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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:09]
B
So, Yael, what's your number?
- [00:11]
A
My number is 110,000 and that is the number of Holocaust survivors currently living in Israel. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics. It's a Monday night here in Tel Aviv. It's Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow. So this is the eve here in Israel. All survivors are at least 80 years old and 28% of them are over 90. So we're really seeing the tail end of the living eyewitnesses to what happened during World War II and the Nazi Holocaust. Jonathan, over to you.
- [00:44]
B
It's an important number. My number is 3.03. That is the strongest the Shekel has ever been in the 21st century when compared to the US dollar. This is a very important milestone during war, but it carries with it good, bad and ugly. It has great ramifications for the Israeli economy, but it also has peril, which is significant. So we'll be covering that today. And before we even ask who wins, I think you're a number trumps. It is, you know, anything that has to do with the Holocaust, the people who are still among us, how we treat them, what kind of a moral commitment it is for Israel to be the best country in the world is an important one. So thanks for bringing it up and never again. Never again.
- [01:26]
A
Okay, let's start.
- [01:27]
B
Let's start. So it is 9pm here on a Monday. These are eerie times, always between Passover and then Holocaust remembrance that we have today. Next week is the Memorial Day and immediately after that, within 24 hours, we celebrate our Independence Day. You're kind of in between optimism. Tomorrow, Israel and Lebanon are having their first civilian high ranking diplomat meeting under the auspices of the US Secretary of State. At the same time, Tehran is at it and we don't know where that's going to end. Hezbollah is still firing up in the. So these are very, very tumultuous times. And now we have all that layer of the national days on top. I don't know how you feel about it. For me, these couple of weeks are going to be difficult.
- [02:17]
A
Yeah. A reminder that while Tel Aviv feels like it went back to normal and for sure, work is back to normal and schools are open. The north is far from normal. And as you said, talks are going to start tomorrow. Hezbollah has been firing nonstop at the north, hitting homes and hitting structures. It's an uneasy feeling, kind of feeling like we're neither here nor there. And for sure, when you're in the center, in the south, just an hour and a Half from the border. It's a whole different reality there.
- [02:47]
B
Yeah, and also history can go either way in the next two weeks, right? I mean, it can go by way of a great achievement for the us, for Israel and Iran, removal of the enriched uranium, da, da, da. It can go into another massive wave of escalation for Israel, for the region, can go by way of more steps towards peace in Lebanon. My wife and my two young kids left to London on Friday immediately as the ceasefire came about because there is a new baby born in my wife's family. There's a Brit happening tomorrow and the great grandfather of my kids, who was 100 years old, a Holocaust survivor, is alive flying into London from Geneva to experience that. So we do have these larger than life figures among us to give us perspective. But when I talk to him and he's one of those hundred year olds who, you know, converses over WhatsApp video, very unique human being with all the perspective of the Cold War and everything that came after and so on. He's kind of so long on Israel, on Zionism, on Judaism, you know, prospering. So there's something to that perspective of people who've been through that and now are in their 80s, 90s and, and can see through it.
- [03:53]
A
So anyway, okay, so as usual we're going to take a quick look at the week's pressing news, our big shorts. But first we're going to go to the latest update on the Windex, the what's your number? Index that tracks the performance of publicly traded Israeli based or found companies. Let's kick things off with this week's Windex. How's it looking?
- [04:12]
B
All right, so let me quote my nephew. I'm sort of like calling on family. My nephew G says I'm very sorry to report this to you when he wants to say he's not going to do something. The market enjoyed a great Trump bump over the period between April 6th and the 12th. The Windex did not. It shed 1.7%. The sister indexes, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose 3.48% and 3.41. Accordingly, the feeling that the war came to a ceasefire, sense of optimism drove the market higher. Leading the pack this week is a very interesting company called Playtika. We haven't discussed Playtika. They rose by 14%. And a very interesting whisper. Morgan Stanley, it seems Market Watch is reporting that has been hired to help the company oversee its business strategy, which Wall street tends to interpret as they're on the shelf Meaning shareholders are expecting a premium. I would say after 14% on the week, the company is almost 90 below its IPO market cap. So not a good story overall. Yes, they do top the list on the week on the Windex, but not a good story for Platika.
