Miriam Hershlag (7:52)

I appreciate it and I'm clearing my schedule for the day, but I only will accept a Nobel Prize for what I can do with a butternut squash. So there's that. Now.

Noah Ephron (8:03)

It's amazing.

Noah Ephron (8:07)

Now, as for me, my name is Noah Ephron. I don't mean to boast, but soon after last week's show came out, I was speaking to my closest of friends, Bill Slott, who I have probably never mentioned on the podcast before because Bill prefers to shy away from attention, which preference I try to respect, and ever since the papers here began to call him, accurately, the best and most colorful tour guide in the history of the Jewish people, I gather that he has just been trying to stay out of the limelight, which, like I say, is a wish that I can only comply with, which is not easy, especially when given the astonishing singing voice he's got. Plus he is beloved by all. But I digress. I was speaking with Bill Slotted, who has also written some of the best songs you've ever heard, including the Bolshevik Boogie, which when you see him, and you will see him, you've got to ask him to sing. But again, I digress. I was talking to Bill Slott, who did I mention took off months to help the people of Masaf or YATA save their homes, and who still gives a day each week to that cause. And he said of last week's show, in which maybe you heard it in an angst and rage filled torrent of barely coherent complaints about Haaretz for its article with that still infuriating headline about the killing Fields, I apparently said that in protest not only would I never read the English Harts again, but I would never write for the English Harts again, which is a joke on so many levels and also maybe the most pretentious thing I've ever said. And people, I do pretension real good, as good as anybody, maybe better. I hold, and this is true, a Jonathan Franzen Award for pretension given out each year by the Society for Cinephiles, Oenophiles, Bibliophiles, Logophiles and Torophiles is lovers of fine cheese. And I was talking to Bill Slott after he heard the show while biking up the mountain behind Kibbutz Dura in the Arava. I won't mention that Bill Slott biked across America side to side and then top to bottom, because that's the last thing Bill would want me to talk about. And Bill's evaluation of what he heard on the podcast, he expressed it in just five words. He said, noah, you really showed Haaretz. Then after a beat, he said, think about the high level of meetings they've been having all week. Oh no, Efron's not gonna write for us again. What are we gonna do? And I'm not bragging.

Miriam Hershlag (10:19)

I understand. I'm sorry. It was times of Israel that had had high level meetings because we seized the golden opportunities.

Noah Ephron (10:26)

Absolutely. I'm sure that that's exactly what was happening. And I am not bragging. God knows my parents brought me up better than that. But what I lack in modesty and what I lack in good judgment, karma has made up for for me with really, really good friends. Today we got two topics of historically un importance. But first we have this matter that we are following with alert interest and great concern as part of an occasional series we like to call the Promise Podcast. Reveres the queer, clear weirdness that appears in spheres. Not all that rare, we avere if we stare unimpaired.

Noah Ephron (11:03)

I was on my bike yesterday, going from one meeting to another, listening to the radio on my earbuds. It was maybe 11:30 in the morning and Karen Neubach was Talking to a 23 year old cab driver named Chachar Levi from Rishon Lizion, south of Tel Aviv, whose father, Eitan Levi, he was also a cab driver who lived in Rishon Etion. And on the morning of October 7th, Eitan Levy had a very early fair, a woman who was going before sunrise to the Nova Festival. And on the way back home, Eitan Levi was shot dead in his taxi by Hamas men who put him in the trunk and drove him to Gaza City. We all know the story, I guess by now we all know all the stories. And there's a video of Eitan Levi's body getting dragged through the streets of Gaza with kids running up to kick him and stomp his face. And it's very hard to watch it and I don't know why anyone would watch it, but I did. And I think pretty much most all of us saw it. And Karen Neubach is gently nudging Shachar Levi to tell what his father's body may be coming home for burial in the context of this new agreement that we're talking about now, what it would mean to him and his family. And she's trying to understand exactly why it is so important, exactly what it does. And Shakar Levi tells how, for instance, he and his girlfriend, Shir David is her name, they have a date for their wedding, it's next month in August. And even though they want to get married and they want to start their own family, already Shakar Levi thinks that he's going to have to postpone the thing yet again for a third time because he just cannot bring himself to have the thing, not when his father, which is to say his father's body is in some room or some tunnel in Gaza. And Karen Neubach, she asked Shahar Levi to tell some about his father and about his family. And Shachar Levi says.

Noah Ephron (13:57)

I am my Abba's only biological child. I have three sisters and brothers. My Ima is in her second go round and he took care of my siblings in every possible way, economically, emotionally. Just like I miss him, they also miss him very, very much. They miss having that father figure in the background. My Folks got divorced in 2006, my IMA started a new family with her new partner. My Ema came out of the closet. She met a woman, her partner with the years, three enchanting kids were born. A six year old girl and four year old twin boys. Maima's partner gave birth to them. But they are the kids of both of them in every and my sister and brother in every possible way. And my parents, after the divorce, they stayed very, very close friends. And one of the decisions that my father reached together with my mother's partner is that he can see their kids as his own kids. And since that decision, we became one big family. He helped us with many, many things. He was a father figure, like I said, he supported us financially. He was our rock economically, he was our rock spiritually. My Ema's partner, she misses him so much. They would speak every day.

Noah Ephron (15:12)

And you could think maybe this was some exaggeration in the way that after they're gone, we can sometimes exaggerate how good and how beloved and how tightly stitched into the fabric of our lives someone was. But it is true that Aviva Levi Zaki, Shachar Levi's Ima Eitan Levi's ex, she never gave up Eitan Levi's name. She's still a Levi, even though the name she grew up with is Gafso. And Aviva Levi, Zaki's new spouse, Chen Levi Zaki, she took Eitan Levi's name too. And their kids, Sunny Reef and River, they are all Levi's too. And Eitan Levi, he is their Abba. Shachar Levi said how maybe everything that happened has been hardest on those little kids, Sunny Reef and River, because they are so young and because Eitan Levi was so big and so constant a presence in their lives. An artist named Michal Kaspit Bobrov, she has a project where she makes teddy bears out of old clothes of people who died. And she also dresses up the teddy bears in teddy bear sized miniatures of the most familiar and memorable clothes those people used to wear. And Shir David Chakhar, Levi's fiance, got in touch with her and she made three bears. One of them is wearing a khaki fleece jacket like Eitan Levy always used to wear, with the same insignia on it. It is in fact the fleece jacket that Eitan Levi used to wear, and another is wearing Eitan Levy's jeans and another is his T shirt. Part of the idea is the clothes smell like the person who used to wear them. And if you press on the bear's belly. Then you hear Eitan talking. His voice is taken from old WhatsApp voice messages that he left for the kids back in the day.

