Three Dilemmas Facing Israel’s Next Prime Minister - with Tal Becker

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2:56 While everyone in Israel and many in the diaspora are focused on how to break the political deadlock following last week's election, it is important to remember that reality also gets a vote. Israel's next prime minister, whoever that may be, will inherit a country that has been transformed by three years of war.

3:16 Israel has demonstrated extraordinary military and intelligence capabilities, and despite those successes, there were of course also some costs, and the next prime minister will face three enormous dilemmas. The first is Israel's relationship with the West. How much should Israel be willing to change its policies to regain international legitimacy?

3:38 And how much of the hostility toward Israel is actually within its power to change in the first place? The second is Israel's relationship with the Middle East. After October seventh, Israel moved from deterring threats to actively eliminating them. But can a country build a stable regional order if its neighbors see it primarily as a military threat?

3:59 And the third, perhaps the most difficult, is Israel's relationship with itself. Whoever winds up able to form a government, the reality is roughly half the country will fear that the other half is about to turn Israel into a place they may not want to be a part of. These dilemmas may seem unrelated, but perhaps they all point to the same fundamental question. Can Israel secure its future by relying primarily on its own strength?

4:29 Or does lasting security require something else, the ability to understand and account for fears, interests, and aspirations of others? To explore these questions, we're joined by one of Israel's most thoughtful diplomats and strategic thinkers, ARC Media contributor Tal Becker, who is also senior fellow at Shalom Hartman Institute and counsel at Honigman LLP.

4:53 My conversation with Tal right after this short message. [Instrumental music playing] In the United States, if there's an emergency, you're dealing with several different systems. One organization runs the ambulances, another handles disaster relief, a third manages the blood supply. In Israel, it's one organization, Magen David Adom. MDA is Israel's national emergency services system.

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5:39 In a country that argues about almost everything, that diversity is sacred. You can support their important work at afmda.org/callmeback or follow the link in the episode description. [Instrumental music playing] Hi, I'm Daniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. And I'm Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

6:08 What's more important, to be feared by your enemies or morally true to yourself? Should Israel strive to be a nation among nations, or should it accept the fact that it is now a fortress apart? What do Israelis and diaspora Jews owe each other? If you're Jewish- Or a friend, an ally- These questions have been gnawing at you these past few years For some of you, like for us, these questions have been keeping you up at night, and for some, they've been simmering in the background, waiting for answers.

6:37 But dilemmas don't always have clear answers. What they do deserve are honest and respectful debates. And as it happens, Yossi and I love to challenge each other to get to the bottom of things. We look at current events through a lens that speaks to us most deeply, a Jewish lens. So if today's Jewish dilemmas are on your mind, tune in to our conversation on For Heaven's Sake, a partnership between Arc Media and the Shalom Hartman Institute.

7:06 You can find For Heaven's Sake on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you there. Tao, welcome back to Call Me Back. Thanks, Dan. Good to be with you in a complicated moment. In a complicated moment. Before we get into everything I just laid out in the introduction, just high level, how would you describe the atmosphere in Israel right now, given the political uncertainty about who's likely or unlikely to form a government, whether anyone can form a government, and the possibility looming that Israel may have to go to new elections?

7:40 Yeah, I would say aside from those who are trying to tell a story about how they won, everyone else is kind of confused and, uh, unsure what direction we're going. And in a way, I think we kind of got the results maybe not that we deserved, but that reflect Israeli society as it is, which is really quite divided, pulling in different directions, and not sure how to make the big decisions maybe that we need to make.

8:07 So I think there is a little bit of relief that we're past this moment. There was a lot of tension around the elections itself, but the fact that there's no resolution has kind of put in like, ugh, we're still got all our problems. Like, [chuckles] like that we're not yet at a place where we see a path forward, I think. Just two observations about the vote itself.

8:27 The fact that so many people showed up to vote is, for me, a kind of not just an expression of a real interest in the outcome of the elections, but also an expression of faith in the institution, which I think is pretty rare in democracies. And in that sense, I feel like the elections were an expression of a blessing that we all feel stakeholders, we're all owners, we all want our voice to be heard, which I, I take as a blessing.

8:53 And there was this miracle and celebration around the actual, I could even say beauty of the elections themselves and the fact that they, for all the predictions, they basically went relatively smoothly. We have some issues, of course, that have been in the news that you talked about with Nadav as well.

