← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Iran with General David Petraeus, Oscars with Naomi Alderman - plus: can Jewish life thrive under fire?
01:36:11
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/vQ0o0F07o2k Subscribe to get bonus episodes, read more about the team, and catch us on every platform we're on! > https://bit.ly/unholy-podcast Naomi Alderman on Substack: look at me. I’m here. I’m the ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat: https://naomialderman.substack.com/p/look-at-me-im-here-im-the-ultimate Day 13 of the war with Iran — and the conflict just got bigger. Overnight, 200 rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon. Hezbollah, which many believed had been neutered, is back. This week, Yonit and Jonathan take stock of a war that is growing, not winding down. They're joined by General David Petraeus — former CIA Director, commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one of the most clear-eyed voices on American military strategy. Petraeus breaks down what the US and Israel have actually achieved so far: missile launches are down over 90%, air defenses have been dismantled, and over 6,000 targets hit. But the new Kh...
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- [00:03]
A
We were hoping that the replacement for the Supreme Leader would be Delsey Rodriguez. And instead what we got is a young Kim Jong Un.
- [00:24]
B
The end of the second week of the war with Iran, a full blown second front opens up for Israel in a war with Hezbollah in the north. It's unholy. I'm Yanit Levi in Tel Aviv.
- [00:36]
C
And I'm Jonathan Friedland in London. Unholy. Two Jews on the news. As you say, we are coming close to two full weeks of this. You're still waking up at all hours of the day and night, particularly the night. But as you said that just at the top, I mean, that voice we heard at the top, that's General David Petraeus. He's gonna be one of two special guests this week. A man who knows about fighting wars in this region also will have a conversation very, very different one with the writer Naomi Alderman, all about her love for the movie Marty supreme, which is up for a Best Picture Oscar on Sunday. So a whole range of stuff we're gonna be covering. But just as you said, this war is rather than come tapering towards an end, which at one point it seemed to be from what Donald Trump was saying. On the contrary, from where you're sitting, a new front is opening up.
- [01:29]
B
Indeed. We're sitting here. It's almost 2pm Israel time and almost 7am Washington time. 200 launches from Lebanon detected towards Israel during the night. Which means, of course, Jonathan, another siren filled night for Israelis here waking up at all hours and needing either to go to their safe room or to a shelter or to a public shelter. You know, just to set the lay of the land here. Obviously, schools have been closed for two weeks. Most workplaces are still closed. This still is a war very much full blown. And the minute Hezbollah enters the fray, and we'll talk about the ramifications of that and what it means, of course, this doesn't look anywhere close to ending.
- [02:19]
C
Yeah. And UN warning that all across the region, people, I think about hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people now on the move out of their homes, particularly in Lebanon. So the WHO region is really going through this great sort of upheaval. If anyone thought this was going to be a short, sharp shock, it does not look like this. As we said in our update episode, I think earlier on in the week, we've now passed the point of the length of the June twelve day war. This is going on longer. Why don't we talk about this new front though, with Hezbollah? For people watching from afar, the explanation for this is these Two things have always been tied. Hezbollah is a pro of the Iranians. It's been armed by them. It's always been more or less directed operationally by them, as seen as a sort of cat's paw of the Iranians for a long time had this effect of acting as a deterrent, meaning, don't do anything to us because Hezbollah will get you raining fire on the north of Israel. They joined in after October 7, 2023, and were hit back very, very hard by Israel to the point where a lot of us, I think, even on this podcast, said they're kind of out of the picture. They're all but disarmed. This sort of thing was said by various analysts on our podcast. It seems like they are very much not out of the picture and have decided to join this war on Iran's side, obviously, meaning joining Iran's attack on Israel. To what extent were you. Were Israelis surprised by this and surprised by the fact that, guess what? Hezbollah still have, can still pack a punch? They haven't been disabled, disarmed, neutered, whatever words have been used over the last 18 months?
- [04:06]
B
Yes, I mean, well, you summed it up quite, I think astutely. First of all, Hezbollah did join Hamas's war against Israel after October 7th. Tens of thousands of Israelis living in the north, in fact, had to evacuate for more than a year. And we should also point out that Hezbollah originally had the plans to invade Israel in the same manner that Sinwar essentially did. They also have this elite force, they call it the Radouan force. So this war was continuing against Hamas and against Hezbollah. And we remember In September of 2024, the pager operation in which Israel crippled Hezbollah very severely, also killed, assassinated the top brass of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah. I would want to quote from things that Netanyahu said when a deal was struck between Lebanon and Israel. Remember, these are the kind of final days of the Biden administration, November 2024. It's Amos Hochstein was also on this podcast several times, who, you know, forged that deal. And then Netanyahu said this In November of 2024, we pushed Hezbollah. This is a quote. We pushed Hezbollah back decades. We destroyed most of its missiles and rockets, eliminated all of the organization's senior leaders, eliminated thousands of destroy the underground infrastructure and terror networks near our border. This is no longer science fiction. We did it. End quote. Netanyahu in November of 2024. So much so did Israel hit Hezbollah that when the first Iran war broke In June of 2025, Hezbollah did not Join the fray. Even though this is what it was destined to do and designed to do, right, have this ring of fire around Israel that Iran created this time. It seemed that. And we see in front of our eyes the fact that Hezbollah is, first of all not eliminated and still has the power to launch, in fact, hundreds of rockets towards Israel. So the main question that many Israelis had yesterday was, wait a minute, you told us that this organization is dead and buried. We thought it was dead and buried. And here it comes back. This is particularly important, Jonathan, by the way, we should mention that the Israeli military apologized to the Israeli public for not preparing them. I mean, publicly, of course, we're all, you know, near safe rooms these days with the war with Iran. We're not saying to them this is a possibility that Hezbollah could actually launch many rockets on, on Wednesday evening. This is important because it's not only telling the truth to the public, but it's also how does this front end. And in a way, Iran, which is a bigger front, I can tell you how it ends. I don't know when it ends, but it ends when the United States President, I think, although we'll hear something interesting from General Petraeus about this. But when the United States President says, we're laying down our arms and this war is over, it will essentially be over. How does this front close if there are indeed, you know, hundreds of rockets launched over Israel? Netanyahu is in an election year. He promised the public that this threat has been eliminated. What is he doing? So this is a very, very complicated situation that we are in, in day 13th of this, of this war.
- [07:16]
C
So just first on that point, let's just pause on that point about the military home command apologizing to the country for not having explicitly prepared them for this possibility. Obviously, that is a responsibility of the political leadership of the country. This isn't just an operational matter where the home command have to say, you know, apologies, we didn't give you a 3:00am warning rather than a 3. It's not operational. It is something that the leader of the country should have done, and of course, he wouldn't have have done it for the reason I think you implicitly point to by giving us those quotations from Netanyahu from earlier, which is it would be to admit that he, when he spoke in 2024 about having completely taken out the Hezbollah threat, that that obviously was premature and that no such achievement had been won. And it seems to me this sits right alongside Donald Trump saying, we've obliterated Iran's nuclear threat in June, only to have to then explain to Americans we're going back in because there's a n threat from Iran less than a year later. This seems of the same order. And it just makes me wonder, and we might get to the politics at a later point. We shouldn't get to instantly. It's an election year. The premise of Benjamin Netanyahu's reelection campaign is I'm the guy who took out all our enemies. Does the reopening of this front, not just Iran, but Hezbollah, put a big question mark over what is his signature achievement and his key electoral pitch, which is, I'm the guy who remove Assad, Hezbollah, Sinwar, all of the others. If, you know, if he's going to the Israeli nation saying, I'm the guy, cut the head off the snake and the snake's head has regrown so quickly, does that in a way undermine his central argument for reelection? I mean, as I say, it's a bit premature of me to get into that now, but it does seem to me that this is really undermining of the whole premise of this war and of the previous war and indeed of his premiership.
- [09:20]
B
First of all, I will say, I mean, say what you want about Donald Trump, Carolyn Levitt, Piff, Marco Rubio, they're out there answering questions from the media every day. We are speaking on day 13th of the war, and the Israeli prime minister has not yet had a press conference. That might change tonight. But just make note of the fact that the only time the prime minister spoke was to Fox News. There was one interview given by the Minister of Defense to our network, and it is the IDF spokesperson, Effi Defrin, every evening out to the public answering questions. The leadership in this country requires and demands almost from the public, or expects, maybe would be the right word a lot. And the Israeli public is called to be extremely resilient. And what is expected then from the leadership is to at the very least speak to the Israeli public. Now it is okay to say Hezbollah is a terror organization. We might be fighting it for years. I think it is problematic to say to the Israeli public, and not only Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant when he was in office, current Defense Minister Israel cuts. We eliminated this problem only to see it back the way it is. And so I think the Israeli public has shown that it is mature and can deal with realities. So I think it is important to just say the reality as it is. It makes sense to me to say we hurt the Iranian nuclear program very severely, but their ballistic missiles are at a place that we cannot tolerate it. And we want to go to war for that. Okay, then say it that way.
