved. But the 500 people who came to Asheruveni's funeral and the thousands who passed through the family Shiva on Keelat New York street in Hatikva, the street where the burnt out Reuveni Brothers warehouse used to be, just a couple of meters from where Asher Reuveni and his brothers and sisters grew up and just a couple of hundred meters in another direction from the site of the old Reuveni Brothers electrical supply and appliance store, and just a couple of hundred meters in another direction from the offices of the old Rouveni music operation. This huge life that changed history mostly happened on a few run down city blocks not far one from the other. All of these people who last week came to pay their respects. They loved Asheruveni and they saw in him for good reason, the man who brought their music and their parents music back into their lives and into the lives of their kids and into the lives of all of us. Yehi Zichro Baruch. Today two discussions. Our first discussion War is over if you ignore a thing or two, with apologies to Yoko Ono and the memory of John Lennon, as we learned the night before last that our 40 day war with Iran is over or at least the fire is ceased and we will ask what the hell just happened? And our second discussion, Crime and Punishment as the Knesset approved last week a death penalty for terrorist law. And we will ask what the hell just happened? And for 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 discuss why public support for the war with Iran that just ended the night before last as we record according to polls slowly but continuously diminished as each day of the war passed. And we will wonder how this war is likely to be seen ultimately by those of us who spent it in a shelter. But before we get to any of that, please listen to this. That song is Khalamti Shatapo by Jane Bordeaux. It is a new song out just over the last couple of years weeks and we will listen to new music of these past weeks over the course of the show. And now it is time for our first discussion which we are calling War Is over if youf Ignore A Thing Or Two. And here is why. As you surely already know, just minutes before President Donald Trump's 8pm in Washington, 3:30am in Tehran and 3am in Jerusalem deadline, after which he threatened that quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. That civilization being millennia old, Persian civilization, Pakistani Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif announced that the Americans and Iranians had agreed to a two week ceasefire to iron out the last details of an end to the war that started on February 28th. President Trump posted on social media that the reason for the ceasefire is that, quote, we have already met and exceeded all military objectives and are very far along with a definite agreement concerning long term peace, all caps with Iran and peace, all caps in the Middle east. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated, end quote. A few hours after that, Iran released its plan, the 10 points of which are 1 a permanent secession of aggression against Iran, 2 Iran maintains control over the Straits of Hormuz, 3, an end of attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, 4American troops withdraw from all bases and all positions in the Middle east. Five, the US Pays Iran reparations for all damage caused during the war. Six, Iran maintains the right to enrich uranium. All direct sanctions on Iran are to be lifted. Eight, all indirect sanctions on Iran are to be lifted. Nine, the International Atomic Energy Agency will repeal all anti Iranian resolutions and 10, all UN Security Council resolutions against Iran will be rescinded. Three hours after the ceasefire was announced, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that, quote, Israel supports President Trump's decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks, subject to Iran immediately opening the straits and stopping all attacks on the U.S. israel and countries in the region. Israel also supports the US effort to ensure that Iran no longer poses a nuclear missile or terror threat to America, Israel, Iran's Arab neighbors and the world. The United States has told Israel that it is committed to achieving these goals shared by the U.S. israel and Israel, Israel's regional allies in the upcoming negotiations. The two week ceasefire does not include Lebanon, end quote, which final assertion was a few hours later confirmed by President Trump. The war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon could, as far as President Trump is concerned, continue, although obviously that will be a negotiating point between the Americans and the Iranians. Not long after that, head of the opposition here in Israel, Yair Lapid, called Israel's part in the war with Iran a quote, unquot diplomatic disaster. He said, quote, netanyahu led us into a strategic debacle, nothing less. What we saw was a disgraceful combination of arrogance, irresponsibility, lack of Planning, negligent staff work 0 Handling of the home front and lies sold to the Americans that damaged the trust between the two countries. Of all the possible outcomes, Netanyahu delivered the worst one. The regime in Iran was not defeated, the nuclear threat was not removed and the ballistic missiles and Hezbollah's missile remain aimed at every home in Israel. This war was managed as if the citizens of the State of Israel were the government's cannon fodder. No sheltering solutions, no educational plans, no compensation plans, no plan for Ben Gurion Airport, Nothing. Zero concern for the citizens. End quote. Yowza, Linda, I think that we are all still absorbing, I know that I am the abrupt end of the war and trying to dope out just what it means and where it might lead to. What do you make of our two week ceasefire and what should we all make of it?
- [35:51]
Linda Gradstein
Well, first of all, I had this image when you just read Netanyahu's statement about how this is such a good thing and this is peace in the Middle east or some the beginning of peace in the Middle east of Netanyahu with his arm twisted behind his back by President Trump saying, read this statement and Israel wasn't part of this at all. And everything that I understand, understand is that Israel did not want the war to end now that Israel felt there was still a lot that they had to do in terms of attacks on Iran and Hezbollah. So I think there's a lot of questions more than anything else. The first question is, is Lebanon included or not? And Netanyahu said clearly that it wasn't. That was backed by Trump. Iran says that it is. And in fact, Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz again to protest Israeli fire on Lebanon. This morning there was rocket fire from Hezbollah. Yesterday, Israel carried out a big operation in Lebanon in which close to 200 people were killed after the ceasefire was supposedly put in place. And it sparked a lot of international condemnation. And then the big question is, what happens to the Iranian nuclear material? You're talking about 400 kilograms of nuclear material. And you know, Netanyahu says, well, Iran will give it up one way or the other, whether in terms of the ceasefire and negotiations and a deal or in terms of Israeli attacks. I think that it's. Once the ceasefire is put in place, although it's not even clear to me that it really is in place at this point, it becomes harder to break the ceasefire and then Israel, Israel could be blamed for breaking that ceasefire. On the other hand, people, I think, and it's something you mentioned, we'll talk about in the Patreon is that support for the war had begun to decrease. It's very hard to live like that. On the other hand, once you're in it to stop it, when you haven't completed the goals, I'm not, you know, is Israel safer today than it was 40 days ago? And in what way is it safer? Certainly there have been thousands I of airstrikes, both American and Israeli, that have destroyed a lot of Iranian the missile, the ability to make new missiles, and yet they were still able for 40 days to fire at Israel. I'm suspicious, I'm hopeful. There was a nuclear agreement beforehand. Right. The JCPOA that President Trump withdrew from under pressure from Netanyahu, in fact, fact. And you know, this has been Netanyahu's kind of life program has been to get rid of the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile threat. And I'm just not sure if the ceasefire does that. What do you think?
