Inside Israel and Iran with Daniel Gordis

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
The argument is that there is one people in the
world in which history has proven over and over and
over again that without the ability to defend themselves on
their own soil, they are always the victims of history.

S2 (00:14):
Hi again, everybody. Welcome back to the Narrative Podcast, Mike Andrews,
Aaron Baer, David Mehan joining you. Normally we joke around
a little bit at the beginning. This episode is jam packed.
We have got to get right to it. You might
want to go ahead and set this to 1.5 speed,
but no higher than that. Aaron talks way too fast
and he's got way too much coffee in his system.
You'll never be able to understand him if you go

(00:35):
any higher than that. But so much news broke this
week that we got to hit a couple of major,
major stories. The first thing that we're tracking is this
news that in 2026, we could see another constitutional amendment
on the ballot. And this this would have widespread implications
that would overturn Ccv's work back in 2004 to pass

(00:56):
a constitutional amendment. That marriage was recognized as being between
one man and one woman. This would overturn that. And
then there's also what we've referred to as the soggy
piece of this, the sexual orientation and gender identity as
a protected class. And, David, that would have all kinds
of ramifications for Ccv's work and for bills that we've passed,
but just interpretation of the law in general.

S3 (01:18):
This is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation
that we've seen in a long time here in the
state of Ohio, and it's definitely on hands on deck
on this. And, um, you know, it's got it's got
some major backers on it. But what we need to
understand is this is going to be spun a million
different ways in the media. Right. And, um, it's going
to make it sound like it's not that bad. Right? Like,

(01:39):
this is just about we shouldn't be discriminating anybody, you know,
for employment or things like that. But I just want
to read just a little bit here. Um, provide that
equality of rights under the law shall not be denied
or abridged by the state of Ohio, its political subdivisions,
or account on account of race, color, creed, religion, sex. Right.
But here we go. Sexual orientation. Gender identity or expression,

(02:00):
regardless of sex assigned at birth or birth. Pregnancy status.
All right, here we go. Abortion. Their genetic information. Really? Um,
and then not just for employment, health care services. Right.
In the area of public spaces. Right. So think of
all the bills, all the great legislation that's been passed
that you helped pass over the years, Safe act that's gone. Right.

(02:21):
We're back to pediatric sex change procedures on on kids, uh,
save women's sports. Right. We're back to having guys and
girls locker rooms. Um, so this is huge, uh, all
of that bathroom bill, bathroom bill. Right. Uh, a year
and a half or so ago, all that goes by
the wayside. Um, if this passes.

S4 (02:41):
Yeah. I mean, it really is, uh, as aggressive as
it sounds, right? This this is one of the most
dangerous pieces of legislation. Uh, it puts religious institutions at
risk in terms of being able to say, hey, we're
going to have people who, not just believe, but practice
our faith here on these, these issues. Um, it's uh,

(03:04):
as David mentioned, um, bringing back the sex change procedures
on kids and not having any recourse. Again, this is
a constitutional amendment. So this is the highest law in
the state. This is what things refer to. And you
might be thinking, oh, didn't the Supreme Court just rule
on this? Well, yes and no. The Supreme Court just
ruled on in this case that we talked about on
the pod, uh, that states can ban these procedures, but

(03:27):
they didn't say these procedures were banned in the country. Right. Uh,
so there, you know, in California, these things are still
going on in Illinois. These things are still going on
because of the Safe act. They're banned here. Uh, this
brings them back and locks them into the state constitution. Uh,
so it is a, uh, a pretty devastating this is
the thing we have been, you know, honestly, since I
started at CTV ten years ago, we knew at some

(03:49):
point the left was going to make the play on, uh,
on this, uh, and this is the time now that
they're trying to bring it forward in 2016.

S2 (03:56):
And we've seen it over at the state House a
number of times, it's been called what the Fairness Act or.

S4 (04:00):
The Fairness Act typically shows up as legislation every year
gets introduced, never goes anywhere.

S3 (04:05):
And I don't want to beat a dead horse on
this guy, because I know we talked a lot about it,
but this whole sexual identity piece, um, you know, I
know a lot of times you guys will say, well,
there's somebody in my family that struggles with their identity and,
you know, they're good people, blah, blah, blah. I can
go into your church on one Sunday and say, I'm
a male, and then next Sunday come into your church
and say, I'm a female, and there's nothing you could

(04:25):
do to prevent me from using, you know, these, these
private spaces and public accommodations, um, for every predator. This
is a wish list, bill. Uh, for for every predator
out there that wants to prey on women and children.

S2 (04:38):
Yeah. And I think one of the biggest strengths that
we have right now is that the law is a guide. Right?
Like this helps churches, private institutions shape their policies. And
I know I've been in some conversations recently because of this.
Like how do we handle this? We didn't even see
this coming within our building. How do we handle this?
And being able to say, well, the state of Ohio's

(04:59):
law is that this doesn't happen. And so that's your cover.
You tell that person they need to use the bathroom
of their biological identity or biological sex. So it's important
we wanted to get it on your radar. This is
truly breaking news this week. And over the next, what,
probably 18 months or so before this ends up on
a ballot in fall 26.

S4 (05:20):
And what's important here? The big news out of this
week was the state ballot board broke this amendment up
into two pieces. Right. So that's um, yeah. And and
arguably and not arguably it really is two things. Right.
So there's a constitutional provision that requires a constitutional amendment
can only be on one issue. Right. Um, and, and

(05:43):
this one, you really have two things going on here.
You have, uh, repealing and replacing one part of the
state constitution. So the marriage amendment, repealing that out and
creating same sex marriage in Ohio. And then two, you
have the addition and an entirely other different place of
the Constitution. The addition of sexual orientation and gender identity
to protected class status. So in many ways, it was

(06:07):
the right thing for the ballot board to do to
to break this up into two issues. That also means
that they have to collect signatures on both ballot, on
both constitutional amendments. That's over 450,000 signatures. They have to
each on each. Right. So there's there's no guarantee they're
going to do that. Um, there are signs that this
is being funded by the big, uh, money groups, right.

(06:29):
There's some telltale signs we always look for, like, who
are the attorneys that they're working with? And they've they've
hired the big, expensive attorneys from out of state, uh,
to to guide this. That was a bad sign. There
were some other signs we're seeing. Maybe this isn't going
to get as much money. Um, and let me say,
I feel this is not the abortion amendment. Right. I
think for a lot of us who are deeply involved

(06:50):
in the abortion amendment were were pretty gun shy on
constitutional amendments right now. There's many reasons this is not
the abortion amendment. And if we take it seriously, I
think we should be able to beat this right. The
the left got hammered. I was surprised when I saw
them bring this forward. The left got hammered in this
last election on the boys and girls sports, on the

(07:10):
transgender procedures, on kids. These are political losers for them
right across the country. Yeah. Like I think it was
the the nrsC, the National Republican Senate Committee spent over
$230 million beating up the left, beating up Democrats for
supporting the Equality Act, which does these same things federally.

(07:32):
So this is this is not abortion. Um, we just
saw in the last election on the the what I
think is going to be the last ever issue one,
because we've officially changed the way we number these things
in the state.

S2 (07:45):
I do have to say, I was just talking with
Ryan and I was saying issue one, and I realized
there have been three issue.

S4 (07:49):
There have been three issue one since you've been here. Right?
Just since you've been here. Right. But the last issue one.
Issue one, see, uh, was, uh, redistricting amendment right. And
that had 40 million, $45 million behind it. The our
side had about 8 million, and we beat it. So
it is possible to beat these things. Um, the same

(08:13):
sex marriage piece of this. Do I think Obergefell is
going away anytime soon? No. Uh, but this is where
righteousness matters. Ohio's Constitution reflects righteousness right now, at least
in the marriage context. Uh, and so we don't want
to see that pass as well. And one day, as
Katie Foust would, would, would tell us, um, you know,

(08:36):
one day, uh, we hope to see our, uh, country
recognize reality again. Uh, both the reality that kids need
a mom and a dad, um, and that marriage is
between a man and a woman. Uh, so. But but really,
the same sex marriage side of this is them just
trying to drum up, you know, their base to turn
out to vote. Um, I don't I think people are

(08:57):
actually sick of the things that the left is pushing
on them. I think we have a good chance of
beating this, but we have to take this very seriously.

S2 (09:05):
Yeah. And again, that's why we're bringing it to your
attention now. So you get as much notice as possible
to be thinking through these things and talking through these
things with friends, neighbors and letting them know what a
big deal this could be for the state of Ohio.
Another piece of news that came out this week. A
little more. On the positive side, the IRS, uh, weighed
in on some regulations around what churches can and can't

(09:27):
do from the pulpit in terms of endorsing candidates. And, Aaron,
you said during our team meeting this morning, this has
really been used as a cudgel, uh, to keep pastors
from speaking out. Well, conservative pastors from speaking out to
not endorse candidates, uh, to to really be sidelined politically.
And now there's certainly a wider crack in the door

(09:48):
for for this to happen.