Noah Ephron (17:22)

Sunny. Sunny, right, that I love Sunny and Reef and river, and I'm going to bring you surprises, lots and lots of surprises. And also some Taffy and Shachar Levi and Chir David, they say that the little ones, Sunny Reef and River, they get comfort from this thing, from this bear, although sometimes they say you can see him getting frustrated with the thing that altogether says maybe just a minute's worth of stuff. And of course it's never enough. And I tell you all this not because I learned from it something new worth pointing out, more like the opposite. I learned from it the same old thing that for some reason I seem to need to learn over and over and over. I got in my mind a picture of what a cab driver, father of a cab driver from Rishon Lizion is like. It's like I got a fix on it. And the same old thing that I for some reason seem to need to learn over and over and over is that I don't really know anything about anybody because every one of these lives is so much weirder and so much more complicated and so much more human and so much more beautiful than anything that I can imagine and convince myself somehow that I know. May Shachar Levi and Shir David build a faithful and loving home in Israel. May they and Sunny River Reef, Aviva and Khen know no more sorrow. And may Tanlevi's memory be for a blessing.

Noah Ephron (18:58)

Today. Two discussions. Discussion 1 Fine dining in D.C. as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah flew to Washington this week to break bread with President Donald Trump to dot the I's and cross the T's on an expected, at any moment, temporary ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas, we will consider the trip and the forthcoming agreement that spurred it, trying to make heads. And after that, tales of what they mean. And our second discussion, Dr. Sophie's Choice, as word comes that an expert committee is being put together to make recommendations to politicians about which hostages should get out of Gaza first, in the context of the incipient deal that I mentioned before in which only half of the live hostages will be released, 10 of the 20, some of them right away and others only at the end of two long months. The backlash against the news that the committee is being formed is vicious, with people invoking the image of Dr. Josef Mengele with his clipboard on the train platform in Auschwitz 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. After reports rise of Grok, Twitter's AI bot going all in on antisemitism, praising Hitler and disparaging, quote, radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti white hate. End quote. We will try to figure out what to make of this while saying ET to Grok. But before we get to any of that, listen to this.

Noah Ephron (22:21)

That song is.

Noah Ephron (22:23)

By Al Mog Tabaka. More music of these weird and troubled times. And now it's time for our first discussion. So, Miriam, twas a not yet sealed deal that brought our prime minister to Washington. What should we make of the trip? And what should we make of the unsealed deal?

Miriam Hershlag (22:41)

Yeah. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sarah Netanyahu flew to Washington Monday to have dinner with US President Donald Trump, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, and nine or ten others before being served the first course, possibly goat cheese gateau, if the Internet is to be trusted. Prime Minister Netanyahu had already handed across the table a folder containing the nomination he had sent to Oslo, pressing the selection committee to give next year's Nobel Peace prize to the US President.

Noah Ephron (23:17)

I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved and you should get it. Thank you very much. This I didn't know. Well, thank you very much. Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you. Wow. Great minds think alike, huh?

Miriam Hershlag (23:43)

Yep. It's amazing. Me and Donald Trump in the same week. Perhaps you can get from the recording, Noah, just how moved and surprised Donald Trump was. Moved because it was a sweet and heartfelt gesture, and surprised perhaps, because, as everyone knows except you, Noah, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee famously accepts nominations only from September 1 to January 31. And one imagines President Trump was maybe concerned not to embarrass his friend, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was seemingly unaware that his letter of endorsement, along with your endorsement of me, is probably sitting in a spam folder on a server in Oslo. But still, happily, everyone got through the event with a great deal of dignity. Ahead of Prime Minister Netanyahu's arrival, President Trump let it be known that he expected the visit to include the festive announcement of a newly negotiated ceasefire and hostage hostage release agreement with Hamas, the final details of which were being hammered out in Qatar starting the weekend before. In the event, a second meeting in the Oval Office, a huddle really was tacked on, and the final details have not yet been ironed out. Talks are ongoing between the teams in Qatar, but a copy of the agreement that was still being dickered over when the president and the prime minister broke bread was leaked to the Associated Press. So we have a good sense of what the general terms of the agreement are, which are these. Upon signing the agreement, a 60 day ceasefire will start. During these 60 days, 10 living hostages and 18 dead hostages will be released, meaning that 10 living hostages and 12 dead hostages will remain in Hamas hands in Gaza. For each hostage released, living and dead Palestinians imprisoned in Israel will be released according to a complicated calculus that takes into account whether the hostage is alive or dead and the severity of the crimes committed by the Palestinians. Palestinian prisoner IDF forces would withdraw to limited areas at the periphery of Gaza. Humanitarian aid would be distributed at points in Gaza. Negotiations would take place during the 60 days with the aim of reaching a final and permanent ceasefire agreement, accompanied by a release of all the remaining hostages. President Trump will personally guarantee that Israel will abide by the terms of the temporary ceasefire so long as Hamas does as well. And President Trump offers assurances that Israel will act in good faith in the final and permanent ceasefire negotiations and that this 60 day agreement will lead to a permanent cessation of the war. The biggest sticking points in the temporary ceasefire negotiations, according to unattributed leaks, had mostly to do with the mechanism by which humanitarian aid would be distributed and whether Israel would or would not need to withdraw from every centimeter of what was Gazan territory before October 7, 2023. All of which raises a bunch of questions. Noah, what should we make of the Prime Minister's inconclusive trip to Washington, the meat of which, as it were, seemed to be on the dining table, with policy discussions remaining foggy? And what should we make of the reported deal? And of course, how should we understand the fact that yet again, Israel is demanding not to end the war outright, but instead, to put it on pause, getting back only just over half of the host instead of every last one of them all at once?