- [11:09]
C
Yeah. And I think that point about the lack of media accountability being made possible by not presenting himself to the Hebrew language media is extraordinary and has been the case for years now. Actually, we've been talking about how he goes on American English language news and media, but not directly speaking to the people he leads. Extraordinary to me that his own people, his own base could forgive that and think that's he does occasionally give an
- [11:36]
B
interview to his own, you know, network, which is 10 or 14.
- [11:41]
C
Yeah, yeah. It's not. That doesn't count as accountability. That's a sort of preaching to the choir, home game, softball thing. It doesn't count on the point about the goals of the war. And we do get into this with General Petraeus. They have been, it's been noted, they're pretty consistent from the Israeli end. They are a shifting sands in the United States. It's gone from regime change to the nuclear threat to ballistics to we must have unconditional surrender to we could have negotiations. It's all over the map. I think it's very interesting to note a divergence that is beginning to open up or anyway beginning to become clearer between Donald Trump and his war aims and Benjamin Netanyahu and his war aims between the United States and Israel, really. So I think I mentioned last week that there is in some ways something about of cross purposes where the rest of the world is talking about nuclear deals, where Israel's position is, look, there's nothing we can ever trust from this administration regime. The Iranians, we want them gone. And therefore, what counts as an advance for one is irrelevant for the other. Now I think that's becoming a little bit clearer when we talk about the clock ticking in the United States. Donald Trump worried about the oil price, the surging oil price, huge international pressure about getting the trade in oil through the streets of Hormuz. Even actually humanitarian aid for the wider region. Sub Saharan Africa, reliant also on the streets of Hormuz. That's one set of issues which are amenable to some kind of negotiated end of hostilities or even just Donald Trump declaring victory. If the pressure gets too great, he'll call a halt and say, look, but don't worry, I achieved the aim of, for example, just weakening Iran's military capacity. That's fine. I declare it a win. Netanyahu's not in that position. What he has said is the pred, you know, he'd obviously be grateful and glad if the Iranian regime is weaker militarily. But his goal is that regime being gone and therefore declare it. You know, Donald Trump can exit the stage and declare a victory, but Netanyahu will still be in this fight because for him, he won't have achieved that goal. That's also even truer of Hezbollah. United States not going to declare war on Hezbollah. It's not gonna join that fight. Israel will be on its own in that fight, and that could be ongoing. So you're just seeing two weeks ago, these two leaders went in, in lockstep together, their interests, their calculus is diverging. And in one just most obvious way, which is electorally, politically for Donald Trump, this is a headache. The opinion poll polling is terrible for him on this war. The American public do not like this war. The lowest numbers at the start of a war kind of ever, certainly, I think since polling began in Israel, you'll tell me, but it certainly began with public support for the war. So just another illustration of how the two leaders are on paths that are diverging.
- [14:42]
B
Yes. And to me, I have to say, we should mention, just in parentheses, that Donald Trump gave several more quotes to Barack Ravid this week saying that President Herzog must give a pardon to Netanyahu. And he called him a pathetic leader and all kinds of other terms. I think Herzog.
- [15:02]
C
Herc.
- [15:02]
B
He called Herzog President Herzog. You're right to point that out. Who is the one who needs to decide whether or not to pardon Netanyahu? To me, I hear in that, and maybe this is just my imagination running wild while sitting in the safe room, I hear from that a little bit of I will pay you here, right? Donald Trump saying to Netanyahu, I will give you this because I'm preparing the ground for an Iranian, you know, hitting the brakes with Iran. So maybe again, my imagination running wild, but everything is tied together. And you're right about the fact that it will be the American president who decides from the Israeli American front when to stop the war in Iran. Hezbollah is a completely different story. And I think we should notice that we are, again, in a more complicated territory than we were two weeks ago.
- [15:48]
C
So just on my political point that, you know, terrible for Trump in America, midterms coming out, this is a vote loser for him. The assumption has been for Netanyahu, this only plays well, this is good for him. Are there any cracks in that appearing born out of the things we've been talking about? The fact that it was not Mission accomplished last June, the fact that it wasn't preparing of the public for the war with Hezbollah, the sense that this could go on and on and on for a very long time. Is anybody beginning to say, you know what, maybe this isn't such a great idea, hasn't been such a great idea, and, you know, is the shine coming off what had been seen as an electoral winner for Netanyahu?
- [16:26]
B
Well, first of all, I have to say that Thursday is our day for polls. So I don't have the current poll for you just yet. And again, in the kind of fray and fog of war, it's very difficult to see this clearly. Remember, Israel is a very divided country. If you are an avid Netanyahu supporter, everything he does is great, and let's wait and see. And perhaps he will see a regime change in Iran. And if you're a Netanyahu opponent or you don't support the Prime Minister, then you just had your case opened up and more to say about the promises made and what they look like in reality.
- [17:03]
C
And I suppose an odd, obvious difference. We have the date for the American midterm elections. We know when they are in November. The political timetable is obviously much murkier in Israel. But do you have any sense of that in the fog of war?
- [17:17]
B
Wait, I'll just look at my Magic 8 Ball and I'll answer, look, the elections are slated for October 27th. It has long been the common thinking in the political sphere that Netanyahu would want an earlier election. It's a lot up to him. If he decides to dissolve the Knesset, then there are three months. We were talking about this, you and I, during this past week. Would it be June 30th? Would it be September 1st? I think that a lot depends on how this war ends. And the complicated, the more complicated it becomes. I would assume that Netanyahu would want to push back closer to the original date, which is October 27th. So I wouldn't put all of my money on earlier, much earlier elections than that. At the point that we are at right now.
- [18:06]
C
Yeah. The idea of a snap election suddenly becomes less appealing if it isn't a clear slam dunk win in Iran. And I think next Wednesday is a particular date on the calendar of significance. Just because of the mechanics of this.
- [18:17]
B
Exactly. The mechanics are that if by next Wednesday there is no vote to dissolve the Knesset, Israel needs. It's not like you guys, you have a few weeks to declare elections if the Prime Minister wants to. In Israel, you need a minimum of three months. So if this doesn't happen, and remember this pesach break coming up. So if this doesn't happen by next Wednesday, you won't have early elections in June. That's, that's the fact of the matter right now.
- [18:39]
C
So that's the timetable question, as we've been saying, the whole question of what counts as a win, what counts as a success, what are the war aims, particularly as they are seen from Washington. For that, we thought we should turn to somebody who, as I said earlier, knows a thing or two about wars, knows a thing or two about the question of American prosecution of wars in the Middle East. And for that we have a very well placed guest. Foreign.
- [19:12]
B
David Petraeus is the former director of the CIA. He served over 37 years in the US military as commander of the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course, commander of the U.S. central Command. No one better, we think, to discuss the current war with Iran. General David Petraeus, such a pleasure to have you on unholy again. Thank you.
- [19:30]
A
Great to be with you.
- [19:31]
B
We are now approaching the 12 day mark, which is as long as the operation in June lasted. Seem like it's going to end now. And I wonder if at this point in time we can hear your assessment as to the successes or the failures of this operation vis a vis the goals that were set out when this began.