9:08 But I think broadly, the Arab turnout and the Jewish turnout are an expression of a society that's maybe surprisingly healthier than we thought, at least in some respects, even if really divided. Now, I want to go through these three dilemmas with you, Tao, one by one. I want to, I want to break them apart.

9:24 So let's start with the tension that Israel has with itself, the sense that half the country feels like the other half is unrecognizable to them in terms of the country that they want to be a part of, or so they say. And the next government, whoever it is, is going to have to just deal with that reality. Yeah. I think first of all, certainly those in American audiences, this isn't unrecognizable.

9:47 That's quite a familiar feeling, that we're kind of in a moment of such polarization and kind of zero-sum dynamics that whoever is the prime minister, and in practice, we're talking at the moment about either new elections or a unity government potentially, or a, a minority government, like those are the three big scenarios now.

10:07 But aside from the question of who will have power is the question of how they will actually govern such a divided society. When you have a reality where I think whoever is prime minister, a very significant amount of the public feels like the vision that person advances is either a danger to them or not the Israel that they imagine that they associate with.

10:32 And I think what has characterized Israeli politics for a long time is this kind of pendulum swing of zero-sum politics, where if you have-- even if you have a razor-thin majority, you use that majority to kind of push your agenda as far as you possibly can against the wishes of a very sizable minority that is really opposed to it.

10:54 And the thing about zero-sum politics, when you use your narrow majority in that way, is that even your victory kind of sows the seeds of your subsequent defeat because your attempt to kind of be triumphalist and try to drive that agenda all the way is the thing that enables the other side to kind of retaliate.

11:16 And we have in Israeli society, I think this fundamental question that how many Israelis will feel that the government that is deciding things is actually going to realize their nightmares. And in the end, it makes it very hard to have effective policy over time. If you look at the effect of some of these policies, you could argue that the retaliation was greater than the actual policy in the first place, or at least in the longer term, there's been a kind of we haven't resolved anything.

11:46 We've just kept these contradictions alive. And I think the real question for the next prime minister and the next government, if they just want even just the basic breathing room to be able to make decisions without producing this backlash, can we heal from this zero-sum pendulum swing, is the question, is there an alternative to that kind of zero-sum politics?

12:08 And in my mind, it kind of begins with is it possible to imagine a government and a leader in Israel that would say, "Before I advance the dreams of my side, I recognize that I need to reassure my opponents that I'm not going to realize their nightmares"? Can we as a people transcend this kind of self -sabotage mechanism that is embedded in these divisions and offer an alternative to that fragmentation and polarization that has basically kept us trapped?

12:39 And I think we can. But ultimately, Tal, it boils down to trust to some degree. Israel's politics were always volatile historically, but the level of distrust was not like what we're seeing today. So at a practical level, what can a new prime minister or the current prime minister, if he continues, what can they actually do to rebuild trust? Yeah. I'll say something on the practical.

13:02 I do want to say that I think we're living at a time of extreme uncertainty and volatility. And so the hunger for leaders who speak with real certainty and offer you a solution and are, are very determined is I think pretty great. And the feeling that if Israel goes this way, I will lose the Israel of my dreams, it feels very strong. So I, I just want to note that.

13:24 But to get into the practicalities, and I think this has whether you do the zero sum political thing or whether you offer an alternative to it has real implications on the Haredi draft and on judicial reform and on those kind of issues. But maybe I'll first just give a metaphor to explain how I think about it, which is a metaphor I use to kind of think about the challenge of governing in Israeli society.

13:45 Let's say I have a rule in my house that you're not allowed to have dessert until you've eaten dinner. And, uh, I pick up my daughter Leora from school, and I say to her, "Leora, let's go home." And she says, "I would like some ice cream." I say to her, "Listen, Leora, you know the rule. No ice cream until we have dinner." And Leora bursts out crying because she wants ice cream.

14:05 What are my options as a parent at the moment when the vision that I have of dessert after dinner is the opposite of her vision? So she's crying. I could say, "Leora, your tears are meaningless to me. You have no legal right to ice cream. You haven't identified that right. And as a result of that, I'm just ignoring your tears." A second option could be, "Oh, my sweetheart, you're crying.

