← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Lebanon ceasefire, Senate Showdown, Orban out
00:41:51
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/1GIuMFYYX1E Get more Unholy content: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ As Israel marks one week out of 40 days of missiles from Iran, Yonit and Jonathan take apart the week's impossible contradictions: Netanyahu delivering a triumphalist Yom HaShoah speech while 400 kilograms of enriched uranium remain intact in Iran; a fragile Lebanon ceasefire that almost no one trusts; 40 Democratic senators voting against arms transfers; and Italy's far-right prime minister — until now Israel's last ally in Europe — quietly moving toward the exit. They also clock a historic election in Hungary, what Orban's fall means for the Israeli opposition, and whether Gadi Eisenkot is the figure who finally changes the picture.
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- [00:04]
A
A somber week of reflection and mourning in Israel, just as the possibility hoves into view of some kind of breakthrough between Israel and Lebanon in their war over Hezbollah. It's unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland in London.
- [00:21]
B
And I'm Yonit Levy in Tel Aviv. Unholy. Two Jews on the news. Jonathan, as you say, it is this week that we tend to call the holiest week on the Israel, Israeli secular calendar, the week between Holocaust Memorial Day and the Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, which is next Tuesday. A famous saying in this country is that they are bundled together and only a week between them. As the Holocaust Memorial Day illustrates, the price we pay for having no state of our own, and Memorial Day for fallen soldiers is the price we pay for having our own state. Now, in normal days, these are days of, you know, normal years. These are days of contemplation and solemnness, culminating, of course, in Independence Day. The emotional roller coaster could not be clearer for the Israeli psyche, but in this year, it will also align with the end of the ceasefire between Israel and the US and Iran. So all of this coming together in a very kind of bizarre mix. I think the word bizarre for the national mood would probably be accurate this week.
- [01:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, it always is. And we will talk next week about how, you know, this, the mood whipsaw, the whiplash of going from Memorial Day straight to your month, Independence Day. But they're all in a mix together this crammed week. And I know from my own time having been there for that, it is, I mean, worth describing maybe to people who haven't gone through it before or haven't heard us talking about it before, but the notion of the country coming to a standstill at a particular moment. I mean, here in Britain, there's Remembrance Day and there is 11 o', clock, a tradition that people will be silent and so on, but it is not observed in anything like or with anything like the intensity. In Israel, there is a siren that sounds, but I know this is a time of sirens, so just explain that to us about how that works. When there are sirens going off anyway because of incoming missiles from Iran or Hezbollah, how do you then distinguish the Memorial Day or Yom Hashoah? Sarah, just walk us through the mechanics of it.
- [02:29]
B
I mean, look, this is. Nothing is more Israeli, right, than trying to explain to your children the difference between a Memorial Day siren, right, the ceremonial act of respect and an alert siren, meaning you are in acute danger. And as you say, this is happening in days where there's still very heightened Tensions over the Iran. The memorial siren for Yom Ha Shoah for Holocaust Memorial Day was on Tuesday, 10am and we even got. I sent you this letter from the school explaining the different kinds of sirens and how you need to explain to your children. Right. So the solemnness and the ceremonial siren, the memorial siren is kind of a very standstill tone of 2 minutes to tell the children that you need to stand still. That's how they explained it in the school. And the other siren, the alert siren, goes up and down. It's a moving siren, the school said, and that is to explain to children you need to move to a shelter. I mean, just that surreal moment in trying to explain it. By the way, I was with a group of adults at 10am all of us knew there would be a memorial siren for Yom Hashoa. And even then everyone jumped from their seat because the alertness is such that you think to yourself, oh, wait, I need to find a shelter. And then the next thing you realize is, oh, it's not, you know, it's not a siren for people trying to kill me now. It's a siren because people killed my ancestors 80 years ago. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound facetious about it, but that is the kind of feeling that you have.
