← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Gen Z in Iran and violence in the West Bank - with Holly Dagres and Amos Harel
01:24:40
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/P3ahIBALMZQ Follow us on social media and join Patreon to get more of Unholy: https://linktr.ee/unholypod As Benjamin Netanyahu boards a flight to meet President Trump, his government is attempting to rewrite the memory of October 7, removing the word “massacre” from its proposed memorial day bill. Yonit and Jonathan are joined by military analyst Amos Harel, who examines rising tensions in the West Bank, the growing influence of the far right, and the fragile balance between the IDF and the Palestinian Authority. Plus: a special conversation with Iran analyst Holly Dagres, who lived in Iran as a teenager, on the resilience and defiance of the country’s younger generation — and what change, and the future, might hold.
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- [00:03]
Holly Dagres
Iranian Gen Z is part of the globalized Gen Z and it's because they're connected to the world through Internet, social media and illegal satellite dishes. And because Gen Z is a globalized generation, it doesn't matter if you're in Tehran, Tel Aviv or Washington D.C. they dress the same, they listen to the same music, they oftentimes watch the same things. They want really basic things. They want to be able to find a job, they want to be able to freely express themselves. They want to be able to go on D and kiss their lover in the streets. I would argue that it was Iranian Gen Z that was the first of their generation to start these anti regime protests around the globe.
- [00:55]
Jonathan Friedland
It's unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland in London.
- [00:58]
Yunit Levy
And I'm Yunit Levy in Tel Aviv.
- [01:00]
Jonathan Friedland
Unholy. Two Jews on the news. The voice you heard at the start there, Holly Dagres, an expert, an authority on Iran for a fascinating conversation about life on the ground there beyond the politics and the diplomacy and the summitry, a really fascinating perspective. We also will be talking to longtime friend of the podcast, Haaretz's Amos Harel about the area in a way that has not got that much attention these last few years. As we've all been looking at Gaza, Amos brings us up to date with what's happening on the ground in the West Bank. That is fascinating too. So we have lots to come in this episode of Unholy.
- [01:37]
Yunit Levy
We really do. But before all that, we should tell our listeners that Jonathan is going to be a flaneur for the next three weeks. Well, you know, it's a book tour and a speaking tour but you know, normal people would just say have fun Jonathan. And if any of our listeners, we have a big listenership in Australia and New Zealand, you want to catch Jonathan, look at the show notes. But I, on the other hand, would you sprinkle a little bit of guilt over this whole thing?
- [01:59]
Jonathan Friedland
Just a light dusty, just a bit.
- [02:03]
Yunit Levy
Enough dusting just to say, I mean, don't think of me, you know, look not upon me, I'll be fine. Iran might attack Israel. Ramadan month is opening. All manner of mayhem can ensue. But I mean Jonathan, you know, you do your thing, just, you know, enjoy yourself down under. Fake smile.
- [02:21]
Jonathan Friedland
A Jewish mother three times over. Listeners should be aware you have three children, so you are a Jewish mother in triplicate. And the guilt trip is noted. It's not been confined to the podcast off air two, the guilt trip is there. So yes, three weeks book Tour vacation as well. Australia, New Zealand. Thank you for mentioning the show. Notes. Do come speaking, I think in Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney. It would be very, very good to see people there. But yes, slight guilt, also slight panic because as we may have talked before, there is a really troubling track record of big news breaking when I'm away. Most recently, the 12 Day War was. I was away in South America on that occasion.
- [03:05]
Yunit Levy
Really the day you flew out. I think just he did specifically we.
- [03:10]
Jonathan Friedland
Did get an UPD episode in before I left. So I'll just remind you as well as people that I did my duty there. No, I'm worried as well here because domestically the Prime Minister's in big trouble.
- [03:21]
Yunit Levy
We'll get to that later.
- [03:22]
Jonathan Friedland
I know, but the possibility that there could be news in all areas while I'm away is very, very probable.
- [03:28]
Yunit Levy
And I'm not saying that will happen. I'm just saying it could, it could happen.
- [03:32]
Jonathan Friedland
It definitely could. Let's hope it won't. And let's talk about what's already happened in the world because there's plenty of that.
- [03:39]
Yunit Levy
Sure. I mean, look, just to start our conversation off this week, I think the whole world, I know, I realize this, everyone was talking about Bad Bunny. But in this country, in Israel, the one performance you know, everyone was discussing was Alon Ohel performing in front of 3,000 people at this big venue in Tel Aviv. We have to pause on this for a moment. Right. Alon oel is a 25 year old young man. He was abducted on October 7th. He was held by Hamas in the worst conditions for 738 days. He's also a young musician. And as part of this sort of his family's battle and the hostage forum's battle to bring him back, there was this big yellow piano that was set up in Hostage Square and people would play it and artists would play it. And his mother, Idit had this dream that she would talk about that her son comes back and, you know, performs in front of thousands of people. And it's hard to kind of, you need to pinch yourself throughout what we have gone through these two years and four months and to realize that sometimes there is a happy ending and sometimes there is a glimmer of hope. And this young man who announced a few months ago he was, you know, doing this concert and he's all of the money coming in from the tickets will be for his rehabilitation in an hour. Right. Think of the Israelis in an hour. All of it was sold out. And of course the artists performed with him. Volunteered. It's just a beautiful moment. Eli Sharabi was also on this podcast, was held with Alon, sort of his father figure was a father, of course, in the audience watching all this with tears in his eyes. Just such an emotional performance this week.
- [05:15]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah, I mean, very, very beautiful that it happened. And I was thinking as you were speaking about elisheurabi and how he did talk to us about his kind of mentoring of Alon, oh, Hel. When they were both held captive and just I'm sure the notion that one day he would be playing to a huge audience back in Israel, that would have just seemed a kind of motivational dream. But to think that that has become a reality. Wonderful, really. In a way, we should hand him the Mensch award and close out the podcast right now because who wants to be brought down by the news from elsewhere? But no, there's lots going on and all eyes were on Washington. And I say that, but you know, in a way there wasn't encouragement of the eyes of the world to be on Washington. If anything, they were sort of slightly camera shy by their standards. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, I think the Israeli Prime Minister of arrived at the White House via a sort of back entrance to avoid being seen and spotted by protesters. There wasn't the usual press conference in the usual way afterwards. So, you know, what's your read of all this?
- [06:20]
Yunit Levy
I mean, first of all, it's their seventh meeting since Trump returned to the White House. Right after the meeting ended, it was about three hours. Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said, I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a deal can be consummated. These are his words essentially saying, at this point in time, I prefer a deal to anything else. As you mentioned, slightly different, slightly irregular meeting. Usually we would have these sort of long press opportunities and, and Trump would answer every single question from American reporters and Israeli reporters and ya would answer questions as well. Now it was like very, very brief and like one picture coming out. I think what's interesting here, look, we, we now know, and we've been talking about this a lot, we don't know what the President wants. I think at this point in time, we think that the President would want to give more breathing space for neg negotiations. We also know that the gap between the Iranian delegation and the American one is quite wide. Um, what we don't know is what the two gentlemen, Netanyahu and Trump, decided inside the room is the plan B. Which means if there is no agreement, does the United States Strike Iran? Do Israel and the United States together strike Iran or does Israel go alone? What are these options? Where are we heading? We don't know. I think it's very important to put the focus on what J.D. vance, the Vice president, said yesterday. He said, what we're focused on right now is the fact that Iran can, can't have a nuclear weapon. That's been the focus of the president, even going back to the administration, to the first administration. If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, regime, that is up to the Iranian people, said J.D. vance. Quite a far cry from Trump himself a month ago writing help is on the way.