- [19:54]
A
We have seen the goals emerge over time and they have been clarified in some ways. Certainly regime leaders were a target at the outset. And in fact, I would argue that the reason we went when we did was that we had exquisite intelligence in the manhunt business. It doesn't get any better than pattern of life. That is precise. Keep in mind, of course, you all know that Israel was going to attack within a month or so anyway because they were worried about the reconstitution of the missile program. And we knew that. In fact, I was in Tel Aviv four or five weeks ago and some of my contacts at the Curia laid that out. Then all of a sudden, President Trump's getting increasingly frustrated with the pace of the negotiations and really, quite, quite upset about that, that they were stringing us along despite the public announcement that, you know, there was progress being made by one of the interlocutors. And then you have this extraordinary intelligence where you can get the supreme Leader, a number of others, and of course, it also included the minister of defense, essentially their chairman of the Joint Chiefs equivalent, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and on and on. And it's during the day. The supreme leader presumably said, well, the Americans only attack in the wee hours of the morning. And that's true except when we have the target that we're really going for. And so I think the decision was made to go at that point in time and that if we continued to discuss it further, we'd lose this fleeting opportunity that we had. So very impressive against the regime leaders, very impressive against the air and missile defense. They've been reduced to the point that we can fly with confidence, not just stealth aircraft, the B2 bombers and the F35s, but also now the B1 bombers, the B52s, the big heavyweight packages that they can carry, in addition of course to what we used at the outset, which was submarine, surface ship and air launch cruise missiles. And so that's been reduced enough. There's still a threat, there's still some so called Manpan man portable, some of those can reach, but it's pretty hard to acquire a bomber that's at a particular altitude. We've done quite well, I think, against the missile launchers and the missiles stockpiles and the missile manufacturing, even the components of the missiles. We've been going after the factories that make these different elements that are then assembled to be a missile. And we've seen that because the missile strikes have dropped way off, down by over 90% at this point in time. And that's crucial because one of the factors that will be considered in determining when to end the war is the so called missile math. In fact, I think the 12 Day War ended when it did, in part because the missile math was getting a bit uncomfortable. In other words, Israel sitting there saying, okay, we have this many missile interceptors left, including those that the US had with the Thaad battery that the terminal High Altitude Area Defense Battery that shot over 1.2 or $1.3 billion worth of interceptors in 12 days from Israeli soil with American soldiers. But we had, we have ship interceptors, we have Patriot, others around the region. But that is crucial because we don't want to have to end this, because we're getting uncomfortable about how many interceptors do we have left writ large. Because it's the host nations in the Gulf that have them as well, it's our ships. We can shoot them down with aircraft in some ways versus how many launchers they have in particular, because that's how a missile gets in the air and then just how many missiles in general. And that's been going quite well. I think as well the drones have become an increased focus and that still is somewhat problematic. And we have also been going after the naval forces I think we've probably sunk at least 50 of their ships now, including 14 to 16 of their mine laying boats. But keep in mind you can lay mines out of a speedboat, you can put them out of a mini sub. You can. And that we're going to come back to the strait, I think again and again that'll be key. We're also, of course, going after just regime force infrastructure in general, the headquarters, their bases, their logistical stockpiles, even major police stations and so forth, and additional regime leaders. And I think that's going quite impressively way, way over Now. At least 6,000 or more individual targets during the course of the campaign so far. Some attention to the remnants of the nuclear program. There's a concern, of course, about a stockpile underground at Isfahan of 60% enriched uranium. I don't think you can conduct a special operation raid into that because you'd have to be carrying bulldozers and earth moving excavation equipment with you where you have to get it somewhere in the local economy. That's a big task. If you're going to dig down to it. I suspect more of the conclusion will be let's make it as inaccessible as we can. Let's hammer it with more massive ordinance, penetrators, pile drive down. But we've also been doing that at Natanz and so forth to make sure that anything that's left I've assessed before, I think with you all, in fact, that the program set back at least by a couple of years and we just keep watching it and if necessary you address it again and then other targets that in general might be those that help create better conditions for internal political change. But keep in mind that very early on, after seeming to announce that regime change was part of the objectives for our forces, the president clarified that correctly and said, well, what we can do is help create conditions, but it's going to be up to the Iranian people, others that might break away from the regime or what have you, which unfortunately we have not seen. And so that has been going on as well. Keeping in mind here that the regime is formidable. It is a million men under arms who have a willingness to kill their own citizens in the tens of thousands, as they did in January during the demonstrations and to imprison tens of thousands of others. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps itself is 150,000. That's the regime protection force. The besieged militia, without calling UP reserves, are 200,000. They're the people on the streets along with the national police, who are 250,000 who will kill the citizens, swing pipes, whatever is required. The big military, the Artes, Army, Navy, Air force, marines, that's 400,000. And you even have the MOIS, the intelligence service, which has 25,000 agents they can add to. The bottom line is you add it up and it's a million men under weapons. They're decentralized, but they are still unfortunately quite cohesive. And so as you evaluate what has been happening and then also recognize that we were hoping that the replacement for the Supreme Leader would be Delsey Rodriguez, if you will, to use the Venezuelan analogy. And instead what we got is a young Kim Jong Un who lost his wife and mother in the attack that killed his father and was wounded. So he's got three or four wars going on, really. He's fighting America, he's fighting Israel, he's fighting his own population, and he's perhaps fighting for his life. We'll see. We don't know how seriously he was injured.
- [27:15]
C
I don't think anybody ever doubted that once the U.S. military and obviously Israel was engaged militarily, it would do extremely well.
- [27:23]
A
Well, you never know though, and you really don't. Yeah, but they have done well.
- [27:28]
C
They have done well. And obviously some misgivings explain the missile math and so on. But taking one step earlier, and really this is a question about strategy rather than tactics. Had you been advising this president, even with that point, that there was this exquisite intelligence about the Supreme Leader and so on, big picture, would you have advised him to, yes, go ahead with this war? Is it a wise war beyond the details of these point by point successes which you've detailed so well?
- [27:57]
A
Well, that is the ultimate big question that can't be answered until months, years or whatever down the road. Will this have helped to bring about the end of a regime that literally lives to kill and and is has driven the economy into even worse of a ditch? I mean, they're in real, real trouble now. They already had the people who were totally outraged at the situation in which they lived. Now the basic services are going to have eroded their ability to export oil. The Israelis hit, in fact, so much that President Trump, who's worried about the price of Brent crude, said lay off that for a while. We need to bring this back quickly. By the way, it's going to take a while to come back because you have shut in production in many of the Gulf states now. To restart can sometimes take weeks. You have all the ships are full, all the storage is full. So you can't restart until you actually create some space for storage. And if you have to escort it, if we get that far, which is a very challenging mission because now a drone that can be remotely piloted can cause and I heard that there was a ship hit over the last 24 hours. That under. It's about confidence.
- [29:19]
C
I take your point. We won't know the verdict won't be in until history judges. But I'm saying, had you been advising him in that moment, do we do this or do we not do it before we can know, would you have said, yes, this is a good idea?
- [29:32]
A
What I would have said is, Mr. President, either a CIA director or a military commander, here are the options for you to achieve the objectives you laid out. Here are the risks associated with those options. And apparently the Central Command commander did lay out concerns about the missile math, about other challenges, drones and so forth that Iran could present. That's your job. It's not to say we should or should not. And so I'll stick with being the director or the commander of U.S. central Command, if I might.
- [30:05]
B
You know, as the Israeli in this conversation who's suffering a lot of the bombardments and the missile salvos here in the 12 days, I'm concerned about what you're saying, General. General. Because you say whenever President Trump decides to end it, and obviously in the relationship between we could talk about the cooperation between the two militaries, but in the relationship between Israel and the United States, if the United States, the president says it's done, then everyone stops. You're saying there's an option that Iran won't actually end.
- [30:31]
A
Well, let me just also note, there's another factor that we just sort of glossed over, which I mentioned, but that is that Israel is going to do this anyway. And here we should emphasize that Israel's national security orientation fundamentally has changed since 10, 7. No longer will Israel sit and watch as a threat is emerging. They will take it down before it manifests itself. And they've continued to do that with Hezbollah. And of course, in a way, Hezbollah's made a colossal error here because Israel is just hammering them. They're going into places in Beirut that they hadn't gone into before, into the Beka Valley. And of course, keep in mind that Syria is no longer an Iranian ally. So it's going to be much, much harder to reconstitute Hezbollah than it would have been when they had the transit on the ground from Iran, through Iraq, through Syria and down into the Bekka and southern Lebanon. But that extends not just to neighbors and threats in the neighborhood. This is the threat posed by Iran. And again, Israel was going to do this and then I think you actually recognize and they really were, and nobody was going to hold them back at a certain point. So that's something absolutely to keep in mind. But then, you know, what will this new leader, how will, what will his character in a sense be? Could there be a shred of pragmatism or is it the fatalist? Again, religious, you know, fanaticism is not too far when you're talking about how the Iranian Shia clerics approach life. You know, for them, victory is he raises his fist out of the complete destruction of his capital and says, we won, we survived. And so that is, I think that has to be keeping people awake at night as they contemplate what should be the conditions that bring this to an end. But, oh gosh, will they stop? Because let me, I'll talk you through what I think are the considerations, the factors that will be considered because it's a multilateral equation. I don't know the coefficient in front of each one, it could literally change. But obviously achievement of the military objectives in general will be one of those. I don't know when you could say, I assume we're very close to that in most respects. Again, drones, not. So we'll have to figure out how to counter those in the future. And by the way, I can guarantee you that the countries in the region are going to invest mightily not just in counter drone defenses. They're going to be very comprehensive and much more complex, but at hardening infrastructure. Everything's going to go underground that matters. And again, they have the resources to do that, by and large. So, okay, what else? Is a civil war in our interest? No, I think that conclusion was reached as well. What about the Azeris, the Baluch, the Sunni Arabs? Again, that's not so it's going to have to come from within. And we don't see a sign of splintering of the IRGC or say the Artesh, the military breaking off that could be so formidable they could take on the regime forces. You just don't see it. US losses really do matter, of course. And now we're up to seven killed, well over 100 wounded, and some of those seriously, mostly again by drones, which shows again, the challenges This I used to have on the list, the character of the supreme leader, the new supreme leader, I again, I fear that he will be as hardline as his father. But again, we should wait and see. And then there's going to be just the general sentiment in the Gulf in Israel, which seemed very supportive. And again, I think the Israelis probably will want to go longer than we may in the end. This is such an opportunity to do so much damage to the country. Asia again, Japan gets a huge percentage of its energy from the Gulf. The Gulf sends out every day normally 20% of the world's crude and 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas. So what are they doing? China actually has a huge strategic stockpile. They've been building it very substantially. They're in a tough spot because they have a friendship with Iran, but the bulk of the. And they bought the bulk of the Iranian oil, but that was only maybe a bit over 1 million barrels a day and then some other equivalent of hundreds of thousands of distillate barrels. Europe again, aviation fuel is big. That's one of the big sources for them. And then obviously in the homeland where the polls are not that great if you are in the White House at this moment.
- [35:25]
D
Sure.