- [05:20]
A
Yeah, these are on fundamentals and we're going to make way for the other companies in the green that are on fundamentals. But still, what's looking, I think you're trying to allude to an M and a kind of signal. Very interesting.
- [05:31]
B
That's what the market thinks we'll be following.
- [05:35]
A
What else is in the green?
- [05:36]
B
Look, I think again on the fundamentals, we see Nova measurements sort of our star. When it comes the pack of silicone in Wall street, it is sort of a critical component. It is a mini ASML coming out of Israel continues to grow. You kind of again visiting its peak market cap. And Elbit obviously continues to grow again, itching its peak market cap again at about 50% growth since the beginning of the year after they've doubled the share price last year. So I think that sort of tells the green story of the week.
- [06:09]
A
So more of the deep tech, the defense, semiconductors, classic SaaS, on the other hand.
- [06:15]
B
Yeah, so I think we've kind of identified it well last week, in last week's episode, that what seemed to be a small or a shallow signal ended up being quite a significant one. The Capybara or Methos launch by Anthropic ended up actually having Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Fed, call on Scott Besson, Secretary of Treasury, and they had an emergency call with Wall street and the SAS Maget on his back. Wicks shed more than 20% on the week. JFrog closes the loop this week with 14%, 28% year to date. JFrog is an Israeli tech company that provides tools for developers. Lemonade. And Monday at 13% in the red each this week, even Palo Alto shed about 4.5%, I would say. And we'll talk about it in the big shorts when it comes to Wicks. There's a big story there. And some of this aspocalypse in the next few weeks may start posing a threat to jobs in Israel. These are some of the biggest employers in the Israeli market. And so the ones in the red on an ongoing basis over the last six to eight weeks are not a good sign for the ecosystem. What do you think?
- [07:22]
A
Okay, yes, definitely with Anthropic's Mythos model, the preview model now out there, I think CISOs, those are chief Information security officers. You know, the people at these enterprises, keeping these enterprises safe, right, are very worried about the vulnerabilities that they don't know about now in their software that could be revealed by Anthropic's latest model issues that their own developers can't patch fast enough because they don't even realize where they are, which is giving these companies panic attack.
- [07:53]
B
All right, I think that's it for the Windex. Let's talk about the big shorts. And as we discussed in the opening, WIX is one of our big shorts today. Let's give our listeners a bit of an understanding of what's going on. WIX started off the year as part of this SaaS apocalypse. And the management moved fast. Right? Late last year they bought base 44, one of those amazing Israeli innovations. Mahou Shlomo, a company with like, I think less than 10 employees, bought very quickly for $80 million as it was growing really, really fast. In the last quarterly report, WIX already updated the incredible growth of that product within its suite. Right now we see the management acting fast. And then came about what is now a very controversial, right, more than $1 billion worth of a share buyback. The buyback was at a premium to the market. 90 doll the stock now that the buyback is done, so minus billion dollars in the company's hands, the stock is now at 65. Yeah, that is a big deal. Wix, you know, within a few weeks will have to present its quoted reports for the first quarter of 2026. And I think that absent an amazing stellar performance or some news that is, as you like to say, fundamental, that actually has, you know, multiples, we're going to see WIX kind of becoming an embattled company in a way, or we may see that. I really hope not. Management is doing a heroic job. I mean, this is a very consequential company for the market, for the ecosystem, for employment. So yeah, that's for me, big short or, you know, huge short in a way.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah. And the anthropic news, as I said in, in the Windex section, got a lot of CISOs into panic, but it got a lot of also these vibe coding companies panicking too. And we are focused on this show on base 44 because it's the Israeli version, but there's a lot of vibe coding companies around the world that also are questioning where do we go from here? You know, companies like lovable and so forth that are huge and so it's not a very Israeli kind of problem. But you Are right. Because there is very local impact ramifications to what is happening. And as one of Israel's largest employers and a kind of a bellwether for the entire ecosystem really the OGs of Israeli tech and kind of building from Israel and scaling from Israel, WIC struggles. It's not just a company story. It really does feel like a lot of stories that we hear around Tel Aviv that are not just around tech feeds directly into hiring salaries, sentiment. We'll talk more about it when we talk about the Shekel.