Noah Ephron (27:17)

Well, this last thing is the big mystery, right? And when it happened in the past that.

Noah Ephron (27:27)

Prime Minister Netanyahu insisted in Israel's name on not ending the war once and for all and getting all of the hostages Back.

Noah Ephron (27:38)

One could say I could say I believe that what was motivating him was a desire to keep alive the issue of Iran and these broader issues in the region. That it was useful to him to have the war go on because he felt that this would be an opportunity to set back or destroy Iran's nuclear program, which in fact, maybe it was. Certainly that happened. And in retrospect, that's certainly the way that the Prime Minister is presenting the history. But now at this moment, it is completely unclear to me why he believes that not ending the war all at once is a good idea. And I have a few, like, broad theories. I know obviously most everyone says, well, the only reason he's gonna do it, he wants to do it, is to keep his coalition alive. And maybe that is a reason, though I've always been skeptical that it's that very, very base level of politics that is motivating Prime Minister Netanyahu. It partly. So the theory that I have is that maybe because he and we are completely unprepared for really negotiating a final agreement, which is to say we don't have a clue about what kind of governance we can imagine in Gaza that would allow us to go forward feeling as though Hamas had been dethroned and the settlements in the south of Israel were safe from rockets from Gaza and from future attacks like October 7th from Gaza. So maybe it's because that work has never been done, not since October 7th. And we have no idea, no idea whether to accept the Egyptian plan, which to me seems like a good plan of having a multinational Arab force in Gaza headed by the Palestinian Authority and the governance that they can offer, or whether it's something else. But aside from that, I don't even have a theory.

Noah Ephron (29:56)

It's so frustrating to feel as though it's obvious that this is the moment when the war should end and. And he absolutely saying no. Do you have a theory about why that is?

Miriam Hershlag (30:09)

I think the political side bears looking at closely not only because of the sort of standard critique of.

Miriam Hershlag (30:22)

Netanyahu's need for power or arrogance or political survival, but because his political survival definitely integrates with what is possible. So right now we're in the last throes of the current Knesset session. They go into break on July 27th. So you could make the case that a 60 day sort of bridge between two parts of a deal means that the second part of the deal will happen without the kind of political pressure.

Miriam Hershlag (30:58)

That would be in play if the Knesset was in session. And a vote of no confidence would almost automatically be brought by the far right wing of his committee, of his coalition.

Noah Ephron (31:09)

Can I ask you a question about this? Because just about how that theory works, because we know that the ultra orthodox parties have become more and more vocal that they are against continuing the war and in favor of ending the war now. And we know that Benny Gantz has pledged to continue to support Netanyahu. Well, Yair Lapid has pledged to do whatever necessary to end the war. But Benny Gantz has gone even farther and said that he will support the government to the end of its term of office if needed in order to.

Miriam Hershlag (31:46)

Well, the state of Benny Gantz's party right now. No, you know, he's just lost.

Noah Ephron (31:49)

No, but it's just in terms of numbers. Prime Minister Netanyahu could end the war without having any fear of his government being toppled before the next election. So I don't quite understand. I'm not saying that this is wrong and that there's nothing to it, but I can't quite understand why it's not in his even political, narrow political interest to let Ben Guir and Smotridge leave the government because of this. And then he finds a spot in what seems to be the middle of Israeli politics ahead of the elections. That seems like such a smart way to go to elections.

Miriam Hershlag (32:26)

Well, that hasn't been his pattern. I mean.

Miriam Hershlag (32:30)

His methodology has been for years as a divider, as a strategic game. I haven't seen him say, let's all get together and work this out. I mean, he has obviously brought in elements into his coalition with whom he has grave disagreements. But he is generally not turned towards, towards the center and the left for this, because the center of left do offer candidates who can eventually, who can pose viable prime ministerial.

Miriam Hershlag (33:03)

Alternatives to him, like Bennett and Gantz and possibly these days, Yair Lapid, who some people feel is coming into his own. So I do think there is that political game. But I also think it's worth examining, if you know, what if we were looking at it from your point of the way that I think you want to ask this question, which is in what way could this serve the security interests of the country to wait, and what is the price of that for Israelis? I do think that Netanyahu.

Miriam Hershlag (33:42)

And you've said it, and I agree. I think that when he takes that algorithm of what he ranks as important.

Miriam Hershlag (33:49)

The lives of the hostages are important and they're not most important. And so when it comes down to a choice between hostages and a completely whatever it is that he seems to be defining As a triumph, a total victory over Hamas. He will pick that and he, he won't keep it as too close values, they are far apart. He's like, that's way ahead for him. And you can understand that. He doesn't also, I mean, we don't talk a lot about the release of the Palestinian prisoners, of which there are many from this and earlier security interactions and arrests. But that, as we know, that also jeopardizes Israelis. It can literally blow up as having turned into a terrible decision.

Noah Ephron (34:44)

So then, what kind of final victory do you think that Netanyahu can possibly be imagining? I'm embarrassed by my lack of imagination. I don't see at this moment what it is that he foresees gaining by the delay.

Miriam Hershlag (35:02)

So, I mean, what's shocking is to discover the abilities of Hamas to continue functioning or of some form of Hamas. So yesterday, yet another soldier was killed.

Miriam Hershlag (35:20)

During an attempt by Hamas fighters to come out of a tunnel and kidnap him. And he fought them and they killed him and then tried to take his body into antiquarian to add to the hostage.

Miriam Hershlag (35:36)

To the hostages. And previously it is.

Noah Ephron (35:40)

And he was the 17th soldier killed in two weeks.

Miriam Hershlag (35:43)

Just in two weeks. And, you know, Hamas is using roadside bombs and including bombs that are made of Israeli incendiary devices that are dropped on there. They're picking them up and repurposing them and blowing soldiers up. So.