14:27 Let me get you that ice cream." And a third option is, "Leora, let me give you a piece of chocolate, but don't tell your mother." And why would I choose that third option? The, the option of not giving everything that she wants, but recognizing that I need to do something. I think I would choose it because Leora's pain has a claim on me regardless of whether she has a right.

14:48 The very fact that we are in relationship, that we share a house together, her tears matter to me even if I think she's wrong. Now, why do I say this story? Because when you think about Israeli society and the tribes of Israeli society, all of them pulling in different directions, I sometimes feel like the public square in Israel is like the debris that's left behind after every Israeli tribe has tried to pull the entire country in its direction in the hope that the entire country will reflect who they are.

15:18 And when we do that, we just continue this constant tug of war. And another way to think about this is to say the pain of other tribes in our society is something that obligates us. It doesn't mean we have to capitulate in front of it, but it does matter. So let's put it in practice. Let's take the judicial reform issue.

15:37 If we continue this zero sum dynamic, well, then if it's the Netanyahu coalition, they get back on the horse and try to push that agenda the whole way through against the wishes of a huge numbers of Israelis. And if it's the change coalition, they try to undo all the legislation that was done and maybe even try to entrench to make it more difficult to do it in the future.

15:56 But then there's a space in the middle which basically says, "Look, there are different needs within our society. We need to see the pain of one side without capitulating completely to it." So perhaps there'll be a judicial reform that doesn't go the whole way. There will be reform of the judiciary, but also reform of the executive and so on.

16:13 And in the dysfunctional way that Israeli society kind of argues about these issues, there is a path to a judicial reform that doesn't satisfy anyone, but nevertheless sees everybody's pain. And if we want Israel to be a society where all the tribes belong, the chances are that everyone is going to have to feel a little bit like they don't belong.

16:35 Because if you belong too much, the chances are you're, you're kind of making someone else feel like they are an outsider. So that's one example. On the Haredi draft, it's a similar kind of dynamic. Either you could have a pendulum swing to like advancing more exemption for the Haredim, for the ultra-Orthodox, or you have a very aggressive kind of top-down legislation that tries to draft everybody and arrest those who evade the draft.

16:59 Or there's a space in the middle that says, "Well, let's create economic incentives for the draft, disincentives for not drafting. Let's show that we see the pain of different communities, both the serving community but also the Haredi community." And I think there's a way to govern here which is not familiar, but it's possible, which tries to hold everybody together in this way of not trying to win by too much.

17:25 When you don't win too much, you win a little bit less. That way you can kind of hold society together. I think there are other ways to do it as well. For example, surprising appointments. Imagine if one side is in power, people appointed to key positions come from the other side of the political realm.

17:44 Or the state commission of inquiry, we establish it, but its composition is not what Netanyahu supporters were afraid of. These are ways in which you try to, to see the other and hold them together within a society rather than trying to win. So if a commission of inquiry is formed but it's not populated, the commission at the, you know, at the principal and staff level, it's not populated by people that the Netanyahu supporters feared, how does that not look in the eyes of the critics of Netanyahu and the critics of the current government as capitulation?

18:16 That'll be the narrative in the press, in Haaretz. You know, that you've been intimidated, you've been bullied, you've been pressured, you've rolled over. And on social media, it'll be played like, "Oh my gosh, we got rolled." But Dan, this is not about giving them ice cream. This is about giving a, them a piece of chocolate and not telling their mother, right?

18:35 This is the question whether, for example, you reach out to the other side and ask, "Can we agree on the mechanism by which this commission will be formed?" It's not about appointing people who are loyalists for either side. It's people who have reputation and can be independent. And Dan, you're, you're touching on something else, which is, I think to everything I said, the answer can be this is naive because politics is just this, you know, dog -eat-dog world of zero sum.

18:59 But that is getting us in trouble. And at the end of the day, I'm not just making a case for an Israeli society that is more unified, has more solidarity because it's nicer. We cannot deal with our challenges as a society. We cannot make the decisions we need to make unless we see each other across these tribes. You know, I describe this like this. We have a sovereign state.

19:22 What we still miss as a people is a sovereign state of mind, and a sovereign state of mind requires us not just to think that I win if my tribe wins. I win if all tribes feel like they are invested in this project, and I have seen their pain, and I haven't capitulated to it. But in the way that I advance my agenda, I'm trying to hold this society together because otherwise it's not just bad for the health of the society, it's actually pretty hard to ever advance your agenda.