- [35:25]
C
So let's pick on one of those, which is the oil price and the markets. And we know the President is looking at that very closely, so is everyone else. Again, in terms of your, you know, you sitting in the chair, if you were advising, what would you be recommending as a way to ensure the flow of oil to does continue through the Straits of Hormuz? Is there a military means that has not yet been deployed that could be to make freedom of navigation a reality rather than an aspiration?
- [35:56]
A
To my knowledge, we have not yet. It's certainly not an official public escorting of tankers, but that mission's really, really hard. Again, all it takes is a few mines in the water or one strike and everybody shuts down again. You know, are you really going to risk your tanker? And some of the countries even declared force by juror. So again, you're in a very, very tricky situation here. Again, remotely piloted drones could be very problematic in this regard. They do have some anti ship or shorter range missiles that could be a problem. There's just a host of challenges. I mean you could even get someone who is so fervent that you know, you have a suicide fast boat threat. So, you know, I know again, in fact, it's interesting that right now we have an admiral as the commander of U.S. central Command. I can't remember when we ever had that before, if ever. Admiral Brad Cooper, very sharp guy. I guarantee you from the beginning he's been figuring out what if it comes to this and we have to escort well, and we only have a few mine sweepers Left, we actually decommissioned some of them, brought on some smaller ones. The Brits have some, the Saudis have some. We'd have to put together an international consortium to do that. But if you're at that point, again, do you have the confidence that you're going to send your ships with it? And then if you have to do it really slowly, you can't even clear the traffic out of the Gulf. So there's again, all these different. You should note that the Saudis are able to get 5 million barrels out through a port called Yanbu on the Red Sea. So it doesn't even have to go through the Bab El Mandeb, much less the Strait of Hormuz. So they're pumping it to the west and then it goes up through the Suez Canal. Not sure you want to do the Bab El Mandeb right now either, because the Houthis, I think, will at some point create some problems. So again, you look at the nature of the different potential threats and you realize that all it takes is one tanker to get hit, and everybody else waits until it's absolutely guaranteed. So this is a thorny issue and
- [38:13]
B
it isn't an easy one. I wonder, General, if you could talk to the cooperation that we haven't seen, I think, before, correct me if I'm wrong, this kind of granular to every detail, cooperation with, between the US Military and the Israeli military. Maybe this is a cheeky thing to ask you. Is one military better than the other, one air force better than the other in certain missions? Because it obviously is kind of. They delineate the missions. There are different kinds of missions for each side. How do you view that?
- [38:42]
A
They're both the best in the world. We have capacity, obviously, that Israel just can't have. Although Israel's been putting 200 aircraft into some of the early sorties, that's a massive number of aircraft. In the early part, they may have actually outnumbered us because we're trying to set the conditions for air superiority at least, if not air supremacy, before we put in the big, again, B1s, B52s. So we have a capacity again, over time that is enormous. Obviously, our naval capabilities are vastly greater. But the individual, the quality of the individual pilots and others is spectacular on either side. It's just. But you're right that we have, I can't remember, certainly not a campaign of this duration where we have coordinated because again, there's a variety of ways you deconflict airspace and so forth. But this has got to be the US Combined air Operations center which used to be in the region, but it was in a two story building above ground. And I'm pretty confident, same as where the forward headquarters of Central Command used to be or is still. But I don't think again because half of it's above ground that that's necessarily where you operate from. In fact, it's known that he was at Tampa when visited by the Secretary of War recently. So anyway, no, the level of coordination has to be extraordinary and the trust level is extraordinary as well because you've got to firmly believe in each other and the accuracy of your reporting. Okay, we took out that particular surface to air missile site or what have you, noting actually that it was the Israeli Air Force in the very early days, early hours of the 12 day air campaign that took down what was the supposedly sophisticated Russian S300 air and ballistic missile defense system. And they did it with the F35s from the United States that they flew. You never know until you actually run against a sophisticated system how good you're going to do or how well. And then in this case they did spectacularly well and proved that the stealth fighter bomber could prevail over a sophisticated Russian air defense system which learned there's some degree of AI part of it, by the way, it's why we were so concerned that the Turks would unpack their S300 or S400. It can learn as it paints the sky with what it has. So again, know that look, these are the two best in the world. And of course the intelligence sharing and collaboration is unbelievable as well. I'll give a very quick personal anecdote. When I was the Central Command commander, so this is between Iraq and Afghanistan for me. I was not officially supposed to go to Tel Aviv because it was not in my area of responsibility. It was an archaic. It was still with U.S. european Command. And I was lobbying to have it added, but it didn't happen until after I left. So I would meet with the Chief of Staff of the IDF in Washington and we'd do it inside the Pentagon. So nobody knew we were meeting. And it was all set up. I'd be in this office that I'd use temporarily when in the Pentagon he just happened to stumble by. Hey, General. And the very first meeting, he opened up a notebook to show good faith, frankly. And it was photos inside the most sensitive imaginable facility in Iran. And he just kept flipping the pages and it was in it and it built from there. And so we had a very close relationship. Keep in mind this is when and then later when I was at the Agency, needless to say, the same thing. But this is Duke's net. It was all these other covert and clandestine activities, all which have been declassified now. So that relationship is unbelievable. And it extends. It's. By the way, it's Shin Bet as well as Mossad in 8200. Because for us, Shin Bet is external and we care about what their assessment is of the west bank and also obviously of Gaza, noting it's publicly known that there's a relationship that we have with the security services in the West Bank. So anyway, this partnership is extraordinary. Even at times when there's been friction between a Prime Minister and a president, sort of just, it doesn't matter in a way, except for maybe a very big decision to do something or not. And it's years in the making, especially when it comes to intelligence. But now years in the making with military too, given the 12 day air campaign and as I mentioned, the THAAD system on your soil, with our soldiers expending 1.2 or $1.3 billion worth of interceptors.
- [43:44]
C
When we were talking about the timetable and how does this end and so on, you referred to the aims and the President's objectives. It's not a new point to say that those have been shifting and people have found it hard to follow exactly what the goals of this war are. If I take it from what you said earlier about that different.
- [44:05]
A
With respect, let me just very quickly, because, yes, the original announcement of the initiation of the operations said regime change. It seemed to make that. But I think very quickly he clarified that, everyone else clarified that, and I think that's something, again, the Iranians have to do that. We can help create conditions, but it's up to them. So even there, I think, and I'm pretty clear on what the different military missions are in this operation and how well we're doing on them.
- [44:34]
B
I just wanted to, if I may, because we mentioned China, and obviously the United States President is going to meet the Chinese president in three weeks. First of all, how this plays out in Chinese eyes, you think? And when the Chinese are looking at the US Military and their operations in Iran, what does that make them think when they think of expansions?
- [44:57]
A
Yep. Because what we do in one part of the world, you know, the book that I did with Anna Roberts, Conflict Evolution of warfare from 1945 to Gaza, we added in the second edition, we constantly remind the reader that what a country does in one part of the world resonates in other parts. And that because Deterrence is a function of a potential adversary's assessment of your capabilities on the one hand, but also your willingness to use them on the other. And if you have a red line in Syria, for example, over the use of chemical weapons by the regime against their own people and it's crossed and you don't do something that undermines the trend. In fact, the Prime Minister of Singapore at the time, I happened to be in his office right around then, he said, you know, that reverberates out in the South China Sea if you leave Afghanistan when you don't have to. Because that war, even though it's a, quote, forever war, you don't have to end forever wars if they're sustainable. And sustainability is measured in the expenditure of your blood and your treasure. And it was not at all unsustainable in that regard. But if you do that and then if the way you do it is fairly chaotic, that sends a message to Vladimir Putin, you know what, they're probably not going to do anything more than they did when we took Crimea and the Donbass. So again, this stuff, Matt, now what we're seeing is we saw a spectacular operation Venezuela, much dicier than people realize. I mean, when you have to kill an individual gun fights More than 30 special operators from Cuba, in addition to the tens or hundreds of actual secret service for Maduro. That's some dicey stuff in a brilliant operation. The other operations we've been carrying out around the world against extremists in Syria, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, others even in Iraq and so forth. So I think on the one hand this sends them a message, whoa, these guys really do have serious capability. All the others have been largely special operations. This is a big conventional, full on warfare. But they're also watching us expend some of the most critical munitions that we might have to use if, if push ever came to shove. And I don't think it's coming soon, by the way. I think they are very clearly eager to do this summit meeting. So is President Trump. Both sides have taken actions that indicate that they're instead of doing something they could do that might make the relationship more scratchy, they are not doing it and they want to have a second one as well. Each of us, you know, we've just revalidated that you cannot decouple from China. They have just revalidated. They really need to sell stuff to the United States and so forth. And they need to get our soybeans or whatever else to feed their people and their Livestock So but they are nonetheless seen and they know because it's all official published documents in the National Defense Authorization and procurement documents how Many Patriot THAAD, SM3 and other interceptors we have at a given time and so forth. So that undermines to a bit. So that's why the President had all the CEOs in his white House last week. Russia is also interesting. Russia's provided no assistance to Iran even though Iran sold them billions of dollars worth of shahed drones which they then adapted and improved. But they are helped by this in two different ways. One, the price of oil is up and it's up so much that President Trump has said let's temporarily suspend the restrictions on the purchase of Russian oil. Remember India was gonna reduce. Cause one of the steps we need to do is reduce their revenue and also crush their war economy. And the fact that they're providing intelligence to Iran. We should pass the sanctions package in the Senate very, very quickly that Senator Lindsey Graham has led. But also they know we're not going to be able to provide. It's certainly not large numbers if any of the missile interceptors to Ukraine that are the one system they really can't yet make. They even have a cruise missile that's better than ours now 3000 km called the Flamingo in a larger warhead than our Tomahawk. But they have not yet mastered the interceptors for the high end missile defense systems. And so that's an issue here as well. But what you can see is just the constant number of dynamics that at the very top, again the President and his national security team have to factor in. And frankly it's a lot more than those factored in in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
- [49:37]
C
We've talked a lot about the US strategic calculus, also the Israeli one. But Iran's calculation did it make a strategic miscalculation in hitting out.