- [38:50]
Noah Ephron
Well, I think that we can be pretty sure that this ceasefire and whatever permanent agreement follows, it does not do that. I mean, if you look at the, the original aims of the war, which were never fully and clearly articulated, but more or less, I think people know that they were to end Iran's nuclear program fully and to rid Iran of the enriched uranium that it has, those 450 kilograms that almost 1,000 pounds of, of enriched uranium that it has underground somewhere. That was one. Another was to rid Iran of its ballistic missiles. Another was to rid Iran of its industry that produces those ballistic missiles. And another was to change the regime in Iran from fundamentalist Islamic regime, as it has been for the last 47 years, to something different, either autocratic or one could dream democratic. And I think that of those four possible goals, the only one that is possibly achieved to a large degree is it is possible that there are no more factories that are quickly capable of building ballistic missiles in Iran. They still have a stockpile of missiles. No one knows exactly how many. But the last estimates that I saw was that they have one third of their original stockpile, which is thousands of missiles capable of reaching anywhere in Israel. They still have the nuclear materials and by most accounts still have the ability to relatively quickly produce a bomb. Donald Trump has said that the regime has significantly changed because the Supreme Leader of Iran was killed in the first moments of the war. That's how the war started. And after that, then many, many others of the leadership of Iran were killed. As Donald Trump tells it, this is now the third generation of Iranian leadership since the war began on February 28th. Basically, two generations of leadership were destroyed. But it's certainly nothing like regime change. So all of the aims, save possibly for the destruction of the missile factories, all of the aims were not fully achieved. And many of them seem to have been quite far from being achieved. And it seems to be unlikely that they will be achieved through negotiations. And all of this leads me to my question for you. Since in the last day and a half, since we learned in the middle of the night of this two week ceasefire that will most likely lead to a permanent ceasefire, people here in Israel have increasingly full throatedly been attacking Netanyahu and his government, saying that this war was an abject failure in the way that Yair Lapis said that I described before. And my question for you is, given that we have not met fully any of the goals that we set for ourselves, perhaps save the one, the least important of the four, is it right to characterize this war as a failure?
- [42:35]
Linda Gradstein
I don't know. The problem is we don't really know what's going on anymore. There's been such, you know, there's been, I think, the longest Internet blackout, you know, in history where we really are not hearing from Iran. We're not hearing what people are saying, we're not hearing what the leadership is saying. I read one analysis that said that the current leadership could actually be more hardline than the original leadership and could make a decision to try to move towards a nuclear, nuclear capabilities, saying, well, if the Americans and the Israelis are going to attack us and then we have to be ready next time. If it's true. And I agree with your sort of analysis of what the goals were and what's been achieved, although again, we don't know for sure if all of that is true, then it seems to me that it kind of was a failure. And where do we stand today? We stand with this ceasefire where, where if I, you know, looking from the outside, all Iran needs to do to win is to survive, which it did. Right. In order for Israel and the US to win, they need to destroy the nuclear program, destroy the ballistic missile capability. And I think there was also, there was a lot of diplomatic damage done to Israel, which has already been under attack because of everything in Gaza and what happened in Gaza that you have, not only from the left in the United States, but from the right saying, what are we doing? Why are we fighting Israel's battles? And at least the perception is, and again, I don't know if this is the truth, I don't know what the truth is here, but the perception is that Netanyahu kind of dragged President Trump into this war and pressured him to start this war. And then President Trump at some point decided, okay, I've had enough. And then he sort of forced an end to it. So are we safer than we were? Are we better off? Where is Iran going? There certainly doesn't seem to be any movement towards regime change, whatever momentum there was in January when the protests were taken. Tens of thousands of people were killed in Iran, and again, nobody knows how much. So it's very hard to know exactly what's going on. It's also hard to know, let's say, they come to an agreement that includes the nuclear program, includes the ballistic missile program. Is Iran a rational actor or not? Can you trust that there will be. That the IAEA will be able to go in and check things and verify all this kind of stuff? So do you trust Iran? Do you trust Hezbollah to make a deal? I mean, there was a ceasefire with Hezbollah since November of 2024, and yet we saw that as soon as the war started again, Hezbollah was able to fire thousands of rockets at northern Israel and make life in northern Israel almost unbearable. Terrible. So, given all that, I'm very, very suspicious, and I certainly don't see this war as a success if it was a failure. I don't know that we really have any way to know until we know more about what happened in Iran.