- [03:59]
A
No, but you're, you're joking about it and you know, we know that humor is a mechanism, a sort of self protective mechanism. Just think about what that is doing, particularly for. I'm talking about the joke for children that there were people who tried to kill us 80 years ago and succeeded. They killed 6 million and people are trying to kill us now. And just the, the imprint of that on very young children hearing these sirens, which mean either past lethal danger or current lethal danger, it will have an impact. I mean, you know, this will, this is something we, we were barely at a point where we could talk about the impact of the October 7th war in Gaza. Two years and what that was going to do. And then we're into another one. I thought we would just say something about the origin of Yom Hashoah itself, because Jews around the world will be used to observing Holocaust Memorial Day and not just Jews. On January 27th, that's the international Holocaust Memorial Day marked for the liberation of Auschwitz at Birkenau. That's the why. That's the origin of that date, Yom Hashua, its own separate date, 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan. So it falls around April. And established originally to coincide with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. I've always found that really Israeli and interesting because the World Memorial Day is the day when others liberated the Jews in the sense of Auschwitz was liberated by the Red army and then other, you know, the United States and Britain and the Allies. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a moment of Jewish resistance. And it's not a coincidence that the young state of Israel chose that as the moment to focus on Israel being what Israel was. It could latch onto resistance very, very directly. So that's why there's this difference between the two dates marked around the world.
- [05:55]
B
And also in difference in title. Remember, in Israel it's called Yom Hazikaron Lashoah Velagvuh. The Memorial day for the Shoah and the heroism to show that there was also that. And of course, it coincides with what you said, that it's the day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. That's what it commemorates. It's part of the story here, definitely, in Israel. By the. We should, if we're on the national mood, we should also mention it's just been a week and a day since the ceasefire took hold. We don't yet know if it is completely stable ceasefire, but there have been 40 days of a war and hundreds of missiles launched over Israel. And that is not something the country is completely out of. Right. I mean, there was. I wanted to tell you at the beginning of our conversation, I sat at a restaurant that are now reopening all of them. And this morning, and I was handed a. This is what the waiter said, a war breakfast menu and an apology that the kitchen is not yet completely full, working in full right after the war. So the menu is a little limited. And it's a war breakfast menu. During these 40 days, Waze actually had a feature in Israel that was called Shelter close to you. So, you know, these are all things that you don't kind of just have a switch on, switch off button. It's still very emotionally charged in that regard, and it's still kind of a very tense moment here in this country. I can't not think of that line that Amasarel chief military analyst Farah Aretz and a good friend of this podcast said a few months ago when we had him on, he had this line, he said, Israelis like to think they live between Paris and Berlin, but unfortunately, Tel Aviv is halfway between Gaza and Beirut. And I think this week kind of reminds us of that very acutely.
- [07:38]
A
Yeah, Very, very directly. And it's interesting you say about the ceasefire because in a way, you know, I was sort of almost discounting that because it's partial. I mean, partial in the sense of fragile, because who knows if it's going to last as, as we speak, it is just after twenty past two in the afternoon in Israel and, and twenty past seven in the morning. I mean, Donald Trump will just be getting his social media posting thumb and fingers ready, I'm sure, as we speak. Who knows what, what the, what twist there's going to be. You know, there's been talks of talks, Pakistan as diplomats arriving or representatives arriving in Tehran. Maybe it's back on, maybe it's back off. And, but, but even if it were to be back on, still, you can't talk about war being completely over for Israel because Hezbollah and its project of raining fire on Israel is unabated. And there are, we are told, and again, this was muddy and murky because the Lebanese said they'd heard nothing of it. But again, Donald Trump announcing late Wednesday that there were going to be talks between Israel and Lebanon, even at the very high level of the Lebanese president. You know, I always think you just now have to have a caveat almost just in your tone of voice about what comes out here, because Trump just fires off this stuff and who knows where it goes. As I say, the Lebanon, you know, Israel said, yeah, that's right. But the Lebanese officials told news organizations this was news to them. But anyway, as we speak, it could be that a firmer or fuller seat fire is negotiated.