Miriam Hershlag (36:04)

They still have. And I mean, I don't know what their rocket capabilities are, but a rocket or two have been fired from the Gaza Strip into or at Israel. And so.

Miriam Hershlag (36:16)

You can't say, well, we've brought them to their knees, then there's been no white flag, and there never will be a white flag. And I think that is the hope that Israel can say we beat, you know, can genuinely say it. I mean, Hamas, no matter what happens, will declare victory. And in some ways they will be right.

Miriam Hershlag (36:38)

From their point of view. But I do believe that Netanyahu has to be able to say clearly to the public and to history that he, you know, that he triumphed over Hamas. And I think that there is still doubt as to whether that's the case.

Miriam Hershlag (36:56)

You know, the devastation and the death in Gaza is.

Miriam Hershlag (37:02)

Horrifying. It's beyond what I don't think any of us could have imagined. And that was true months and months ago. So it's hard to imagine that it's possible to reconstitute Hamas, but under certain conditions, maybe it is. And if we haven't got it sewn up in the way that Israel, I mean, this is if you only think that you're going to hit this with a hammer and you're not going to do what it takes to create, for example, a grassroots Gazan response to this or bring in a genuine Palestinian or.

Miriam Hershlag (37:38)

Multilateral Arab presence into Gaza, if you can't swing that.

Miriam Hershlag (37:45)

Then all you've got is this deadly hammer that Israel keeps hitting at it. And I think that's where Netanyahu is comfortable.

Noah Ephron (37:54)

I don't, I think that you're, you must be right. But I cannot imagine what Netanyahu believes he can get by hitting more with the hammer. Like you said, I don't, I can't conjure in my mind the picture of something that Prime Minister Netanyahu feels. He could go to the Israeli people and say, aha, this was the ultimate victory that I promised you. And I agree with you. It seems as though he must have something like that in mind, otherwise he would end the war at this moment, not that long after the success in the campaign against Iran. And so he must have something like that in mind. But I can't even imagine it.

Miriam Hershlag (38:46)

Well, I want to add that in addition to.

Miriam Hershlag (38:52)

Not providing clarity of what a pragmatic political victory, military victory looks like, we're also still trafficking in these ideas of turning.

Miriam Hershlag (39:06)

Rafia into, I mean, I hate to say the word, but it literally would concentrate the population of Gaza into the southern tip of Gaza and create some kind of, I think probably likely humanitarian disaster and feed into this Trump pipe dream of self deportation that has a pipe dream of countries wanting this population and even with probably many Gazans desperate to leave. So it's also playing into that sort of, I want to hope it's some kind of pipe dream and fantasy. And that is also why Israel is still talking about maintaining that Morag corridor which would surround, which would surround Rafiyah. So they're still talking about that kind of, of radical and to my mind, nightmarish and horrifying humanitarian disaster of that kind of treatment of this population, this very, very battered population.

Noah Ephron (40:20)

And we need to end this. But I'll just end with this final question. So do you think that maybe one of the things that Prime Minister Netanyahu is delaying the end of the war for is the construction of what his defense minister, Yisrael Katz has called a humanitarian city on the ground of Rafah, that that is why he wants to delay the end of the war?

Miriam Hershlag (40:49)

Well.

Miriam Hershlag (40:52)

I don't understand it. Because if Israel thinks it's going to lead this construction of this zone.

Miriam Hershlag (41:04)

That'S an occupation, and.

Miriam Hershlag (41:09)

It will have to be done by the army, and it's a military occupation. If Israel thinks it can somehow make an international deal for this to become a humanitarian zone managed by regional actors. I mean, or if that I might understand, or. Or if it's purely about pandering to Trump's odd fantasy of, what is it, Vegas and Gaza, then I also understand that because Netanyahu needs Trump on his.

Noah Ephron (41:44)

Side and on our side, I think that Donald Trump has pretty much left that behind.

Miriam Hershlag (41:48)

He hasn't brought it up lately. And it's very strange that they're not very much. It's true. And it's very strange that you hear it. It continues to exist in the, in the, you know, not certainly in the extreme right, but also in the right flank of the Likud, as in, you know, Katz, our defense minister.

Noah Ephron (42:12)

Well, I'm still mystified. Now listen to this.

Noah Ephron (43:42)