- [10:19]
B
Yeah, and I think you're making an important point here. It's this anthropacman reality, right? So whatever anthropic sort of initiates this kind of pac man dynamics where certain companies are going to buy or eat other companies or anthropic itself being the pac man, you know, eating everybody around. For me, the second big short is a bit more of a geopolitical one because we're seeing some dynamics that relate to the ceasefire here in Israel. So schools are back, employment is back, airline activity is back. Kudos to Emirates. There's UAE which is kind of towering over the rest. We're now seeing Sheikh Aldun in Beijing landed earlier this morning. Very, very impressive moral high ground type diplomacy in Emirates flying back to Ben Gurion, which is great. We're also seeing Leviathan and Karish, two of the Israeli gas production, I should say rigs going back live. They were closed during the war. They opened up a few days before the ceasefire. The story is that they were open because Egypt and Jordan who are served by this Israeli gas reservoir have run into political challenges over the cost of gas. Very, very interesting dependency. And I think for me Lebanon piece is critical for where the region is going. And so I think the ceasefire, broadly speaking is impacting the economy. What's your instinct there?
- [11:38]
A
It's pretty incredible on a social kind of perspective. The moment the ceasefire was decl and schools were back, it feels almost like this bizarre back to normal and we all kind of pretend that everything's fine and it is fine, right? As I said, minus the north, which is totally not fine. But the moments flights resume and you said, you know, mentioned some of the foreign airlines that took the leap and resumed. You see the business activity, you see local tourism again minus the north. Even investor movement starts to normalize but it's so fragile and I think you also feel that in the air. So it's a mix. That's why I say it becomes eerie, bizarre feeling of everything's normal but everything is also not Normal and one escalation and one headline and that can reverse immediately.
- [12:22]
B
Yeah. And again, these two weeks, right. June, Holocaust Memorial Day, Independence Day, it adds another layer to that. All right, I think we're ready for our deep dive.
- [12:36]
A
All right. So Yonatan, we usually think of a strong currency in very positive terms, and it certainly is, but it's also a very double edged sword. And for Israel and most countries that rely on exports and foreign investment, it certainly is. The Shekel, as we've been talking throughout this whole episode, up until now, touched its highest exchange rate compared to the US$3.03. There are good, bad, and there are also very ugly sides to a strong shekel. And we're going to help our listeners make sense of them all. To put another way, maybe the question that we should be asking is, is the strong Shekel a success story or is it actually more of a policy dilemma?
- [13:16]
B
Or is it both?
- [13:17]
A
Or is it both? Yes, you can always have ways. But let's start with the good. For consumers, this is almost, I would say, like a silent tax cut. Right?
- [13:26]
B
Right. So first, I think you're right. It is a net positive. I mean, let's be very clear. Any country wants to see its currency getting stronger because at the end of the day, the tax dynamic and the available income impact is the most dominant net positive. And that trickles down and that creates, you know, more tax payments and so on. The bank of Israel in its April 2026 report actually estimates that because of the strength of the Shekel, that trend continue. The inflation in Israel is going to end with 2.2, far less than the expected 2.8 by the government or previous reports of the central bank. So the deflationary effect is clear. We're importing a lot. We're a small country, landlocked. Right. This is not the European Union, this is not the US and when you import, it's all dollar denominated. That is oil, that is sugar, that is cereal and so forth. That is cars, that is transportation. So yes, the overall trend is that this strengthening of the Shekel allows for lower inflation, which is very good news in terms of standard of living, in terms of cost of living and so on.
- [14:27]
A
And what about foreign venture capital? A lot of the tech ecosystem, most of it really relies on investors from overseas investing in Israel.