- [46:05]
Noah Ephron
Well, I think that what you said is very wise, beginning with the fact that we really do just do not know what was and what was not accomplished. And we certainly do not know where it will lead. We don't know to say that this won't lead in six months time or a year's time to protests that lead to a change in the regime. We don't know. It just is impossible to say. The chorus over the last day and a half of attacks on Prime Minister Netanyahu for having made a mistake and blundered into this war, and for having made the mistake of seeming to, or in actuality actually having persuaded President Trump to enter the war, thereby harming Israel diplomatically in a way that. That could impact our. Our future for decades to come. It could be the very, very last, the very, very last nail in the coffin on the relations between Israel and the Democratic Party in the United States, for instance, all of those things. At this particular moment, it seems, in retrospect, as though it makes sense to. To say that Netanyahu made every possible mistake. I think that what might have happened is that the war may well have failed. It seems to me that Very, very likely that when the history books are written and when we do have the perspective of a year and 10 years and 50 years, we will see that this war really, in a deep way, did not achieve any of its aims, but it still could have been, been the right decision to make to undertake it. I think that we will talk in the Patreon about the diminishing appraisal of Israeli citizens of this war as the war went on. But I think that the near universal support on the first day of the war, people who just were convinced that this was a good idea, reflects something that may be true, too. Even though. Though this may have turned out to be a failure. And what might have been true is that if we had this chance to change the face of the Middle east, which was never a sure thing but might have worked, and if we had this chance to create in Iran a polity that no longer seeks to destroy Israel, including with nuclear weapons, weapons and with other weapons of mass destruction, then we needed to take that chance, even if we weren't sure it would work. And now, having taken that chance and having seen that it failed, we, I think, can be in the position of saying our prime minister may have made the best decision at the time and it had a bad outcome and we need to live with it.
- [49:21]
Linda Gradstein
I think you're giving Netanyahu a lot more credit than he deserves, to be quite honest. I think that. That his decision was based as much on the public is now all we're talking about is Iran. All we're talking about is the shelters and the missile attacks. October 7th feels like it was another century ago. Nobody is talking about the fact that Netanyahu has consistently refused to take responsibility, responsibility for the biggest intelligence failure in Israel's history, that he has refused to appoint a commission of inquiry, that his government is moving ahead with the judicial reform even under all of this, that the ultra orthodox are about to get enshrined in law. The fact that they won't have to go to the army and they'll still get billions and billions of dollars while your kids and my kids are going to the army more than they should and matter marriages are imploding and the pressure of the reserves is too much. I think it's. I don't want to go too far. In other words, I don't know that this is only a way of getting public opinion off all of this. But I think that you're giving Netanyahu too much credit. And I think that if that they. I mean, it was certainly a miscalculation on at least from what we see now. But I think that he certainly maybe did want to destroy the nuclear program and that has really been, he's been talking about that for decades. But I think he as much wanted to destroy any public opposition to him. And there's gonna Bethere's an election in October and I think it was as much about politics as anything else.
- [51:09]
Noah Ephron
Well, that's certainly the common view. I disagree with it because of what you said, because you have a who for 20 years has been saying, if given the chance, I will do exactly what he did beginning on February 28th and I will devote myself fully to creating the circumstances where I will have eventually that opportunity to attack Iran. There is nothing in his career that he has been as steadfastly devoted to as as this. He slowly worked, had a lot of luck having a man like Donald Trump who is so careless about attention to detail and so thoughtless about the future impact of anything that he does. He finally created the circumstances where he could do what he has been telling us for, you know, half of our lives that he is planning on doing. And then he did it and it failed. That's probably, that's a tragedy, I think. But I think that there's reason to believe that what he was doing was acting out of a lifelong, fully held, well articulated, often repeated belief that he had and not in response to what the polls said yesterday or last week or last last month about his standing in politics. But, but I'm glad that you said what you said because that is what everyone, everyone believes in. It could well be right now. Listen to this.
- [53:28]
Linda Gradstein
Wow,
- [53:53]
Noah Ephron
Ma. That lovely song is Basi Vuv by Alma Gove. More new music of these last past weeks. And now it is time for our second discussion. So Linda, we have had terrorists pretty much since the start. Why now, after 78 years, do some people think we need a death penalty for terrorists law?