- [08:04]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah, no, I also absolutely think we should pay attention to that. It is a shift. I mean, Trump himself walked back his earlier promises when he was talking about coming to the rescue and so on, and suddenly he started saying the focus was on Iranian nukes. He then sort of qualified it a bit by saying, and we want them to stop killing people, but anyone, we'll get into this more with our guest Holly Douglas later about the Iranian people. But if they hoped that there was going to be the American riding to the rescue, I think they will be even less hopeful now. It also should be seen, I think that JD Vance remark as a gesture towards the Iranians, as a kind of concession because he's essentially saying, we're not going to get into your, you can keep oppressing your own people in a way. He wasn't even focusing on the demand of halting Iranian support for proxies in the region or the pursuit of their ballistic weapons program. Focusing narrowly on the nukes is a real, you know, olive branch to the Iranians because that's where perhaps a deal could lie. They're very, very intransigent on the ballistics question. They certainly are not going to move on their right to rule as a tyrannical regime, the Iranian people. So by JD Vance locating the area of negotiation narrowly on the nuclear question, I think that was a gesture towards them. Look, the other thing, of course that will be in the Iranians delegation's mind is they've been around this block before where they were talking to the Americans and then as it were, out of nowhere, they were under attack. As they would see it, the US Moved during negotiations. So they will have one eye on that as they're talking to the Americans. Is this a feint? Is this just a ploy to divert them? My reading would be that Trump would quite like to get a deal and he would like remembering Jake Sullivan to us. He likes peace and like steel. I mean, this would be both. This would be a twofer. I think he would love to say that, but, you know, we know that he can use military action, too. And we were also told that he got a bit of a kick out of the Maduro operation at the start of the year and thinks, I've got this big toolbox, I might as well use it.
- [10:25]
Yunit Levy
Yes. And as you mentioned later in our show, Holly Dagres will talk to us from the perspective of the Iranian people. We have been talking a lot about the regime, but we want to hear what they're going through, particularly after this terrible massacre of January 8th. Moving on to what is happening inside Israel internally. It has been two years, four months, five days since October 7th. Last week, between Thursday night and Friday, I learned a lot about politics and media. I would surprise you from the West Wing. And CJ Craig always called it the Friday morning dump of the news. If you want someone not to notice a story, that is when you'll, you'll publish it. Of course, media has moved on a little bit, but still, that was when Prime Minister Netanyahu released his 55 page document of answers to the state comptroller as part of his investigation into October 7th. We need to pause on that just for a moment and say we have been talking a lot on this podcast about this, the fact that the Netanyahu government is circumventing during anything to circumvent the idea of a state's commission of inquiry, which is the standard practice in this country of investigating something definitely on the scale of what happened on October 7. In fact, Netanyahu's own idea to move forward with a political appointed commission is actually gaining a lot of traction in the Knesset and might become a law very, very soon. So Netanyahu released his own version. Now Netanyahu is the prime Minister. He of course, has a way of releasing classified documents. He can do that and he can release any classified documents he wants and not release others. So very quickly, it was the opposition that said, look, you're releasing anything that makes you look good. Particularly what he was trying to say is that he was the one who said over and over that Hamas top officials, top brass need to be assassinated. And it was his own defense echelon that said no to him. Oh, lo and behold, a day later, already our network, Channel 12 published the opposite protocol, a part of the protocol that showed that the picture was quite different. The point is that we're all getting. The Israeli citizens are just getting pieces of their puzzle. We are not getting the full picture because there is no state's commission of inquiry. This all works in Netanyahu's favor, and it definitely works in his favor when you add the fact that we talked about this earlier in the podcast. A few weeks ago, the name officially of the war was turned into the war of revival, right? And this week, families whose loved ones were murdered on October 7 actually found out that the bill that was talking about the memorial services for October 7th, the word massacre, was erased from it. So all of it is a. An attempt to, you know, portray reality in a certain way that will be favorable. Thus, it seems, particularly as people oppose Netanyahu, it seems that that would be what he is trying to achieve.
- [13:23]
Jonathan Friedland
I just want to linger on that last point for a moment. This change of the name for the October 7th memorial that will speak into about the events of October 7th rather than the massacre. This is a kind of erasure, and to use a very charged word, it's a kind of denial of the reality of that event. And all you have to do is imagine this were an agency or a body or an institution outside Israel doing this. Imagine the United nations refused to call it a massacre and talked about this the very blandly, the events. Imagine the BBC did that say, imagine the outcry in Israel and in the Jewish world. This is 10-7- Denial, they would say, like Holocaust denial, they would say this is erasure of the greatest act of Jewish suffering since the Holocaust, the most, the most severe terror attack in Israel's history. Just for the politic of him wanting to downplay this event in order that he doesn't get blamed for it in the elections that are coming this year, just because we're kind of used to it from him and just because in a way, it comes from the Israeli government. People should look at this. I, I urge people who are listening to this, think about how you would react if this was, like I say, the un, the BBC, the people that, you know, a certain stripe of pro Israel advocate always like to go at taking the word massacre away from October 7th and replacing it with this more euphemistic formulation. It's not forgivable or acceptable that it's being done by the Prime Minister of Israel. The larger point, of course, still stands. We've made it so many times extraordinary that coming on for three years after that massacre, there's still no state commissioner inquiry and there won't be one. He's obviously determined to thwart it as long as he's in that seat. And as you Say, going, you know, advancing towards having a political one. That's terrible in terms of specifically October 7th, the inability to learn the lessons. The evidence trail is going to get colder and colder. Memories will fade, it'll be harder to reconstruct those events. But also as a precedent, this was one of the really sort of signature things about Israel's system of governance. We've often mentioned the various different commissions of inquiry. Agranath Commission, Yom Kippur War, Kahan Commission, after the Lebanon War in 1982. This was a sort of exemplary part of Israel's institutional system that these fearless commissions of inquiry would go wherever the evidence led them. So I think these are really, you know, damaging developments, and they should be taken, and we should sort of linger on their significance.
- [16:03]
Yunit Levy
I think I sent you one of the skits by the brilliant satire program Eretz Nehederet in which one of Netanyahu's advisors chose him, that every, every single person that was involved in October 7th is now fired. And he says, and, sir, if you'd like us to erase the numbers 7 and 10, we can do that as well. But look, I think what's interesting here is the attempt Netanyahu has been making from basically day one, almost to say, I am not to blame for this. It is all the military, military intelligence, the rest of the intelligence services who failed. Now, is this working? We will eventually know when elections happen. Does the Israeli public actually buy into the fact that someone who was prime minister since 2009 with a brief recess of a year plus when Bennett and Lapid were prime ministers, is he completely irresponsible? But that is exactly what he is trying to say. He's trying to say it with the documents. He's trying to say it with the fact that he is setting up what he calls a democratic and balanced commission of inquiry. All of that is to say I am not to blame at all. I wasn't woken up on that morning. I actually told my defense echelon that they should go after Hamas operatives. And again, what's interesting here is to look at his playbook and to see whether or not this is going to be an effective move. And he's been trying to do it for a very long time. We will only know when elections happen if that indeed passed the test of the Israeli public.
- [17:35]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah, I think that's a very good point. That will, of course, be the ultimate verdict that he is even in the game still, that he's in the job, that the polls show that he's in contention, that to me suggests he has already had some reward for what he's been doing, as you absolutely rightly say, from day one even and I think some of the internal inquiries from the IDF and elsewhere confirm this, that really within hours of the thing he was already working out what the narrative was going to be on day one. I as I say the fact that the opinion polls do not show him, you know, below the threshold repudiated by the public for his response, culpability for October 7th means in some ways it's already worked for him. But yes, the ultimate verdict will be if he is renewed in his job or stays rather as prime minister. Amos Harel is a longtime friend of the podcast Military Analyst for Haritz and his upcoming book 629 All About October 7th is out later this year. Amos, very good to have you back with us on Unholy. You know, all inevitably all the attention of the last two years plus has been very much, particularly internationally on Gaza. But obviously the situation in the west bank people have been warning at different points is changing. People are saying it's going to explode at some point. There was this move by the Israeli Cabinet just at the weekend, a sort of change in policy. A lot of the reporting on it said this was in effect advancing creeping annexation, annexation by the back door, unofficial, different phrases. Can you just describe to us what the cabinet agreed and your assessment of how significant it is?