- [49:47]
A
Yeah, it's a good.
- [49:49]
C
Why is. Yeah, why is it continuing to do that?
- [49:53]
A
Well because again it's slightly suicidal in its actions and again this is almost part and parcel of that sect and so forth and yet and we haven't yet done the maximal damage by the way. Watch this space. Dubai is often described as the lung of the Iranian economy. Wait for the UAE to freeze their reserves and freeze all their business. You know, it's almost the conduit out in addition to the massive smuggling that goes between the little tip of Oman and the other side of the strait. And I'm sure everyone is seeking what more can we do that will get them to recognize that they are on a track to absolute destruction. And yet that hasn't yet happened. I think that's why Israel was going after the oil infrastructure, the energy infrastructure. I mean, I don't know, should we invade Karg Island? And by the way, I agree that the president shouldn't take boots on the ground. We should never take anything off the table. In the past, presidents prematurely would do, would announce one time the drawdown date for our troops in Afghanistan in the same speech where we're announcing the buildup and you're trying to in a contest of will with an enemy who says that they have the time and you have the watches. So in any event, everyone is searching for what could we do that will bring them to their senses? And by the way, then beyond this, and we'll end here, what will be the overall resolution when this is all said and done that prevents Israel from having to do this again every 6 to 12 months when they try to reconstitute, fill in the blank missile program, even perhaps some of the drone program? And it's harder to get the drones to Israel, of course, than it is to the Gulf states. But these are the issues that I think are going to be very important to the sentiment in the Gulf, where the business model right now is being more than a bit threatened.
- [52:03]
B
General David Petraeus, we could go on and ask you questions, but we're mindful of the fact that you're a busy man. We really thank you for your time and for this.
- [52:09]
A
We're really privileged to be back with you. Thank you.
- [52:11]
B
Thank you so much.
- [52:12]
C
Thank you. Always illuminating to have someone who has very much been in the room where it happens, been in the command center where it happens. And David Petraeus definitely has been that. I think, you know, there will be some who will say he's a little optimistic thinking that the war aims of the United States are now so clear, having been regime change. And David Petraeus said they're now clear of what they actually are. I think some would dispute that and say they've continued to move over the map. But nevertheless, really interesting and a very arresting line about the regime, James, that has happened, namely out with Khamenei and in with Khamenei. And he put that in a very arresting way.
- [52:59]
B
Yes, indeed. You know, we wanted a Dulce Rodriguez and we got a Kim Jong Un is quite a line, I think. Also I would pay a lot of attention to what he says about China and how China is looking at this conflict and how the United States is faring at it. We're still in the middle of things. We don't know yet how this, this, this ends. It's always fascinating to have his perspective on, on these matters.
- [53:29]
C
So let's just say something about the second half of the episode we're going to be talking about. Marty supreme is one of the nominees for best picture. And I think it's fair to let listeners into the fact that you and I did discuss this quite a lot. We discuss whether or not is it appropriate to talk about a movie about ping pong at a time of war
- [53:53]
B
or the Oscars at all.
- [53:55]
C
Or the Oscars at all. I mean, even just to be talking about movies when people are sitting in shelters, when people are under bombardment, it's a time of war. Shouldn't we be focusing? This was the conversation on death, destruction, wartime. That is obviously more important than a series of movies and red carpets and so on. I myself had been thinking on this thing for a while and I think the visit I did last week to Australia in some ways put it in quite sharp relief because, you know, I mentioned on the podcast how I went to the site on Bondi beach where the mass killings happened in December and afterwards, the events I did where people were asking about Jewish life after Bondi. And at those events, the thought came to me that there was a very heavy security presence, inevitably at those events, just as there is when you do events in London or New York anywhere, a Jewish event anywhere in the world now has this very heavy security. And I was asked about that and I said, look, I was hugely grateful to the group they called the csg, they're the community security group in Australia, for providing security on the outside of the building, this sort of perimeter on the outside. But what I said was, in a way, with all due respect to them and gratitude to them, metaphorically speaking, we mustn't let them on the inside. We can't let it be that in our Jewish spaces all we are preoccupied with is security and danger. In a way, we have to, on the inside, let Jewish life continue and remember what it is we are protecting in all our talk of protection and security that we are protecting our Jewish religious life, our Jewish cultural life, festivals, traditions, literature, food, music, movies, whatever it is. And in the space of the last seven days, just as it happens, coincidentally, I've seen sort of both ends of that, which is I was there on Bondi beach last week. This week, by coincidence, I was at the opening in London of a new theatrical production. It's a new version of Yentl. It's Nothing like the movie, I hasten to add. It's more like the based on the real Isaac Bashevi Singer story by the Kadima Yiddish Theatre Company of Melbourne. They've done a production. It went to Melbourne, in Sydney. It's now come to London. It's very, very different. Very sort of radical new take on it. It won't be to everyone's taste. I found it very inventive, very rooted in Jewish tradition. The point is, it's Jewish life continuing. And I don't think this is just a diaspora point. I think in Israel, too, people are in their shelters. But I read, you know, the Amazing Race, that big TV show, Big Brother, Israeli version are back for new seasons. Life is continuing, must continue. And that's why I think even though we're talking about Iran, we're talking today, Petraeus, we also can have room to talk about Marty Supreme.
- [56:58]
B
So, first of all, I'll start with saying that I think you're not wrong and the proof is in the pudding. We're having this conversation about the film. I think that the first version of this conversation. I have to tell you, Jonathan, when you first I said to you, maybe we'll postpone the conversation about Marty supreme this week. And you called me up and said, no, no, essentially, what you're saying now, that Jewish life continues, and life must continue. And I was listening to you while I was lying down on the couch in the makeup room in Channel 12, being so tired that I couldn't even get up to get my makeup done for the evening news because I've obviously spent 12 days in the shelter and trying to even explain to you how we can have this. How are we having this conversation? I mean. I mean, look, the fact is that we. And by the way, not only Israelis, but many other countries in this region have been in survival mode for two weeks, and anyone outside this region has not been in survival mode. This is not judgment in any way. It's just the fact, and I think that you are right in saying that the Jewish credo. Can we use that word? The Jewish thinking has always been, how do we manage even in this survival mode? Right? I mean, look, movie theaters aren't open, restaurants aren't open, and. And. And theaters aren't open here. Right. I couldn't even see the film. That's why you're doing the conversation alone with. With Naomi Alderman. But the point is that the Jewish Jews always knew how to think, even still think about life, about culture, about, importantly, talking with the outside world, even with the Most difficult circumstances, I have to say. I'm not sure I would take the Israeli primetime television as example because it is a sliver of normalcy in what is almost 24 hour news coverage and has been that in fact, since October 7th. I would look at things like people celebrating Purim in underground shelters while this war is going on, or people getting married in underground shelters while this is going on. Remember that conversation with Rabbi Angela Bogdal saying that the Talmud actually says to Jews, if you are in a funeral procession and you run into a wedding, it is your duty to dance with the people who are celebrating. We have to figure out a way to do that, but we have to be also honest about the situation. The fact that you can go see Yentl in the theater is not akin to the fact that I am binge watching a very silly American TV show in the middle of the night just to calm my nerves between sirens. It's just not the same thing. Because as I said, right now we are in this survival mode. So I really think it's important that we have this culture conversation. I also think it's important that you and I talk about where we are in this moment in time. And by the way, just a good opportunity perhaps to say to our listeners, and most of them are outside Israel, if you have an Israeli friend, even someone you haven't talked to in a long time, write to them, see how they're doing. Chances are they're not doing great. And an opportunity also to say a very big thank you to a lot of the people who wrote me in these current two weeks. I really think that even though we are under sirens and bombardment and we don't know when this ends, yes, we should have a conversation about the Oscars on Sunday, about might even watch it in between sirens and in between safe rooms. But I think it really is important that we have that conversation. So that was a long winded way, Jonathan, of saying, I think you're actually right.