- [54:38]
Linda Gradstein
That's a good question. And you know, last week the Knesset voted into law something called the Death Penalty for Terrorist bill proposed by MKs Limor Sanhar Melech and Nissim Veturi, both of the far right Jewish Power Party. The heart of the bill reads, quote, the purpose of this law is to establish the death penalty for terrorists who carried out lethal terrorist attacks as a means of combating terrorism, including for the protection of the State of Israel, its citizens and residents, enhancing deterrence, preventing bargaining attacks and retribution for the heinous acts of terrorists and to establish the arrangements for carrying out this punishment. The Minister of Defense shall instruct the commander of IDF forces in the area to amend the security Provisions order to read A resident of the area who intentionally causes the death of a person where the act is an act of terrorism as defined in the Counterterrorism Law 2016. In this section, terrorist shall be sentenced to death and to that penalty alone. However, if the military court finds that special circumstances exist justifying the imposition of life imprisonment, it may impose that sentence instead and that penalty alone. A person who intentionally causes the death of another with the aim of negating the existence of the State of Israel under circumstances described in subsection A10 shall be punished by death or life imprisonment and only one of these penalties. The commander of IDF forces in the area shall not have the authority to commute, mitigate or pardon a death sentence imposed on a terrorist as described as above. A condemned prisoner may meet up to two lawyers for professional services. A death sentence shall be carried out within 90 days from the date it becomes final. A death sentence shall be carried out by hanging. An earlier version of the bill describes its purpose like the present penal Code establishes a penalty of life imprisonment for the offense of murder. Experience shows that this punishment does not deter terrorists, as many of them assume that their prison terms will be significantly reduced through deals involving the release release of prisoners. Many terrorists have even returned to their former ways and continued terrorist activity after their release. In addition, the Palestinian Authority transfers funds each year to terrorists imprisoned in Israeli prisons, assisting in their upkeep. Since imprisonment does not provide sufficient deterrence, it is proposed to establish that the penalty for terrorists for acts of murder they have committed shall be death. This penalty is expected to deter and thereby prevent further acts of terror terrorism after the bill passed party line ishli 62 to 48 with only one center right opposition MK named Michal Shir. Segment from Yeshatid abstaining Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister of Internal Security and head of the Jewish Power Party, was quick to celebrate the new law, passage of which was probably his biggest campaign promise four years ago. For the past days, Ben GVIR has been all over tv, radio, podcasts and the Internet Internet framing the new law as a huge and important success. We promised, we delivered, he wrote on Facebook. Of course, the death penalty for terrorist law has many critics abroad and at home. Four of the leading jurists in the country, led by Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer and writing at the behest of the Israel Democracy Institute, sent Minister of Justice Yariv Levine a more than 3,000 word long letter Explaining chapter and verse what's wrong with the new law, the scholar attorneys wrote that most democratic countries have abolished the death penalty because it is cruel, inhumane and blind to human dignity. They say that study after study has shown that the death penalty does not deter crime and especially crime done out of true belief. They said the IDF courts make mistakes and mistakes ending in the death penalty cannot be undone. They said killing all the terrorists would make future hostage exchange deals impossible. Also, tossing the death penalty into the mix would make a shambles of Israel's existing legal framework. It would erode Israel's moral standing. Also, mandatory sentences, especially mandatory death sentences, undermine the authority of judges to use their well judgment. Not allowing for appeal is another problem of the law. The jurist scholar argued that by linking the crime and punishment to its ideological motive, destroying the Jewish state, the law basically applies only to Palestinians. Someone like Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron 32 years ago in what was surely an act of terror, would not receive the death penalty according to this law because he was an eager supporter of as Jewish a state as can be. The Israel Democracy Institute cast doubt on the Knesset standing to write laws that apply in the occupied territories. And finally, they pointed out that the new law violated violates the Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights based on these grounds and more challenges to the law have already been submitted to the Supreme Court by numerous human rights groups and opposition MKs, and the court has agreed to hear the cases. Of course. Noah, there are those who would argue that there is no tribunal more supreme than this podcast. What do we have to say about this newest law in Israel books?
- [60:07]
Noah Ephron
I'm glad that people have finally turned to us for this important issue to hear our judicious words. I hate everything about this law. Let me be more specific. What I hate most about this law is the fact that it will never actually be a law. It will be struck down by the Supreme Court. It is written to be struck down by the Supreme Court and it is written to be struck down by the Supreme Court in order that the right wing, and especially the far right wing have an issue to run on in the elections that are coming up soon. The idea being that the Supreme Court says, look, it's just not constitutional, quote unquote constitutional. Israel of course, doesn't have a constitution, but it is not in line with Israel's basic laws to have a law that seems to discriminate on the basis of of ideological grounds. So it's not right to have a law that for the same act will automatically sentence some people to death by hanging. But a verdict which other people will never receive by virtue of the fact that they have a particular ideological view. So the fact that this is a law aimed to make people mad at the Supreme Court on the right and come out to vote is loathsome in my eyes. Going into the law itself, the fact that it is structured on ideological grounds is another thing that I despise about this law. I think that a citizen of Israel or, or a person living within Israel should be completely free to doubt that the state has a right to exist. They should be free to say that, they should be free to write it. They should be free to try to organize a political party saying that we need to disband this country and turn it into something else. Having any this particular political view or any political view is not a crime, should not be a crime. Killing people is a crime. And if you want to have, have death sentences for murder or for certain kinds of murder, I am not necessarily opposed to that, though I am worried about it. But to have it be criminalizing a certain kind of thought or a certain kind of idea or a certain kind of ideology strikes me as something that is frightening, dangerous and bad for us all. There are other things about this law that one that one can find objectionable as well. Like the fact that it does, as I mentioned, take away from judges the right to adjudicate. And it says that if, if you find someone guilty of committing this kind of. This, this kind of murder, then you cannot take into account any extenuating circumstances or circumstances at all. You cannot, as a judge, decide that this, I don't know, 16 year old who committed the act did so because they had been brainwashed and therefore did not deserve to die, but deserved some other punishment or perhaps to be put under psychiatric care. Any law that takes away from judges the right, right to have a human or humane judgment seems loathsome in my eyes as well. So for all of those reasons, and without necessarily me personally being against the death penalty and against the death penalty for people who murder a lot of people on the street because they want to terrorize the entire population, even for someone who's not against that in principle, like me, I find this law to be just horrid. I take some comfort in the fact that we can be confident that it will never actually be a law because the Supreme Court will stop it. Even as that, as I said, is one of the features of the law that bothers me the most. Linda, what do you think I agree
- [64:34]
Linda Gradstein
with some of what you said, although not all of it. I think that. I mean, the definition of apartheid is having two legal systems for two different peoples living in the same. The same area. And so that's exactly what this is. I mean, Jewish settlers don't have the death penalty and if they commit terrorism, and Palestinians who commit terrorism do have the death penalty. So that, to me is very, very problematic.