19:50 You have a temporary win, and then there's the backlash. How does a prime minister make hard decisions without provoking a national crisis? So I hear you on these major kind of across the board stakeholder issues where like the Commission of Inquiry, for instance, where like literally every segment of society has a point of view on this, but then there's just the difficult decisions a prime minister has to make day in, day out.

20:13 Are you suggesting that every hard decision has to have this framework in mind? I'm gonna be honest about it. I don't know that we are at that stage. Like we-- It might be a process of cultivating a society through our education and through spiritual leaders and parents, where we try over time to cultivate a society that produces these kind of politicians, these kind of leaders, right?

20:35 Politicians don't come from outer space. They are reflections of the societies that produce them. And if we are a society that's so divided, the problem, first of all, isn't with the politicians. It's that we haven't yet cultivated a kind of sense of citizenship that requires you to see the other and have this kind of sovereign state of mind.

20:53 But if we can get there, I do think it matters the way a leader talks when they make difficult decisions. If they present it as zero sum, if they've shown not only that they listen to the other side and see the other side, but that the other side's position is integrated in what they do, so that you don't push the Haredi, uh, the ultra -Orthodox draft exactly in the way that you promised because you see another part of Israeli society.

21:17 It's basically that didn't vote for you, but your success depends on them continuing to be part of the game. And so in that sense, Dan, it's asking for leaders that see that our lack of ability to make difficult decisions and hold society together is one of our core challenges. So we need leaders that can transcend it in the way they make decisions, in the way they surprise us with their sympathy and appreciation for the people they disagree with, in the ability to say, "I don't think all the truth is on my side.

21:49 I have something to learn. There's something legitimate about the view I disagree with." That would not just be a very Jewish way of dealing with these challenges, because Judaism has never thought that one side exhausts the truth. It's also probably a more effective way of at least advancing an agenda.

22:05 It's trying to advance your dream, but not to the point where you trigger someone's nightmare. We'll be right back after this short message. [soft music] I want to tell you about the organization sponsoring this episode, Magen David Adom, Israel's national emergency services system, which runs Israel's entire national blood supply.

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24:00 You can sign up for Ark Plus at arkmedia.org or follow the link in our show notes. And we're back with Tal Becker. Okay, I want to move the conversation to the second question, which is, can Israel regain legitimacy in the eyes of the West? How much do you believe Israel's deteriorating standing is the result of its own actions and that people are, you know, there's a sufficient number of critics that are operating in good faith and are just frustrated with Israel's actions, with Israel's conduct, with Israel's policies?

24:36 And how much of it reflects deeper forces that Israel, at the end of the day, can't do much about? That they're locked in in their hostility to Israel, and there's no approach that will satisfy them. So let's do a taxonomy first of all, right? Let's try not to be pundits about this. Let's try to think about what the options are. All right.

24:56 So option one is that this hostility and kind of anti -Israel frenzy is driven by the toxicity of this Israeli government and the personality of Prime Minister Netanyahu. That's like theory one of the case. Theory two of the case is that it's Israel's policies and the language around those policies, and if it shifted those policies, we could significantly set back this kind of hostility that we're experiencing.

25:21 Option three is that this is, you know, hostility to Israel, to the very existence of Israel. It's anti -Semitism. It's basically immutable. It doesn't matter what we do. And I think option four is that actually this isn't even about Israel as much as it is about dynamics taking place in the West and Israel's kind of roadkill, a kind of collateral damage to these bigger trends, right?

25:44 Whether it's the trend of what we in Israel [chuckles] sometimes talk about, a kind of suicide mission that part of the West seems to be on, or whether it's the internal political dynamic where, you know, if Trump is supportive of Israel and you're opposed to Trump, therefore you're opposed to Israel.

25:58 But you would be opposed to Diet Coke because Trump drinks Diet Coke, right? It doesn't really-- It's not about Israel per se. So when we ask ourselves which of the four is this, it's kind of like the question, what is the best shawarma in Jerusalem? Do we have a method of measuring what the best shawarma in Jerusalem is?