- [60:37]
C
Yeah, no, I think the difference between the two situations is really pointed and right. And I completely get that they are inherently different. The interesting thing is when you said we've been in survival mode for two, I thought you were gonna say years, and you said two weeks. Because actually this situation has held since, in different ways, since October 7, 2023 in Israel. And in some ways, as you again said on the wider Middle east, that's in a way what led me to this feeling, which was if the two week conflict we're in now had been a sort of one off, then I think, yeah, park the Oscars. We're not gonna do that. We'll only focus on this. The really grim truth is this has become perhaps the new normal and this sort of survival mode thing that we're talking about. You know, it was October 7th for two and a half years. There was a. The ceasefire was what, October. Then we're back in a war situation in February. The idea that this is just a sort of, you know, people are talking about this with. I think it even came out of our interview with David Petraeus that Israel may be back again and again and again with Iran, with Hezbollah. There's the idea that this is sort of done and then it's over. Well, that's more tenuous. And therefore that does raise a longer term question about Jewish life and the need to keep going.
- [62:05]
B
It really does. But I want to be accurate. I think we're in acute survival mode for two weeks. And you're right that the whole period is two and a half years. But I do feel like throughout those two and a half years there were points in which the Jewish world met perhaps on a clearer level or had the same conversation. After October 7th. We were in this together. It was very clear. And the hostage crisis and the anti. Semitism, I think we did not you and me, right, but just the Jewish Diaspora and also you and me, but Jewish diaspora. And Israel did feel in times that we, we really were very close. I think this is an example of the fact that you can't feel what I have been going through in the past two weeks because you haven't been going through it. You have, I hope, besides jet lag, a very tranquil night. And it's a different reality. That's just the way it is. And that's why I was pointing to these specific two weeks. I did, by the way, make note of the fact you did not try to find out what the very silly TV show I am watching. I thank you for that, my friends. I will not say it to you even if I'm very tired at this point in time.
- [63:06]
C
Well, I thought you were there referring to the Amazing Race and Big Brother. Now you've intrigued me. Me and all the listeners are now intrigued by that question. What that could possibly have been. No, that's true. I think, anyway, beautiful that you called back to and referred to Angela Bugdal and the reference to the obligation that the funeral procession make way for the wedding procession and indeed join it and dance and celebrate. And we are mentioned, I think last week I mentioned couple with a couple who Got married on four levels underground in a car park that was doubling as a bomb shelter. It is this constant thing which is a big, big long part of our history of somehow finding strength and renewal and hope, even after the greatest suffering and tragedies. As it turns out, it is exactly that. That is the theme of the conversation I had with our next guest, all about this movie that is up for Best Picture. Naomi Alderman is a writer across multiple genres, award winning and acclaimed for disobedience and the Power, both of which were adapted for the screen. She's a broadcaster. She also does brilliant things with computer and video games, which I must confess are beyond me, but we might get into that. Naomi Alderman, welcome to Unholy. Lovely to be here and we're so glad you're here. But the reason I in particular wanted you to come on was a brilliant essay you wrote on your substack all about the film Marty supreme, which is among the nominees for best picture, which will be decided obviously on Sunday. The piece was headlined, look at me, I'm here. I'm the ultimate product of Hitler's defeat. You wrote, marty supreme is the most intensely Jewish movie I've ever seen in my life. So we're going to get into it. My full disclosure is I enjoyed your piece more than I enjoyed the movie. I, I and, and you've made me doubt my conviction about the movie in a nutshell, because this is about what, what you think, not what I think. But my objection was that I felt it was one of these things. There may be occasional spoilers, so we'll warn people about that. But it seemed to me slightly, in that kind of Tarantino way, a series of very cool, very sensational moments, but not really a story just bombarding you with, oh, that's cool. This will look good. That will look good. Won't that be a cool bit rather than a real narrative? That was my objection, and it seemed a sort of movie for the ADHD age. One of the scenes that looked cool was actually a Holocaust scene. And I took particular exception to that. I then read your piece and thought, maybe I'm wrong. And so you say this, you say it's a movie about the shadow of the Holocaust, about what living in that shadow does to you. And it's the most Jewish movie I've ever seen. So I want to start with that about the Holocaust, because that is definitely in there. Timothy Chalamet as Marty supreme, this table tennis would be champion, plays against an Auschwitz survivor. He says to reporters, I'm gonna do to Kletzki. What Auschwitz couldn't. There was a kind of gasp in the cinema, how shocking that is. But then the movie seems to drop the Holocaust as a thing. But you argue it's there all the way through.
- [66:27]
D
So I actually. Yeah, I've even. I even have some new thoughts since I wrote this.
- [66:32]
C
Great, great.
- [66:33]
D
So, yes, I think the Holocaust. I don't. I don't think you can bring up the Holocaust in the way that it brings up the Holocaust. By showing you, first of all, Kalecki with the number, the Auschwitz number tattooed on his arm, then showing you this very intense scene where he was saved from the horrors of the camps, partly because he was a table tennis champion and they let him. Let him go and defuse bombs in the forest, which is. This is all based on a real story of a real tennis table tennis champion. And then one day he finds a hive of honeybees and he's able to smuggle some food back to the other people in his dormitory by smearing the honey on his body and they lick it off. So.
- [67:21]
C
Which is one of those extraordinary visual scenes. And as I watched it, I thought, I bet that did want to have. And that's where they got that from. I thought that. But I thought that is such an intense Holocaust scene. You sort of have to have the right to earn a scene like that, not just use it and drop it as a sensational, cool bit of visual filmmaking. But you argue that it's sort of central in a way to the thrust of this film.
- [67:46]
D
Yeah, I think it's. Listen, I can't tell somebody else whether to like a piece of art or not. You know, we all have to make our own decisions about that. For me, I feel. I mean, it's a very Jewish film. It's deliberately Jewish. Timothee Chalamet is Jewish. Gwyneth Paltrow is Jewish. Odessa Atzion is Jewish. It has deliberately cast. I mean, it's got Sandra Bernharden and Franzscher. It's deliberately casting Jewish actors there. I don't think that the Holocaust is there by accident. It's set in 1952. It's a film about what it's like to be a Jewish. When you know that this. I'm going to say a strange word. Perhaps this humiliating thing has happened to your people. I think it's an attempt to grapple with that. Now we may be more used to thinking of the Holocaust, obviously a tragic thing, a devastating thing, incredibly destructive thing, but also a sense of real humiliation, which I think is what the film is about that feeling of all Jews in 1952 are starting on the back foot, going, I have been. I'm ashamed that this is what happened to us. I think it's very. Actually unexplored and under discussed feeling. And so Marty's constant striving. Well, it's the striving of the Jew who is trying to get away from the Holocaust in all the ways that we try to get away from it. There are psychological ways to say, I can prove that I am okay. And actually, the thing that I want to say about this, which I didn't know when I wrote the piece, the casting is really thoughtful. The film casts Pico Ayer, the journalist, as the head of the table tennis association. I discovered it's like the films that left me a little trail of breadcrumbs. So I discovered he has actually written a book about. Partly about the place of table tennis in the Japanese psyche. So his wife is Japanese and we should explain.
- [69:50]
C
Yes, he's a story journalist and observer of Japan.
- [69:55]
D
Right. He's written multiple books about Japan. But one of the books is about. So his wife is from Hiroshima and when her parents are dying. This is true. Piko Aya went to live with her parents in Hiroshima and went to the table tennis club. And it was during the playing of table tennis that he heard the stories about what it was like to live in Hiroshima during and after the atomic bomb was dropped. There's an incredible moment where one of the women who he's playing table tennis with says people had the skin hanging off like the fold of a kimono. And so it's a film. So in the film, Marty, who's the Jewish hero, the anti hero, is playing repeatedly against this Japanese champion. And the whole point is these are two tremendously humiliated peoples struggling back to find some kind of sense of self. Something that doesn't end with Hiroshima and doesn't end with the camps, but can then be a new identity. And I think there's a lot of that in the fact that in the film, Marty is really not ever angry with Endo, who's the Japanese player. The person who's the real problem in the film is the anti Semite who sets them up to play against each other, who hates the Japanese and hates Jews and just wants to see them humiliate each other. Loves to see a Jew humiliated.
- [71:24]
C
Just on this one point, I mean, just because you're right, the two peoples are sort of fused by the Milton Rockwell character. I stumbled on that a bit because The Jews in 1952 are a victim people, and the Japanese are partly a perpetrator people, allies of the Nazis who inflicted terrible torture on their victims, of their inmates, of their own camps and prisoners of war and so on.
- [71:50]
D
Sure. I think it's a much more movie about the Jewish experience than it is a movie about the Japanese experience. And I think that there's a nod in casting Pico Aya. There's a nod to say, actually there was a tremendous Japanese emotional experience, and we can't just completely ignore that. But at the same time, you probably couldn't make a movie. You know, the movie would have to be two more hours long to really grapple with the emotional experience of being Japanese in the wake of not only knowing that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened, but also that these terrible experimentation camps had happened, that the prisoner of war camps had happened, that the emperor had been deposed. Anyway. So I think it is true that it's less good on Japan than it is on Jews, but on Jews for me. So one of the things that I wrote about in this piece is that for me, the movie is. It rejects New Testament narratives. It is a. And if you say to me, well, it's very episodic, I will say too, what do you think the Torah is?