S4 (09:50):
Yeah. This is the reality is and I'll spare the
full history lesson on this. But for well over 60
to 70 years now, churches have been intimidated and sort
of bullied into silence of you can't speak on not
just political issues, but explicitly endorsing candidates from the pulpit. Um,

(10:11):
that to buy this what was called the Johnson amendment
and the interpretation of the IRS saying, hey, we're going
to strip you of your tax status, especially if you
endorse candidates on the ballot. Right. Some churches would then say, well,
we can't talk about politics at all or anything remotely
controversial or cultural or political. Um, and they kick people
like David Mahan out of their church. Um. So soon?

(10:31):
It's been a few years. That was I think that
was pre-COVID. So, I mean, like, we.

S2 (10:36):
We're at a real crossroads.

S4 (10:37):
That's right. Exactly. There it is. Um, but. Uh, did
they play their worship anyway. Anyway, probably some germs. And
you got us off track here. Um, so Johnson amendment.
Can churches endorse? Uh, so the IRS has been sort
of looming this over church's head saying you can't do this,

(10:59):
and a lot of churches then just wouldn't engage on
any of these things. The reality is, from my understanding,
there's been one enforcement action against the against a church
since the Johnson Amendment has been on the books. They've
never really gone after them because they know the IRS
knows this amendment is blatantly unconstitutional. You cannot tell a

(11:20):
pastor what they say from the pulpit. Um, some might
remember the Alliance Defending Freedom's Old Pulpit Freedom Initiative, where
they would literally have pastors endorse candidates from the pulpit,
record it and send it to the IRS and say,
Sue us, come get us. And the IRS wouldn't because
they know they'd lose. Uh, this now, is the IRS

(11:41):
just making clear? Yeah, we know we this is unconstitutional.
Now what? Actually.

S3 (11:46):
Because I can just picture, you know, half of the
listeners out there thinking about, okay, my pastor is going
to come out with the MAGA hat on Sunday and,
you know, go Brandon hats and.

S4 (11:55):
Oh my God.

S3 (11:55):
Sunday service. But that's not that's not what we're saying. It's,
you know, should we be doing this. You know, that's
another question.

S4 (12:02):
That's so that's the two questions here is what can
a church do and what should a church do. Right.
So what can a church do? I think what is
very good about this is this is the government getting
out of the pulpit, a place they had no jurisdiction,
no right to be in in the first place. And
what's very important here is that the what this actual

(12:23):
guidance came out in was, uh, in some litigation going
on down in Texas with the National Religious Broadcasters and
a few other, you know, intercessors for America. The IRS
argued in a brief their position of what, uh, what
their rules and what the Johnson Amendment means. And they said,
you know, churches can we believe the church that churches
can endorse candidates in their sermons, right? In their what

(12:46):
they would call family conversation. Um, so this does not
mean that they think churches can go out and start
buying political ads and things like that. But if they
are communicating and talking and shepherding their congregation, what does
that mean? Uh, can they do this? And the IRS
is very clearly saying yes. And I would likely say, um,

(13:06):
and more normal caveat seek your own legal counsel as
you are, uh, interpreting all of these things. Um, but
CCV will be putting out some guidance on this here soon. Uh,
for religious 501 C3, they likely can endorse candidates now, too,
with their people. Again, if they're going out and buying
political ads. That's a whole other issue. It also keep

(13:27):
in mind any money that's being spent on this would
count towards a 501 C3 lobbying expense. Uh, again, for
all the people who run C3, you know what that means. Um,
but it just really takes the muzzle off. Now David's point, though,
is the the more important question. I'd say that's really
the only question churches should have been asking themselves this
whole time is what should my church do? Right? Um,

(13:52):
and that's the type of thing that from Ccv's perspective,
what I think this does is this takes the lid off,
this takes the excuse off, and just lets a pastor, uh, say,
all right, Lord, what should we do in this context? Um,
and I'll just say, I've heard some people through the years, um,

(14:12):
make really black and white statements that churches should never
endorse a candidate. And I just don't think it's that
black and white. I think this is a prudential question, right?
I cannot go through the Bible, go through the Ten Commandments,
go through, you know, Jesus's greatest commandments, and see a
pastor shall not endorse a candidate, right? I don't think

(14:34):
they were even voting then. So it's kind of hard
to 11th. I think it's right there, right there, 11th
or 12th somewhere in there, I just. I don't see it. However,
I do see good prudential reasons for a church for
a pastor saying, hey, you know what? We're not going
to endorse, uh, for this reason or another, it's going
to distract us from what we want. There's a lot
of reasons why churches don't talk about lots of things
that are godly reasons based off of their local context. Um,

(14:59):
so we're not coming out and saying, church, you have
to come out and endorse now. You have to come
out and, um, you know, wear a Maga hat on
Sunday or whatever. Um, but I am saying church, don't
just write this off as well. We don't endorse anyway.
We never would. Maybe the context of your local community
or your state or the nation is such that you
feel like, hey, I have to speak out and and

(15:22):
provide wise counsel. This is where I just keep coming
back to. Pastor, if you're not helping shape the way your,
your congregants, your your, your sheep are thinking about cultural issues,
who is.

S3 (15:34):
Yeah. And the way I see it is that, you know,
because I'm always encouraging pastors and ministers to to hit
the issue pieces, right. And they didn't even want to
talk about issues because of that provision or, you know, that.

S4 (15:46):
Amendment.

S3 (15:47):
You know, amendment. But but now that that's been squashed, right,
at least for the IRS, we just got to go
to the courts and all that, I'm sure. But now
that's been squashed, we should feel more comfortable at least
dealing with the issues now 100%. Right? There's absolutely no
excuse for pastor not to deal with important issues that
face the people in your congregation, in your community. Right?

(16:08):
So that's how I see it again. You know, I
don't know if we need to be out there, you know,
straight up endorsing unless we've got like, like you say,
the mouse or the right.

S4 (16:16):
That's, that's that's the thing. Like, I hate Hillary Clinton.

S3 (16:19):
Right.

S4 (16:19):
But no, that's that's my thing about this, which is
we're going to take things to the extreme here. But
if there is somebody in your community, somebody on the ballot, right,
the equivalent of a Hitler on the ballot, I think
it's okay for a president to say, don't vote for,
not for a pastor to say, don't vote for that person. Right. Um,

(16:41):
and again, this is why it's it's such a prudential thing,
like seek the Holy Spirit, all of that. But I
would just my thing is, I would challenge the pastor
to show me where it is unequivocally wrong. And that's
the thing I hear a lot from pastors should never endorse.
You just should not do that. They should keep politics. Well,
that's acting like politics is somehow amoral. And we see

(17:04):
that politics have massive moral implications. Um, see the 30,000
kids that are going to lose their lives because of
the abortion amendment, or the kids that are going to
be sterilized because of this constitutional amendment, if it were
to pass.

S3 (17:17):
And silence is a political action.

S4 (17:19):
There, it is so.

S2 (17:21):
Well said. Well said. Last thing we need to hit
before we get to our interview for the week. Uh,
we've talked a lot about the state budget over the
last few weeks, and now it looks like there is
some momentum on an override vote that's coming up. What,
the week of the 21st, I believe. David? Yeah. So
what kind of stuff are we looking at? Possibly being
overridden by the General Assembly?

S3 (17:41):
You know, there were 67, uh, items that were vetoed
by the governor. And so here in a.

S4 (17:47):
Couple every year, David's been alive.

S3 (17:49):
Oh, man.

S4 (17:50):
That's the time that.

S2 (17:51):
Lisa didn't go with IQ.

S5 (17:52):
Points. One for every IQ point, I like that. Oh, man. Um,
all I do is love.

S3 (17:59):
Y'all.

S5 (18:00):
Man.

S3 (18:01):
Uh, so in two weeks, uh, we just heard news
that the, um, you know, the house will be coming
back in from vacation, I guess, uh, flying in and
flying out, many of them, uh, to to veto or
to override three provisions. Right. Most of them are around, uh,
property tax. And so, you know, a lot of them
are like, oh, what about the, the, you know, gender
identity stuff and the libraries in front of kids, you know,

(18:24):
what about ESAs, right. And so they're still whipping votes.
They're still trying to what that means basically is they're
still calling the members, right, who are spread far and
wide across the country right now to see, you know,
is there political will to veto certain items right now? Yeah.
To override certain, um, of these vetoed items. Now, right now,

(18:48):
they've just whipped the votes around property tax. And there's
a time, you know, there's a time frame on that.
They literally have until December 31st of 2026 to override
these items. Um, so that doesn't mean. So just if
they handle these three provisions right now, it doesn't mean
that they can't come back in in the fall and
get some more. Um, but as it stands right now,

(19:08):
it's just around property tax.

S2 (19:10):
Yeah. That is a very full segment of the latest
breaking news here in Ohio.

S4 (19:16):
And under 25 minutes. I'm just saying you're giving us
a hard time. We we were.

S5 (19:19):
Well we're efficient.

S2 (19:20):
But we still have an hour long interview with Daniel Gordis.

S5 (19:23):
But that was a good one. I got one.

S4 (19:26):
Of my favorite, uh, conversations.

S5 (19:28):
Because.

S3 (19:28):
He wouldn't shut.