- [19:31]
Amos Harel
So our friend Shira Ephron just published an article in Foreign affairs magazine, their website this morning and she defined that as a change from de facto annexation to the Eura annexation. And I think that's probably the right term for this. What the cabinet is basically doing, it's easing the ways, the so called legal ways for Israel to take control of more and more Palestinian territory in the west bank, removing all kinds of restraints. And it also allows more influence of the Israeli government over what's going on at areas A and B. Like myself, you're a veteran of the of covering the Oslo accords. These were the good old times, so to speak. A lot has changed since then, but the fact that the government quite openly is saying, well, not only control the fate of area C, but also A and B, areas that should be under civilian control of the Palestinian Authority means quite a lot. And as you've mentioned earlier, while the world was focused on Gaza, actually the far right in Israel, the far right partners of Netanyahu in his government mostly have been very, very busy at changing the status quo at the west bank and assuming that the world doesn't notice, of course, the Guardian will cover that every now and then. IRIS will do that as well, but it's not top of anyone's agenda. And Cmotrich, there's quite a lot of criticism over his performance as a finance minister, but as the second minister in the Ministry of Defense, he's managed to achieve quite a lot during the last three years. He was very, very focused on that, and nobody's tried to stop him. Netanyahu gave up all authority on what was going on there as he established his coalition in late December 22nd. And neither of the two defense ministers we had, Yoav Gallant and later Israel Katz, attempted to influence that in any way.
- [21:47]
Yunit Levy
There are two things going on here. One is that the Trump administration reiterated its opposition to annexation. And the other thing is, of course, that we are in election year, so we perhaps should say this is reversible. I mean, if a different government comes in, this could be reversed. Does that change anything, particularly the Trump response? Is that the Trump administration response, does that change anything in Netanyahu's calculations to go ahead with this?
- [22:12]
Amos Harel
I would assume so. And yet these decisions were taken two days before Netanyahu went to meet Trump in Washington. And I assume that Trump's response, through your correspondent Barack Avid, was actually meant to address that. It's may, if you remember the deal of the century ages ago, five or six years ago, there was a discussion at that time whether that would mean annexation or as the Israeli side portrayed it at that time, Israeli sovereignty next week. And we all know how that ended. There was a power battle behind the scenes between David Friedman, the American ambassador in Israel at that time, and Jared Kushner. And Kushner won. And there was nothing about annexation the next week, five or six years ago. So I think something similar is happening here. I don't know how much Trump is actually interested in that, but there are limitations to what Israel can do on the international level. When it comes to the domestic scene, then Smartluch is able to achieve quite a lot legal changes, but more than that, facts on the ground, the reality itself in the west bank has changed quite a lot during the last two and a half years. It began with a lot of violence. There were a lot of incidents with Palestinians, with Palestinian gunmen and so on. Some who were thrilled by what has happened on October 7 at the Gaza envelope communities and tried to repeat attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. There were Israeli attempts to block that, but that died down, I think, quite early. What we have since then, there's of course Palestinian violence There are still incidents with gunmen and so on, but the main event is about Smotrich and the people who support him changing the reality on the ground and using the fact that everybody's focused on Gaza to actually change reality.
- [24:12]
Jonathan Friedland
And it's exactly part of that that got attention with these sets of decisions at the weekend, because one of them is this measures to make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy, buy up land. Exactly there, which again is the, is the age old way of changing facts on the ground. But in terms of settlements and settlers, again part of the international gaze when it has looked at the west bank. And absolutely the most attention has been on Gaza, but it's been about these waves of settler attacks in which settlers attack nearby adjacent Palestinian villages. There was a wave of those just recently. What is driving that? What is the IDF response to it? Is there a sea change, a qualitative change, or is it just an intensification by volume?
- [25:06]
Amos Harel
So first of all, there's a history there. It's not as if they were ever good neighbors in the past. And there has been violence from both sides between Palestinians and settlers for a very long time. But what we see in recent years is that violence is actually used by the settlers, by the Israeli side, to gain more and more territory, with the idea of, and the government turning a blind eye to that and sometimes actually being active in encouraging settler violence. There have been many incidents in recent years, and there were some attacks against settlers as well. But what we see, it's mostly about what was previously known as the illegal outposts, some established in the 90s, others in the decades after that. But there has been a change about five years ago which had to do with what they call farms, mostly young people, a small number in each of these farms. It starts with cattle, and very, very quickly. They have caravans there and so on. They try to build something. The IDF sees its responsibility as taking care of them and taking care of their security, defending them against, against possible Palestinian attacks. But in reality, what we see among many of those people who live in those new farms is actually a willingness to engage in violence with Palestinian neighbors. And sometimes what you have, you see settlers wearing military uniform, but not all of it. For instance, military trousers, but not the full clothing. They carry weapons, but it's not clear whether these are IDF weapons or weapons belonging to settlements. But what you see is gradually is more and more use of these weapons to intimidate Palestinians and in some cases to shoot at Palestinians. It's mostly described as self defense, but most of these incidents when you watch the videos, you watch them from the middle. You don't know what happened earlier on. When you talk to experts of people who live there or people who have been following this carefully for years, it's quite clear now that there is more settler violence than it was before. Again, the vast majority of settlers are not involved in that, but the leadership does not really take a strict enough position against that. And that's also true for both the IDF and of course, the government. And what has drastically changed is that people like Smotrich and Benkville are actually openly encouraging that. There's the double standard talk, which we're familiar with from the other side, with the Palestinian attitude towards violence and terrorism and so on. But what you see is if they're really, really under pressure, they'd say something along the lines of, we really wish that all violence would be left to law in order to deal with, or something like that. But it's rather clear that they see this as part of a bigger plan. And then what we have to mention, and I'm sure that you're both familiar with and thought about already, is the famous Smotrich Plan for a Decisive Victory, which was published and introduced to the public in 2017. At that time, he was a relatively junior minister. Not many people cared about what Smolych had to say. But this time he's a senior minister and is an important part of Netanyahu's government who actually affected decisions in Gaza. For instance, Netanyahu's refusal to sign a final hostage deal for more than a year had to do with Smaltrich's influence. And Netanyahu kept telling Trump that because Smalti is against it, his coalition could collapse. In retrospect, we know there was not a single. I think I've mentioned that talking to you guys in the past, but there was not a single demonstration from the right against the last hostage deal. But Smalti has been very, very influential, and he's been capable of influencing what is going on. And this is all part of the plan. If you actually look at where those new farms are situated, most of them were established in very specific places that the settlers see as strategic. What do I mean by that? These are places that would block Palestinians from gaining more land or building more homes outside of villages and towns. And on a wider level, from a wider perspective, this means trying to put more obstacles that would prevent the two state solution. Not that anybody's talking of that as a reality any longer, but this is important, extremely important. From the right Wing, the far right point of view.
- [29:59]
Yunit Levy
Yes. And this is amazing when you take into consideration this is a politician that in Every poll since Oct. 7, doesn't pass the electoral threshold. But as you say, his holding over the prime minister is quite strong. You were to, I think, to point out that the violence goes both ways, but this can lead to, I mean, how. How worried are sort of the top. How worried is the top brass of the IDF that this might lead to, you know, a third intifada, that this might, you know, these kinds of incidents of violence from both sides just intensify, and that kind of blows up this, this powder kick.
- [30:33]
Amos Harel
So three or four years ago, I would have told you, yes, the IDF stopped. Ras is concerned. They want restraint. They want to continue the current situation in spite of everything else that's going on, because if you comp with the alternatives, then this is a better option and so on. I'm not so sure that this is the same IDF we're talking about. And perhaps there are quite a few armies active now in the West Bank. If you talk about the top brass, about Eyal Zamir, the current chief of staff, he's not really very. He doesn't occupy himself too much with these. The thoughts about the west bank he has, has quite a lot on his mind, whether it's Gaza, Lebanon, or, as we speak, Iran. And you don't see him taking a stand or being very, very active about rules of engagement, about settler violence, about incidents in which settlers attack soldiers and so on. And when we talk of the actual senior commanders in the, what is known as the Central Command, which is responsible for the west bank, what you see is more and more settler influence and more and more Smotrich influence. Smotrich and his like are calling the shots there. And the IDF mostly plays second fiddle to that. And what I'm concerned is that not enough people are willing to step on the brakes in order to prevent escalation. And some of the people concerned, some of the people involved in these decision making might even think that this could be a positive development, that this could serve a wider purpose, that this could serve their ambitions to finally take control of the West Bank. It's sad for me to say, but I can't be fully convinced that the IDF has no part in this. What you see behind the scenes, some in junior levels, some in more senior positions, people are actually becoming more and more engaged with the ideas around the Smolich, and you cannot deny that anymore.