- [72:55]
C
Yes.
- [72:58]
D
Have you read Genesis? This is how those stories work. Right. Genesis is the story of a people, and it's a story of a family with their feuds and their sort of tremendously dramatic moments and then their little petty angers with each other. I mean, look, I think I'm not necessarily a believer in the way that I was, but I certainly value the Torah tremendously as literature. And the literary form of it, you know, the literary form of the New Testament is leading towards this moment of sacrifice or a moment of conversion. And you see a lot of those stories in Western literature. And like, fine, that's the culture of milieu in which we live. You would. If this movie had been of that form. There's usually the. The Christian version of a sports movie is, first there's a loss, then eventually there's a win. So it would go. You've got to have the moment. I mean, it's even. I don't know. Have you ever read the book Save the Cat?
- [74:02]
C
Oh, yes. About sort of bestselling novel. The formula for bestselling books.
- [74:06]
D
Yes, the formula. Right. So the formula for a Hollywood movie is that before the ultimate victory, you have to have a moment where death is near. This is Jesus. This is a Jesus story. And that's fine. That's the Western canon. But when you say, no, we're not gonna do that, he's not gonna get to play that final match. When he turns up in Tokyo, it's gonna turn out that he's already lost in some way and he's going to do something different with that. And even winning is gonna be complicated. But actually, the victory of the whole movie is that there gets to be another Jew born after the horrors of Auschwitz, which the movie has put inside our minds. I find it very. I mean, I find it very Jewish.
- [74:53]
C
And you write that it's very moving because the idea, the thing is front and center located immediately after the Holocaust. And whatever else happens, the noise, the fury, the storming, the blasts, the explosion, a Jewish life is created. There is a. The film ends with a birthday. And for you that is the victory. Because every Jewish life born after Auschwitz is a victory of some kind in a way that for you. And that's. And you argue that's something in the film.
- [75:20]
D
I think it is in the film in the sense that the film starts us with the sperm going towards the egg and sets us on that trajectory and says to us, all right, we're gonna bookend like this. This is what this film is about. There's gonna be a load of other stuff going on, but at the end of the day, two Jewish. A young Jewish couple are gonna end up having a Jewish baby. And all of the other things in the film are going to show you how many forces are arrayed against them and how messy they are and how ridiculous they are and how crazy in many, many ways. I mean, his mother is crazy. She's constantly calling him, saying, I'm about to die. And he's going, I'm not. You're not dying. This also felt very familiar. Yeah.
- [76:09]
C
Cause it's the ultimate Jewish mother's guilt trip that the phone rings and she's dying. She's in the hospital and she isn't. She's just want him to come back,
- [76:16]
D
but she just wants him home.
- [76:17]
C
You write in the piece.
- [76:18]
D
I mean, may I say.
- [76:19]
C
Yes, go on.
- [76:20]
D
May I say it's not confined to Jewish mothers. My Jewish father does it too.
- [76:27]
C
You write in the, in. In the piece that this film loves Jewish people. You also write in the piece that how. And. And most of the, you know, a lot of the characters are Jewish. Everyone is conning everyone else. They're deceiving each other. The mother lies to her son, she dobs him into the authorities. Uncles trick him. His own lover tricks him. He tricks her. You know, these are Jewish people behaving very badly.
- [76:54]
D
Right.
- [76:54]
C
And yet you say this film loves Jewish people. I think I know why you don't think that's a contradiction, but just explain to people why you don't.
- [77:01]
D
I will happily explain that you cannot make a film in which all Jewish people are saints. That is not how to love us. We have to be. Listen, Jewish people are no better and no worse than anyone else. And it's really tempting because the world constantly says to us, no, you're much worse, unclean, disgusting, evil Jews. It's really tempting to say no. No, actually, our ethics are excellent and we're brilliant. And it is such a discipline, but a really important discipline to be able to say no, we're just the same. We have the same desire. Hath not adieu eyes, we may say about ourselves? Hath not a due hands, organs, dimensions, senses? And if you wrong us, shall we not be revenged, says Shylock.
- [77:50]
C
He does seem to be out for a kind of revenge in the form of winning and being a world champion after, as you say. And I think you're completely right about this, about the humiliation that the film comes out of, the period of Jewish humiliation. It's set in 1952. That's not an accident. I think that's absolutely right. One thing that really grabbed me and arrested me was this idea of him wanting to put on the map this sport that, as you rightly say, we all know is gonna be at best a marginal sport, table tennis, of all things. It doesn't lend itself to, you know, heroism. But you say it's not just enough he be a champion. He needs to be a world champion. He needs to be the best. And you link that to a whole range of Jewish striving that is visible in multiple fields. And I have to say I'd never thought about this point until you made it. But just, just, just for people who haven't read your piece, just explain that very specific point of striving internationally as it is.
- [78:45]
D
All right, all right. Do you feel you're a striver?
- [78:48]
C
Very definitely. No. The piece resonated with me for that among many reasons.
- [78:52]
D
Yeah. I think there are a lot of Jewish strivers out there. And this is another sort of anti Semitic trait. People say, well, look how successful they are. There must be some plot. And you go, okay, you have to understand what Jewish people as a people have lived through. So during the Nazi regime, basically most of the countries in Europe either rolled over to the Nazis or didn't put up too much of a fight. And if you wanted to get away from that, I mean, I just. I made a series last year for the BBC about the Manhattan Project. And I think people don't necessarily know that almost every top physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project was Jewish. And almost all of them were fleeing Hitler in various ways. So Niels Bohr was Jewish. We think of. Oh, no. Danish. Jewish. Danish and Jewish. And I mean, you can go down the list and go, all right, Fermi is Jewish and John von Neumann is Jewish. All of these people. Leo Szilard is Jewish. Edward Teller is Jewish, obviously, Oppenheimer is Jewish. And is it Rabie? Right. The way that they ended up being safe in America is because they had an international reputation for excellence. And I think if you give a whole people the awareness that this is what it takes to survive, people work really, really hard. And it hasn't just happened once to Jewish people. It has happened to us over and over again. That you had to. You know, the expulsions across Europe took place over hundreds of years where you had to be able to go, right, We've been expelled from Portugal. We're gonna have to Italy now. And we have to be impressive enough to be able to survive in Italy. So there's the. There's the. Is it Leonard Bernstein song easily assimilated? That is part of it. You have to be able to be easily assimilated, but you also have to be supreme. I mean, that's what it's about. You have to be able to say, I mean, I don't know about you, but certainly for me, after the Brexit in particular, I started to think, okay, somebody has effectively taken away 26 of my 27 passports that I used to have. So I need something that will get me into some other countries. I just. I have to have that because you can never know when a country will turn.
- [81:18]
C
And so your point about the Manhattan Project, in a way, is these were people who, whatever else was going on, would definitely get entry visas into other countries because they were world class. And therefore there's Marty Supreme. He doesn't. It's not good enough that he's the New York champion. He's got to be a world champion tabletop player so that when they come, he could get access to other places should he need it.
- [81:38]
D
Yes. In order to escape from the Nazis, you had to be able to not just be very good in your country, but you needed people in other countries to have heard of you sufficiently that they would go to their boss. And this happened to many people. It happened to Lise and Meitner that they would go to their boss and say, look, I know it's a real pain, but we've got to get this person out of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, wherever, because they are really world class. And yeah, you do that enough and we all work really hard.
- [82:08]
C
And you. This is not in case listeners are skeptical that you're putting this gloss on the film. You do in your quote, the director of the movie saying it was the survival of the Jews through the Holocaust. That was the gasoline on the flame of Jewish pride. In other words, there is this link between the experience of collective humiliation and then these sort of, you know, almost chest thumping expressions of Jewish pride because Marty supreme is. Marty in the film is arrogant, obnoxious and so on. I want to zero on one specific before we leave this, particularly the show aspect, and that is to go back to the honey scene. Kletzki, who you note is played by the actor from the movie Son of Saul, one of the, the most searing and graphic depictions of the show are. That's a real. If people know that film, seeing him again on screen is very powerful. You quote in your, in your essay, though the famous line from Viktor Frankl about the best of us did not return, it seemed to me that Kletzky, by making his body a carrier of nutrition, by literally smearing himself with honey so these fellow inmates could live and survive. Absolutely an example of the best of us. And yet you juxtapose that as saying that, you know, there's Klutzky, but the best of us, those people did not come back from the camps. It's a really specific niche point I'm picking up on here. But I don't understand why you don't think Kletzki's one of the best of us.
- [83:38]
D
I mean, I do, I do, you know, but I think also once you have read Victor Frankl, you understand who all those other people were that he was feeding, and you understand that people took the opportunities available to them. Listen, none of us, none of us would criticize Kletzky for disarming bombs for the Nazis. Disarming bombs seems like a great thing to do. But, you know, certainly he played in the Son of Saul a Sonderkommando, that is, somebody else who was working for the Nazis. So the film, I think. Right.
- [84:14]
C
Under the most extreme duress.