That song is Ergon by Lielle Arabov. And now it is time for our second discussion, which we are calling Dr. Sophie's Choice. And here's why. A, quote, senior member of the ceasefire and hostage release negotiation team let it be known this week that a committee of professionals had been or would soon be assembled to review what is known about the medical condition of each of the 20 hostages still alive in Gaza. So, reported Channel 12 news, the results of this review would be presented to politicians overseeing negotiations with Hamas to help them. The politicians decide which 10 living hostages should be released in the temporary ceasefire agreement now being negotiated through intermediaries with Hamas, and which of the 10 should be let go at the start of the 60 days, which along the way and which at the end. The reason behind setting up the medical review committee is that from the bits and bobs of evidence about the hostages, reports from fellow hostages who've lately been released, and old and recent videos taken by Hamas, and medical histories of these people from before the 7th of October. We can conclude with some confidence anyway that some of the living hostages are more likely to, well, die than others, and some are more likely to suffer permanent physical damage than others if they don't get the medical care that they need as soon as possible. While everyone feels queasy about the idea of giving some hostages preference over the others, even though all of them obviously, desperately need and obviously entirely deserve the best care that there is and to come home immediately, it's still. Despite that, it's still the case that in probably every emergency room in the world, doctors do triage. They decide to treat one person ahead of another person whose needs are also severe on the grounds that that's how it makes the most sense to dole out the limited resources of a hospital, the time and attention of doctors, which is an infinite, and the number of operating theaters, which is an infinite, and bags of blood, you know, whatever. The idea of the Hostage Medical Review Committee is to do triage on hostages as best we can from afar so that the most lives will be preserved and the most quality of life will be preserved among the hostages. Almost as soon as the idea, though, of the Review Committee was leaked, there was a fierce backlash against it. A representative of the Israel Medical association told Recep et Radio that the organization considered it unethical for any doctor to take part in the committee. Lt. Col. Amir Bloomfeld, who was the head of trauma care in the IDF Medical Corps, said in an interview that, quote, it is forbidden for any doctor in Israel to support the decision to determine the medical status of hostages in Gaza, end quote. This because the evidence is just not sufficient to make a serious evaluation. Bloomfeld said, quote, I think that any decent physician in the state of Israel, one that has morality and conscience, would see that it is forbidden from cooperating with this terrible act of judging which hostages need to get out immediately and which hostages can survive maybe a little bit longer. That matches the views of many, many of the family members of hostages. Anat Angrest, whose boy Matan was a soldier pulled by Hamas men from his tank and beaten severely beyond consciousness on October 7, she said of the idea, quote, they are talking about who will live and who will be consigned to hell. Will the state once again separate twins or a father from his daughter once what sort of cruel solexia is this? Solexia is the Hebraicized German word for what Dr. Josef Mengele did on the train platform in Auschwitz with a flick of his finger, sending some people to their death and others to the slower death by starvation and exposure, though still possible survival of a work detail the idea of Israeli physicians deciding who among the hostages will survive and who may or may not survive struck many, especially people with sons or husbands or fathers alive in Gaza. Like a Nazi sort of thing. But is it really? We know for sure, for instance, that 24 year old Alon Oel is losing his sight over the past couple of months, and that at least some of his visions could be saved. If he could be seen by Israeli doctors in an Israeli hospital and treated now in two months, less of his vision might be saved. There may be none at all. Miriam is it really obviously wrong, I mean, even Nazi level wrong to take something like that into account in deciding who should get out the day after the agreement is signed, maybe this week or next week. Is the Israel Medical association wrong that the Hippocratic Oath means that doctors are forbidden from making decisions like that, even though in other contexts doctors make decisions like this every day in emergency rooms around the world?

Miriam Hershlag (49:29)

Well, you know, let's start about the Nazi comparison. The choices that we have become, like, you named this, this kind of Sophie's Choice, those are imposed from the outside. No. Nobody wakes up one day and says, hey, I'd really like to figure out whose life I value more. It is a forced thing. And, you know, Nietzsche said, whoever fights with monsters should be careful, lest he thereby become a monster. It turns all of this war, and you know, war is the hell of war, involves being called upon to do horrible things and make horrible choices. So.

Miriam Hershlag (50:14)

It does rhyme in some ways with that solexia image, and it's horrible to be put into that position. The other thing I would say is that if Israel doesn't make the choices, Hamas will. So somebody. Once we go into a phased deal and remember that every demonstration et kulam is the. One of the most shouted phrases. All of them. Bring them all. All at once. All at once. It was the biggest fear of hostage families, that this would happen. I mean, the biggest fear is that they will never see their loved ones, but they are rightly terrified, entirely terrified that their person won't be on the first list and that second list will never happen. So. So there's a reason why this was the big sort of sum of all fears for lots of families. I think that the Israel Medical Association's position makes sense because of what they said about not having medical knowledge.

Miriam Hershlag (51:23)

And remember that we did have. We had a celexia already. Right. We decided that there were categories of people who. We prioritize children.

Miriam Hershlag (51:34)

In earlier hostage releases. You know, there's an argument somewhere, somehow, that someone could make that said, you know, somehow someone else's life, you know.

Miriam Hershlag (51:45)

The physician who was being held, you know, her life might be more valuable than a young child's, but that's not what our society is made of. Women, I think, somewhat controversially, were automatically assumed to be to be prioritized over men and older men who had already managed to live a good life and were suffering terribly. So those were. You could make arguments, some of them, it would be hard to imagine making them publicly, but those were decisions. We've already done solexia. So what We've got is this last remaining group of people who are in a completely different condition from what we were dealing with several months into the war when the first hostages were released. We don't know. We don't know.

Miriam Hershlag (52:36)

What they know. So I could see physicians being consulted. If the army of Intelligence has information.

Miriam Hershlag (52:46)

About a hostage and about their chances of surviving or something like that, could see some consultation. But having the medical opinion involved in the surveillance sort of decision making process seems irrelevant.

Miriam Hershlag (53:01)

And also I don't think the doctors should be asked to take the responsibility for that. When it's been the politicians and the military that's been making the decisions that brought us to where we are. I mean, it's mostly been Hamas making these decisions, but it's also been on the leadership of the country and the military. So why would their opinion be of any particular use and why would they want that responsibility?

Noah Ephron (53:29)

Yeah, I think that you're probably right. I keep thinking of Alon Oel, though, with this thing about his eyesight fading. And I don't know anything about the medicine of it, but some people do know something about the medicine of it. And.

Noah Ephron (53:53)

If there was a chance for him to save his sight by him being first on the list, then I feel it's hard for me to say, even still we should ignore that. Even though I agree with you, in the end, I think that's right. This past week, one of the hostages, he was released, I think in February, Oad Ben Ami was in the Knesset and he told this story about how once.

Noah Ephron (54:25)

At the very beginning of the year, not long before he was released, then his captors gathered up five other hostages and they put the six hostages in the room. And they said, we're going to. This morning we're going to shoot three of you dead, and we're going to shoot three of you in the kneecap. And you have to decide which of the three of you are going to be shot dead and which of the three of you are going to survive. Or else we're going to kill all six of you and you have to discuss it among yourselves and tell us which of the three of you that we need to kill. And he said that. Then they left them alone and they talked and they decided that.

Noah Ephron (55:05)

They were not going to tell them, they were not going to give them three names. And they came back in and apparently the whole thing was just psychological torture to begin with. But I was moved and struck by the fact that there were these six people sitting in a room, and you could imagine that Possibly the older people, Ohad Ben Ami himself.