- [14:36]
B
I think from a global perspective, that's actually a challenging one because those investments, we'll talk about it in the bad, are now worth less in Israel. Right. The interesting piece is that the Israeli market for savings one of the biggest in the world because of a reform passed by none other than Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003, the Bahar reform, which means we all have to save for our 401ks, right? We all have to have a pension fund. Now it's 2.9 trillion shekels in just that piece of the national savings in Israel. That is a big number. It is now bigger in dollars, right? So the net positive here is that the shekels that we earn in Israel can buy more assets abroad. If you're an Israeli entrepreneur who is focused abroad, you're a real estate entrepreneur who's buying assets abroad, who buys labor abroad, and you're earning in shekels, you're raising money in the Israeli stock exchange in shekels, you're raising from Israeli pension holders your debt, you're in a better position to explore opportunities worldwide. And I think we're seeing that, right? We're seeing Israeli entrepreneurs in hospitality, in hotels in Europe and elsewhere, we're seeing real estate entrepreneurs. And so our shekel is ever stronger. It means we can buy better assets in better terms in Europe or in the US and so I think that that's another sort of net positive for
- [15:57]
A
the industry and those assets. If I translate that for tech companies, it also means cloud resources, cost, structures, et cetera, right?
- [16:06]
B
That's the third big piece, right? When we buy cloud storage, when we buy Google Computation, when we buy our super user account in anthropic, it's dollar denominated. So if we want to use all our software, all our operational costs on the digital side, they're all dollar denominated. So if you've converted to shekel early in the year, you're actually enjoying quite a bit. So I think those three are the big good, big positives. It is all at the end of the day, net positive. 1 is the deflationary piece, which in theory has us keep more money in our pockets. The second piece is that we can have better travel abroad, better kind of investment abroad if we want to be global. And the third is the inputs that we buy for our business, mainly in software, are all dollar denominated. So these are becoming cheaper.
- [16:53]
A
All right, let's remove our rose tinted glasses because I've had enough of everything's great. Let's talk a little bit about the bad. Even though, yes, you'll put a disclaimer, everything is net, net, it's good. But Israel is fundamentally an export economy. So at what point do you think, will a strong shekel start actually hurting Growth.
- [17:12]
B
So, you know, the industrialist association will tell you it already is. Right. Because for them, the export cost is becoming more significant. Israel, just to kind of give of a sense, sense, almost 40% of our GDP is export of services and goods. Right. Excluding diamonds. Israel sort of has them come in in certain form and then has an added value and it leaves. So it doesn't sort of count on the national accounting of Israel. So let's say almost 40% that is dependent on a better stabilized Shekel. Right. If you will. Because when the dollar is weak, shekel is strong. You're buying from Israelis. Now the Israeli good has become more expensive. Right, Right. You'll buy the same thing from India, you'll buy it from Poland, you'll buy it from Germany. Right. Now, I think it's important to understand because usually what we would have in the inverse is the Israeli Central bank has about $240 billion in net cash reserves, in dollars. Right. And so they could do something. But right now the dollar savings are worth less shekels if they need to convert. And if they need to do anything like that, I should say, by the way, I neglected that in the good. It's easier for us to pay our national debt, which is also a big, big win.
- [18:21]
A
And you know what else costs more? Not only the goods, also the Israeli employee.
- [18:26]
B
Yeah, we raise money in dollars. Right. So you raise $50 million. You're assuming a certain average salary, which is high, but still at a discount compared to London or compared to what you need to pay elite. Elite. Elite engineers in Silicon Valley. We're getting at parity because if the shekel is at 3, then let's say that you in the US would earn $400,000 as an elite engineer. That would be about 1.2 million shekels. Right now. That's about 100,000 shekel a month gross. Israeli engineers are something, you know, at the elite, they're making 100,000 shekels, or 85 or 80amonth. Now, that is a challenge twice. One is because when you raised the capital, you thought it would be 330 or 340 or had some kind of an assumption on your Excel SHE sheet. And now you have 20% less money to work with because most expenses in Israel are R and D and they're in Shekel. And the competitiveness of the Israeli employee is now in danger.
- [19:25]
A
Absolutely. And that together, compounded with the AI revolution and all the classic SaaS that we're seeing kind of being compressed by it is not a pretty picture at all for jobs in Israel, actually. Very worrying. On that note.