- [09:15]
B
Yes. I mean, we should say for the Israeli side, perhaps slightly under duress. Remember, there was a deal in place signed in the last kind of final days of the Biden administration, November 2024. Hezbollah broke that ceasefire agreement when the war with Iran started a few weeks ago and shot over Israel. Israel responded. And so now we are at this moment where, as it seems, first of all, there were ambassadors for Lebanon and Israel meeting in was, there is, as we speak now, talks about a historic, we should say, conversation between Prime Minister Netanyahu, phone conversation between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun that might happen today. And we are leading this all into a direction of a ceasefire. The question, of course, and remember, the citizens in the northern part of Israel, first of all, have been evacuated for a year after October 7th. Now they have been under a barrage of missiles, still continuing, even as we speak now of a ceasefire in most of Israel, in the northern part of Israel still, Hezbollah firing rockets and of course, Israel responding, waiting to see if that means that the Lebanese government will in fact take up its role in disarming Hezbollah that is the biggest question from the Israeli perspective and also I think, from from the Lebanese perspective as well.
- [10:37]
A
Yeah. And look, people have been saying, and I think they're right, that this represents, in the midst of this crisis, an opportunity because they hear on the governments of Israel and the government's underlying government of Lebanon have something very big in common. They both actually want to be rid of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is, to put it very nicely, a cuckoo in the nest. That puts it very mildly in Lebanon. And have just by their presence there and by their constant missile fire aimed at Israel have brought return fire back on Lebanon. And of course, those missiles do not effectively discriminate between Hezbollah and the Leb. Very often there's civilian casualties in the process. The Lebanese government would love to be shot of this sort of parasite on the. On the body that they have in the form of Hezbollah. The worry has always been that they just don't have the power to do it. I mean, the Hezbollah certainly in their pomp, had more military muscle than the government of Lebanon had that they were backed by Iran, they were armed to the teeth, huge arsenal. And could the Lebanese government. You know, we know famously how fragmented that country is. It's small, it's fragmented. Did it have the muscle and power to take on Hezbollah in the way that it needs to be taken on? I haven't seen myself any evidence that that has materially changed. So it would be great if there is some kind of agreement and handshake. I just don't know whether Aun has the ability to sign a ceasefire deal, as it were, on the part of. On behalf of this militia that functions as a state within a state, certainly a military within the state of his country. And so I don't know what the value of that would be. In a way, the deal you need is with Hezbollah itself.
- [12:28]
B
Yes. And again, this is a terror army at the service of Iran. And this is a problem that Israelis in many way thought had disappeared or at least was diminished in power. It turns out that reality is a little bit different. We see in three cases, the Iranian case, the Lebanese case, and of course, the Gaza case, in which we're talking about a framework of an agreement, but the details are murky now in Gaza, we see now that Hamas is still in control, it hasn't been demilitarized. And in the Iranian deal, the same issue. Right. The enriched Iranian, who's going to take it out? Who's going to be the inspector? Who's going to restrict all this? We don't know. And when you look at the people who are negotiating. Right. J.D. vance, the American Vice President, Pakistani Field Marshal Aseem Munir is. Israelis don't feel like these are the two people who have their security as top priority. So it's very concerning on all of these levels. We don't know where it leaves the country at this moment. Which adds to that kind of mood of trepidation that I was talking about at the top.
- [13:32]
A
Yeah, I mean we should just clarify that when we say that Israelis thought it was over, that's because they had been told it was over by their prime minister. Netanyahu last summer talked about the Iranian the Hezbollah threat having been destroyed, set back, but you know, boasted that this was done, that the they wouldn't be back for. I think he talked about generations. That's not how it's played out for in all the ways and in all the fronts you've set out and explained.
- [14:05]
B
Netanyahu had said In November of 2024, we took back Hezbollah decades, dismantled or destroyed most of their rockets and missiles. This is not science fiction. We did it. By the way, Israelis also thought it was over because there was a deal signed, a ceasefire that Hezbollah was supposed to uphold and did not. So all of this is part and parcel of that, as I said of that feeling like this is not over. Even if this ceasefire right now with Lebanon and a ceasefire does take hold with the, with Iran, the feeling is this eerie feeling like we will be here again, like this is not the last cycle of violence in this region.