S5 (19:29):
Up. I mean.

S3 (19:30):
Your whole thing. Daniel didn't even talk.

S5 (19:32):
Daniel talked like Daniel, gave good, long answers. But it
was great. You didn't even hear the interview yet. I
don't even know what he's talking about.

S3 (19:39):
Gotta get some work done.

S5 (19:40):
No, listen, that's why he wasn't invited. Because he comes
in and he's rude.

S2 (19:46):
I was invited, and if you want to hear what
it's like to be a third wheel, uh. Stick around.
You can. You can live my experience. You will hear.

S5 (19:55):
Me. The sidekick. That's right.

S2 (19:57):
I will I will give a very nice introduction to
the interview and close us out. And I'm quiet as
a church mouse in between. But I can tell you,
from having listened to the and not participated in the
entire conversation, it is a great one. You will enjoy it.
And it's coming up next on the narrative. Hey narrative listeners,
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to join, go to KBP. That's CBP dot. Welcome back
to the narrative. Mike Andrews joined by not one but

(21:05):
two bears. Now Maria and Aaron both here for our
interview today with Daniel Gordis, who's one of the founders
of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel. Uh, it's their first
and only liberal arts college in the country. He's the
author of a dozen books on Judaism and Israel. He
writes regularly on his Substack, Israel from the Inside. He
was raised and educated in the United States, and he's

(21:26):
been living in Jerusalem since 1998. And we're so honored
to have you on the podcast today. Daniel, thanks for
the time.

S1 (21:33):
Thank you for having me. It's a great honor.

S2 (21:35):
Well, I'm going to just go ahead and make a
real rookie mistake right off the bat here and ask
too broad of a question. But with everything that's been
going on in Israel lately, can you give us an
overview or a sense of where things are at in
the country today? After all the news with Iran over
the last few weeks and the war that popped up? Uh,
how's the how's the population doing? How are things looking

(21:56):
in the country?

S1 (21:58):
It's a very complicated question. It sounds like an easy one,
but it's actually a very complicated question. It's, um, you know,
if you were to ask people in America, how are
they feeling about things? I mean, there's there's there's day
to day stuff. The horrors of Texas in the last
couple of days are just heartbreaking. Um, some people are
thrilled with the president. Some people are not thrilled with
the president. Some people are thrilled that the United States
is getting back into world issues, and some people are not.

(22:19):
I think it's a similar kind of a thing here.
So what I would say is that, um, geopolitically, Israelis
recognize that we are in a much better place than
we were on October 6th, 2023. In other words, the
day before the attacks, obviously we weren't at war, which
was a good thing, but we were very worried about
Hezbollah and the North. They had 150,000 rockets, many of

(22:43):
them precision rockets, and they were there to make sure
that we couldn't attack Iran, whether it's Iran had Hezbollah,
the idea being you guys do what we just did,
which is send airplanes to Iran. We pick up the phone,
we call Hezbollah. You get 150,000 missiles raining down on you.
You can't do that. So it's a chess game. Uh,
and because of a whole series of really kind of

(23:04):
brilliant moves, there was that beeper thing which happened a
long time ago, which helped us stun Hezbollah at the
beginning and then take them out. Uh, we stunned Iran
at the beginning and then did some significant amount of damage.
I think that the president's, uh, notion that we obliterated
their nuclear program is exaggerated, apparently. Is that is not true. Uh,
but we did it. Considerable damage. So I think Israelis

(23:27):
are feeling very good about where Israel is geopolitically and
in the region. I think Israelis are feeling very good
that there is a genuine friend of the state of
Israel in the white House. They may like everything that
he stands for, or they may not like everything that
he stands for. But there's no question that Donald Trump

(23:48):
has been at Israel's side in the last few weeks especially.
But I think all the way along and Israelis are
feeling very, very supported by that. And I think that's
a really important thing. That's the good news. And of course,
the other part of the good news is that we
have seen an extraordinary resilience in Israeli society in the
course of the almost two years since October 7th, 23.

(24:10):
And we won't go into all of that now. But
there has been a tremendous amount of civilian bonding together
and supporting people. There was a beautiful article in the
paper this past weekend. Uh, I don't know how many
young widows there are in their 20s, but there are
probably hundreds of young women whose husbands were killed when

(24:30):
they were sent off to battle. And, you know, because
a lot of them are religious people who tend to
have kids earlier in Israel, these are a lot of 22, 23,
24 year old women with 1 or 2 kids. Um,
and this has been a horrible story and they're starting
to get remarried, which is an unbelievable thing. I mean,
you would think you take a 22, 23 year old woman, girl, whatever,

(24:51):
and you give her the horror of her lifetime. You
just imagine her sort of, you know, pulling back and
trying to raise her child or children and just hiding
from the world, almost. And what we're seeing is the
actual opposite response. Women are saying and they were written
up in this, in this really very beautiful article over
the weekend. They said some of them, like, even as

(25:11):
I was on the way home from my husband's funeral,
I looked at my child and I said, this child
is not going to grow up in a gloomy household.
That's just not going to happen. We're going to find
a way to be happy. Um, and this story about
these young women who are starting to get remarried. In
one case, she married one of her husband's closest friends. Um,
you know, these are just kind of really just beautiful stories. And, um,

(25:33):
so I think there's a tremendous amount of social resilience,
and there is a tremendous amount of exhaustion about the
war in Gaza. I think if you asked most Israelis
today which you would hear is, um, yeah, we got
to destroy Hamas, but we're not destroying Hamas right now.
And we have mornings like this morning where we wake
up to five soldiers dead and 14 seriously wounded. Uh,

(25:54):
that's a terrible day in Israel. And so there's a
kind of almost hoping that Donald Trump is pushing Bibi
Netanyahu to take a ceasefire now, because we are, many
of us thinking we're kind of running out of tricks
in Gaza, and it's terrible for the Gazans and it's
terrible for Israelis. This isn't over, but let's stop it
for now. So it's complicated. It's, uh, it's devastated on

(26:17):
the day to day because of the loss of these
young men, mostly men, a few women also because we
have a lot of women in combat. Um, the good
stories about people regrouping and I'll just, you know, say
I was actually talking to, um, a friend of mine
who happens to be a doctor. Um, last week we
were just kind of schmoozing, and, um, he said to me,
you know, how are you doing? He's not like a

(26:38):
guy that I see all the time. Um, he said,
how are you doing? I said, I don't know, I
guess I'm doing like everybody else. And which is a non-answer, obviously.
And he said, you know, I just tell my patients, um,
that I was reading something by an Israeli well-known psychologist
who says that anybody that expects we're going to go
through what we went through during those 12 days, and
then the Army says, okay, it's over, and you just

(27:00):
go back after hunkering down in your safe rooms, even
even if you're not hit and nobody, you know, was hurt, uh,
you saw that neighborhoods in Israel were blown to pieces,
and you understand that we were vulnerable. How much more
vulnerable would we have been had they had nuclear weapons? Um,
so it's a sober time. It's an optimistic time. I

(27:20):
think the country is fundamentally both sad and very optimistic.
That's how I guess I would put it in a nutshell. So.

S4 (27:32):
Daniel, I want to ask one follow up question to
that and then get to a bigger picture. Question one
during those 12 days of, uh, of really intense action
with Iran, how many, how much time were people? Was
your average person, whether it was in Tel Aviv or
in Jerusalem, spending in a bomb shelter? What was just

(27:52):
the lived experience of that?

S1 (27:53):
Like some people actually have sizable bomb shelters in their houses,
and so they just moved into them like people. Actually,
if it's a room, it has to be built in
a certain way with rebar and all that. But in
some places it's a room. Um, so it might be
a kid's bedroom, in which case the family just sort
of slept in those rooms. So when the sirens went
off in the middle of the night, you didn't bother.
After waking the kids, you just made sure the door

(28:15):
was shut and whatever. Uh, in our case, for example,
that's not. We don't have that. We have, um, it's
our laundry room. It's right next to the kitchen. It's
not big, you know, it's got the washer and dryer
and then a little bit of space for some laundry baskets.
And here and there, it's not a big laundry room.
Our kids, who live about a three, four minute walk
from us, my daughter, who's married with three children of

(28:35):
her own, um, they don't have a shelter or a
safe room in their building. So they moved in. They
just because they did not want to be in a
situation where even though you get a ten minute warning,
theoretically from the first siren, um, you don't want to
be running in the middle of the night with three kids.
So they moved in. Um, and then when the sirens
actually did go off, it was seven of us in

(28:56):
this very intimate laundry room. So by the time we
had been this, living this for a while, we kind
of all had our perches. And, um, my, our oldest granddaughter,
who is, uh, I guess ten. So she, we put
a little mattress on the top of the washer dryer,
little yoga mats, and she went to sleep up there
on the top of the washer dryer. The little baby,

(29:17):
who's like, two slept in his father's or mother's lap.
The five year old kind of found another couple of
yoga mats and smushed them into the corners. And the
rest of us sat, you know, kind of Indian style,
mostly on our phones, waiting to see what was going on. Um,
how much time did we spend there? We didn't spend any,
you know, hours long kind of experience there. Because what
happens is, you know, you get the warning and then