- [19:38]
B
Yeah. And you made the point when we discussed wix. This is another pain on there. Converting dollar revenue to shekels to pay for thousands of employees. That's another pain from the perspective of a lot of those. The Mondays, the Lemonades, even Checkpoint. These are big companies with many hundreds or thousands of employees.
- [19:55]
A
All right, it got bad, but now we're going to go to kind of really ugly. And that's because it comes to real kind of human impact. The part that hasn't been discussed in all the articles that you see about a very strong shekel and so forth in the export economy is really kind of what it does to the people of Israel. On the one hand, the people who would like to make aliyah to Israel. And also, what does it mean about the brain drain? So let's start with aliyah.
- [20:21]
B
So, you know, for aliya, it's super painful. It's really ugly. Right. Rent is high in Tel Aviv in shekels, but in dollars, you would say, okay, dollar terms, you know, it's not like what I would pay in New York or in any other competitive big city. It is becoming very competitive because construction is not keeping up with the pace of growth and demand in Israel. We're a demographically grow. And when the shekel becomes so strong, just let's put the number out there, in the last three years, the dollar lost 25% of its value compared to the shekel. So if you wanted to come Here, you know, three years ago, it was 25% cheaper for you to come here, to rent an apartment, to buy an apartment, to get along, to use a cushion that you've saved in the US to sort of adapt towards an Israeli life, this is becoming a bit more challenging. And if the shekel does indeed crosses below three and we have sort of a mind shift and we're in the twos, what's the true equilibrium of the shekel? And then how does the bank of Israel do anything about it? Because it can't sell, because it now also lost 25% on the reserve value. And by the way, if the economy does better and if you use the dollars that you have to repay debt in a clever way, fantastic. You get the debt to GDP that's lower, you're fueling the shekel even further because the macroeconomic dynamics are becoming significantly improved. So this is quite an issue for people making aliyah. Israel is becoming more expensive than most of the cities. We'd want to see people making aliyah
- [21:45]
A
from and when you do, beyond just the dollar amounts or shekel amounts, even just the apples to apples of what you get, and this is what you hear from people making aliyah, the size of the house, I mean, it's not going to be apples to apples no matter what. So a more expensive alternative is not helpful either.
- [22:03]
B
Yeah, I think there is a bias here because the people who make aliyah in their 20s, 30s, can't appreciate what they get for the tax here. Right. Because usually they would come the insurance that you get, medical insurance, all those things that don't cost you money in Israel. You're like, who cares, right? You're like, I don't need this. Right. I'm 25, I'm 22. Like the subsidy level of healthcare and all of those things, you know, is also something that people when they're young and when they come in their 20s and 30s, they don't really consider that. Whereas private kindergarten 0 to 3, which is not covered by, you know, state education, are staggeringly expensive in the greater Tel Aviv area. And so, yeah, this is going to become a challenge. And you know, if we want to see a million olim here over the next decade, this was Michael Eisenberg's sort of prediction and focus area as part of the trillion dollar economy vision when we had him on the show.
- [22:55]
A
Right.
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B
A strong shekel is not necessarily good for that piece of the equation.
- [22:59]
A
That's where the policymakers kind of need to get into action. All right, what does this do for the brain drain which is keeping me up at night?
- [23:07]
B
Exactly. So to me, the biggest risk for Israel post election in terms of the sort of national mindset and so on, is brain drain. Right. We are in a hyper competitive economy globally. We are in a very delicate geopolitical situation. We are in a position where if you are a digital talent, you can live wherever. Right. You can make those choices. And by the way, they don't need to leave Israel. They can go for three to five years, but if the numbers are big enough, because this is such a small community again for our listeners, a 400,000 people community, 10% of the workforce is sort of the core of the tech industry. And a strong shekel is like rocket fuel for immigration. Most of these people at the top that fear the brain drain, they already own an apartment, some of them have already paid their mortgage. And so just think about what happens when you earn 12,15,000 shekel rent on a Tel Aviv apartment. And now that is $4,000 every month just from the rent that you get. In Israel and you go to Portugal or Greece, nice places that are less functioning economically than Israel, less competitive, then your lifestyle suddenly gains 20 or 30% and you're still earning your salary at Nvidia or wherever. Yeah, to me, honestly, and I think this is not top of mind, a strong shekel is rocket fuel for brain drain from Israel.