26:15 I think it's Doron's on HaRechalim Einu, but that's my experience, right? We don't have a way of testing this theory. What we have, I think from an Israeli perspective I will say, there is quite a bit of concern that it is more category three and four than it is one and two. And it really feels like, from an Israeli observer looking at the trends in the West, that there's this, this is not as much about criticism of Israeli behavior as it is a need to either feed a domestic audience or a political need, or that anti -Israel has kind of become a form of your identity in some way or another.

26:54 When Jewish self -determination in the discourse is, uh, somehow racist, but Palestinian self -determination is liberation, right? When every Israeli use of force in the discourse seems to be criminal, but the use of force of our enemies is somehow something you need to understand and put in context, then the Israeli interpretation of that is that yes, it is immutable, right?

27:17 There's nothing we can do about it. And yet I would say in the face of that, that we better test that proposition. It is not smart of us to say, "Well, I'm giving up. I've decided that there's nothing we can do about it." We really need to see, not just willy -nilly. We first have to make sure we're doing the right thing, number one, in our own eyes.

27:38 Number two, we need to make sure we're not endangering ourselves. But yes, it matters whether we have friends or we don't, and we should try the proposition. Is it different if we limit the stupid things we sometimes do or say, like some of our ministers have done? That matters. I think we, we conflate Hakeem Jeffries and Abdul El -Sayed at our peril.

28:00 We need to try to separate those two. It matters if it's a tidal wave or a tsunami or a surge. So these are because we don't know, it's very worth testing. And one last point, Dan, I would add is that it seems to me that one of the differences that is emerging between what you might call the change coalition and the Netanyahu coalition is, first of all, whether the greatest challenge Israel faces is to its international standing or still to the physical threat that it faces.

28:29 And I think on the change coalition, there is this feeling that right now, three years after the war, the challenge we face to Israel's story, the assault on its story, is almost a greater challenge than the physical threats we face in the Middle East, which we have the military capacities to confront.

28:46 And I think on the Netanyahu coalition, there's more of a tendency to believe, no, those physical threats are still the predominant ones, and we better focus on them even if we pay a legitimacy cost because of trends in the West and so on. And the second distinction between those two is can we do something about it? Do we think we can do something about it?

29:05 And I think that question, and I've heard it discussed a bit on, on Call Me Back, Dan, with different speakers. It seems to me that most people answer that question, does what we do matter, is a function of your preexisting politics. And I have an allergy or a suspicion whenever anyone's analysis lines up with their preexisting politics.

29:24 Those people who think Israel has done terrible things or problematic things want to say that we have to change and that will improve it, and those who think the problem is in the West, then they say it doesn't matter what we do. And all I'm saying is it is in our interest to test the proposition and make sure that we are not turning potential friends away and not empowering enemies needlessly.

29:44 I will say though, Tal, over the past three years, it has felt, and this has always been the case, but obviously it's been, uh, deteriorated, you know, at a fast clip over the last three years, this notion of Israel fighting two wars simultaneously. Obviously, there's the physical battlefield, but the other one is in the minds of billions, literally billions of people around the world.

30:02 And as I said at the, at the, in the introduction, Israel has achieved remarkable military successes but has suffered a devastating defeat in the battle of how the world understands Israel, how the world understands Israel. Not the region necessarily, but how the world understands Israel and its actions. So where does that fit in in terms of-- And, and, uh, it-- 'cause it's more than just Israel should stop doing stupid things. Of course.

30:24 A minister that says something incendiary, okay, you can turn that off, but I have a hard time believing. I'll-- Let me, let me put this in very practical terms, okay? If Gadi Eisenkot manages to form a government, a minority government, I mean, we don't-- this conversation is not ranked punditry, so I'm not, we don't need to get into those permutations.

30:41 Imagine Gadi Eisenkot is the next prime minister, and Gadi Eisenkot flies to Washington or his, you know, representatives go to Washington, they go meet with a future speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, let's say, and says, "Listen-" The policy of Israel is not gonna change dramatically in certain areas, but I do think it's gonna change with my leadership, Eisenkot would say, in certain areas, and I hope that in those certain areas it'll bring the temperature down, and we can get into what those areas are.

31:08 But just imagine that he-- whatever, dealing with the settler violence, dealing with some of the incendiary things that ministers in the current government says, whatever it may be, that he's, "I'm gonna address these things and I want to bring the temperature down." And then there's a flare -up in Southern Lebanon, or there's a new threat in the part of Gaza that Israel does not have a security presence in, or there's an emerging threat in the West Bank, where many believe the next October 7th could come out, as you and I have discussed, could come, you know, originate or, or be launched from the West Bank.