(29:39):
either they hit or they get shut down, but it
doesn't last forever. You have to stay in a good
bit of time. Ten, 15, 20, 25 minutes after they're
shot down, because big pieces of metal keep spinning around
and coming down. So I would say that we were
in there probably, uh, once or twice a day, uh,
or once or twice a night for most of the

(30:01):
days of the 12 days, each time it's, uh, 30 minutes,
40 minutes. Not longer than that. But you have to
remember that if we're talking about three little kids and
it's at 3:00 in the morning, so you've woken your kids,
you've dragged them downstairs near the kitchen, in the laundry room.
You hold everybody up. It's stressful. Even the two year old,
he doesn't understand what's going on, but it was only

(30:22):
like 11 or 12 days. And he said, why are
there sirens? Like all of a sudden he realized this
is not normal. Like, he didn't say, well, American kids
don't do this because he doesn't know what American kids do.
But even a little two year old, it like, began
to dawn on him that this is just kind of
an absurd way to live. Um, so it wasn't a
lot of time, but it was constant stress. Nobody went

(30:44):
on a bike ride. Nobody took a walk. Because you
don't want to be more than X number of minutes
away from your house and your safe room and your shelter.
So it was a little bit like Covid. People were saying,
in other words, you weren't you weren't worried about seeing
other people, but you didn't go out. You didn't go anywhere.
You ordered everything in. You didn't go to restaurants where
they were closed anyway. They had to be closed by law. Um,

(31:06):
but supermarkets were open and pharmacies were open, but you
kind of would just go online and order it. Um,
so it was a little bit of Covid with some
bomb shelters thrown in. Um, you know, it's a kind
of a crazy world in which you can make that reference,
but it is. So we didn't it wasn't a lot
of aggregate time, but it was 12 days of very
deep stress, I would say. And I really do believe,

(31:26):
as this doctor friend of mine said to me, I
really do believe that, um, it's only been a couple
of weeks since this. We are still not processing it intellectually,
but we wake up in the morning. My wife and
I still, you know, we're now we're empty nesters. Our
kids moved out, uh, moved back to their house the
morning of the ceasefire. We announced, check out. Time is
at noon. Uh, you guys are out of here, but, um,

(31:49):
we're not. But when we wake up in the morning,
we still say to ourselves, well, we slept through the night. Um,
we didn't have to go to a shelter. Uh, so
it was. It was emotionally draining. Much more than it
was physically draining for us in Israel, in Jerusalem. Jerusalem
took no hits. But, um, we've had other wars where
Jerusalem was the center of all the action. This time

(32:09):
it was not so. It was not a lot of
aggregate hours of shelter time. It was a lot of
aggregate hours of worrying time.

S4 (32:19):
Go ahead. Maria.

S6 (32:21):
So you mentioned that, um, Israelis are feeling sad, but
also kind of optimistic, maybe hopeful that once Bibi gets
back from the United States, there will be, uh, you'll
be closer, perhaps, to a ceasefire. Um, Israel is obviously
more culturally diverse, I think, than a lot of Americans
think about when we're having these kinds of conversations. A

(32:43):
lot of times we're thinking about Jewish people, but there
are obviously large a large population of Arab people there
as well as Arab Christians. Is the sense among those
communities similar? Is there a national unity in hoping for
a ceasefire or the return of, you know, the 20
or so hostages that are estimated to be alive? Is

(33:04):
there kind of a national fervor from those communities as well,
or is it culturally divided?

S1 (33:10):
That's an excellent question. And like most excellent questions, the
answer is not cut and dry. So I would say
that Christian Arabs are much more aligned with Jewish Israelis
than are Muslim Israeli Arabs. Muslim Israeli Arabs can be
very loyal to the state. I don't mean to imply
in any way whatsoever that they're a fifth wheel, but
their co-religionists are at war with Israel, right? Which is

(33:34):
not the case for Christian Arabs. Christian Arabs have no
real no real dog in this race and feel very
fortunate to live in Israel, because if they lived in Gaza,
they would be mostly dead. Uh, the number of Christian
Arabs who managed to survive in Bethlehem these days is
very small. Bethlehem is mostly a muslim city these days
because Christians have been pushed out. Um, so ironically or

(33:58):
maybe not ironically, but it is a fact nonetheless that
I think Christian Arabs feel very protected by Israel and
want a ceasefire. There's no question the Bedouins in the
Negev who are poor know they are not Zionists. Let's
just put it that way. Um, they want a cease fire.
They don't have shelters. They've been getting hit too. We've
had Arab casualties. There was a there's an Arab town

(34:19):
in the north of Israel called Tamra, where, uh, members
of a single family were killed when a missile hit
their house. Uh, and so, you know, Arabs are not
any more protected from this than Jews are. Um, so
I think that there is a there's a basic desire,
society wide, um, to get a cease fire and move on. Now,

(34:40):
there is a not insignificant portion of the Jewish population
that wants to keep at it and try to destroy Hamas. Um,
I am not in that camp. I'm among those people
that think we've done as much damage as we're going
to do to Hamas right now, and it's just not
worth many more mornings like this with five kids dead
and 14 badly wounded. You know, we have to remember
that badly wounded doesn't mean when there was a lot

(35:00):
of blood. But we'll patch you up and you'll be okay.
Badly wounded means, you know, no arm, no leg, uh,
head injury that you're never going to recover from. I mean,
the the the wards here in this country of kids
who suffered. Um, you know, the Hebrew word is hedef.
Like shock waves from the antitank missile that hit the tank.
They weren't actually their bodies weren't touched, but the sound

(35:21):
blast was so loud that they've actually had brain damage.
They can't speak. I mean, we're talking horrible stories. Um,
and we never find out from the censor here when
they say 14 wounded. What that means we're never going
to find that out. We'll find out the names of
the dead, because their funerals are already today. But we
won't find that out. So there's a lot of people
here that I think would like this to stop, just
because it's just not worth the cost benefit. There are,

(35:41):
to my knowledge, no Arabs in Israel who believe we
should keep fighting Hamas at this point. I mean, there
might be some, but there are. They are very, very
small in number. And then I think also it's important
to point out that Israeli Jews are very heterogeneous. Also.
They're heterogeneous politically. You know, they range everywhere from an approximate,
you know, equivalent from a Maga person to a, you know,

(36:05):
an American progressive person. I mean, we have the whole range. Uh,
they range religiously from the Bible Belt to, uh, you know,
New England or whatever you want to say, or the
Bay area. You know, I mean, we have we have
people from Ashkenazi, i.e. European backgrounds, who are all white
and look very much like us. Um, and we have

(36:26):
people who are darker who are almost indistinguishable from the
Arab population. Those are, by the way, the majority of
Israeli Jews, people think of Israel as a, uh, as
a white country, but it's actually not. Israel is actually
a darker skinned Jewish country. Then we have Ethiopian Jews,
of course, from Africa, who are black. I mean, they
are just as black as any African American, uh, in

(36:48):
the United States. And these people all bring with them different, different, uh,
you know, social baggage, different political baggage. We have a
million Jews that came from the former Soviet Union, um,
who take antisemitism very, very seriously. And when they get
into a conversation with the left wing Tel Aviv Jew,
they say, yeah, well, you grew up in Tel Aviv.
I grew up in Moscow. Let me tell you something

(37:09):
about people who hate Jews. So this is a very
heterogeneous society in that way also. But I don't believe
that on this particular policy there is a real divide
between Jews and Arabs. And there's definitely not a divide
between the Jews and the Christian Arabs. I think Jews
and Christian Arabs are probably pretty much virtually completely aligned.

S4 (37:30):
So, Daniel, you know, our podcast is called The Narrative.
And the idea of that was, you know, you take
the the mainstream media narratives that are coming out and
let's dive in and talk about what, what what the
truth is of the matter. Um, and I think there's
no place you see more media narrative than talking about
what's happening in Gaza and the way the media tends

(37:53):
to just sort of run with whatever the Hamas PR
machine kind of puts out on. Hey, oh, the the IDF, um,
blocked aid from coming in, or there was this many
civilians that died here, and certainly there were many civilians
that died, but that the context of it always seems

(38:14):
to be a lot more complicated than the the media
reports it. So I guess two, two questions here for you.
One um, who is it that the media is talking,
like who's actually running Hamas now or running this PR
machine or all those types of things when so much
of the leadership has been destroyed that that the media
is getting their narratives from. And what actually is the

(38:35):
state of Gaza right now? Um, and how much of
that is, you know, rightfully so. And I can't recommend
Israel from the inside highly enough to fix it. Your
your writings always do such a good job of not
just sort of whitewashing and saying, hey, Israel is doing
everything right and is the best place ever and all
that kind of thing. You're you're certainly very critical of

(38:56):
your country the way we are of ours at times. Um,
but you are you try to be really fair in
those things. What is actually the state and what what
how has Israel been engaging in Gaza to this point?