- [84:16]
D
Right, right, right. The Sonder commanders were hated in the camps. And yet at the same time, we who have not had to live through that fully understand why a person might do that. And the movie Son of Sword is about this man's search for one act of redemption because he feels so strongly that, you know, I think the film absolutely does not put its thumb on. He's doing Nazi jobs for them. And quite rightly so. Quite rightly so. But I think casting the actor from the Son of Saul in that role is to say he probably wasn't loved in the bunks. He probably wasn't loved. But I think you're right. He's the nicest character in the film. The film is about. This is what it does to you. I'm sorry, but this is what it does to you. You come out going, I understand the world now. The world is about kill or be killed. The world is about keeping yourself alive, searching for your pride, for the pride of your people. I mean, I think it still explains a lot about Jewish psyche today. I think. I think people who are not Jewish don't know what it's like to really fully believe, as I think most Jewish people I know do believe, that it could happen anywhere and that it probably will happen again at some point. I think for people who are not Jewish, it feels like history. It's like an interesting piece of history. Whereas I think for Jewish people, it feels like a revelation of the truth of what people are capable of, and particularly people European Christian culture is willing to direct at Jews.
- [86:08]
C
Well, just on that very last point, it's funny you say that, because what I was about to put to you is how interesting it is that this is made by the Safdie brothers, who are, as I understand it, Syrian Jewish. In other words, their upbringing is not in European Christian Christendom. Their upbringing, experiences is different. And I wonder if on some level it took of perspective outside of. Of the European Jewish experience to see that. I'm interested to know whether you think people coming to this film realize what you see in it, which is this intense Jewishness. Do people who see Marty supreme understand that it is, as you put it, the most Jewish movie you've ever seen?
- [86:46]
D
So on that point, I think the reason that I got very, very inspired to write a really long piece about Marty supreme was because I had seen so many bad, stupid comments about it where I think it was. I can't remember. And I don't want to point fingers at anybody in particular, but somebody said, oh, this is a bad sports movie. I'm like, no, it's a movie about the psychological effects of the Holocaust. It's not trying to be a sports movie and failing. It's specifically about something very different. So I do think that there's a lack of understanding. I think there's a lack of. I mean, I think there's a lack of biblical literacy these days, as we know. And so some of the things I point out in the film, which I didn't spot the first time I saw it, like he seduces a woman by making an apple appear, just like in the Garden of Eden. I think it's got a lot of nice little touches like that, which I think people aren't necessarily picking up on. But I also think the film is incredibly and deliberately uncompromising. It's very inspiring. As a creative person. I look at it and go, oh, this is how uncompromising you can be. It was released in the US on Christmas Day, which is traditionally the day that Jews go to the movies and nobody else goes to the movies, which is to say, look, it's for you. I made this for you. With regard to the point about being Syrian, I mean, obviously what many of us feel is that there was a revelation of what Christian culture is capable of. But at the same time, I think in the subtlest possible way, I don't know how your listeners will feel about this, but to me, it's a movie about, why are Israelis like that? And the answer is because of everything that's happened. And there is something incredibly Israeli about his way of talking over people and insisting on his point of view. I mean, you know, I have many, many people who I love very much who live in Israel, and it is still the only place in the world where I've been in a queue in a pharmacy and another woman has literally been bodily moved me out of the way so she could get in front of me. You know, it's a country full of strivers. And the moment I arrive in Israel, every time I go, oh, in the uk I'm a catfish amongst carp. Whereas in Israel, everybody's like this, yeah,
- [89:08]
C
you're a carp among catfish there because of that will to survive. The.
- [89:12]
D
The will to survive.
- [89:13]
C
The film opens with Naomi Alderman. Thank you so much for talking to us on Unholy.
- [89:19]
D
A delight. Thank you so much for having me.
- [89:26]
B
So, first of all, can I just say, I'm a huge fan of Nomi Alderman and I love her books. I think the Power, which I talked about, I recommended, is a fantastic book. I think that was such a great conversation. I'm so sad to not have been able to do that because of the situation here and the war coverage and the safe rooms and the Rest and course of. Of course the theaters are closed, the movie theaters. So I couldn't see the film, but now I want to see it after hearing her talk about it. So I thought that was a great conversation. Jonathan?
- [89:52]
C
Yeah, no, I'm a fan, a big fan of hers too. If you haven't ever heard it, worth digging out, see if you can find it. A fantastic essay she wrote after 9 11. She was in New York on 911 and she wrote a brilliant piece about that addressed to, you know, a mysterious. You're not sure who she's writing to, but someone who's let her down very badly. I really recommend that. Brilliant, brilliantly broke that piece because it's brilliant. We should hand out some awards.
- [90:18]
B
We should. I think in the spirit of somehow continuing with Jewish life, let's continue with this Jewish tradition and go back to doling out. See, I was listening when you were talking and doling out mention word and chutzpah words. What would you want to start with, sir?
- [90:34]
C
Well, with chutzpah, you know, I know we do this a lot, but whoever runs the White House X account, formerly Twitter, they have been putting out videos that are mashups of clips of movies, video games and actual real life footage, aerial footage of the bombardment of Iran. I think anyone who's listened, who listened to you just a few moments ago, but listens to the podcast or listens to the voices coming out of Israel, coming out of Iran, knows that this is serious stuff. This isn't a game. And just before we recorded and this is what sort of pushed me over the edge, someone sent me the latest post which shows footage of somebody bowling, you know, in a bowling alley. Tempin bowling and the pins, the skittles kind of thing are represent Iran and its nuclear threat and so on. And just all done as if it's just a game, all for fun. And this is serious. Lives are on the line. People are, are really going through, at the very least, excruciating sort of tension and anxiety. And Donald Trump's White House treats this as if it's a video game, as if it's just content, online social media content. Well, it isn't. And some of the memes and gifs and movies and reels or whatever they're putting out are really pretty disgusting. So I think a chutzpah award for them.
- [92:01]
B
I'm going to add another chutzpah award using the authority I have to add more awards. Minister Mai Golan, she is the minister here in Israel of women's empowerment and social equality. She is from the Likud, we should say. Just to zoom out on the story, obviously, flights in and out of Israel have been incredibly limited for the first few days, no one in and out. Now there's an attempt, first of all, to bring back the Israelis stuck abroad. By the way, only in Israel are these flights called rescue missions, rescuing Israelis back into a war zone. But that's the language that we use the terminology. And there are limited flights outside of Israel, mainly for urgent cases. There's also limited on how many people can be on these flights, obviously, because launching missiles and missiles are still being launched at Israel. So this is complicated. I think that that doesn't even need explanation. Cut to Minister Magolan, who had to fly to New York to the UN to give a speech on women's issues. She took with her no less than five members of her team in an event that, if we are honest, we can say it could have been done by Zoom, of course, then lashing out against the media and the leftists and everyone else who just said, look, this is not appropriate at a time of war.
- [93:23]
C
Yeah. Maya Golan has a bit of a track record. People might remember her saying, I'm personally proud of the ruins in Gaza. She said that a couple of years ago. And they might remember in September of last year, the Israeli police raiding her office, summoning her for questioning, connection with an investigation so.
- [93:43]
B
Which was published on channel 12. I'm just being here.
- [93:45]
C
We are, you know, investigation into. To allege misconduct, but nothing alleged about this incident with New York. Lots of grounds for a chutzpah award for her. What about our Mensch nominee?
- [93:59]
B
I think we'll be unanimous on this. I think we give it to the Academy of Hebrew Language, which deserve it all the time, if we're honest. But what happened this week was that Iranian hackers, you know, broke into that system and wrote something like, you won't either hear Hebrew language soon because, you know, whatever we'll do to you. I don't give the exact quote, but the Hebrew Academy did respond by saying something which I think is quite nice and perhaps needs to be quoted in full. I'm translating from the Hebrew. Our site has been broken into. Even the people, the hackers understand that the Hebrew language is inseparable from the Zionist movement. And it. It is an important part of our culture and of our Israeli identity. And we just want to say to the people who hacked into our site, we don't study Hebrew because we need it. We study Hebrew because we love it. Which I think is a beautiful quote. Fania Oz, who on her X page, brought this to, I think, the knowledge of the world. She added, Over 10 million people speak Hebrew at this time. Zero people spoke it as an everyday language in 1880. Modern Hebrew will not disappear.
- [95:10]
C
So those are our awards. Another Jewish tradition has been fulfilled, despite the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our thanks, I think, to our special guest, Naomi Alderman, who I know battled through a cough and a cold and a bit of a bug, not that you could hear it, to join us to talk about Marty Supreme. I know she'll be watching and rooting for that film on Sunday. And obviously General David Petraeus for briefing us on this ongoing war.
- [95:38]
B
And a huge thank you to Michal Porat, who is, you know, doing this day in, day out, no matter what the sirens and the safe room situation is. We will obviously be bringing you more episodes of Unholy than we do on usual days because of this situation, ongoing situation. We'll continue to update you throughout the the week. Stay safe and we'll talk soon.
- [96:01]
C
Yeah, you stay safe, Yoni. Be well.