- [24:29]
A
That is the ugly.
- [24:30]
B
That is the ugly. The last two are ugly. I agree.
- [24:33]
A
And just kind of a note on Aliyah, similarly to aliyah is tourism. It's a pretty significant industry in Israel and depending on what has been going on geopolitically, different parts of Israel have been impacted. But if you're working in this industry overall, the past few years have been really rough.
- [24:54]
B
Yeah. And think about it. Labor laws in Israel are very aggressive. You don't have foreign workers as much as you would like to have that are critical for this industry. That has to do again with failures in the Ministry of Interior. The geopolitics of it are challenging in and of themselves. But now add to that a strong shekel and the need for very significant reform in order to allow sort of a base structure of cost, and you find that it's really a tough one. The government has been actually very helpful since the beginning of the war, actually, I would say since COVID in leveraging the growth in GDP to kind of providing some kind of relief. But you can't keep tourism on a life support. Right. It doesn't work. The system needs to live. And so I agree. I think you're making a great point. This is not going to be solved so easily as the shekel grows stronger. And I think at the end of the day, you gotta draw tourists in for an incredible experience that Israel has to offer. But with a strong shekel and with a very poor infrastructure from the policy side, this is very hard to win.
- [25:55]
A
Okay, so just to conclude the good, bad and the ugly, the good, we kind of agree that this is net,
- [26:00]
B
net good, net net positive, for sure.
- [26:02]
A
We would not want it the other way, which is a very weak shekel, because that would bring kind of a whole new slew of problems that we haven't discussed. But you'd agree that policymakers need to kind of get working at the significance and the consequence of what a strong shekel does internally in Israel.
- [26:22]
B
Yeah, and look, I think we just outlined, you know, nine different dimensions of this. Right? There are clearly more. The chief economist in the Ministry of Finance, Shmuel Abramson, one of the smartest people in Israel in the public sector Israel is, I'M sure busy with that. But then you need a functioning political system, ideally not in an election year, to be able to deal with these challenges and with these opportunities. And so I think, again, overall, massive success of the Israeli economy. Overall, great vote of trust from international investors in the Israeli economy. At the end of the day, the interest must go lower so that the Shekel is less attractive. There are tools, but the central bank needs to see a functioning political system in order to play that tango. And we'll need to see how that works through overall. For now, I'll take the more money in the pocket. And again, if the structural reforms do occur in the next government beginning of 2027, you're going to see the trickle down effect of a stronger Shekel in our pockets, far greater velocity than we see it right now.
- [27:26]
A
All right, let's go to our words of the week week.
- [27:33]
B
So, you know, I think, you know, President Trump spoke a lot this week. One of the things I picked up on is that he and Prime Minister Netanyahu have both adopted a narrative which I tend to like, which is US big sister, Israel, smaller sister type dynamic. And I think that in a great, to a great extent, the big sister is teaching the small sister how superpowers behave and how sort of, what's the timeframe, time horizon. You need to look into geopolitical moves. The ceasefire was received in very, I would say with fear in Israel last week. But the Americans have kind of communicated, look, that's how we do it. You know, you fight for 40 days, you fight hard, then you stop and you see if you have a diplomatic breakthrough. Right. And so here's what he had to say. And I like that he said, look at the Israeli U.S. relationship, look at the incredible partnership we have on this. As Bibi Netanyahu said, we're the big brother and they're the small brother. In other speeches, he called it big and small sister. It's been a very effective team. I like to hear that. And specifically, there are also growing fears in Israel that parts in the American society are breaking away from this partnership. This partnership is critical. It is essential part of Israel's ability to reach its goals, to deliver on prosperity to everybody living here and also to the region. And so it's great to hear President Trump say that, but I can't help feel the echo of, you know, what happens two or three years from now. Right. So we have to work with President Trump as if there's no tomorrow. But we definitely need to prepare for tomorrow without President Trump and that would be a potentially a bit of a more challenging, strained relationship between Israel and
- [29:15]
A
the U.S. i saw that the words of the week that you chose and instead of trying to discuss it with you, I found someone who does it much more eloquently, someone who I admire very, very much, and that is John Poland, Hirsch Goldberg Poland's father. He and Rachel are the most eloquent people who I very much admire and unfortunately under these circumstances. But he tweeted this week exactly around this topic. He tweeted both in Hebrew and in English. As an Israeli American with dual citizenship who believes in the tremendous potential of both countries to do good in the world, I am troubled by the prevalence of combined Israeli US Flags that I now see throughout Israel. Israel as an Israeli, it makes me feel like a colony of the United States rather than an independent country. As an American, I worry about how flags affect most Americans. Exactly what you just said, Yonatan. Who do not see the close integration of the United States with a small Middle Eastern country as healthy for the United States. We know how soft spoken he can be. And for me this speaks volumes and I do agree with him with John Colin.