31:40 And a Prime Minister Eisenkot who's trying to bring the temperature down has to authorize some kind of spectacular military operation, military action. And that military action, as many military actions, operations do, has some collateral damage, and there are civilians tragically killed, or there's civilian infrastructure that is hit.

32:01 And then the social media goes crazy, and Israel's hysterical critics in the media go crazy citing, "Aha, nothing's changed. Nothing's changed." Which by the way, as you and I have discussed, many critics over in the United States, I see this firsthand, were already preparing for a post Netanyahu Israel and laying the groundwork for saying, "Well, what's really gonna change when, when Netanyahu's gone?"

32:25 It's an Israel problem. The, the-- Israel doesn't have a politician problem, Israel has an Israel problem, that the original sin is the founding of the state, and a state that takes, you know, engages in reckless actions and, and engages in war crimes, and aha, even Gadi Eisenkot. Tragically, a, a hospital in, in, in southern Lebanon was hit. How is that different from Netanyahu? So I'm just-- I want to get, like, practical here.

32:48 There's, there's bringing the temperature down, which I'm, I'm with you, but I'm skeptical. Dan, we have such a need to be able to speak definitively about what will make a difference or won't make a difference, where are we headed, what is our reality? And I just don't think it works that way. Things are better or worse. There are people who are willing to speak up or not. There are friends who have been distanced that you can bring closer, and there are people you can't change at all.

33:17 So yes, that scenario that you described is a possible scenario, but it will have mattered, in my view, at least for some audiences, that you have explained what you are doing, that you have engaged, that you have been willing to listen. There are a set of things that you do to try to bring your friends closer and delegitimize your enemies. You talk about your predicament, you talk about your dilemmas.

33:40 You show empathy for the situation that you feel you had no choice but to be engaged in. Does it matter for everyone? No, but it matters. We operate, I think I've said this before on Call Me Back, but it's worth saying again for me, Israel gives Jews the opportunity to operate in the space between the apocalypse and the Messiah.

33:58 Nobody thinks that we are going to bring salvation and have everybody loves Israel. But there are versions, despite what is being talked about on, at kiddushes, around synagogues, around the Jewish world, there are versions that are not catastrophic. Because everything is uncertain, because there are people with different views, because there are different social circles, because there's a million and one dynamics, you cannot abdicate your influence and agency.

34:25 There's trends happening in Latin America. There's trends happening in Europe. There's pushback in this direction. There are people, in my view, who actually want to be Israel's friends if we give them more ammunition to do so. Is it the bullet? It's not the bullet. But we abdicate our responsibility for the national security of Israel if that isn't part of our national security toolbox, and we just say, "You know what? It's not gonna matter."

34:48 How should Israel's next prime minister then prepare for a world in which winning the information war, in which winning it may matter just as much as winning the war on the ground? Like, 'cause, uh, by the way, Tal, you know this, you speak to a lot of audiences around the diaspora, as do I. This is something that just comes up over and over and over.

35:05 If you go visit the fold, I guarantee you right now, if you go to the fold right now, there's a conversation happening I can almost certainly predict about why is Israel g- so bad at navigating the, the information war? Why is Israel so bad at telling its story? This comes up over and over and over. How do you respond? So we may need to dedicate more time than I can give in one answer to this.

35:26 But first of all, to be a little bit annoying about it, I don't think the word is winning. The word is doing better in the information war and gradually doing more. These are-- It-- we're talking about billions of people and their views and social media algorithms, and the very complicated question of how people form and change their opinions.

35:44 So we have to be on that battlefield to the extent that we have control over it. There are forces we don't control. But let me just say very briefly, there's the challenge of the storyteller. What is the story we are telling that can resonate with the most audiences possible? How do we connect this, especially if the relevant audience is the liberal West?

36:04 It doesn't have to be, but if that's your relevant audience, you better put it in terms that someone with a liberal sensibility can understand and appreciate. And that involves kind of, on the one hand, showing that you share their values, but on the other hand, trying to acquaint them with the reality in which you're realizing that value's in a place called the Middle East, where those values have been rejected constantly, right?