- [32:39]
Jonathan Friedland
That is a very striking point to have made. And given that if the armory is not the army people think of from 20, 30 years ago that maybe has some people, some elements who would not lament or fear this powder keg exploding. Where does that leave what until now, a lot of people have felt has kept the lid on this situation. And that is the cooperation, the security cooperation between the IDF and the Palestinian Authority. A lot of people felt that's kept things under control. Given what you've just told us, in a way, about the army, but also just given the whole situation, the weakening of the pa, where are we at with cooperation between the two on the ground?
- [33:24]
Amos Harel
Okay, so I'll give you the old answer and perhaps a new version of this answer, which you may find a little more cynical. The old version, the Oslo days version, goes that in spite of everything else that's been going on, these connections on the ground level are still extremely important. The colonels talking to the colonels, the brigadier generals talking to the brigadier generals, they both have. They share some kind of common ground or goal by the fact that they want to prevent bloodshed. They don't know how to solve this bloody conflict in the long run. But what they both know right now is that they need to prevent more violence, and therefore cooperation is needed and this continues. The Palestinian police still helps save Israelis who enter Ramallah by mistake or may anger some local people there. In cases where there are incidents with settlers, you sometimes see an attempt to cool down the situation from both sides. This goes on and there is some intelligence being shared as well, in spite of what has happened on October 7. And there have been cases in which the PA arrests Hamas militants because they're worried not only about what these terrorists can do to Israelis, but what also the chaos they could cause inside the Palestinian Authority. So all of this is still happening on a relatively more cynical level, I would tell you that there's a high level of deterrence because of what has happened in Gaza. I don't speak to a lot of Palestinians in the west bank, but I know quite a few. And in my brief visits to the west bank on the Palestinian side since October 7, what I've noticed was the lack of sympathy to what was going on in Gaza. They paid lip service to that. But mostly they were concerned about their own reality, about checkpoints, about permits to work inside Israel, something that was mostly stopped after October 7, about the economic reality inside places like Ramallah, Nablus and so on. And this is what they're concerned about. And I think there's a very high because of the damage and destruction caused by Israel in Gaza, which in itself was of course, a response to what was done to us on October 7th. I think that there's a high level of deterrence towards most Palestinians. And people would have assumed, with 70,000 casualties or more in Gaza, people would have assumed by now that a third intifada would be wrecking the West Bank. This is not happening because I think many Palestinians are afraid. They're afraid of the possible outcome. They've seen Gaza and Khan Yunus. They know what could happen to Ramallah and Janina under similar circumstances. So this could blow up. But a repeat of a massacre along the lines of October 7th, I think this is harder to do, first of all, because Israel, I hope, will be more ready for that. And secondly, because the vast majority of the west bank residents are afraid of the consequences. They see what has happened to their brethren in Gaza and they know what a terrible evil deed, but also a terrible mistake was made by Hamas with their decision to attack.
- [36:45]
Yunit Levy
That's a very interesting outlook that you're sharing with us. I wonder how much you mentioned the economic issue and I wonder. There are about, if I'm not mistaken, 100,000 people whose work permits were revoked after October 7th who live in the West Bank. How much does that have or play any kind of factor in what we're talking about? So the tensions rising or how does that affect the situation itself?
- [37:09]
Amos Harel
I think it works both ways. On the one hand, people are frustrated. There are again assessments that close to 40,000 Palestinians work illegally, continue to work inside the Green Line, inside the old 67 Israel. There are also close to 10,000 who work in settlements. It's interesting that settler leaders, many of them, while they preach of the dangers of Palestinian work inside Israel, allow Palestinians to work and get permits for Palestinians to work inside settlements in order to build more homes in these settlements. But by and large, the situation, the economy is doing terrible. It's not as bad as Gaza, of course. People do not live in tents, they have enough food and so on. But if we talked five or 10 years ago about a possible future economic future for the Palestinian Authority, this is not the situation right now. We're not getting tax money from the returns from the Israelis. There are no salaries being made from working legally in Israel anymore. A lot of the younger people are unemployed under these circumstances. And if you look at the situation in the long run, of course it's troubling. Again, speaking in the old Oslo language, this may have problematic outcome because this prostration may lead to an eruption of violence and yet again, people on the Israeli right wing would tell you this is over with. This is. You're talking of old speech. From the days of Oslo till October 6th, we're no longer discussing matters in such terms. And you and everybody else needs to start reckoning that this is the new reality, that we're working along different lines and different rules than we did before. Because somebody like Smotrich Smotli has said that he sees him and Stuart, another minister from his party and so on, sees this period as a sort of a heavenly miracle. Yes, of course, something bad happened on October 7, but since then we've recovered and we're gradually achieving our meaning, their goals. From my perspective, of course, this looks quite different. I don't see a lot to be happy about over what's going on in the west bank, and neither do I see this as a positive development in the Gaza Strip.
- [39:28]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah. And as you say, part of all this enabled by the fact that people were looking the other way, and with your help, we've been able to pay attention to what's going on there in the West Bank. That was very sobering, but clarifying. Amos Harel, as always, extremely grateful to you.
- [39:45]
Amos Harel
Thank you.
- [39:52]
Jonathan Friedland
Well, from a topic that perhaps has not had sufficient media attention in recent weeks and months to one that has just consumed the news agenda all over the world. And I'm talking, of course, about the Epstein files, the list of names, the volume of documents. It's made news. Well, certainly here in Britain, it's made news in Israel, dominant story in the United States. The ripple effects are just felt everywhere of this truly gruesome and dismal story.
- [40:25]
Yunit Levy
I mean, this week, I think the urgent question should be turned to whoever's sitting in the uk, which is, could Keir Starmer lose his job as his role as Prime Minister due to this case?
- [40:37]
Jonathan Friedland
He definitely could. I mean, and it's. I'm not the only one to have noted the irony that he is one of the few big, powerful people in the world who is essentially not mentioned in the Epstein files. He had absolutely nothing to do with this and certainly, you know, was never mentioned by Epstein himself and not on his radar, and came to prominence long after Epstein's death. But, yes, embroiled, because he appointed Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, appointed as Britain's ambassador to Washington, one Peter Mandelson, a sort of grandee of British Labour Party politics. And it was known even then, actually, that Epstein and Mandelson had been friends. What has since come out is a huge slew of evidence that they were extremely tight and were in touch with each other all the time. And what is devastating for Starmer is that one of among the things that Mandelson is alleged to have done is to have passed on confidential secret government documents and papers during the financial crisis back in 2009. And all signs point to him forwarding them on as useful sort of financial information to Jeffrey Epstein, in some cases within four seconds of receiving these, you know, cabinet level secrets. Obviously nobody suggests that Keir Starmer knew that had happened, but the charge against him is what terrible misjudgment to have put this man into that job knowing that he was a pal of Jeffrey Epstein. As always with political scandals, if this was the only thing, it probably would not be enough. But there are grave misgivings about Keir Starmer's judgment. His kind of nous anyway. He's made a series of policy decisions that he's had to reverse and the opinion polls are terrible for him. The rise and rise of the national Populist Party reform under Nigel Farage means Labour is trailing very badly. And so this may have been the last straw. It came within. He was hanging by a thread earlier this week. There were senior calls within his party for him to go. He managed to rally his own senior colleagues, but for how long? I mean, most people are now saying it's a matter of when, not if, he goes. And in some ways the only reason it hasn't happened so far is because his opponents don't yet have a candidate to succeed him around which they have all coalesced. But no, looks dire for him. And the proximate cause, the flashpoint is the revelations in the Epstein files.