- [30:17]
B
Yeah, look, this is a challenge that's upon us, but there are two ways to look at it. One is to kind of echo President Trump. Echo also Prime Minister Netanyahu. And I think there is a more than a grain of truth in how they describe it because both armies are fighting, you know, wingto wing, there is genuine alignment of interest and so on. For me, the question is the next episode. I will invoke one thing before we finish. I wrote a piece in Yediochonot a few weeks ago challenging the notion that Israel has a lot to do with what's going on in the U.S. these are, some of them are bigger trends than Israel. Israel, they have to do with American patriotism, the use of force. I went to read the investigative report in 1969 that ABBA, even probably Israel's most dominant and successful diplomat, has asked for to study the scandal of Hasbara of 1969. And I'm translating this loosely ordered an investigative committee for the failures of Hasbara. Hasbara in Hebrew. Hebrew is sort of public diplomacy, what we would call today. He found that to be very, very peculiar. How Israel went from 1947-67 being the world's darling and then within two years of the victory of the Six Day War, having challenges in its public diplomacy. It's like you're reading exactly what's going on right now. Right. Soviet propaganda, Soviets were really active with pro Palestinian PLO propaganda sown in the radical left of Europe and in the campuses in the us The US with questions much like John Paulina, why are we involved in the Middle East? Why are we suffering the dynamics of the Middle East? Why should we? Because it was laid with Vietnam. Right. So the the notion that ABBA even ends with and so I don't want to say there's nothing new here, but I would wish for our government to treat this challenge as the 1969 government did. They did such a great like to go to the archives and to read these 50 pages, I'm like, what? Wow. They took it so seriously. They saw the nuance and for some of those dynamics in the US and Europe, they said, look, we can't impact that. Some of it's anti Semitism, some of it has to do with how people hate their own countries and their governments. But for the stuff that we can do, at least we have a plan. And so that's my positive take on how to go forward. And I'm actually pretty certain that the next government, even if Netanyahu is the head, definitely if Naftali Bennett, who just tweeted about this last week about how he sees this and so on, will take this very seriously. Yeah, I think that's it for today's so thank you to our listeners for tuning into ARC Media's what's yous Number. We hope you found it interesting. We see the growth in listeners so apparently you do. If you did, be sure to like subscribe rate, review. You know the drill. If you want to make suggestions or share your feedback, catch us on social media, on Instagram, or just reach out to us at what's your number? @arc media.org.
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A
What's yous Number Is an ARC Media podcast. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin. Aretti Production manager is Brittany Cohen. ARC's community manager is Ava Weiner. What's yous Numbers? Interim executive producer is Beth Perlman. Sound and video editing is by Liquid Audio. Our theme music is by Midnight Generation. I'm Yael Listener Levi.
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I'm Yonatan Adiri and I hope next week we meet when there's a good conversation between Israeli diplomats and Lebanese diplomats. I'm really, really excited about about this.
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A
Let's Make It Happen.
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B
This podcast offers general business and economic information and is not a comprehensive summary for investment decisions. It does not recommend or solicit any investment strategy or security.