- [14:47]
A
On exactly that point, how the long term problems that beset and have beset Israel have not really been neutralized, just as you've said. If anything, this is my own view and I put it into Bret Stephens when we spoke to him. I think if anything the Iran threat on some level Israel is less safe now than it was on February 27th from that threat. Just because Iran now has demonstrated A it's huge economic muscle, B, it has now even more appetite for a nuclear bomb because it wants to deter this kind of action from happening again. And it's enriched uranium is still there and intact. Donald Trump bafflingly refers to it as dust. It isn't dust, it's the weapon. It's the material from which you can make a nuclear weapon. And, and it's still there, hidden underground but present. So I think it's actually set back that project that was definitional of Netanyahu for so long. As for the peace talks, look, we hope they have a breakthrough but these things take a long time and the jcpoa, which Donald Trump pulled out of and mocked really as Obama's terrible deal, by the way. I think he would grab that deal with both hands now if it was on the table. It took months and months and months of diplomacy, of expert diplomacy to get there. You can't just do it in 21 hours in one conversation. And he says, Donald Trump, you know, Iran holds no cards. I think everyone can see they hold quite a few, including the world economy in their hands. But I think on terms of just the particular Israel point, this was made quite well, I thought, by David Horowitz, the editor of the Times of Israel, in a recent piece about the two timetables which are clashing, which is on the one hand we're going to come on to talk about the politics, but this is an election year. He needs to be campaigning and saying, I've dealt with all these threats, I've neutralized them, they're all defeated. He needs to say that to have a political campaign message that he's the successful bringer of victory. And that clashes with the military security reality. And the point Horovitz made is we've been here before when we've been complacent. He writes about the threat that the enemy poses. And he draws the parallel with the assessment of Hamas before October 7, where there was complacency at the political level and then leaving the country insufficiently guarded. And now because he thinks by constantly saying we've won, Iran is defeated, they just don't know it yet, they're begging, they're desperate. That feeds a kind of complacency. Whereas a realistic non political assessment would say the threat is great, I personally think it's even greater than it was before. And those. So the two timetables, Netanyahu election candidate and Netanyahu commander of a country at war, they are colliding, they're at odds at the moment. And I thought that was, I think that's an important insight.
- [17:55]
B
I would say two things to that. One is we are in an election year, as you said, and if Netanyahu, who has the main power to call early elections, elections right now are slated for the end of October 27th of October 2026. He has the power to call early elections. If he had thought that it was a shoo in that he would surely win in this situation and the cards he has dealt right now, he would call early elections. The fact that he didn't is indicative of the fact that he is worried. Indeed, what he is bringing to the Israeli public now, he can talk about achievements a lot. And in fact, he has. And by the way, I think the one thing that perhaps illustrates this more than anything else is his Yom Hashua address. It is traditional for the Prime Minister to speak at Yad Vashem, to speak in the Holocaust Museum on Yom Hashuah. And I would want to quote for you what he said. He said the US And Israel crushed the Iranian regime. And he said year after year, I stood here and pledged at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, we will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. I promise there will not be a second Holocaust. He said, this year we have turned that promise into a reality. End quote. Now, what's interesting about that is, as you said, it's clear that it's not over yet. Right. Just specifically, that 400 plus kilogram stockpile of uranium that will enable the regime to actually put its hand on a nuclear weapon is still in Iran. So that is first and foremost. And second, a lot of the people who went through October 7 and paid a heavy price for October 7 said to him, what do you mean you promise there won't be a second Holocaust? Look at what happened to Jews under your responsibility. Of course, it's different magnitude and it's of different length and duration and scale and size. But for Israelis, what they felt on that day, what was done to them, and the sadism and the murderism, what happened to them felt like that. So all of that connects, I think, to what you're saying, and indeed for Netanyahu, that kind of those two clocks, the defense issue and the political issue, they're converging and not in a way that right now, as we speak, is good for him.