- [43:20]
Yunit Levy
I mean, who would have thought that one day when we started this five years ago that the stable political country would be Israel? And this country going into elections every couple of months or in a brief period of time would be you guys.
- [43:34]
Jonathan Friedland
Well, essentially Britain now has no, Britain now has had something like four or five or six prime ministers in the last, you know, five years. I lose count. Israel, meanwhile, has solved this problem by just having one person be Prime Minister forever. So it makes it much, much simpler.
- [43:51]
Yunit Levy
It does. I have to say that I always tell audiences from, you know, outside Israel that I say that this year will be my 11th election night broadcast, which in normal countries would probably mean 44 years. I've been doing this less than 44 years, not a lot less. But. But in any case, back to what we were discussing, look here, I think what we've been Noticing here in Israel is, first of all, the connections between Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister, and Epstein. It was known that these connections existed. What came out from these files, first of all, is the fact that Barak stayed at his house a lot more than was known, actually. And conversations coming out that Khalor Barak himself, let's say people who listen to it, would notice things that could sound racist when he talks about Russian immigration to Israel. He has apologized for that. But this, of course, in Israel and definitely in an election year, becomes something of fodder, particularly because Barak was, of course, still is a very vocal critic of Netanyahu. So all of Netanyahu's supporters are rallying around this and saying that Barak has to be basically excommunicated from politics. He hasn't been actively in politics for about, I would say, eight years, and of course, not a prime minister since 2001. But this is sort of embroiled inside the political situation in Israel. We should add that what we have been seeing generally when these files are coming out and all of the stories coming out is anyone who needs an excuse for anti Semitism definitely finds it in these cases.
- [45:20]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah, no, that's been a real feature online. Whether it's conspiracy theories in which Epstein is a Mossad agent, or dark stories about Epstein and his associates. The antisemites have had a field day with this story, as you can imagine. But I think in a way, what anyone looking at it would be even more depressed by is the extent of the abuse. The women and girls being used, in the words of a former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, very eloquently put it, used as less than human, regarded as less than human by powerful men who believed they could act with impunity, whoever they are and wherever they're from. The breadth of this, how it does take in different, you know, capital cities, societies all over the world, they. What these people have in common is a sense of their own impunity related to power and vast amounts of money. And it has been, you know, I think an extremely. Well, I was going to say so, but it's actually been sort of sickening to see it. And I think that's the big picture that people perhaps should be taking away from this.
- [46:29]
Yunit Levy
I couldn't agree more. I think that, you know, when you remember Chinatown, right, and you understand this, a film about how someone is rich enough and powerful enough to get away with murder, and here for such a long time, these people were rich enough and powerful enough to get away with essentially murdering souls of young women and girls. And it is a good thing that this is becoming, you know, this is coming out to light. But when you think of what was hidden here, what was done in modern times in the Western world by powerful men, enabled by, by another one powerful woman, just thinking about it, it makes you sick. And I think that the fact that there isn't a special prosecutor in this case because the President decided not to appoint one, I think that if there could have been, at least you could have felt like this finally will be all of it, all of it would be open and known to the world. I just, I'm scared to think if anything like this is still happening or can happen, if it happened once before in this magnitude.
- [47:27]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah, I think your love your point about special prosecutors is really good one. I was speaking to a legal expert who said, you know, releasing all the documents, millions of them, seems like an act of transparency. Actually, it's the opposite. It means that things are diluted, they're lost in the, in the sort of swamp, the avalanche of papers, a special commission of inquiry or a special prosecutor, special counsel, then they would sift through and discriminate and work out what is. Because a lot of it, if you look through it, a lot of it is just press stories, random emails, garbage online. You just need somebody, you need somebody to sift through it and wait it and then really get to the bottom of it. I'm not sure the victims have been served at all by this disclosure. Even before we get into the fact that many of them had their identities in effect revealed, even as some of the powerful men who are culpable had their names and identities redacted and protected. So the injustice continues. And this one is a story that is reverberating, as we've been saying all over the world, including in Israel, but far beyond. We talked earlier about the summitry going on in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister and the American President about what's going to happen with Iran. A lot of the thought about this is the taking place at that 30,000ft level as people work out the geopolitics of this. But at the heart of it is the people of Iran. And we wanted to focus on that with a guest extremely well placed to talk about it.
- [49:13]
Yunit Levy
Holly Dagrest is an analyst on Iran. She's a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and curates the Iranist, a widely read weekly newsletter on Iran Iran. She's a leading voice on Iranian social movements and generational change. And we're very glad to have her on on Holly today. Holly thank you for being with us.
- [49:28]
Holly Dagres
Thank you for having me on the program.
- [49:31]
Yunit Levy
I mean, we have so much to talk about, you know, what is going on in Iran. But just if we can, your life story, just to set the stage on this is really fascinating. Your mother is Iranian, your father's American, and you actually spent your formative years in Iran. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
- [49:48]
Holly Dagres
Yeah, it's confusing because everybody's trying to leave Iran. And just as I was turning 13 in 1999, my mom, who had since divorced my father and remarried, decided to move back to Iran. And so I would say it was the biggest shock of any young person's life to move to this country that nobody really gave me Iran 101 on. So I had to all of a sudden wear hijab and nobody to explain to me why the country was ruled by a crown to a turban. And so frankly, at that age, I wanted to listen to my pop music and wear my shorts and tank tops, being from sunny Southern California. And so I actually hated Iran at the time. So it's kind of wild to think I went from that trajectory to this, where I've made a career out of it. And it's because I really fell in love with the people and the culture. And I understood that they don't represent. Represent the Islamic Republic or the regime that's been ruling them for four and a half decades.
- [50:46]
Jonathan Friedland
So as you say, those formative years, Those teenage years, seven years, I think you were there up till 2006, but you're not allowed back now?
- [50:55]
Holly Dagres
No, and I'll explain why. I used to travel back and forth till 2013. My mother actually still was living there at the time. And I was a grad student at the American University in Cairo. And I got interrogated and threatened with imprisonment or deportation. And they made me sign something called the Tahodnameh, or commitment letter. And I haven't been back since. And I think it was a blessing because I think I would have kept coming and going and eventually probably would have gotten picked up. And of course, given the career I'm in, and I've actually lived in Israel as well, to top it off. So not only to them am I a CIA agent, I'm also a Mossad agent. So it really complicated things. And so looking back, I think it really was a blessing.
- [51:45]
Yunit Levy
I'm interested about this because I didn't know. When did you live in Israel?
- [51:48]
Holly Dagres
I was there from 2017 till 2019. My ex husband was a CNN correspondent. We met in Cairo and his career took us to Jerusalem.
- [51:58]
Yunit Levy
So a fascinating life you've been living.
- [52:00]
Holly Dagres
Yeah, I feel very privileged.
- [52:02]
Yunit Levy
Olip Yongyang can make this can top all of the story that you're telling us.
- [52:06]
Holly Dagres
I feel very privileged to have lived in Tehran, Cairo and Jerusalem. And I think that's really rare.
- [52:12]
Jonathan Friedland
So that is. You've covered the bases with that one, really.
- [52:17]
Yunit Levy
I mean, there's so much to talk about and I'd love to kind of ask a lot about the population, what they're going through, particularly what you're interested in, which is the Gen Z. But I mean, we can't not, you know, start with talking about this terrible massacre of January 8th. Can you tell us how the people are doing to the extent that you can. You can feel the mood of the nation after this, you know, these terrible couple of weeks?
- [52:44]
Holly Dagres
Well, there was a communication shutdown, of course, that began on January 8th, and it was during that communication shutdown that.
- [52:52]
Amos Harel
A.