S1 (39:09):
You know, first of all, we don't know. And I
think we should all acknowledge what we don't know. Um,
we don't know because there's not a lot of journalists
in Gaza. Israel has not allowed journalists into Gaza, which
is itself a subject of much discussion, hasn't allowed Israeli
journalists into Gaza. Um, so if we Israelis don't watch
CNN or Fox News or whatever else, uh, we're not
seeing videos of kids in, um, we're not seeing videos

(39:32):
of kids in Gaza. The Israeli media started to show
it a little bit and then backed off just about
a month or a month and a half ago. But
by and large, Israelis know that things are very bad
in Gaza. Israeli knows. Israelis know that 70% of the
buildings in Gaza are destroyed. Uh, we know that it's
hot as hell here now, and those people have no

(39:52):
roof to put over their heads. And we know that
in the winter, when it starts to pour and be
really cold here, uh, those people are also going to
be in very. So nobody here takes that lightly. I
guess there's some people who do, but the Jews who
I know care deeply about human beings and don't want
to see three or 4 or 5 year old Gazan kids, hungry,
wounded or anything of the sort. We understand that there's

(40:13):
a terrible humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There just is. Now,
a humanitarian crisis is tragic, but it does not mean
that it's ethnic cleansing. It does not mean that it's
intentional mowing down of civilians. And it does not mean
that there is widespread starvation. Is there hunger? There probably

(40:34):
really is. Are there masses of people going to these
aid centers to get food? There absolutely are. Are there
people dying for a lack of food that's much less clear.
And it's very hard to get data on that, because
people in Gaza who try to put out a narrative
that's unlike the Hamas narrative very often don't live to

(40:54):
see their article published. Uh, and so there is a
Hamas machine. You don't need to have many higher ups left,
you know. You can have a couple of young people
with some keyboards and an internet connection, and somebody tells
them what to say. It's not really very complicated in
that regard. You know, the warfare, or at least the

(41:15):
narrative side of warfare has been highly equalized. Back in
the day, if you couldn't get on NBC, CBS or NBC,
you can get your story out. Those days are obviously
long since gone. Um, so, um, it's very hard to
know what's exactly happening there, but I think Israelis understand
that there's some terribly sad things happening. There's no there's
no question about it. And we want it to stop.
We just want it to stop. If we thought that

(41:36):
we could destroy Hamas at great expense, even to to Palestinians,
we might say that's a horrible cost benefit analysis to
have to do. People forget, you know, how many German
civilians were killed in the Second World War, innocent civilians,
because being a German didn't make you guilty, didn't make
you a Nazi. If you were six years old, it
didn't matter what your parents believed. You were a six

(41:58):
year old child We killed the United States, killed millions
of German civilians. But that was an era when Americans
had the capacity to believe in the justice of a war.
And as horrible as it was for many Germans and
others who were killed, Italians and people across the world,

(42:18):
Americans basically understood that this was a a world in
which you could not destroy Nazism, was a world in
which it wasn't really worth staying alive for the long run,
because you wouldn't want that world for your children or grandchildren.
I think that Israelis still have the capacity to see
the world that way. They understand the the toxicity and
the murderous nature of certain ideologies. Whereas I think Americans

(42:41):
who are, you know, bordered by Canada on the top
and Mexico on the bottom, and two very nice oceans
on either side, and a generation that is very non-historical
in its perspective. Um, and a little bit Pollyanna ish, uh,
just doesn't take these ideologies all that seriously. And then
you add to that, of course, America made mistakes in
fighting ideology. It went to Vietnam to fight the spread

(43:04):
of communism. It went to Korea to fight the spread
of communism. It invaded Iraq to get rid of weapons
of mass destruction, which may not have been there or
probably weren't there at this point. So Americans are also
very dubious about fighting wars over ideological things, which I
totally understand. Um, but what Americans have lost is the
ability to believe in right and wrong and in justice

(43:26):
and injustice and in truth and in falsehood. Uh, and
so it's become very hard, I think, to make a
narrative case to many young Americans that war can be necessary,
that war can be just so they have a they
have a machine. It puts out the narrative. It's very
hard to check it because there's not people on the
ground you saw with the hostages how effective the Red

(43:49):
cross was the first time the Red cross got anywhere
near the hostages. When it was Hamas handed them over.
I mean, they they visited nobody for years. Literally years. Right?
A year and a half before that, we sent medicines in.
And when our soldiers finally broke into those areas, we
sent in medicines for each hostage, because obviously we know
their medical records. We know that this hostage has got celiac,

(44:10):
and this hostage has high blood pressure, and this hostage
can't see without his or her glasses. So we sent
prescription glasses in and everything was labeled with everybody's name,
and it was given to the Red cross. And the
Red cross handed it off to somebody else. And then
when our soldiers went in and captured these underground bunkers
of Hamas, we found all the medicines. They're not distributed,

(44:31):
just sort of piled up. Um, nobody talks about that, right?
Nobody talks about the bus kids having been shot, not shot,
but apparently strangled with somebody's bare hands. Who does that?
In other words, this is about this is about a
real evil, um, that has to be destroyed. And yes,
I'm sure that horrible things are happening in Gaza. It

(44:51):
is really heartbreaking. And I say this as a person
of faith, I do not believe that God does not
care about the people of Gaza. God cares about every
human being who is created in God's image. There are
tragic times in human history when perfectly innocent people get
caught in the crossfire of ideological battles that are not
of their own making. And that is tragically the situation here.

S6 (45:15):
With regards to faith. Daniel. There are, um, when we
experience trauma or nationally and personally, it tends to push
people more towards their faith. Um, some people away, but
usually it forces people to reckon with some of these
more metaphysical ideas. Justice, evil. What is life for? Does

(45:36):
that happen in Israel? I know that we tend to
look at Israel, um, probably somewhat wrongly, as being more
embedded in, uh, repetitive conflicts as opposed to living in
the United States. It sometimes can feel like it's just
you guys just go from one conflict to the other.
And I know.

S1 (45:54):
That's not wrong.

S6 (45:55):
It's not your entire national story. But when things like
this happen, do you see people, um, pushing deeper, more
into their faith, whether it's a Jewish faith or a
Christian faith or a muslim faith?

S1 (46:08):
Yeah. So I really can't speak for the Christians or
the Muslims because I just don't know. I don't know
how that's affected them in this, in this particular conflict.
I would imagine the Muslims, it's a very complicated, very
complicated place to be. And the Christians, I think, are
people of faith. And they and they were probably already
fairly well entrenched in their faith. And I would imagine

(46:30):
that nothing here has happened to undo that. I think that,
you know, when it comes to Jewish faith, it's very
important to understand the radical difference between Judaism and Christianity
in terms of the roles of theology. Now, it would
make it would make almost no sense, right, for a
Christian person to say, I am a deeply, passionately committed

(46:50):
Christian and I don't believe at all in Jesus. I
just don't buy that whole thing. That kind of doesn't
make any sense. Um, but it makes perfectly good sense
to say I am a deeply, passionately committed Jew. And
I think the whole God thing is nuts because we're
a religion, but we're also a culture and a civilization
and a nationality. Um, which is both, you know, it's

(47:13):
just not better or worse. It's an up and down,
I guess, at times. But Judaism is a much it's
a very different kind of an animal. I think very
often the United States, we think about the theological differences,
you know, the Hebrew Bible versus the Christian and Hebrew
Bible together. Uh, the divinity or not, Divinity of Jesus,
you know, the status of rabbinic law and Jesus's critique

(47:33):
of the Second Temple and all that, all of which is,
you know, perfectly interesting to talk about and I think,
you know, probably fascinating. But I think that that theological
conversation misses the radical difference between between, um, between Judaism
and Christianity. Think about the the Christian Bible, the number
of times the word land appears in the New Testament

(47:53):
as close to zero. The number of times the word
land appears in the Hebrew Bible is in the gazillions.
I don't know what the actual number is, but there's
online sites where you can find it. But the land
of Israel plays a tremendous role in the faith of Jews. Um,
and it was a frontier of yearning, uh, for, for

(48:14):
hundreds of years, even when there was no prayer of
getting here. So the first thing that God says to
the very first Jew, Abraham, who becomes Abraham, is go
to the place that I will show you what the
place that I will show you is where I'm sitting
here talking to you. Um, literally. I mean, if I
went up to my upstairs porch, I can pretty much
see that exact spot. Um, so, um, so I think, yes.

(48:35):
I mean, I think that there's a faith thing that
I'm going to come back to in a second. But
the first part to remember is that that passionate commitment
to Jewishness is not necessarily a matter of faith in
the theological sense. It's a matter of faith in the
importance and the preservation of the Jewish people. And here
I would say a there has been an unbelievable deepening
of a sense of I am part of this people.