- [20:03]
A
Yeah, I think your point about early elections is absolutely spot on, that we know him and we know if he felt this was a winning platform, he would be rushing to the polls. He clearly knows it isn't. The polling suggests that even, and this has always been a fascinating difference you've teased out before in our conversations, the polling shows basically quite solid support for the war, but that does not translate into any kind of bounce for him. The same was true, incidentally, of the 12 day war in June. Pollsters were expecting to see a bounce, and they looked at the numbers and it wasn't there. And that was when people believed the promises about having set back the Iranian nuclear program for generations, having destroyed Hezbollah for decades, as you were saying, that seemed credible then, even then, he wasn't getting a bounce. So he'll know this and know that he will be held to account, I think that speech he made on Yom Hashoah, I mean, it won't surprise people to know that I've bulked that. I think to use that occasion, to essentially use Yom Ha Shoah as a campaigning occasion is. Yeah, I just think it's gross, really. I think it's let that be the day where you commemorate the show rather than making a stump speech speech. So I bulk at that. But in terms of the actual content, I think he did make himself vulnerable to the counter argument, which is you're saying you've prevented this other one. You're doing it in a recorded ceremony because you knew that if you did a live ceremony, there was a risk that there would be missile fire and a siren during the actual ceremony that proves you have not neutralized this threat that you're bragging you've neutralized. There is this cognitive dissonance. There's this gap between the claimed reality, which he needs to claim because whether it's early or late he's going to face the voters this year, and the real reality, which is the Israelis, when they hear the siren of Yom Hashoah, as you told us, they thought, well, it could be that or it could be an incoming missile, even for a second. So that's the gap that's opening up between the politics and the reality.
- [22:13]
B
Yes. First of all, you mentioned the polls. I would say a very interesting phenomenon is that most of the polling, as it as it looks now, Netanyahu is going to lose the election. His coalition is going to lose. Channel 14, which is Netanyahu's essential considering this country. His mouthpiece has completely different polls saying that he is on his road to really a historic victory. It's either that, you know, we'll discover on election day what the reality is, but right now, that is the picture. I would just point, if we're on the sort of issue of elections, look closely at Gadi Eisenkot. We will be talking about him more and more in the following weeks. Former chief of staff of the idf, part of Benny Gantz's party, kind of centrist party, then broke from him, by the way, also for a few months, part of Netanyahu's government right after October 7, but then left the government and now is someone kind of emerging as a very interesting opposition to Netanyahu isn't considered someone who has the sort of charismatic ability that Netanyahu is, but also very difficult to attack him personally. He lost his son, Gal, who was fighting in Gaza, also also lost his nephew in Gaza. And so this is going to be a very interesting picture. The big question is, will Gadi Eisenkot join hands with Naftali Bennett? But in the sort of indicative question that we published our polls in Channel 12 last week, that question about who do you think is compatible to be prime minister? I think it's very interesting that Gadi Eizenkot is getting even higher numbers than Naftali Bennett. They both look in the competitive round against Netanyahu. So that's an interesting person to think about when we talk about Israeli elections.
- [23:48]
A
No, completely. And just walk us through the mechanics of this. He was somebody who was at the side of Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party of the past. Is he actually already emerging as somebody who, like, does he have all the infrastructure? Does he have the mechanics behind him to be a plausible prime minister?
- [24:06]
B
Well, first of all, I mean, in the, again, the recent polls, the question was, who do you think is compatible to be prime minister? When Netanyahu was. We put him head to head with Naftali Bennett. Netanyahu got 39%, Bennett got 30, 32% against Eisenhut. Netanyahu gets 39% and Eisenhut gets 35%. Now, he does have a party, it's called Yashar. It's straight line, if you wish. Also a kind of indicating that I'm not left, I'm not right, I am somewhere in. In the middle, but there's an infrastructure for a party. And he, you know, I think the main reason he is not uniting with Bennett is, is, you know, they're both politicians with their own egos and, and no one wants to be number two. So that will be a question. But in every poll, if you put them together, they surpass the Likud. So that will be an interesting question to look at.