Noah Ephron (55:31)

Is probably in his 50s or 60s. You could imagine the older people saying, well, okay, maybe the younger people or people have young kids. Maybe they should get out before me or something. But I was very moved by the fact that. That they came to what once they came to this decision seemed to me to be the only obvious decision, which is, no, no, we're not doing this. And then. And so then I guess that's what the. The Israel Medical association is saying too, is saying, like, in addition to the fact that obviously it would be medically irresponsible to say anything.

Noah Ephron (56:07)

With the confidence that would, you know, to say, some people. Some people's lives are gonna continue to be at high risk because we think that this person should get out. Even beyond that, we're just not gonna play this game. We're just not gonna be part of this sick, sick, sick game.

Miriam Hershlag (56:28)

And in that sense, I think that bringing in the ethical universe of the Holocaust is relevant because we talked, we were raised to think about survivors, and we less so about the choices that those.

Miriam Hershlag (56:45)

Who were faced with some possible out and chose not to take that choice, not, for example, to take a choice where it would be at the expense of other lives. We don't have those stories, or we have fewer of those stories, obviously. It's such an enormous event that we have a lot of stories, and we know that. But that though that form of a heroic retention of humanity is also part of the story.

Miriam Hershlag (57:14)

And I think all of this is a form of dehumanization. And I think it's going.

Miriam Hershlag (57:22)

Look that I do think there is an inevitable dehumanization for both sides in this that we've seen starting pretty early. And.

Miriam Hershlag (57:34)

Now here we are talking about whether someone should go blind, should be left to go blind, or someone should be allowed to come and see his, you know, reunite with his children who he hasn't seen in two years. So it's.

Miriam Hershlag (57:51)

Sophie.

Noah Ephron (57:53)

Now listen to this.

Noah Ephron (59:16)

Is.

Noah Ephron (59:37)

That song is.

Noah Ephron (59:40)

By Ben, who was Shlomo Artsy's boy. And it is about Matan Angrest, Anat Angrest's boy, who we just talked about. You can find all the songs you heard today in all the usual places. And now it is time for our what a Country segment. This is the part of the show in which each of us describes something that maybe brought us some solace as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while. Or possibly surprised and amused, delighted, enchanted and source sold, or maybe even fluged us as we did that self Same wending Miriam, what is you're what a country.

Miriam Hershlag (60:15)

In the scheme of things, my friend, Berhanu didn't exist. He wasn't a member of the four tribes of Israel that Ruby Rivlin, the country's 10th president, defined in his famous call for national integration. Which is to say that Birhanu Youssef was not a secular Jew or a national religious Orthodox Jew, or an ultra orthodox Haredi Jew, or an Arab. Those are Rivlin's four tribes. Tribes. In the Census Bureau's breakdown of Israel's population by religion, Christians are barely 2% of the population. Ethiopian Christians are so few that they just fall into the murky category known as other. But even within the tiny population of Ethiopian Christians, Berhanu was other. No matter how you sliced it, he was other. I know there are listeners to this podcast who encountered him in Jerusalem at one time or another, and I'm sorry if this is how you're learning that he died last week at age 67. Barana was extraordinary. For many years we were part of each other's lives in deep and complicated ways. He was an uncle figure to my children, and yet I would never claim to have fully known him. Him, I don't know if anyone can, because he wasn't just one thing. His life was an intricate mosaic, one that was never quite visible all at once. Berhanu was born in Ethiopia, the only son of a communist dissident who had become a target of the regime in the 1960s. After violence broke out, it became clear that Berhanu was at risk of being killed in a revenge attack. So when he was still a little boy, he was sent to Jerusalem to live under the protection of his uncle, the city's Ethiopian archbishop. He grew up in the compound of the Ethiopian Church in the Old city. This is pre 67 and Brahanu told me about lying on the roof and watching the city change from Jordanian to Israeli hands, the spit and Polish Jordanian soldiers supplanted by the shambolic Israeli one ones, an IDF general with an eyepatch striding through the shook and sipping Turkish coffee in the cafe. When he reached his teenage years and made it clear he wasn't going to join the priesthood, they told him to leave and from that point on, Berhanu was on his own. He enrolled in an Arabic speaking high school where he had to learn the language almost overnight. He found his footing in the Communist Youth Movement, studied at Birzaid University. He was smart, idealistic, tied to the Palestinian cause. He had run ins with Israeli soldiers and police. He spent time in prison. In the mid-1980s he met and took up with a Jewish American woman, and through her he encountered Jews not as an abstraction or as a system, but as people. He moved through Jewish spaces for the rest of his life, while always staying connected to his other worlds. He had several American Jewish girlfriends in succession. I met him when he was involved with a friend of mine. I invited them for Shabbat lunch on a hot summer day, and for years he would tell the story of how he met me, this tall American woman who was clearly insane because she served cold soup, cold tea and cold coffee all at the same meal. Eventually he became my housemate in the garden flat owned by my aunt and uncle from New York. When I got married and moved out, he stayed. For 30 years. He managed the house, working for my aunt and uncle when they came for the summers and handling a long succession of tenants, usually JTS rabbinical students during the academic year. He was part of my family, part of my aunt and uncle's world of Jerusalem scholars and old school Zionists. But he never stopped also being part of the Ethiopian community and of Arab East Jerusalem. I tried to remember all the jobs I knew he'd had over the years, and I believe this is just a partial list. He was a rabble rousing union organizer in the West Bank, a tour guide, a contractor, an electrician, a house painter, a social worker. He was the Ethiopian community's liaison to the police, a mediator for the community in internal conflicts. He also mediated in the Church's frequent squabbles with the Coptic Orthodox Church. He represented the Ethiopian Church in a property disposition with Egypt and with his knowledge of ancient Gez, he helped prominent Jewish Bible scholars decipher the book of Jubilees. He was funny and brilliant, sharply critical of those in power, willing to revise his opinions, re examine his beliefs. In recent years he found a spiritual home with a small community that met in the Syriac Catholic Church. After my aunt died and the house got sold, Burhanu returned to the old city and lived there until the end. Now I guarantee you that right now there are people listening to this saying, no, you've got it all wrong. And that is certainly true. Everyone who knew him felt they had a claim on him, a version of him they understood, but no one ever really saw the same person. This thought keeps hitting me that Birchanu Yosef had a lot in common with Jerusalem itself. Not the Jerusalem of postcards or prophecy or gold or even iron. The real one, the Jerusalem of alleyways and contradictions, the Jerusalem that has changed hands and flags too many times, A city that so many claim but so few fully know. Berhanu's identity was complicated and dynamic. Ethiopian, Arab, Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic, secular. He held them all and lived in the spaces between. One friend called him a prophet without a platform. Like Jerusalem, he had seen too much. And like the city, he was surrounded by people who loved him, needed him and misunderstood him. Like Jerusalem, he was never entirely cared for, never protected from the slow wear of a life lived without a real safety net. Things were always precarious. Financially, physically. He managed for years. And then one day he couldn't and he died too soon. Jerusalem, the city he knew and loved, is also frayed at the edges, stretched by too many stories, loved loudly and poorly, immensely beautiful and deeply neglected. The religions and their many streams and endless splits, each have capital T truths. But how could truth be one thing? Maybe there are deeper truths in the overlaps and the interstitial spaces. Berhano's last big dream was to build in the Old City a center for sacred music for all faiths. He got as far as actually procuring the space and funding and starting to renovate a property along the Via Dolorosa until. Until, like lots of projects that don't work until one does. The site he'd carefully negotiated for and worked on got commandeered for other purposes. At his funeral on Friday, there was a taste of the sounds that might have been part of that transcendent experience.