- [52:54]
Holly Dagres
Unprecedented massacre occurred. The numbers are reported to be in probably the tens of thousands. So the group Human Rights Activist in Iran says it's at least 6,500 and they're looking at 11,000 plus cases. The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights says that it's probably in the 20,000 plus plus range. And so this is. We haven't seen a scale like this in modern Iranian history. Like Even during the 1979 revolution, the numbers of deaths weren't like that. And Dr. Ali Ansari, a historian at St. Andrews, said that we haven't seen violence from the Iranian states like this since the 1790s, just to give you context. And so the communications are back online, of course, Internet and social media is blocked and Iranians have to use circumvention tools like VPNs to get online. And just for viewers and listeners to understand, 35% of the most popular websites in the world are blocked in Iran. And so we're really still understanding just a sliver of these atrocities that rise to the crimes against humanity that had been committed by the Islamic Republic. And so Iranians are still in shock. They're still processing it, the harrowing stories. I just. The regime has crossed, I would say, a line or a threshold of no return. And there's no way of coming back from these events.
- [54:31]
Jonathan Friedland
And in terms of how the people of Iran are sort of coping with that or the impact it's been on them, on the most superficial level, I think it means the demonstration have stopped. It has achieved what the regime wanted in the sense of deterring any more of those protests. But we have seen these funerals in which Iranians even dancing at some of those funerals as a gesture of defiance. I mean, just it was obviously billed as, and intended to be rather a crackdown. But has it cracked down? Are the Iranian people themselves, you know, cracked down upon by this, or are they still in a mode of defiance and resistance?
- [55:14]
Holly Dagres
I would definitely say the latter. And I'll unpack a bit of what you're saying. For starters, I've spent, unfortunately, I've gone to numerous funerals of my own family growing up in Tehran. And funerals are very somber. They're emotional. They express themselves in the crying, hitting themselves. And it's actually a therapeutic thing to do. It's to actually express yourself in that matter. And then to see these Iranians I've seen actually have weddings for their loved ones that will never be able to get married because they've been killed by security forces. This is something we haven't seen before from Iranians to actually show happiness. And it's because they want to disconnect from the regime itself, this idea of.
- [55:59]
Amos Harel
Of.
- [56:01]
Holly Dagres
I would say, death worship. In the Islamic Republic, there's murals of the Iran Iraq War martyrs. There's always holidays surrounding the deaths of the Shia saints. And so there's always this, like, cloud of mourning in Iran. And so this is, I would say, a response to that feeling that the Islamic Republic has put upon the people for 47 years. And I think it's also to show that they're no longer scared. You can kill our loved ones, but you know what? We celebrate. We honor them. We're so proud that they were martyrs in this fight for freedom. And so that's what you're seeing in terms of the funerals themselves, but Iranians still remain defiant. Yesterday just marked the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, and there were pro regime rallies. Historically, there are no to force people to go to the streets. It's mandatory. And there was a high turnout, of course. And they also forced some of the families of those who are imprisoned that are on death row and whatnot, and told them, you need to go show yourself physically, like, take a picture, whatever, and show up to these rallies so that, like, we stop from your loved one from being executed, or we reduce their sentences or we let them go. But there was that angle. But then there were Iranians still very defiantly from their rooftops, from their windows were chanting, death to the dictator, Death to Khamenei. And there were viral videos of that in different parts of Iran. And so knowing that they brutally cracked down at unprecedented scale, Iranians still remain defiant because to them, they will not live without the status quo. They want the Islamic Republic gone.
- [57:49]
Yunit Levy
I mean, you said that there's this beautiful talk that you gave TED Talk about the Iranian Gen Z. And this is what you say. You say, have you ever seen how grass crushes concrete and springs to life between the cracks of a sidewalk? That is Iranian Gen Z. And I wonder really after these last couple of weeks and you say the regime has crossed the line that it can't walk back from, will we see the end of this regime? I don't know. In a month, in a year, in five years. But is that where we are heading in your opinion?
- [58:25]
Holly Dagres
I think certainly so. I don't have a timeline. If I did, I'd be a very rich person right now. But funny enough, I believe this. Yossi Cohen, the former head of Mossad actually was doing a book tour recently and I think it was on CNN he said five to 10 years. And I was like, you know what? I could see that. And it's because the things that the regime has done for these four and a half decades has created the situation that it's now in. Systemic mismanagement, corruption, repression. And then of course the events in the post October 7th, seeing that its proxies have been maimed, its top ally Bashar Al Assad having been toppled, and of course the vulnerabilities that we came to realize after the 12 day war, it's really not in a great position. And of course dinar is now of course the sword of democracy hanging over its head that the United States might strike in the coming days, if not weeks. And so it's really created the situation it's in and it really can't go back to that. And the Iranian people, they've recognized that. That's why time and time again we've been seeing these cyclical anti regime protests since December 2017, January 2018 onwards, and of course the most famous one being the 2022 Woman Life Freedom uprising. So while they had different reasons for starting like the Women Life Freedom was prompted by the murder of a Kurdish Iranian woman by the name of Masajina Amini at the hands of the morality police. This recent event that started on December 28th was the collapse of the Iranian rial against the US dollar. The core grievances remain the same. And it's because of those core grievances that have not been addressed, ones that Iranians have been echoing for years. This is why they've been having, having this explicit call for the ouster of the Islamic Republic.
- [60:33]
Jonathan Friedland
You mentioned the scholar of Iran, Ali Ansari, earlier, and I remember him saying just before, ahead of January 8, that a key thing to watch for is whether the security personnel, security forces, whether that's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or the Basij, those people, whether they will open fire on their own fellow Iranians. Iranians. And he had at the time, I think he'd seen one or two indications that maybe they were reluctant to do that. We know from the tens of thousands reported killed in the massacre that you referred to that it seems they were prepared to open fire. And there's footage of brutal beatings, you know, hand to hand, kicking and punching. In one video that I saw an Iranian woman at the hands of a group of men.
- [61:20]
Amos Harel
What is it?
- [61:20]
Jonathan Friedland
That, first of all, does that surprise you? That when it came to it, there were Iranians ready to open fire, machine gun, mow down fellow Iranians, but also, what is it that it will take to change that? Because in a way, for a regime to topple, it has to come about that the security forces defect and flee from the regime.
- [61:43]
Holly Dagres
I think that's a really important question, the question of defection, and it's one of, one of the gripes I have with Western governments is why not create off ramps for these defections to happen? And so we didn't see defections, as one would assume, but I would argue that it just hasn't been public. Defection means different things. It means not showing up to work. It means feigning illness. It means when everybody else is shooting, maybe you pretend to shoot. We don't know what exactly played out. And you noted some really horrific images. They weren't just using guns, they were using machetes. And honestly, some of the videos and pictures that have come out of the country ironically look like isis. And I point this out because you have Iranian officials, including Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Ararchi, describe these protesters as ISIS and terrorists. And that's why they need to be killed. And so when you look at like why security forces continue to shoot, this is still an ideological regime. And people actually believe this idea that the United States and Israel have fomented this unrest, that they're out to divide the country up. And they unfortunately call it the syrization of Iran, which is also in itself ironic because it, it was the IRGC Rhodes force that played such a big role in destroying Syria to prop up the Bashar al Assad regime. And so when we're looking at this, some of these people are actually shooting and they're thinking they're killing Mossad agents, CIA agents in their head because that's what the regime has fed. Who are these people? These are the bad guys. That being said on the topic of defections over, I think it's too soon to tell. We've reportedly had two Iranian diplomats, one in Switzerland, in Austria, defect. I think you might be seeing more. And it's because there's this moral rupture because of these atrocities that were committed. It's this fear that the regime is going to collapse at one point and also what will happen to them in a post Islamic republic? Will they have to pay for their sins in a form of transitional justice? And so I think that it's really too hard to say in this moment, but it could over time take a different direction.
- [64:10]
Yunit Levy
Tell us what we don't know about, you know, the Iranian population, the Gen Zs. I mean I would assume that any population is so closed would have this vibrant and kicking underground for all kinds of like parties or you know, as you say, the VPNs that you they can watch. I think at one point you described how they watch watch with satellite dishes, the Taylor Swift concerts. Like tell us what we don't know about this society, about this age group even in Iran.