- [24:55]
A
It will. And the sort of slightly nerdy point is that, yes, of course, the two parties could come together after an election, but the call to form a government goes first to the largest single party. So that's why people would, if they want to see the back of Netanyahu, they would be quite keen, I think, a lot of them, for these two men to get together so that they can combine their strength, be the largest single party, and therefore get the nod from the president post election to have first crack at forming a coalition. Should we just say something about the international picture? Because there was two developments, both of which I thought were very, very telling and interesting. The first comes out of Washington D.C. where there was a vote in the Senate about military aid for Israel and Democratic senator from Michigan elected only in 2024. Alyssa Slotkin balked and would not vote with that motion. She voted, in other words, to withhold not all but a specific portion of financial assistance for military purposes to Israel and issued a long, and I thought very important, sort of quite nuanced statement on social media explaining her position, saying she was still a friend of, of a Democratic and Jewish state. I thought the choice of words was interesting there, but that she did not support this government in the way that many. The Netanyahu government in the way that many Americans don't support Trump. She couldn't stand with Netanyahu, didn't mean she wasn't a friend of Israel and so on. Now, she acknowledges there that she has among her constituents a Jewish community, also an Arab community, famously Dearborn, Michigan. Very, very large Arab Muslim community there, Aro Christian community there as well. But she was mindful of that. But I don't think it would be, or rather I think it would be a mistake if people say, ah, okay, that's a politician. Just watching her local base. Who knows, you know, those people there are very anti Israel and she's got to appease them. I think that would be a mistake to read it that way. I see it instead as just yet another sign that the Democratic Party in the United States is no longer what it once was. It's no longer the. The party of Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, where it would just be almost reflexively with Israel. And it would be kind of traumatic for even one or two people to break from that. The events of the last two, three years, and I think before, have changed that. And why I say before is Benjamin Netanyahu did change something, which was, until then, it was seen as a bipartisan issue. He, I think, almost went out of his way to make it quite partisan, where he addressed Congress, press famously. When Obama was president, when it was John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, a Republican, he went at a Republican's invitation, as it were, to sort of, you know, take a stand against the Democrat. He weighed into the partisan politics of the United States, breaking what Yitzhak Rabin had always regarded as Israel's strategic, number one strategic asset, not a military weapon, but it's bipartisan support in Israel. So in the Cold War days, people used to say about diplomats, among diplomats and analysts who lost China, who lost Vietnam, meaning who was responsible politically for seeing one country go out of the west column and into the Soviet column, as it were. I Think the question for Israeli politics now has to be who lost America and certainly who lost the Democrats? And I'm afraid the finger points very, very largely at the man who's been at the helm for so long.
- [28:27]
B
First of all, this is bad news for Israel, and this is a sea change. You mentioned Lisa Slotkin, and by the way, importantly so. But just look at the larger picture here, right? 40 out of 47 Senate Democrats voted to block bulldozer sales to Israel. 36 out of 47 Democrats backed a measure to stop bomb transfers to Israel. This is a change in the way that Democrats see Israel. And Slotkin is Senator Slotkin is a moderate Democrat. She's not Ilhan Omar, she's not aoc. She's clearly struggling with this. Right. In that message that, that post that you read, she says, I will continue to support sending Israel much needed defensive weapons like Iron Dome. This is a friend of Israel saying, I can't do this because I don't support the Netanyahu government. By the way, if you add to that Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, a man who was vetted by the Kamala Harris team and they decided he was too pro Israel for them. This is a man who sat on the podcast last week and essentially said, America shouldn't be bullied by any world leader. He meant Netanyahu. Now, this is, this is what the language is like. And this is a really concerning development for Israelis because the pendulum swings in the United States, by the way. It could swing this November and there will be, there will be a price to pay in other countries around the world, the pendulum swings perhaps between right to right and not between right to left. But in the United States, it still swings in both directions. And this is, I think, a very, very worrying development for anyone who cares about Israel. And by the way, you put the finger on Netanyahu, I would just say, I think we can also put the finger on parts of the Democratic Party who have been very, very anti Israel and also pulling the party into that direction.
- [30:15]
A
Sure. But they were, you have to disagree
- [30:17]
B
a little bit at the end.
- [30:18]
A
No, of course. But they were, they were a noisy minority for a long time. And it's the events of recent years that have made them now pretty, as you said, it's mainstream. And now it would be the Joe Biden figure who would be the outlier. Yeah. And in fact, that's the case. John Fetterman is an outlier as a Democrat who remains, you know, supportive of this government of Israel. They're most of the, mostly they're not. And I think they, you can see the trajectory of that.
- [30:46]
B
But if, but there is a silver lining here a little bit, right. If you are not a Netanyahu supporter. All of this, by the way, all of the anti Israel sentiment in the Republican Party as well is tied to one man. And you see that they are talking more against Netanyahu than they are against Israel. So there are people in this country where I'm sitting who think, okay, if Netanyahu is gone, perhaps a lot of the antis Israel sentiment will be gone as well. I'm not sure that is the case, but we should point to that as well.