(48:58):
And all of a sudden I get what my grandparents
said that I always just dismissed, which is they hate
us and they always will hate us. You know, my
grandmother and my grandmother, I grew up in the States,
as you can probably tell from my English. And, um,
my grandmother fled what is now Ukraine as a young girl,

(49:19):
probably 12 or 13, in the early 19, very, very
early years of the 1900s. And she came literally dirt
poor and remained pretty dirt poor through most of her life.
My mom remembers remembered, um, my grandmother not eating certain
days because there wasn't enough food for the grown ups
and the kids. So the kids ate and the parents

(49:39):
didn't eat. I mean, they were really poor, you know,
in that early Brooklyn period when Jews and Irish and
people of all the world were coming between 1880 and 1920.
And then I look at these pictures of, uh, you know,
my mom and her mom in the backyard of our
suburban Baltimore. Typical American house, you know, the red bricks

(49:59):
and the lawns and the sprinklers and the swing sets
and all that. And I asked myself, now, I was
unfortunately too young and stupid to ask my grandmother back then,
what do you make of all of this? But just
to come from from a little shtetl in Ukraine and
then to sit in your daughter's backyard with her kids
running around in this. Why do I mention all of that?

(50:22):
I mention it because I think that, um, you know,
even though I was very taken with how American my
grandmother became, one thing that she used to say always
struck me as silly. And she would say, they hate us.
Don't forget that. She'd say goyim, right? But they hate us. Um,

(50:43):
and for her, it was Christians. I mean, for her,
it was absolutely Christians. The people in Europe who tortured
them were not Muslims and they weren't Hindus. They were
Christians and they were doing it tragically, a lot of
it in the name of the church back then. And, um,
and she never got over that. And I would say
I was 14 or 15 or 16. And I would
say to her, Safta, which is Hebrew for grandma, I

(51:04):
would say, Safta, you don't understand. It's different now. It's different.
They don't hate us anymore. And then she would pat
me on the head and she'd say, you're very cute.
Which was her way of saying you're an idiot, but
you don't know it yet because you're just not old enough.
And I have to say that I think a lot
of Israelis have had a kind of a if I
could apologize to my grandparents, they were still here moment.

(51:27):
I would, uh, because what we're seeing in the United
States also this outbreak of just vile hatred of the Jew,
and we're seeing it in Australia, and we're seeing it
in Paris, and we're seeing it in London. It is
really the Jewish experience of the early 1900s before it
got really, really dark. Arc. So there is this, I think,
a sense of a returning to a belief in the

(51:49):
importance of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish identity. But there's also
Maria that the piece of faith here that you're talking about,
we heard from Elie Sharabi, who is as secular, an
Israeli secular kibbutz. Members are like USDA choice secular like
they are the finest secular they make. There's not a

(52:10):
tinge of God anywhere in there. Um, but he said
that he was being, you know, tortured there for 600
days or whatever it was. He would get up every
morning what it means to wake up after a night's
sleep like that, I don't know. But he would get
up in the morning and he would say what we
call the Shema, which is hear, O Israel, the Lord
our God, the Lord is one. There were women, young

(52:30):
army women who were taken hostage, um, who became observant.
They started to keep the Sabbath. They were basically starving.
But when it was Yom Kippur and they knew that
it was Yom Kippur because they heard the radio, they
knew whatever they wouldn't eat or drink. Um, even though,
by the way, Jewish law says absolutely that if you're starving,
you should eat and drink. But they were trying to

(52:50):
make a statement to their captors that I love my
tradition more than I'm afraid of you. And, um, the
stories of these captives, some of whom found God, but
some of whom found without certainty about God, a profound
comfort in the traditions of thousands of years, I think

(53:12):
are really, really moving. And I think that what it's
evoked in Israel is not a kind of a religious oh,
look at that. They're finally catching on and getting to
be religious just like the rest of us, because that's
just not that's not who they are. Um, but there
is a real sense that, you know, this, this tradition
of ours that is 2000 years old didn't survive for
2000 years by accident, and it didn't survive for 2000

(53:35):
years because it had an abundance of power or money. Uh,
it survived because it had parts that spoke to our
souls and our humanity in a way that nothing else could,
because it came from our parents and their parents and
their parents and their parents, and as far back as
you can go. And, um, you know, when I sing

(53:55):
to my wife on Friday night at the Shabbat dinner table,
the 33rd, 31st chapter of the book of, um, what's
it called? The Proverbs in English. Um, it's a woman
of valor, you know, and I, you know, it says,
you know, the husband does this, the wife does that.
I want to tell you, that is not a correct
description of the division of labor in our household. So

(54:18):
so I sometimes I wish it was, but it's not.
And and so someone might say, well, if it's wrong,
so to speak, why do you sing it to her?
And I say the answer is because I don't know
anything about my great great, great great great grandfather, except
that he sang that to his wife also. And some
things that happen around my Shabbat table are exactly what

(54:39):
happened around their Shabbat table, and that's what led people
to fast on Yom Kippur. In. In captivity. That's what
led people to say the Shema in captivity. That's what
led people to hold up signs when they were in
those helicopters being ferried out from Gaza to the hospital,
and they gave them these little, you know, whiteboards, and
they could write anything they want because the cameras were

(54:59):
there and it was going on national news. They were
they talked about, you know, God was with me. I
left as a this and I came back as a
believing person. Um, so yeah, I think it has, you know,
they say there's no atheists in foxholes. I don't think
that that's really true. I think there are a lot
of atheists in foxholes, but there's nobody who doesn't believe
in something in foxholes. And I think a lot of

(55:20):
the young men and some women who went into Gaza
may not have been what you or I might call
people of faith in the classic American or tradition Christian
way of defining that they had a deep faith that
was deepened in the importance of being part of the
Jewish people. So I think as a society, we have emerged,
believe it or not, much more Jewish, each in our

(55:41):
own way. Um, and there's a kind of a discovery
here that's going to take years to unpack, but it's
it's profound. And in many ways, it's very beautiful.

S5 (55:51):
Um, so.

S4 (55:52):
So, Daniel, um, that I love those stories. I, um,
my family's Jewish. I remember the first time I led
a Passover Seder with my kids. I. My dad sent
me the 1983 Maxwell House Haggadah that we used when
I was a kid. And I remember opening them up
and all these crumbs fell out, and I was like,
those were crumbs from my dad's beard from 20 years ago. And, um,

(56:14):
it reminded me of what you were saying, reminded me
of when I was in college with my grandmother, and
something was going on, uh, in Israel, and we were
talking about it and, uh, she made the comment, uh, again,
that felt like, uh, cousins just hanging out, talking. And
then my grandmother comes off the top rope with this
comment of like, yeah, well, this is how it happens.
And then Jews end up in ovens. And we were like, whoa, grandma. Uh,

(56:38):
and but it just, again was a very different, um,
you know, she she was born in 1928. She's actually 97. Um,
not not long for this world, but has lived through, uh,
a lot and had just a very different lived experience. Um,
I think bringing that especially for our audience at the
narrative as, uh, there's been a lot of coverage of

(57:03):
the hard, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, uh, movements on college campuses. I'll
just say I've been surprised, even in, uh, evangelical and
some Catholic circles, um, seeing it might not be the
same hardcore pro Hamas support in these circles, but less

(57:24):
support for Israel than than you'd expect, considering our our
Savior is a Jew. Um, and, you know, like you said,
there's very much connection to this land. You know, there's
a there is a theological conversation to be had about
why Christians should, should care about, um, Israel in particular.
But even just for could you maybe make the case

(57:47):
speak to just the Christians in America today on from a, um,
just anybody who cares about justice or cares about, um,
protecting life and peace, um, why we should be caring
for Israel, why we should be standing for Israel today.

S1 (58:06):
I think, unfortunately, it's a simple argument, uh, which is
it's not that we have always wanted it. I mean,
that is true, but that we've always wanted a country
of our own. But the Kurds want theirs, and the
Basques want theirs, and the Chechnyans want theirs. And I
understand that because I'm part of a group that deeply
loves the land, but they haven't gotten it. And so

(58:27):
the argument, well, we've always wanted it. That's not a
very compelling argument because other people wanted to and they
haven't been given it. I think the argument is different.
The argument is that there is one people in the
world in which history has proven over and over and
over again that without the ability to defend themselves on
their own soil, they are always the victims of history.
Not usually, but always. And you know, I grew up,

(58:49):
I'm in my mid 60s. I grew up in that
little window. In other words, the late 1950s, when it
was far enough away from the Holocaust that this, that
the smoke had sort of dissipated a little bit. And
there were lots of survivors around, and they were our
teachers in school and they were our friends parents. Um,
but it was still removed. They didn't just get off

(59:11):
the boat. It was 15, 20 years later as we
were growing up as kids. And, you know, when I
went to college in America, I wore a kippah the
whole time. And I never had an I never had
an uncomfortable moment. It was, believe it or not, at Columbia.
I mean, I never had an uncomfortable moment at all. Um,
and I grew up in a world in which it
really did seem that anti-Semitism was a thing of the past.