- [64:58]
Noah Ephron
I want to hear everything you have to say. But about that point, which is often brought up, I'm not sure that I entirely see it when I actually read the law. Because if you're, say, you know, a German who comes to Israel and because you think Israel has no right to exist, murders some people, you can be put to death. If you're a Jew, including an Israeli Jew who is opposed to the state and wants to destroy the state, you can be put to death for that. Apartheid seems a crucial aspect of apartheid is that it really is racial. The way that you're born, what your genes are like, your biology determines your ultimate fate. And this law does not do that. So I'm not. I think that this law is, you know, is written in a way that is unfair and terrible. And de facto, were it to be enacted, it would lead only to Palestinians and other pro Palestinian terrorists to being killed. But I do not see it as being an apartheid law.
- [65:57]
Linda Gradstein
Okay, maybe you're right. I mean, look, the whole situation in the west bank in which Jewish settlers are under. Under Israeli civil law and Palestinians are under Israeli military law is problematic. But let's leave that aside in terms of. So would you feel differently about the law if it called for the death penalty for anybody who commits a terrorist act, Jew or Palestinian, would that change the way that you feel about this law?
- [66:29]
Noah Ephron
It would partly change the way that I feel about the law. Like, no law could be acceptable if it does not include Baruch Goldstein under the broad tent of people who are potentially affected by it. That said, I would also oppose any law that does not give judges the right to actually make decisions about the sentence and states that anyone who can commits act X through by virtue of ideology Y must be hung or sent
- [67:04]
Linda Gradstein
to prison for life and with no possibility of appeal. That's my other problem with it.
- [67:09]
Noah Ephron
Absolutely.
- [67:10]
Linda Gradstein
But at the same time, if we look at what happened on October 7th when 250 Israelis and other people from Thailand and other places were taken captive, had there been this law against terrorism, I mean, Professor Kremnitzer talked about there's no possibility of a prisoner exchange but there's also no interest in them taking captives, in that anybody who takes captives apparently would be put to death. And I wonder, I know that the studies have shown that this does not decrease crime, but when we're talking specifically about terrorism, the fact is that Israel released Yahya Sinwar, who was later assassinated in the Gilad Shalit deal. And Israel has consistently released some of, including recently some of the most terrible Hamas, Hamas terrorists. And if you assume that they're ideological, then you assume that they are going to go back to terrorism if they can.
- [68:27]
Noah Ephron
Some of them.
- [68:28]
Linda Gradstein
Right.
- [68:28]
Noah Ephron
Yes. I think you put your finger on a really important point and it was more obvious in the original version of the law that was submitted more than a year ago, where in the description of the law that went with the submission, they said its main purpose is to prevent Israel from being able to hand back terrorists to Palestinians after people were kidnapped, which is what it was designed to prevent. The next Gilad Chalit deal or hostage deal in the Gaza war.
- [69:02]
Linda Gradstein
And I wonder if I was the parent of a 16 year old Palestinian teenager and this law was on the books, I might lock him in his room. I mean, to the extent that I could and because I would be so afraid of what could happen. So does it lead to deterrence? I don't know. I really don't know. And so that's where my hesitation about this. I mean everything in my liberal says we shouldn't be doing this and we don't do this kind of thing. I don't know. And the truth is that Israel of course has done it with Eichmann. Israel did, did assassinate or kill Adolf Eichmann. And Israel has consistently carried out assassinations. Even yesterday the military secretary to the head of Hezbollah was killed in an extrajudicial assassination. And apparently this big operation in Lebanon killed dozens of senior Hezbollah people as well as of course the pagers that exploded, killing a whole bunch, hundreds of people. So it's not that Israel doesn't do this kind of thing. I do. Again, I agree with you about that. The judges should be able to tell things. You know, not one of the terrorists of October 7 has been brought to justice in Israel. And they apparently legally. It's very complicated in terms of how to bring them to justice. So meanwhile you have all of these people sitting in prison who haven't been brought to trial, which is its own problem. Administrative detention tension to me is a legal problem. So is this just one more legal problem? I also think that it's meant as the whole, the noose the little pins of the noose that Ben GVIR was wearing I think were horrible and I think does it given how do we it caused me to think about, you know, the value of human life and what do you do about that? Am I opposed to the death penalty in principle. The other thing is that like in America, they've had these cases where there's DNA evidence that comes out 20 years later that the guy who supposedly committed the murders wasn't the one who's the guy who's been sitting in jail for 20 years, that it was a mistake. I don't know how much that happens in Israel. That said, I've sat in on Trump trials of Palestinians and it's very chaotic in the Ofer military court where the lawyers barely know the clients and haven't really had a chance to talk to them. And it's almost kind of a rubber stamp. And the Shin Bet says we have secret evidence that this guy committed a terrorist act. And the military judges say okay, and basically do what the Shin Bet wants. So I really have mixed feelings, I guess is what I'm saying.
- [71:57]
Noah Ephron
Well, my feelings are not mixed.
- [71:59]
Linda Gradstein
There you have it.
- [72:01]
Noah Ephron
Now listen to this. That lovely song is Lifnish Loshim by Nitsan alone. More music of justice these past few weeks or month or two that just came out for these very, very odd times that we're living through. And now it is time for our VOD A Country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that maybe brought us solace as we found our ways to and from our fortified rooms or bomb shelters over the last little while, which we don't need to be doing anymore, or may have surprised or amused, delighted or enchanted and source hold or possibly even fluged us as we did that going up and down into those over the last little while. Linda, what is your what a country?