36:24 And that means something. It's not that we don't share those values, even though there are liberal forces in Israeli society. It's that we're trying to do it in the Middle East, where we-- they're trying to kill us all. So it changes the reality in which you try to do it. So there's a whole set of challenges of storytelling.

36:39 One of the examples, um, I often talk about is that we want General Vahidi of the IRGC to think we're a Rottweiler with rabies, and we want Emmanuel Macron to think we're a French poodle. And it's very hard to differentiate our messages, but in prioritization, because we live in the Middle East, we're gonna prefer to be seen as a Rottweiler with rabies first because they're the ones who kill our children.

37:00 And so it's gonna be hard to tell that story effectively, we can do it more. And then there are a set of things that relate to the story listener. What is going on in the West that makes it harder for people to actually hear what we are saying? So the information war is a very complicated, multifaceted thing. I don't want to give a kind of glib elevator speech.

37:19 There's a set of things we need to do to be effective storytellers through our policies, through our language, by being the best of Israeli society forward, and there are sets of things which some of which we control, much of it we don't control, that affect the story listener. But what we don't do is abandon this battlefield because it is one of the core components of Israel's national security. Okay, I want to turn to the region.

37:45 Whether or not military superiority alone in the region can produce security in the region. Since October 7th, Israel has shifted its posture from, and you and I have discussed this, Israel has shifted its posture from deterring its enemies or at least trying to deter its enemies, to destroying their capabilities before they can threaten Israel.

38:03 That seems like an entirely rational response to October 7th. So what exactly is the dilemma? Yeah. So I would say as follows. I mean, and we'll just take a minute just to explain why you said it was rational, right? So the shift, even though it's not been formal, from what I call threat deterrence to threat removal, is this idea that we cannot, we need to have maximum freedom of action in order to prevent annihilationist forces from developing the capabilities to target us in the way that they want to target us.

38:33 We're no longer going to be in the business after October 7th of kind of buying quiet if under the cover of that quiet, these forces can gain the capacities that they demonstrated on October 7th, or Hezbollah can build its missile capacity, or Iran can build its nuclear capacity. Now, that makes a lot of sense, but there is a cost associated with that. There are two real costs, actually.

38:54 There's an internal cost, which is if you have got this kind of constantly vigilant, forward -leaning posture, you're kind of looking everywhere, where the-- you kind of whack -a -mole approach to where threats are emerging, you are demanding a lot of your society, a lot of your soldiers, a lot of the families of the soldiers, a lot of your economy.

39:12 It's a very draining thing to do day in, day out, month in, month out, and so on. And the second relates to how you are perceived by your partners or potential partners in the region. So I will say frankly that some of our partners in the region look at us and say, "It seems like your security doctrine is basically bombs and buffer zones. You don't see in us the potential for partnerships.

39:37 You don't see our need for stability and sovereignty. You don't see in us potential partners in actually confronting extremists." Now, we have a reason for not seeing that because of a lot of disappointments in the past. But if you think about Israel's strategic interests, it's a balance between, on the one hand, wanting to ensure that you have freedom of action to act against these threats, especially after October 7th, but it is also a desire to encourage the stability and prosperity of our partners, neighbors near and far, so that they can confront the extremists in their midst.

40:11 And if you look at the challenge in Lebanon or in Syria or in Gaza or even with the Gulf States, in every one of these scenarios, we're kind of balancing the need to be sure that we can defend ourselves with our desire to have partners in shaping a region that can confront and move away its extremists to the edges.

40:32 Now, let me put this in a slightly different way. We are at a moment where the regional order is being redefined. The Iran war and the October 7th and its aftermath has really changed the landscape of the Middle East, and there is a genuine discussion going on about how to reshape the regional order.

40:50 Now, if Israel is not at the table of that conversation, it will be on the menu. It will be the country that people think that partners in the region, potential partners in the region think they need to organize against rather than with. So Israel needs to do this, or the next government, I would say, has this dilemma of, on the one hand, protecting its freedom of action and the need to be in the threat removal business.

41:13 But on the other hand, signaling that we want to be partners of those in the region who care about the stability of everybody, who are willing to confront the extremists. We don't just neglect their interests in sovereignty and stability. We want to be partners with them. And being able to send that message, I think, is critical for the long term.