Miriam Hershlag (67:51)

The Ethiopian priests and deacons chanted in the round domed church on Ethiopia Street.

Miriam Hershlag (68:16)

Later, at the Ethiopian cemetery in the west bank village of Al Azariah, where my son and nephew were pallbearers. Berhanu's friend from the Catholic community, Nadine Fanous, sang.

Miriam Hershlag (69:00)

And you can hear the muezzin call to Muslim prayer behind Nadine. It's an intimation of a possible harmony that's pure, beyond words, words. May Brahanu's memory be a blessing. And may Jerusalem, his complicated, precious city, remember him too.

Noah Ephron (69:20)

Oh, Miriam, I'm so sorry for your loss, for all of our loss.

Miriam Hershlag (69:25)

Thanks.

Noah Ephron (69:30)

It's hard to move on from that, but I will. We were two days into the Hebrew Book Week fair when the war with Iran started and the thing shut down, obviously, and the war was still going when the book fair was scheduled to be over. It's called Hebrew Book Week, but It goes for 10 days. But then the war, it went on for 12 days, though this past week blessed them. The publishers and also the cities hosting the thing decided to start the fair up again, at least for a few days, Sunday to Thursday, and with meetings and all, the only night that I could go was last Thursday, which was the last night of the thing, which added a little bit of low level. Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. Hysteria to my browsing and chopping. And in fact, there were in the end, six books on my list that I just did not get. I could not find them, though, at the same time, there were six books not on my list that I did get. So in a deeper sense, everything was maybe as it should be. The book fair is in Sirona, the old Templar settlement across from the curia, where they're building the Ceron Hotel that I talked about. And it's divided up into three separate compounds labeled A, B and C. Though if you come from where I come from, you go into C first and then B and then A. And the first publisher's display table I get to is the Zalmanshazzar Press, the publishing house of the Shazar center for Jewish History, which is a very serious and wonderful operation and one of my favorites. And I go back and forth in front of the table and back and forth in front of all the books, picking out one about how people searched for their missing, maybe, maybe not dead loved ones after the Holocaust. There was a whole operation behind this, a daily radio show and government offices. And then I pick up and settle on another book of things that Supreme Court justices have written about the Holocaust and how it affects what they think and how they rule when it comes to human rights. And I've got these two books under my arm. And the woman behind the table says, mind if I asked you something? And I say, no. And she says, do you think that we ought to be over there in section B? And I say, why? And she says, well, that's where all the serious publishers are. The Ben Svi Institute, Ben Gurion University, and my God, Magnus is there. That's where we belong with them. And we were always right near all those other serious publishers all through the years, until maybe two years ago. And I say, I get it. But on the other hand, maybe it's good that you're the only, like, really serious publisher in section C. After all, I know that you're here. I always come to you first. And to make the point, I pick up Anat Hellman's book about fashion in the first decades of the state of Israel. And even though I know that maybe I already own this book, and I still, I add it to my pile just to show the woman that she's selling books. And the woman says, no, that is not how it works. It is not right. And after I hold my phone against the thing that she holds up to pay for the books, I guess that I prove her point because I pretty much right away make my way to area B because, well, that's where most of the books on my list are. And soon I was at Magness, which is the publishing house of the Hebrew University. It was started in 1929 when Judah Magness was the chancellor of the university, though back then it was called called the Hebrew University Publication Society. It only took Magnus name after the great man died in 1949. And the thing about it is, even after almost 100 years, the books that Magnus puts out still have like homeopathic traces of the Wiesenschaftlichkeit of those German scholars who first made the Hebrew University into what it was and never entirely stopped being. Your Martin Bubers and your Gershom Scholems and your Hugo Bergmans, though Bergman, he was Czech, but you know what I mean. And I pick up a book about Israel's martial law from 1948 to 1966, and I'm flipping through it when another book catches my eye out of the corner of my eye. It's got a 19th century romantic painting on the COVID of a man sitting on a bench in a stand of trees with a big book by his side, staring at a beehive. And the book is called A Ramble in the Hive. Humans and Bees from a Cosmological Perspective. That's how they translate the title into English. And it's new. I've never seen it before or even heard of it. It's by someone called Moore, Kaddishson. And I pick it up and I start to page through it and it really is about bees. In the introduction it says, quote, this book is an invitation to wander inside a hive to learn about bees, to get to know the important stations in the history of beekeeping, to learn about about earth shaking discoveries about the lives of bees, and at the same time to learn from the bees and the point of meeting between them and us and from them about ourselves. What is it in the spirit of the hive that captures our hearts? What do the bees in their circumstances today have to tell us about us? End quote. Which is a question I never thought about before. But once I read it all at once I needed to know, what do the bees have to tell us about us?