- [74:14]
Linda Gradstein
Well, as I told you last week, I was going to Kibbutz Kittura for the Seder and it's a wonderful place. You're in the middle of the desert and you drive in and it's green. And there are all these people who really believe in the future of the kibbutz movement. It's still kind of a socialist as you can get kind of in Israel. And my daughter led the Seder and she did a beautiful job and it was really just family. And my brother and sister in law, Neil and Sharon and their four sons and a couple of partners and one of the sons is married and expecting their first child and Our family. And it was just wonderful. And she did a beautiful seder, including, when we got to Arameo Vadavi, she asked each of the people who hadn't been born in Israel to tell a story about one of their first seders in Israel. I mean, she did a beautiful job preparing and getting everybody involved. And we went till about 12:30 in the morning, which. Which to me is the perfect time for a seder to end. And we had good food and matzo balls and. Anyway, and then the next day on Hag, in fact, we had this kind of funny conversation of how when we all made aliyah decades ago, calls, phone calls were really expensive. Do you remember this? And that we used to call our parents, like, every two weeks for five minutes with a stopwatch. Don't go over five minutes. It's really expensive. And we were saying how we think that in some ways that helped us become independent adults because we weren't in constant contact with our parents. And one of my sons was there, and I have his permission to tell this story, netanel, who was 25. And we left, and he was listening to this discussion. And we left on Friday around 11 in the morning to come back to Jerusalem for Shabbat. And he said he was going to a party in Mitz Peramon and would be back on Shabbat. And I said, how are you gonna get there? He said, don't worry. Now he is 25 years old, right? He's not five. So we came back to Jerusalem and we had a lovely, quiet Shabbat. And then he didn't show up, which, again, I wasn't particularly worried. And Saturday night, I sent him a message, you know, everything okay? And it didn't go through. In other words, it hadn't gotten to him.
- [76:40]
Noah Ephron
Wow.
- [76:41]
Linda Gradstein
And I thought, okay, you know, maybe his phone ran out of batteries. And. And he's a kid who, during a normal workday, can call me four or five times during that workday. Hi, mom, how you doing? What are you doing? And he's done about 300 days of me louim. And he's kind of trying to figure out what his next move is. And then we woke up Sunday morning, and he still hadn't gotten in touch. And all day Sunday, I called a couple of times and sent him a few messages. And by Sunday evening, I was really starting to work. So I called and we called Cliff's brother on the kibbutz, and we said, is he there by chance? Like, maybe he'd come back to the kibbutz. He Said, no, he's not here. And that was the end of it. And I called a good friend of his and I said, tom, I don't know where he is. And Tom, late Saturday night, probably at about 11:00', clock, 11:30, called the police and said, we haven't seen him since Friday morning and we're getting a little bit worried. And so this is now Sunday. So he had been sort of officially missing for more than 48 hours. And so at midnight, we get a knock on our door and there is a police car with a male policewoman, a male policeman, a female policewoman and an ambulance. And our heart stopped because we thought that they were coming to tell us that, God forbid, something had happened because of the ambulance. And the reason they sent the ambulance is because they thought that he might be locked in his room or whatever. And they said they came in, it's now like midnight, we wanna see his room. And he actually has a little kind of separate apartment made out of our parking space. In true Israeli fashion, we closed off the parking space, put in a show, and he lives there. So we let them in and they started asking us, you know, does he do this kind of thing all the time? And my two fears were, first of all, an accident. And secondly, I thought that maybe he had taken some drugs. As far as I know, he does smoke pot, but doesn't take drugs. And maybe he had taken something and had had a bad reaction. And then at about one o' clock in the morning, the police called and said that my husband had to come down to the police station to file a missing persons report. And I said, tell them you'll come in the morning. And the truth is, is that I had planned to call the police if he wasn't back by Monday morning. And they then called half an hour later. And so my husband went down and they were kind of suspicious of us, you know, like when they said to him, why didn't you file a missing persons report on Friday night when he didn't show up? And my husband said, because he's 25, not 5. And then they came back on Monday morning at about 8 o' clock in the morning, and of course we hadn't slept all night. And they asked us some more questions. And by then I was just sort of almost like, you freeze, something inside you freezes. And I felt nauseous and I felt like something happened to him because he does get in touch so much. And so his friend actually then hacked into his Instagram and put on his Instagram his own on my son. Nitson nails Instagram. Has anybody seen Netanel? Because we can't find him. And in the end, Tom got on his motorcycle and drove down to Mitsperramon. And my son was at something. Now, some of our younger listeners I had never heard of this, was at something called the Rainbow Gathering. Do you know about this, Noah?
- [80:23]
Noah Ephron
Yeah.