41:32 And the next Israeli government is really going to have to balance those two needs. That approach obviously depends on which country you're dealing with. For instance, Israel's approach to the UAE, which it's been a deep relationship and extraordinary security ties, you know, going back to 2020, obviously, with the Abraham Accords, but especially, uh, during the Iran war.

41:53 And then Israel's dynamic with Saudi Arabia, which has increasing tension with the UAE. So how does Israel-- I mean, this gets really complicated. So it's not uniform, and you're right. So let's take, you know, we can take Lebanon for an example, right? We, on the one hand, have to have the capacity to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding and rearming and posing a threat.

42:15 But on the other hand, we now have a Lebanese government that recognizes that Hezbollah is our shared challenge and that there actually is no conflict between Israel and Lebanon. The problem for the Israel-Lebanon relationship is Hezbollah. So how do we, without taking too many risks, empower them to try to degrade Hezbollah financially, to limit its political legitimacy?

42:35 And in each arena, there's a little bit of trust but not too much trust. There's benchmarks, there's tests. Same true with Gaza, same is true with the Gulf countries. Of course, with the UAE, we're in a, we're in a much healthier place. But at the end, Dan, what it comes to is as understandable and, in my view, necessary it has been to really turn the volume up on the use of force as a tool to deal with the threat we faced after October 7th.

43:01 Israel's national security toolbox can't just be about the use of force. It has to be about also partnerships and alliances. It has to be about also enhancing legitimacy, solidarity within the society, economic resilience, and so on. And so we have it in our interest to broadcast to the region that the stability of those committed to peace and confronting extremism matters to us, and we want to be part of that conversation.

43:28 We want to listen to their needs, and we expect them to listen to our needs. And to make sure that we are at the table at that conversation of shaping the regional order in a way that doesn't take ridiculous risks, but realize that we can't sacrifice our long-term interests in advance of our short term.

43:46 One more sentence, Dan. It is not out of the question in my mind that if we use the next two years of the Trump administration well, we could be in a situation where we have a security agreement with Syria, real progress with the Lebanese government in confronting and limiting Hezbollah, progress in Gaza in disarming Hamas but building a post-Hamas reality in those areas of Gaza not controlled by Hamas, and a partnership with Gulf States in trying to contain and push back any remnants of Iran's capacity to project power, and to begin to create a new Middle East order where Israel is an economic anchor of that order, it's a stability anchor on that order, and it's seen as indispensable.

44:29 And we will be able to do that not just by relying on our capacity to use force, which is seen by some as a destabilizing thing, but demonstrating that we care about and are invested in the region as a whole. So that calibration, and you're right, it's complicated, is going to be a critical challenge for the, whatever government emerges. So there's a common thread running through these dilemmas.

44:51 Israel has very good reasons to focus on its own security, obviously its own interests, its own fears. But in every one of these cases, there's, there is a price to ignoring how others experience Israel's power. And I'm more sensitive to this in the region than I am globally, but nonetheless. So again, practically, how should Israel's next prime minister address that tension? Yeah.

45:14 So first, let's just talk about this for a second to notice that thread. I think it's important to notice it. And that is in every one of them, the question is, how much do we take account of the needs and interests of the other? And, you know, Dan, for the last three years, I think most Israelis have felt that the only thing standing between them and the murder of their children is the IDF, and they feel that viscerally.

45:38 But there comes a point where not doing that becomes its own danger to your national security. So overcoming that is critical. And I think it begins by a prime minister and a government that says, regionally it means balancing our commitment to the freedom of action of the IDF with our desire to be partners in shaping a regional order and being sensitive to the needs of our partners to some extent as we insist that they be sensitive to our needs.

46:05 It doesn't have to be the tsunami. Everything is uncertain, so people want certain answers. But because everything is uncertain, everything is also possible. All right, Tal, we'll leave it there. Thank you for this as always, and, uh, I look forward to talking soon. Thank you, Dan. [upbeat music] One thing about Magen David Adom, the sponsor of this episode.

46:38 MDA has roughly 39,000 personnel. About 90% of them are volunteers, more than 30,000 Israelis who respond to emergency calls and are paid nothing for it. I keep thinking about what that means for a donor. These are people who are not asking anyone for money. They're asking to be trained, to be equipped, to be sent. So the staff is already taken care of.

47:01 What they need is somebody to fund that training, gear, and ambulance. That's a good trade. Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/callmeback. [upbeat music]