Miriam Hershlag (74:48)

Us?

Noah Ephron (74:49)

And I'M reading this, and a woman behind the table, she's in her 40s, I guess. She has an open face and her eyes are bright, and she has a very big smile. She is beautiful. And she says to me, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. And I say, well, I'm just trying to figure out just what this book is and what I have to learn from the bees. And the woman behind the Magnus table, she says, wonderful, but if I can help you do that, just let me know. And I say, well, do you know anything about the bees? And she says, well, some. I am Mor Khadison. And I look at her uncomprehending, and she takes the book from my hand and she says, I am this Mor Khadisun, pointing to her name at the top of the book. And now I am flustered, and I say, oh, I thought you were working here at the table. And she says, no, and I'm still awkward. And I said, how did you come to the bees? And she smiles that smile and she says, that's just the thing. I did not come to the bees. The bees, they came to me. And I go, how? Why? When? And Moor Kadishman tells me that she lives in the Galil, in a little hilltop village of a few hundred people named Harashim. And she says that she's a writer and a translator. And over the years, more and more, she's gotten into deep ecology. It started somehow with Gaston Bachelar, I think, a book called the Poetics of Space. She says, and with time, more and more, she started to see more and more in the world. And she says one day she started to see and hear the bees, and then she just couldn't stop seeing and hearing the bees. She says, the bees help us think about who we want to be. She said the bees raise all sorts of questions about the world and all of our places in it, all of our meaning, the people and the animals and the plants and everything else. She says, the bees shake up what we think about, what we control and what we do not control. She said, the bees, they can help us fall in love with the world. And I think, but I'm too shy to say, I don't think you ever had any problem falling in love with the world. And just then, this beautiful girl, maybe 12 or 13, she comes to the Magnus table, and Moore Kadison says, are you having a good time, my sweet one? And the girl says, she is. And then she goes off again. And Moore Kadison says, what's Obvious that that girl is her girl, her daughter and more. Kadison goes on from where she left off and says, the bees show us that the idea that we can master nature, it's just not the case. We cannot. And the bees, if you watch them, we can see that we are not supposed to be the rulers of nature and we're not supposed to be consumers of nature, but rather, we're just part of nature. And you can feel this when you are with the bees. Even the hum of the bees in the hive, it does a thing to you. It makes you. You feel things and makes you realize that you're part of this world in some deep way. And Moore Kadison says, more and more people get this all the time, which is why even at a moment like now, I am hopeful for the future. And as Mor Kadison is talking, I'm idly flipping through the book and there's paintings by Brueghel and woodcutts from 16th century Books about bees. And Plato is in there, and Darwin and the Church Fathers and Bachelor and Jung and. And I say, this is like the whole history of the west told through bees. And Moore Kadison says, yeah, she says, if you pushed me, I'd say what I am is an anthropologist of the human imagination. And the bees have always had a place in the human imagination. And when I tell her that my girl is studying to be an anthropologist, she says, what could be better than being an anthropologist? What could be better than coming to a place with an open heart and listening and watching, and the only thing you want is to understand? And we talk for a long time until a guy comes up to the table, a fan, and he's recognized Moore Kadison, and he needs to talk to her about some other book she did that changed his life. And before she turns to him, she says to me, give me your number. And I do. And she calls me, so her number is in my phone, too, and I walk away, and I'm surprised to find that my urge to buy other books, it is slaked. All I am is eager to get home, to start to read about the bees, which is what I've been doing, spellbound in the week ever since the day after the book fair, there's a WhatsApp from Mor Kadisun. It says, quote, hi, Noach, I was so happy our paths crossed yesterday, and all the more so that you went home with the bees. Send me your address. I have a book about wilderness that I really want to send you. Shabbat Shalom Morgan.

Noah Ephron (79:30)

And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itai Shalem, our station manager, without whom there'd be none of this. Thanks to Oshibo Lim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you so much Miriam. Thank you Natalie. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and the station going and it keeps us moved and grateful and in your debt. We'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and actually like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer answer eventually. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this. If the tallest building is something we admire, think of the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai or one World Trade center in New York. Surely the same must be true of the longest podcast. FA FA fa. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that this week as we record from July 6th next to July 14th we celebrate the Festival of San Fermin and more specifically the Running of the Bulls in Pamploma, Spain which occurs on each day of the festival beginning on the second day of the week long festival starting at eight in the morning when between half a dozen and a dozen bulls are set to charge through designated streets of the city fences, keeping the bulls on the straight and narrow with 2 or 3,000 sober although running ahead of them. Just yesterday as we record one 25 year old runner was gored under his right armpit and he is now in stable condition under observation at the local hospital. But that is a small price to pay and no one has actually been gored to death during the Running of the Bulls since way back in 2009. The running of the bulls has been around for a long, long time, though no one knows exactly when the tradition started. Ernest Hemingway famously wrote about it in the Sun Also Rises, which was published 101 years ago and Louis Lumier made a movie of it in 1899. And I guess I do not need to tell you that I adore the running of the Bulls and the Festival of Saint Fermin. It is probably my favorite week long veneration of a saint. And of course Saint Fermin by tradition was martyred by being tied to a bull who dragged him to his death, which is hardcore props. So there's that plus the fact that a sweet smell rose from his grave causing ice and snow to melt in the winter, flowers to grow, the sick to be cured about which respect. And even though it is still going on as I say these words, just this morning people were hospitalized when they stumbled trying to outrun the bulls and tomorrow more people will probably be hospitalized as they stumble trying to outrun the bulls. Still I can we can't shed the sure knowledge that soon this year's running of the bulls will be over, gone slowly at first and then all at once as Hemingway might put it, not to be back for a whole nother year. Not so the Promise podcast. We will be back for you next week and every week reminding you that while it is true that in Pamploma with just a little luck you can manage to outrun the bulls, there are other times and other circumstances in which you will never be able to escape the bull. So much bull on this the Promise pod.