- [64:38]
Holly Dagres
Yeah, Iranian Gen Z is really, I would say they're part of the globalized Gen Z and it's because they're connected to the world through Internet, social media and illegal satellite dishes and they're also the first to be born with it. And because Gen Z is a globalized generation, the it doesn't matter if you're in Tehran, Tel Aviv or Washington D.C. they dress the same, they listen to the same music, they oftentimes watch the same things. I was told that over Halloween, K Pop demon hunters, which by the way Iran, they don't celebrate Halloween. But this year it was, or at least last year it was all the rage. And that was a popular costume that young Iranians were wearing. And so they also used English slang, Gen Z slang in their lingo. And so they very much are connected to the rest of the world and also have the same needs and wants and they want really basic things. They want to be able to find a job, they want to be able to freely express themselves. They want to be able to go on dates and kiss their lover in the streets. As maybe you remember the song Badoya for the Sake of that was the de facto protest anthem of women life freedom that won A Grammy at the time. I mean, it's very simple, basic, neat things that these young Iranians want. And it's for that reason they're going out in the streets knowing full well that we met with bullets and batons. And I would argue that it was Iranian Gen Z, that was the first of their generation to start these anti regime protests around the globe. And that started in 2022. We also, I always talk about that being a women and girls led uprising, but I would say it's Gen Z. This is again what happened during this most recent iteration of anti regime protests and we've seen since after 2022 in Madagascar, Bangladesh, the Philippines that Gen Z has been rising up. And it's because these young people don't feel like they have a future because of climate change, because of inequalities and corruption. And so they're really trying to take hold of that. And you're seeing that play out in Iran especially.
- [66:53]
Jonathan Friedland
And when you talk about the those who are watching K pop Demon Hunters and listening to the music, are we talking there about just the very, very narrow, western facing, hyper educated elite or is that really, you know, young Iranian people across the board, even outside Tehran, across the country?
- [67:11]
Holly Dagres
Well, most of those kids don't get to have visas to leave the country. When I was growing up, I knew a girl that had never left Iran, but she spoke with the perfect American accent because she took English classes and watched all these Hollywood movies. So these are kids that really just want to be part of a world that they don't have access to. I mean, I'm just talking about this with you guys. I think of Ariel, the Little mermaid, how she wants to be part of the human world and not be a mermaid. Like literally that's what these kids are. They, they want to be part of something. And so you see it in the provincial towns and some of the smaller cities. And, and I have to say that also means that there's also pro regime Gen Z. That cohort has gotten smaller because of the Internet and social media, because of their curiosities. You can't keep away young people, people from their curiosities. And so that's exactly what you're seeing with Gen Z. And this is why the cohort of pro regime Iranians keeps getting smaller and smaller because the curiosity of wanting to know more and the regime is unable to stop them, whether through the blocking of the Internet or seizing people's satellite dishes. The moment the satellite dishes get removed by authorities, the next day they're back up because People want access to the world. And so it's a double edged sword for the regime in this moment.
- [68:39]
Yunit Levy
It's interesting because the regime is saying, death to America, death to Israel. You're saying they watch Hollywood movies, they watch Taylor Swift concerts. I'm just curious what they actually think this generation, what they think about Americans, even what they think about Israel, like what is in their minds.
- [68:57]
Holly Dagres
Well, it's funny you highlighted those chants because for years now one of the chants is you say the US is our enemy, but our enemy's here, right with us, talking about the Islamic Republic. And so there's a real realization that their problems are with the clerical establishment. It's not the United States, it's not Israel. When I was growing up in Iran, 2006 is when they started enriching uranium domestically. And Iranians are very much nationalistic and proud of it, to the point you'd go to the bazaar and buy fresh pomegranate juice and they'd call it nuclear juice. And by the time my last visit to Iran, which was 2013, it was at the height of multilateral sanctions led by the Barack Obama administration. They were very punitive. And Iranians used to blame the US for their problems, like our economy is bad because of these sanctions that have been imposed by the West. Now you talk to the average Iranian, they say, well, this nuclear program has brought nothing but pain and suffering, whether it's through these sanctions, whether it's this 12 day war that it invited. And so they see it as the bane of their existence. I mean, the anti regime Iranians, of course there's also this cohort of pro regime Iranians that think, oh wow, maybe there was a reason we should be going for the bomb, because if we had a nuclear weapon, then the US and Israel wouldn't have been able to attack us during the 12 Day War. So they see it as a deterrence. So it's, I would say, very much growing up in Iran. Iran is probably the most pro American in the Middle East. It's been like that for a long time. When I was last there, and you have to keep in mind, this is a country that burns American flags. They were selling American flags in 2013 as bikinis, as leggings. And I remember buying a pair of American flag leggings to test this theory, because in the 90s we gifted an American flag T shirt to a cousin of mine who walked in the streets and wore it and got a race arrested for it. But here in 2013, I'm wearing these American flag Leggings and nobody cares. And so they've really. It's a very different environment in Iran now. And it's something that the regime recognizes before. Women Life, Freedom and IRGC affiliated magazine said that we're really struggling with this generation. They don't want to adhere to our ideal Islamic system, citizen view of our youth. And they've been struggling with it since. And I think that that's why before this recent uprising, you started seeing these reports of young Iranians violating mandatory hijab, not just in Tehran, but all across the country. It's because they've been overwhelmed by numbers that these young Iranians are so fierce and so strong and brave that they're willing to go out and not knowing that they could get in trouble, that they can get arrested and killed like Mahsa Gina Amini. But they're still pushing back. And that's why you saw that between the 12 Day War and the December 28 protests and some of the reporting.
- [72:12]
Jonathan Friedland
So you've talked there about the attitudes to America. What about, though, the attitudes to Israel? And I'm even thinking about towards Jews. I mean, we know that there is a Jewish minority in Iran. It used to be much more numerous. You know, there's always been a view that actually there would be a kind of rapport between Jews and Iranians as kind of non Arab peoples in the Middle East. Just tell us about the attitudes that, the unofficial attitudes below the surface that you see in terms of Israel and Jews among Iranians, particularly young Iranians.
- [72:46]
Holly Dagres
Well, as you know very well, the Islamic Republic is anti Semitic in nature, in its rhetoric and its Holocaust denial and other reasons. And so they've tried really hard to influence the people in their thinking in that regard. And of course, even with Holocaust denial, and so thanks again to the Internet and satellite dishes, Iranians have been trying to inform themselves more and more over the years. And Iran, it's clearly had an impact. I remember in the 2000 and tens, maybe you remember this, there was this Facebook page, Iranians love Israel and Israelis love Iranians or something like that. And it was actual people within both countries trying to say, hey, our governments might not like each other, but we like each other because we're people and their politics of our governments don't represent us. And that was extraordinary moment between these two peoples. And so there's that aspect. But also, interestingly, I would say up until the 12 day war, Iranians have become more pro Israel over the years. And it's because they've recognized that the Islamic Republic sees Israel as an archenemy, and it seems to be, and it fears it, and that it arguably could be one of the. Of between the United States and Israel. The only, I would say, counteract, could counteract the Islamic Republic and actually respond to it. And so you started seeing much more pro Israel rhetoric inside the country. And that was what we've been seeing at least up until the 12 day war. And I remember initially, in the first 24 hours, 48 hours of the war, Iranians were celebrating when top military brass were being taken out in their penthouses. And of course, as the war expanded, the mood on the ground changed and there was a worry about where things would go from there. But there was some celebration in those initial 24 or 48 hours that Israel was taking out the leadership.
- [75:03]
Yunit Levy
That's fascinating. We started with your personal story. So I can't not ask you if you're ever back there, if there's ever a circumstance where you can go back, what would be the first thing you do? What would be the first thing you'd want to see? Family you'd want to see. Did you think about that?