(59:32):
And that's why I would tell my grandmother that she
was wrong and she would tell me I was cute, um,
but meant she meant stupid. And at the end of
the day, she's right. I mean, if you would have.
I mean, I've been to Australia several times. It's a
wonderful country. And it felt every time I was there
like an unbelievably tolerant, embracing, caring country. And what Australian
Jews are dealing with now is just unbelievable. Um, and

(59:57):
what I would say to those people in the evangelical community,
let's say, who, and we know that the younger generation
of evangelicals is much less committed to Israel than the
parents generation. The Jewish community follows that, um, very closely.
And there's a lot of research about it in the
Jewish community for the very simple reason that in the
belt between Los Angeles and Dallas, there are more evangelical

(01:00:20):
Christians than there are Jews on planet Earth. Um, and
so the, the it is not Jews in America who
are ultimately going to shape American political policy. It's actually
more evangelicals. And you've heard Bibi Netanyahu say, I think wrongly,
not factually wrongly, but wrongly in terms of what it
means to be a Jew. Say, ah, you know, I'm

(01:00:41):
sick of these American Jews. They're always criticizing me left
and right. I got the evangelicals. I got as long
as I got the evangelicals, when I go to the
white House or Congress, I'm fine. Well, that's a short
sighted in terms of relationship with half the Jewish world,
but it's also very short sighted in terms of understanding
of the evangelical community. It's just not true. Younger evangelicals
are very much like a lot of younger Americans. They

(01:01:02):
are moving away from many of their parents political convictions,
and they're thinking for themselves, and they are very much
worried about what they perceive as being imbalances of power.
And in the American model, imbalances of power, whether it's
between light skinned people and dark skinned people, even though
Israel is actually mostly a dark skinned country, nobody thinks
of it that way. Um, so the white screen people

(01:01:25):
are always wrong, and the people that have the army
are always wrong, and the people that are quote unquote
settlers are always wrong. And there was a lot of stuff,
as you pointed out. You know, Aaron, as you pointed out,
I try to be very fair about this in Israel
from the inside. And I'm a patriot. But being a
patriot does not mean not being critical, any more than
being deeply in love with your spouse means never telling

(01:01:47):
them where you think they've made a mistake. I mean,
that's just what love is. You. You want the person
you love or the country you love or the child
you're raising to get better. And that's just not going
to happen with, you know, rubber stamping all your fabulous
you're fabulous. So I, I think that there's plenty here
that's not not to be proud of as there is
in every single country on the planet. But I would

(01:02:08):
say to these younger evangelicals, the Jewish people, for some reason,
that we don't understand, was hated by the Greeks, and
it was hated by the Persians, and it was hated
by the Romans, and it was hated by the Christians,
and it's hated by the Muslims. Now, um, there's anti-Semitism
in Japan, a lot of it. There's just no Jews
in Japan, I mean, so go figure. It's a very

(01:02:28):
strange thing, this thing called anti-Semitism. But history has shown
that when we leave our security and our future in
the hands of anyone else, disaster invariably happens. And that's
why October 7th was so devastating for this country, because
what happened on October 7th was what we thought we
had left behind in Europe. There was we knew there

(01:02:48):
would be battles. We knew Jews would die in battle.
That's always going to be the case here. But the
idea that that people could come and rape Jewish women
at will, that they could take wire and bind Jewish
women to their children and set them ablaze. That's Europe,
that's pogroms. That's the stuff that we left behind. And
it happened here. And that's what's so shattered here. And

(01:03:10):
we're going to take probably the rest of my lifetime
for this country to really fully come to terms with
the depth of that failure. But my argument to young
evangelicals would be that you should care about Israel, not
because Israel is perfect and you should care about Israel
not only because of theology, Allergy, perhaps. But you should
care about Israel because it's just because this is the

(01:03:33):
one people that history has shown that when it cannot
control its own destiny, terrible, terrible things invariably happen. And
the new example of that is the United States of America.
And if it can happen in America, it can happen anywhere.
And I, you know, I hope and pray it won't
get terrible, but it's pretty bad. And, um, so I

(01:03:56):
would just say to them, if you if you're a,
if you're a person of faith, then you should care
about justice and you should care about fairness, and you
should be smart and historically oriented and look at history.
That's why the Jews need a country of their own. Um.

S6 (01:04:10):
You know, and of course, we would say as Christians
that there's a spiritual reason behind this generations long hatred
of the Jewish people. Um, you know, there are several
maybe theological reasons. But chief among them, in our estimation,
being that Jesus is Jewish and that, you know, the
evil forces in the world have known that. Um, but
as you mentioned, the treatment of the Jewish people by

(01:04:31):
Christians so often throughout history is a really dark stain
on our history as as Christian people. Um, but it
also explains somewhat the hesitancy, maybe, of the Jewish people
to embrace Christian Jews, if you don't mind me using
that phrase. So in the United States, we have pockets
of these communities that sometimes refer to themselves as Messianic Jews.

(01:04:54):
So Jewish people in cultural identity, ethnic identity and in
religious identity as well, who maybe have chosen to embrace
the idea of the deity of Jesus. And I know
that there are small pockets of Messianic Jewish believers in
Israel as well. Can you tell us about how those
communities are viewed by the larger Jewish population in Israel?

S1 (01:05:18):
Yeah. I mean, like, I understand that for for Christians,
especially people who call themselves messianic, Messianic Jews or, you know,
No Jews or Jews and Jewish Christians or whatever. Um,
that that combination makes perfectly good sense to them. And
that's why they live their lives the way they live
their lives. And, you know, I'm a, you know, a
live and let live kind of person. I don't want
anybody judging my theology, and I'm not going to judge

(01:05:39):
somebody else's theology. But what I can judge is what
I understand Judaism to be right, and what my own
personal understanding of Judaism is. The minute that one takes
a deity other than God, as we understand God, um,
and attributes divinity to that, that's legit. It's just Christian legit.
It's not Jewish legit. And we're going to disagree about that.

(01:05:59):
And that's totally fine. I mean, I think we have
to learn as societies and as people to disagree with
each other and just not kill each other. You know,
you can see the world in one way. I can
see the world in a different way, and a third
person can see the world in a third way. That's fine. Um,
but I think that in Israel, which is basically much
more traditional instinctively, in other words, it's not more traditional.

(01:06:21):
I mean, the vast majority of Israelis are not religious,
and the vast majority of Israelis do not keep kosher homes.
And the vast majority of Israelis are not observant of
the Sabbath. Even having said that, um, there is no
law in Israel that you cannot drive your car in
Israel on Yom Kippur. There's no such law. You will
not see a car move in Israel, not a single car. Um,

(01:06:43):
there's just a sense this is the day in which
nobody does that. And I think if you legislated it,
people start driving right away because they would say, okay,
you're going to try to tell me what to do.
I'm going to show you. But there is a kind
of a traditionalism about this country. And I think that, um,
the average Israeli would say, uh, you know, if people
want to call themselves Messianic Jews, okay, you know, that's

(01:07:03):
their right. And they have a theology that speaks to
them and is meaningful to them. And we're not going
to go there, make a deal out of it. But
in Israel, which is a very traditional society that is
really kind of slicing against the grain, so to speak,
or rubbing or standing against the grain. And so they wisely,
I think, keep a fairly low profile. Um, they don't,

(01:07:25):
you know, nobody's looking to start anything. And so. But
I think if they did, if they started a major
missionary campaign here, there would be an outcry and, uh,
it would not be good for anybody. So the Mormons,
for example, there is a mormon program. I know that
that's a very big difference. But, um, you know, the
Mormons here who have a kind of missionary zeal about them,

(01:07:47):
especially outside of Israel, uh, we're basically told you can
have your Mormon they have a beautiful, beautiful campus, uh,
overlooking Mount Scopus and so forth. You can do all
of that, but there's just not going to be any
proselytizing here in Israel. And they've stuck to that. And,
you know, we go to concerts at the Mormon campus.
It's a beautiful place. Um, we've had students from the
Mormon campus over to our house for dinner because they're

(01:08:08):
friends of, you know, children of friends of friends. And
we've gotten to understand them and learn about them. And
really fascinating. And I wish Jewish young people would be
nearly half as polite as these young Mormon people were.
My God. But, um, I was really unbelievably wonderful. Um,
but I think Israel's not a country in which people
are going to take kindly to proselytizing of any other sort.

(01:08:29):
And so, yeah, there's some there's some Messianic Christians here.
They keep a fairly low profile. Israelis have much, much
bigger fish to fry than to go out and create
issues with them. Uh, you know, I'm not going to
I'm not going to pull any punches here. You know,
in my own theological view, the minute that one crosses
that line about the divinity of Jesus, it's a legitimate belief.
It's just not it's not it's not a Jewish belief,

(01:08:51):
in my view. But when Aaron says that's who he is,
that's who he is. And that's totally fine. I mean,
you know what? We're just two thoughtful people who try
to take faith seriously and try to live meaningful Jewish lives. Um,
I can explain to him why, in my worldview, that
crosses a line that I don't think I can still
call Jewish. And I'll explain to me why, in his view,

(01:09:12):
it's not crossing a line, or it enriches his Jewishness
or whatever. Right. I mean, I really mean that. I mean,
really that great. I don't think that in theological worlds,
trying to figure out who's right and wrong is a
very productive thing. In fact, that's what gets people to
kill each other. I think what I try to do
is understand somebody else's worldview, see why it's meaningful and

(01:09:32):
moving for them. Um, but in this particular country, which
is about the sustaining of the Jewish future, I would say, yeah,
this is probably a society that is not going to
look kindly on that kind of proselytizing or whatever, and
therefore it's in a very, very low flame. And it's
a very live and let live world in that regard. Yeah.