- [31:12]
A
Oh, I think that's absolutely right. And she's Slotkin's just a great example of that. She went out of her way to say her issue was with this particular government, not with Israel itself, of which she remains a friend. And I think many Israelis do sometimes worry that the whole world is turning against them, when really I think it's not the whole story, but part of the story is just opposition to this very particular government. Not just Netanyahu, but Ben GVIR Smotrich. These people, their names are known around the world. They are a big part of the problem. Just because you were mentioned, absolutely rightly, about friends, really noticeable this week that the Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni announced that Italy would not automatically renew its defense agreement with Israel. In view of the current situation now. Absolutely. Your point before about not Ilhan Omar, not aoc, ditto. This is not some left government in Paris or London that the, you know, the Channel 14 crowd in Israel can say, ah, they're all just the same, you know, anti Semites or whatever. This is a far right leader, a big Trump ally. Until now they've fallen out over this war in Iran. But this is the from the wing in Europe that was actually actively pro Israel. She, Giorgia Maloney, has reached a sort of crossing point. It's partly because this war is so unpopular in Italy. She's broken from Trump as well, furious at his comments recently about the Pope, but just another sign, as if there was a shortage of how opinion is shifting and that includes internationally. The old assumptions are no longer true and it's even Israel's most doughty, steadfast friends and allies who are shifting. So we have to pay attention to that.
- [33:07]
B
So speaking of that example of a pendulum moving from right to right and not from right to left, I think we should look at Hungary. We did tee this up last week, but a big, big sea change there as well.
- [33:20]
A
Yeah. And I have to say, as I was watching those results, everyone, like the
- [33:25]
B
world was glued to the results in Hungary right when it was, it was,
- [33:29]
A
it was so fascinating. I mean, because, because. And this is, look, you brought out the most salient point I've heard about when it comes to the com. The lessons for Israel, which is, as you just said, right to right. I mean, the parallels. The more you find out about. I won't say Peter Magyar, but I think it's. That's. I'm not giving it the full Hungarian. It's Maggie. Well, you know, I defer to you.
- [33:52]
B
Well, we have a few years to get you to it.
- [33:54]
A
We do. He absolutely. It maps on to the Bennett versus Bibi comparison. Exactly. As you said last week, he's somebody from the right. He's actually worked for Orban breaks from him younger, not really promising a complete sea change in terms of Hungarian nationalism and so on, but on the things that really matter, which is back, you know, taking its seat again at the table and making nice with allies rather than offending them. That's his big promise. You could really imagine Bennett using that as a playbook. I wonder if he is on the phone to the Magyara campaign saying, okay, tell me how you did it. The other point is all even more basic, which is Orban acquired an aura of invincibility and permanence. He was prime minister for 16 years. I know he barely getting started in terms of Netanyahu, but it proves that people who, who are embedded deeply in the institutions of the country have reshaped the institutions in their own image, nevertheless can be removed on a vote of the people. But this is the big but from all accounts we have of that election. It required a Herculean effort by this opposition leader, and not just in the weeks of the campaign, but for months and months and months, maybe even years, going around the country, speaking to audiences town by town and building allies and building coalition, doing the hard yards of on the ground political campaigning. To take on an entrenched machine and an entrenched figure like Orban, it cannot be done overnight. So I don't know whether Eisencott and Bennett and Yair Golan are doing that kind of work. But I think the lesson from Hungary is that's what it's going to take to shift somebody who's become a permanent fixture on the landscape, whether in Budapest or Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
- [35:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it is interesting. He's wasting no time in kind of erasing parts of Orban's legacy in whatever matters in this part of the world. We have to say, he said Hungary will return to the icc. And he stressed that there won't be a default position that Orban had when it comes to a vetoing decision decisions by the eu. He did say that Israel and Hungary have a special relationship. He said there will be zero tolerance for anti Semitism. But of course, Orban was someone who had very, very deep ties with Netanyahu and Netanyahu was rooting for him. Netanyahu Jr. Was rooting for him, Trump Jr. Was rooting for him. There were even Orban, if I'm not mistaken, urban advisors who came before the 2022 elections to help with Netanyahu's advisors. So this was a very, very deep connection. There were many who pointed out that parts of Orban's rhetoric were anti Semitic, but that was less important. I think, for parts of the Netanyahu government. In any case, that is now over. And this is a new kind of relationship that Israel will carve with Hungary's new leader.