- [80:24]
Linda Gradstein
So I had never heard of this. So the Rainbow. According to the Internet, rainbow gatherings in Israel are temporary intentional communities, communities focused on peace, love and ecology, often held in nature, including the Negev Desert near Mitzpahramon. These gatherings are unofficial, non commercial and self organized by participants often calling each other siblings who share resources and food. And so, first of all, there was no Klita. There was no cell phone reception there. And he said that a couple of times he thought that maybe he should get in touch and he was gonna climb up a nearby mountain to get. Try to get cell phone recept. Something happened or somebody was playing some good music that he wanted to listen to. So it was this sort of hippie dippy. And then he said that he thought of that conversation we had had where we thought it was good for their independence not to be in constant touch. Anyway, so Tom went down to. Drove down to Mitzparimon, found him. He could not understand why we were so worried. He thought that it wasn't such a big deal. Although he said when he thought about it further, it was. I said that I might kill him when he gets home. And I was wondering how the wine selection was in jail. If I go to jail for murder. Oh. But one thing I wanted to say, what I learned from it. Sorry, I forgot the important point, which is we talk all the time about the fragility of everything and the fragility of life. And it's very hard to live your life that way. Right. You say live every day as if it's your last day and try to make it count. But when I really thought something had happened to him, I thought how. And it made me think about all of the. So many people who have lost children and how do you keep going? I thought about my friend Rachel Goldberg, Poland. How do you keep going? And I have only admiration for those people who do manage to keep going. And I'm just so grateful that nothing happened to him and I'm so mad at him, but I'm also really grateful.
- [82:33]
Noah Ephron
Oh, my God. Oh, my God, what a story. I'm so sorry. I think you should ground him until he's 30.
- [82:39]
Linda Gradstein
Well, that's what I said. He's 25, I'm gonna ground. I thought about it, by the way.
- [82:45]
Noah Ephron
I think by the time he's 30, he'll have understood what he did. He'll have had a chance to think about what he did and he'll have understood it. Oh my. Oh. So, yes, it's hard for me to go after that, but I will anyway. So there, there, there is this set piece. It's a cliche in old westerns. Like a fight would break out in a saloon and tables would get flipped and chairs crack down on people's heads, leaving people out cold and others are cold cocked with the butt of a pistol and bottles of booze are smashed and shattered and then all at once the thing is over and the piano player sits down at the spinet and he starts to play and in no time like order returns and people in hats with big brims are putting down their bets on their hands of poker and the bartender is setting out shots like nothing ever happened. And that is what today is like here a little. We got the message that, you know, in the middle of the night, the night before yesterday, but basically yesterday morning to clear out our mattresses and bedding from the shelter that we've been sleeping in under the Gordon School. And this morning, for the first time in almost six weeks, the school was filled with hundreds of kids as we record jostling each other and they're telling tales about what they've been up to. I saw them this morning while I was out walking the dog and walking the dog at the beach for the very first time in a month and a half, I saw that the boardwalk is just full to the hilt with runners and walkers and bikers and recumbent bikers. And traffic on the streets was backed up for blocks, especially on Haryarkon street, like it was every day while we have things the way they normally were. But for the last couple of months they haven't been normal. It haven't been normal for a long time. So already I can feel these past six months weeks like unanchored to any reality that I've ever experienced before. These past six weeks are already starting to become kind of gauzy and hazy in my memory. But before they recede fully into some sort of miasma of memory, I just wanted to say that alongside everything else, there was something not just weird but also weirdly nice about our time in particular in the shelter. Now, how I learned about the ceasefire was at 3 in the morning the night before last there was a. So all of Us sleeping in the shelter. We were roused some more, some less. And Ricky Puch, who, she's an artist who lives in the building over from ours, her girl or and our girl, went through all of school together from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, and they're friends to this day, or was also there sleeping in the shelter. And Ricky Puch's boy and ours were in kindergarten together. There are a lot of connections. And the night before last, Riki Puch was sitting up on her camping mattress, leaning against the wall, scrolling through her phone and. And she said, trump says there's a ceasefire. And I said, really? And she said, yeah. And I rolled over and went back to sleep. And it is a strange thing hearing this news from that woman in this place. The great and very controversial social psychologist Stanley Milgram. He's the guy famous for those Yale experiments where he got people to administer ostensible electric shocks to ostensible participants. In an ostensible experiment on learning with increasing severity, a lot of the people followed its orders until the ostensibly participants were really just actors, ostensibly passed out. He also studied something that he called the familiar stranger, a person who you come sort of to know. Especially in cities, this is common because you're like say at the same bus stop every day at the same time, or you shop in the same bodega at the same time, but at the same time you don't really know these people. So you know them and you don't know them. It's a strange relationship, these sort of strangers, sort of friends. And Ricky Puch, she's more than that. Our kids are friends, but still, it's weird that suddenly she's my real for a month and a half telling me that news of existential importance at three in the morning while a siren blasts outside. And in truth, the shelter was a factory of familiar strangers. There were the two couples who slept across from us. One was two moms and a little girl. She had her fifth birthday underground. And we brought the little girl a helium balloon and a play DOH pumper set. And the other couple were two moms and an eight year old boy and sometimes his nine year old cousin. And the two couples were somehow related. Two of them were sisters with each other and they had lugged down a full size regular mattress. And one night they played home alone for the boys, the boy and his cousin, even though the movie was in English, though the kids, they were in stitches, laughing and laughing into the night. And Susan and I found ourselves looking over at one another and laughing. During the daytime when there were sirens, the place filled up with lots of people. Some were regulars and some were one off people. Among the regulars were a French family, maybe four kids, maybe five, who wore quipote, but they also used their phone on Shabbat. Their father did not wear a kipah. He took it on himself to close and seal the heavy metal doors on their side of the shelter. Susan did the same on our side because the shelter was under the school, and because the school has basketball courts and makeshift soccer fields. Sometimes, when the sirens came at