- [75:23]
Holly Dagres
Funny enough, I think about it a lot more these days. I see it more now. I saw it for a second during the 12 day war. I entertained the possibility and of course, during this recent uprising, at least initially. And I grew up, of course, at some part of my life in the US surrounded by people that fled during the 1979 revolution. And they used to have nostalgia for Iran and say they want to go back. And I never understood that nostalgia and need and longing until it happened to me that I can't go back. And so I kind of relate to these older Iranians that I grew up with. I mean, first, obviously, I would say family. I still have most of my Iranian family there. But, you know, I'd want to do the simple things. I would want to walk down Tehran's sycamore line street valley ass that stretches for kilometers. So it's just absolutely stunning. It doesn't matter what time of the year, whether it's snow covered, whether it's fall. I'd want to go to the bazaar. I love antiquing. I shopped in the Grand Bazaar, but there's also a smaller one called Tadrish where we would do our grocery shopping. And it reminds me of Jerusalem's Shuk, and I actually used to shop there. And it reminded me of Iran a lot. And it really warmed up my heart every time I went there. And so, I don't know, I just want to walk everywhere and explore and see how it's changed, because it's obviously developed a lot more since I was there in 2013. They built so many roads and highways. And I have to say, Tehran's a beautiful city and much more developed than one would think. Despite being internationally isolated and under sanctions, I'd argue it looks better than Cairo. My Egyptian friends will be upset to hear that, but. And I was just in Riyadh and I was like, oh, well, I like Tehran more. So it's. I don't know, I just would want to explore, I think, and just take it all in. And I think I'd just be in awe that I would be back, frankly. It'd be an emotional journey. And with my late mother having passed away, I have a picture of her actually in Iran behind me. I think I would think of her a lot because a lot of what I did in Iran was with my mother, so.
- [77:44]
Jonathan Friedland
Well, we hope you get to walk that sycamore lined avenue. You've described it so beautifully. Holly Dagres, thanks so much for talking to us on Unholy.
- [77:53]
Holly Dagres
Thank you for having me. It was a delight.
- [78:01]
Yunit Levy
I mean, Holly's so smart on Iran, but when you add to that, that personal layer of, of living there for seven years as a teenager, you think about an American making half American, half Iranian, making that journey at the end of the 1990s, and, you know, the fact that her family still lives there, I mean, and what she describes as her kind of dream, if she ever gets to go back. I think that was fascinating. Of course, the description of that generation, that Gen Z's that live a life and want to change and how, you know, what kind of life they're living now. I thought that was really interesting.
- [78:35]
Jonathan Friedland
You know, whenever you speak to people who are sort of exiled from Iran, all they have to do is evoke the place. And you immediately realize this is the world you don't hear about or see on the news because it's a real place and a real society. But what struck me while she was speaking was that I'm used to hearing that from people who've been exiled since the revolution. And so their memories are kind of 1970s memories of the Shah's Iran. You know, here to hear somebody who was there, as you say, incredible as a teenager, formative years, but in. Into the first years of this century and describing, you know, they're watching K Pop and all that. I mean, all of it was just completely fascinating. But every time you hear it, you realize, okay, when people are looking at the pieces on the geopolitical chessboard and thinking of sanctions or military action. It's a real society, a real place. That sycamore lined avenue where people can walk for miles. It's a real place. And she evoked it very beautifully. I thought. So. It is time for our weekly awards. Now, Joni, I have to confess that normally it is a very crowded field for chutzpah and maybe the world is getting ever so slightly better, or maybe I'm just about to go away for several weeks. But we have had a little, little shortage in the chutzpah department. But nevertheless, luckily the world comes through. Because I mentioned earlier, didn't I, that the British Prime Minister is paying a very heavy price for having appointed Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to Washington. It turns out there was a short list on it was a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, former Finance Minister George Osborne, but also Bear Grylls. Not a name I expect all of our audience to know. But he's a TV kind of rugged survivalist who can. The name is. The clue is in the name. He can survive anywhere, you know, in the woods. He can deal with bears with his bare hands. Kind of think, think of like a Steve Irwin sort of guy who is just unfazed by. But not. Anyway, a diplomat, not somebody who knows the pot. Apparently people in Starmer's circle thought that he's a reality TV guy. Trump's a reality TV guy. Yeah, that's a great idea. Anyway, luckily it didn't prevail. Although maybe it would have been easier for Starmer than the mess he got himself into with Peter Mandelson. But a small chutzpah nominate mention, really a nomination for not just appointing a diplomat. There was a perfectly good ambassador already and plays Karen Pierce, a veteran diplomat. Just stay with them. Get diplomats, do diplomats jobs, tv, you know, survivalist. They can do their thing. Anyway, a small nomination in our chutzpah catalog.
- [81:12]
Yunit Levy
I thought you were going to say it was on the tip of your tech to say TV people should stay in TV looking at me and staring for like 10 seconds.
- [81:20]
Amos Harel
Good.
- [81:21]
Yunit Levy
I'm glad you said Chancellor of the Exchequer. We have to. Basically you have to do that every couple of episodes because that's fun when you say it. Okay, I'm going to go into Mensch. Although we did open up with a lovely story about Alon Ohel, who could definitely make the mention award of the week. But I found another one, so why not? Why not, as you say, make the world feel a little Bit better about itself. And the man we want to give the event award of the week, or I would want to, is AJ Edelman. Also, we should say, apart from everything else, the brother of one of our favorite guests, of course, Alex Edelman, the comedy genius. But A.J. edelman is the representative, I think the word is pilot, of the bobsled team representing Israel in the Winter Olympics. Insert any joke you want about Israel being in the Winter Olympics. Mideast weather, they're, you know, I don't know, competing on camels, whatever. But still, his dream, we should say, has always been to win a medal for the Israeli team in the Winter Olympics. So they are happening now in Italy. I'm sure you're following this closely, Jonathan. The reason we put him on this list, among other reasons, is that the. Actually, the team was robbed this week. And it was kind of a story. He went to, you know, he published this on X. And a lot of their equipment was stolen. But we still believe in them and think it's a beautiful story. He got them all, the team together in 2018, started writing messages to all of his friends. And this kind of a really great group. And they call themselves the Shul Runnings. Like there was a. Remember that bobsled. Exactly, that bobsled. Jamaican bobsled team called Cool Runnings. And they also have the name. I think it's Frozen Chosen. There's all kinds of names over this story. But it's such a lovely one. And I think it's really nice that, you know, he could play for. He could play for the American team. He chose to play for the Israeli one. And we're keeping our fingers crossed. I think the first competition is February 16th, so we really hope that they might actually win a medal.
- [83:10]
Jonathan Friedland
We do. We send them good wishes. First of all, I think your use of play reveals the limits of your knowledge of bobsledding perhaps a tiny bit. I'm not sure you play.
- [83:19]
Yunit Levy
You think I don't follow closely the bobsled competitions everywhere in the world.
- [83:24]
Jonathan Friedland
You will do now. But I'm remembering our conversation with Alex Adelman, because when he started saying that his brother was in the Olympics and a bobsled team, and it's a whole part of his act, I remember thinking, that can't be true. That's really. I mean, it's hilarious, but it's not. And of course, being Alex Adelman, of course it's totally true. Cause that's. His comedy is rooted in the absurdity of real life. We send very, very best wishes to AJ Edelman. In fact the whole Edelman family. Why not? We should have him on.
- [83:51]
Yunit Levy
I think we should have him on.
- [83:52]
Jonathan Friedland
We've just decided Committee of one Frozen and Frozen chosen is fantastic. We wish him and the team great luck. We have our thank yous and well, you know I'm going to say thank you in advance because I won't be here for a little bit. So thank you to you Yonit for holding the fort when I'm not here. But just to say again, Australia, New Zealand, I think it's going to be there. Some of the details in the show notes. So do come along Melbourne, Sydney, wherever you can.
- [84:20]
Yunit Levy
You're welcome. Jonathan and I will say a big thank you to Michal Porat and to Nir Laiss this week and we will see each other in a really long time. Have fun.
- [84:32]
Jonathan Friedland
Don't rub it in, you'll need. See you soon.