- [36:54]
A
I think it's time for our awards. Yonit, as always, tradition to be observed. Let's begin with chutzpah. I mean, just because it fits so much, almost the kind of Yiddish definition of the word, I have to nominate JD Vance for, with a straight face saying, calling on the Pope to be more careful when deciding to opine on matters of theology. I mean, first of all, J.D. vance has been a Catholic for seven years, that's all.
- [37:25]
B
Second, in more than the years we've been Catholics.
- [37:28]
A
I'm just saying, yes, he's true, he beats us, but can you imagine, you can imagine rather this being the opposite way around, where a cleric would say to a politician, I just think you need to become more careful when opining on matters of theology. Obviously, that's what I do is what the cleric thinks. But no, JD Vance has no hesitation or compunction in thinking that he, scholar of theology that he is, can tell the literal Pope to be a bit more careful when speaking about. He's fine when he talks about other stuff, but if the Pope's going to talk on theology, I think he probably just needs to take a little bit of care, you know, just saying. I think it's an extraordinary jaw dropping bit of arrogance. Somebody said it takes some, some huge arrogance to, you know, invent Pope splaining, but that's what he was doing. It is just a, you know, chutzpah taken to a whole other level to set himself up as the arbiter of of matters of Catholic theology. And the Pope is a novice who needs to be guided by by J.D. vance. It's just, it's all of a piece with the Trump administration, but I thought a choice almost Leo Roston esque example of chutzpah.
- [38:36]
B
I have to say that first of all, two things about the two personalities you mentioned on J.D. vance. A point was made this week, the kind of streak that J.D. vance is on. He takes on the Iran talks, they collapse. He comes to visit Orban, Orban loses. I think another point was that he met the last pope and that pope died very recently, very soon after. So the kind of streak that J.D. vance has, I have to say that the Pope is from Chicago. I grew up in Chicago, so I'm for him just as a natural kind of knee jerk reaction. I don't think since a Polish pope, Karol Wojtyva or John Paul II as he was known to the world. My grandmother and John Paul II went to the same university. So ever since that we weren't as proud of a pope in the Levi household.
- [39:22]
A
And she knew him, didn't she?
- [39:24]
B
She had met him in the hallways. Her story used to be that if he actually met her and knew her, he probably wouldn't have become the Pope. That was what she liked to see. But they were in the same university in the same years.
- [39:37]
A
I think that's one of my favorite bits of unholy I was going to say trivia, but it's not trivial. It's epic. I mean the whole course of history could have been different. He would have met your grandmother. He would have obviously fallen in love
- [39:47]
B
with her and his converted to Judaism.
- [39:50]
A
Converted to Judaism. We'd be talking about Rabbi John Paul II of B' Nai Brak instead. So our Mensch award, I'm going to just do a nod in advance. We mentioned that Yomad Zikaran Memorial Day is coming. I always have admiration for the joint commemoration ceremony that is held each year. This year coming in Tel Aviv and Jericho of Israelis and Palestinians bereaved by the conflict. And the organizers for this is the Parents Circle, the Families Forum and Combatants for Peace. They are do organize an annual memorial ceremony. They're doing it again. It's worth mentioning this organization in part because they have recently been nominated by an institution for the Nobel Peace Prize. You know, it's a very arcane process. Lots of people get nominated for that, but you never know. But they are hosting anyway their annual ceremony and that will be on Monday at 8:30pm if you are either in Tel Aviv or Jericho. And so perhaps a mensch award for them and that organization.
- [40:59]
B
Look, it has become more and more difficult, definitely, after October 7th to have these kinds of ceremonies. It has been for a few years now. Extreme right wing activists also attacking with words, sometimes even physically, the participants of these ceremonies. I think it is important to note that these ceremonies continue, and there are groups of Palestinians and Israelis trying to have this connection and this conversation. We are winding up our conversation for this week. We can tell our listeners we will have two very special conversations ready for them, two very special interviews next week. And we will also, so say our big thank you to Michal Porat. And we will see each other next week.
- [41:40]
A
See you then.