S4 (01:09:52):
I want to, Daniel, as you've been super gracious with
your time here, I want to bring this to just
sort of up to the date, up to the moment
news of where things actually stand here now, uh, you know, uh,
as Maria mentioned, uh, Bibi Netanyahu, uh, I think he still, uh,
it's Tuesday now, this is going to get posted at

(01:10:13):
the end of the week. Uh, I think he's still
in the States. He might be flying back home. Um,
you know, I saw on on, you know, Israel from
the inside. You talked about how his flight got delayed
because of internal Israeli politics with the Orthodox Jews and
things like that, and, and the real pressure to, uh,
end the war, uh, in, uh, in at least in Gaza, um,

(01:10:38):
where do things stand right now? Internally in Israel and
in Israel politics. Um, that especially with, with Bibi Netanyahu's
future as prime minister and if not him, who's then
going to step and who's who's the person behind him?
And will he have his closest relationship with the United
States and things like that?

S1 (01:10:57):
Yeah. Well, those are all really great questions. And if
we want to keep this going until you post it
on Friday, then I think we can have that. You know,
we can work that out, but I suspect you're going
to run out of tape, even though I know we're
not doing tapes anymore. But here's what I would say
about it, really very briefly. Bebe, uh, was very unpopular, um,
after the seventh, obviously, it was a huge failure of
the government, and not just in the seventh, but the

(01:11:18):
eighth or ninth or 10th, you know, people needed things.
The government was really out of it was just stunned
and it was not able to do anything. Um, there
were the rock solid supporters who never wavered, who said, yeah,
terrible thing happened, but he's the guy now. A lot
more people think he's the guy because of what happened
in Iran. And they really do believe that Bibi and
Ron Dermer were the ones who were able to convince
Donald Trump to do what he did in Iran with

(01:11:41):
the B-2s, um, which I believe was the right thing
to do. How effective it was. I don't know yet, but, um,
I think it was the right thing to do. So
he has gotten a bump in the polls. There's no
question about that. But it's not a huge bump. Interestingly enough, um,
and even if he can bring peace with Saudi Arabia
and with Syria and all of that is very much

(01:12:02):
in the cards, which we'll get Donald Trump, the Nobel
Peace Prize, probably, um, and it might get Bibi Netanyahu
the Nobel Peace Prize, I don't know. I just don't know.
But maybe they would split it. It's happened in the past.
Begin and Sadat split it. Rabin and Arafat split it.
I mean, the fact that Arafat got it, I think
cheapens it dramatically. Um, but whatever, you know, the world

(01:12:22):
does what the world does. Um, so it's very hard
to say. But here's what's interesting about the polls. The
polls are showing a slight bump for Bibi, not a
huge one that the Likud, which is his party, would
probably get. I think it was about 26 seats in
the Knesset. It's it's 120 seat parliament. So you need
a coalition of 61 seats to be able to form
a government. So he would get, I think, 26 and

(01:12:43):
then some of the other parties, whatever. But the, the
parties that are now the opposition, without the Arab parties
still get about 61 seats. So Bibi would have the
biggest big block, the biggest single block. Excuse me, but
he wouldn't, at least as of the polls right now,
have enough to put together a government. There's a lot
of discussion in Israel. You know, Bibi was, um, perceived

(01:13:05):
for a very long time as a very fallen man,
a once great spokesperson for Israel, a person who, you know,
he's been indicted on a whole bunch of things and,
you know, it's either guilty or not guilty. But these
trials are just dragging on forever. Um, and a lot
of people say, you know, he may get convicted, he
may not, but when there's smoke, there's enough smoke, there's
a fire somewhere. That's what people say. Um, and that
may be fair. That may not be fair, but there

(01:13:26):
was a real sense that his legacy had been destroyed.
And literally during while we're sitting in those safe rooms
that you asked about, you know, earlier in our conversation, Aaron,
you know, what are we doing in the safe rooms?
We're looking at our phones, trying to see when we're
allowed to leave because they tell you, they send you
these these, you know, notifications on your phone that you
can go out of your safe room. But we're also
like talking about, my God, what's happening here politically. And

(01:13:48):
a lot of people were saying, My God, this guy
just resurrected his his legacy. Now the question is, do
you go out when your stock is high? In other words,
some people are saying he's going to now he's going
to try to get himself vindicated legally. He's going to
get the Nobel Peace Prize or make it possible for
Trump to get the Nobel Peace Prize. And then he's
going to step aside. He'll go out at the top. And,
you know, he's already 76, 77. He's not in good health.

(01:14:11):
It's a well well-kept, bad secret. He travels with a cardiologist,
and apparently, I'm told, a urologist and a general doctor.
So when he gets on that plane and flies around,
there's a whole troop of them. Which was not the case.
Formerly he's had a pacemaker put in during this term.
He had prostate surgery during this term. Um, he's not young.

(01:14:32):
He's in his late 70s. And if he ran again,
it would be when he's 77. That would take him
into his early 80s as a prime minister. Um, a
lot of people think it's going to be his swan song.
I don't think so. I think that it is not
in his, um. And I hope he will take that by.
I hope he does resign at the top and leave
with the legacy that a person who's devoted his whole

(01:14:52):
life to the Jewish state deserves, even if I am very, very,
very critical of many of the things that he's done. Um,
but he's comported himself pretty remarkably in these last several
months and throughout much of his career until things went south.
But I don't think he's going to step aside. I
think that he, um, has come to believe a number
of things, that he's the best person for the job,

(01:15:13):
and his his devotion to the State of Israel requires
him to, you know, if called upon, I will serve.
And a lot of people are going to call upon him. Um,
I think his wife very much wants him to remain
prime minister, and that's not a small factor. And I'll
just point out that if you've read Jake Tapper's book, um,
Original Sin, which is the one about the Biden health

(01:15:35):
cover up, uh, it's very clear that Joe Biden played
a very, very central role in convincing Joe Biden, I think, cruelly, uh,
to run for president again. Wives and spouses in a
in a good marriage. And by all indications, you know,
Bibi's got a decent marriage, and I think the Bidens
have a decent marriage also. Um, and I wish those
marriages well, obviously, even if I don't necessarily agree with

(01:15:57):
the politics of one of the people in that marriage.
But spouses have an enormous influence here. And Sarah Netanyahu
has everybody knows a tremendous amount of influence on Bibi.
And she's younger than he is, and she very much,
I think, wants him to keep at it. So I
think if you had a call an election right now
and elections were next Sunday, what you would see is

(01:16:18):
Bibi would run, um, he would get the largest single
block of votes, but he might not be able to
form a government, which will put us pretty much right
back to where we were when we had five elections
in the space of two and a half years, right
before the judicial reform, and then October 7th thing. So
I always, you know, I've said throughout this, throughout this conversation,

(01:16:40):
which I very much enjoyed and for which I'm very grateful.
You know, the Jews have a long memory and they
learn from history. I think we're better at learning from
long term history than we are from short term history.
I think we're about to repeat some very unhelpful political
dynamics here, and there's been a lot of horse trading
that I won't go into right now. And who's leaving
which smaller parties and forming parties of their own. But

(01:17:00):
the likely candidates are Naftali Bennett, who was once prime
minister and pretty widely regarded as a decent prime minister.
Um can like him, not like him. But he was.
He was honest. He worked hard. He appointed smart people. Um.
There's Benny, there's, um. Eisenkot. Gadi Eisenkot, who is a
former chief of staff of the Army who fought in
this war, lost a nephew in battle and then lost

(01:17:21):
his own son in battle. Um, who dropped out of
Benny Gantz's party last week because he wants to be
able to run his own party. Now the polls are showing.
What if these two guys ran together? We're not going
to go into all of that, and the polls are
going to change a lot between now and election time. Um,
so we shall see. As you mentioned there in Bibi's um,
departure from Israel earlier this week was delayed because at

(01:17:43):
the very last minute, sort of as he was, you know,
going through security, which of course he does not do. But,
you know, as he was getting ready to walk on
the plane, he got word that the ultra-Orthodox parties were
pulling a fast one about their wanting a bill that
would exempt their sons from from serving in the army.
And he just couldn't leave because he had to take
care of that. In the meantime, that thing could still

(01:18:03):
blow up very, very easily. So he's he's far from,
you know, having, you know, circled the bases and stepping
on the home plate. We'll see. One thing this country
is not is boring.

S2 (01:18:16):
Well, this is this has been so informative, Daniel. We're
grateful for for your time today and for your continued
reporting from Israel, for our listeners who want to want
to get more of your content, uh, what's the best
way for them to to find you and interact with you?

S1 (01:18:30):
The best way is to go to Daniel gordis.com, and
you can join the Substack list there and take it
from there.

S2 (01:18:39):
Great. Well, Daniel Gordis, thanks so much for for all
that you do. And thanks for joining us today on
the narrative. Thank you for tuning in to this episode
of the narrative presented by CSV and produced by Wessler Media.
If you found today's episode insightful, leave us a review
or rating and subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. We're
your hosts, Mike Andrews, Aaron Burr, and David Mahan, and

(01:19:00):
we'll see you next time on the narrative.

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