just the right time, the shelter filled with kids dribbling a basketball or kicking back and forth a soccer ball. And you could get bonked in the head with a soccer ball at any time. One time, the shelter filled up with little girls dressed as princesses and unicorns. That's all there were. There were like eight girls that you were either a princess or a unicorn, but either way you had sparkles. Maybe they were straight from a birthday party underway in the neighborhood, or maybe in Independence park across the street from the school. When the sirens went off, one thing was the dogs. It wasn't long ago when not that many people had dogs in Tel Aviv, but now lots and lots of them do. I think one in every five households or so has a dog. And we, of course, brought Lucy the dog each time each siren we came. But each siren also brought a different collection of dogs. And some growled and barked at each other, and some played with each other, nipped at the napes of each other's necks. So each time, with a new mix of dogs, there was like a new little drama about how would they get along? Would they get along? Would they bark? Would you have to? One time, long after a siren started and the heavy door was shut and sealed, there was a loud thwop, thwop, thwap of a palm banging against the metal of the door. And there was someone screaming on the other side. And Susan ran to open the door, and by the time she did, the man who was maybe 30 on the other side, he was lying on the ground just screaming. And Susan called to me to bring one of our pillows, and she put it under his head, and she slid to sit down next to him on the floor, and she asked him to tell him what was wrong. And he said that he'd worked for Magenda Viradom, the emergency ambulance service, and he knew that what he was having was a panic attack. He said he'd been above ground when a missile hit on the first day of the war. And so he had. Now he was in a full panic, and he'd been drinking, apparently a lot. And Susan asked if there'd been any drugs that were worth knowing about. And by now most everyone in the shelter was gathered around. And somebody said, I'll go upstairs where there's service, and I'll call Mada Magen de Vida Dome. And the man screamed that he wanted his friend Roy, I think. And Susan said, I'll call him. Is his number in your phone? And she took his phone, and it was. And she did. And he didn't answer in the first message. So she said to the man on the floor, he's probably in a shelter somewhere. He probably doesn't have reception. I'll keep calling him until he answers. And then she said, hey, why don't you breathe with me? And the man on the floor breathed with her until he stopped gasping. And then the man came down from up out of the shelter and said, the Mata people are on their way. And the French guy, he brought water. And Susan called again, and Roy answered the phone eventually, and he said that he was on his way, too. And soon the EMTs were there, and everyone was so concerned, and everyone in the shelter, they talked so gently and calmly and nicely to this man who by and by returned to him so though he remained very drunk. And all of this is just this teeny fraction of what happened in the shelter. I got through three shelter books over the week. That oral history of Paul McCartney and wings, and that thick biography of the cartoonist Robert Crumb, and then that new book of the making of Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen. Mostly, what it was was for this place underground for 40 days, it just came alive with people and dogs and drama and Pothos and Tskokim laughs, making it clear that whatever Stanley Milgram may have shown about how people can quickly become hard and heartless, it is equally true that people can take a hard and heartless place made of concrete and metal, buried a story and a half underground, and fill it with life and joy and warmth and Bonheimee. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks, Hui Thai Shellam, our station manager, without whom we would have none of this, and who has worked all sorts of miracles to make it possible to keep on recording through the sirens in the shelters that hopeful are a thing of the past, even as his own home was actually hit in one of the attacks. Thanks to Archibolim, my favorite band from Kibla 2. 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 your support. It keeps the show going, keeps the station going. It keeps us moved and grateful and in your debt. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen. You are very valuable time to listen and ask you to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Apple Podcast and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this the international lawyers and diplomats have been all over the thing with a fine tooth comb and in their ten point plan, the Iranians apparently no longer insist, despite rumors to the contrary, that the cessation of hostilities are contingent upon an immediate cessation of the creation of new episodes of the Promise podcast. This delinkage, as the negotiators call it, is widely considered to be a major continent session on the part of the Persian regime. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today as we record April 9, it is international Unicorn Day. So stipulated way back in 2015 because, as one webpage devoted to the event put it, unicorns clearly deserve it. A sentiment that one can only vouchsafe. Of course among the cognoscenti, the best of all Unicorn Day related websites is is unicorn-day.com which comprises only a single page. The homepage which has in bright pink letters against a backdrop of twinkly stars in a dark night, exactly nine words quote unicorn day april 9th make unicorns great again. Mooga. End quote. Of course unicorns have appeared in Scottish heraldry at least since the reign of King William I in the late 12th century. And by the 15th century gold was coins called unicorns bearing the images of unicorns were minted in Scotland. This during the reign of James III and by the time of James iv of course with the union of the crowns, Scotland was represented on the flag by the unicorns, which was by then recognized as the country's national animal. Alongside on the flag the lion that was used to represent England. All of this history and more is canvassed in a terrific essay called Unicorn Day is really here on the BBC site. Thank God for the BBC, which essay includes a picture of a unicorn at a winter solstice ceremony at Stonehenge and mentions that quote, narwhals are known as the unicorns of the sea. End quote. Plus do I need to mention that the site Getty Images contains 78,964 fully licensable images of quota unquote unicorns puking rainbows. And obviously I am made of flesh and blood. If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you tickle me, do I not laugh? If you charm me with tales of unicorns, do I not get ensource old? Obviously I do. And it cannot come as a surprise to you that International Unicorn Day is probably my favorite day of the entire year. But even though it is not yet halfway over already, surely like King James IV felt in 1603 of Scottish independence, I to came can feel it fading away, not to return. At least for a whole nother year, if ever, even not. So the Promise Podcast we will be back for you very soon. Probably next week, though we're still working out the kinks. But surely very soon. Reminding you that while some things like unicorns remind you that we are ever and always surrounded by whimsy and magic and enchantment, other things remind you that even the most whimsical, magical and enchanting things can, after you listen to them, maybe a bit too much, make you lose your lunch on this the Promise Podcast.