--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noel King. On October 18th, President Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv.
--:-- Benjamin Netanyahu: I come to Israel with a single message. You're not alone. You are not alone. As long as the United States stands and we will stand forever, we'll not let you ever be alone.
--:-- Noel King: Now, in that speech, Biden urged the protection of civilian lives in Gaza. Israel's military campaign in Gaza has since claimed many lives, including those of around 3,600 kids.
--:-- Michael Koplow: Biden's support for Bibi may be slipping. At an event in Minneapolis last night, a woman interrupted Biden's speech. Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now.
--:-- Noel King: And Biden responded, I think we need a pause. The White House said later, that's a pause to get hostages out and to get aid in.
--:-- Michael Koplow: And then Politico reports today that Biden and his inner circle are saying Netanyahu's days are numbered.
--:-- Noel King: Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth.
--:-- Michael Koplow: As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp.
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--:-- Michael Koplow: This is Today Explained. My name is Michael Koplow, and I am the chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum, which is a policy research group that is dedicated to supporting American foreign policy toward a secure Jewish and democratic Israel.
--:-- Michael Koplow: And we believe that the way to do that is through an eventual two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since really 1993 and what is known as the Oslo process, the thrust of American foreign policy toward Israel and the Palestinians has been to figure out how the two sides can actually get to this two-state outcome where you will have Israel living inside secure borders, you will have a state of Palestine that fulfills and respects legitimate Palestinian nationalism, and you can resolve this conflict that has really been dominating the Middle East for decades.
--:-- Michael Koplow: So over the weekend, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent out a tweet at about 1 a.m. in the morning, Israel time. And then he deleted the tweet. In it, he said his military leaders hadn't warned him about the possibility of an attack. And he said they were, in fact, the ones responsible. He later apologized, but it seemed like a bit of a moment to have the prime minister of Israel publicly blame his defense chiefs and then have to walk that back.
--:-- Michael Koplow: What does that tell us about what is happening inside the Israeli government right now? Prime Minister Netanyahu has been focused not only during this conflict, but for years on figuring out how he can remain in power. And there have been a number of things that have challenged his hold on the premiership, not least of which are the fact that he is at the moment in the midst of a criminal trial on three separate counts.
--:-- Michael Koplow: Now, this has never happened in Israel before, that a sitting prime minister has been charged with offenses as serious as these. Netanyahu is alleged to have used his power as the then communications minister, as well as prime minister to give regulatory benefits to a media magnate here. And in return, Netanyahu, according to the indictment, was demanding favorable coverage.
--:-- Michael Koplow: He's been able to survive that up until now. But the October 7th attacks were the most shocking event, I think it's fair to say, in Israel's history. On October 7th, you had 1,400 Israelis killed in one day. And so this is seen as a monumental failure. And given that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been in power with the exception of a year and a half interregnum since 2009, it's logical that many Israelis look at what happened and say that the prime minister must have some sort of responsibility for this.
--:-- Michael Koplow: And the prime minister has been trying very hard to avoid saying that he is responsible. And that's how we get to this tweet. And he deleted the tweet a couple of hours later and actually came out and apologized, which is relatively rare for Prime Minister Netanyahu. But it fed into this widespread perception that he is certainly consumed with fighting this war and an Israeli victory. But that he also seems to be consumed with doing what he can to avoid blame and thinking about what his political career is going to look like on the other end.
--:-- Michael Koplow: The New York Times and other news outlets have reported that Israeli security officials tried to warn Netanyahu that his domestic policies were causing political turmoil and that that was weakening the country's security. If in fact that's true, what could that mean for Netanyahu politically?
--:-- Michael Koplow: Netanyahu is in a real bind because Israelis do indeed view October 7th as an enormous failure. And it's very tough to be the prime minister who oversees something like this and survives. Now, one of the difficulties is that replacing an Israeli prime minister before a scheduled election who does not actually want to resign is exceedingly difficult.
--:-- Michael Koplow: I think that in previous times almost everybody would expect the prime minister as soon as the fighting is over to step down. And I don't think that we can assume that that will be the case with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The only thing that I intend to have resign is Hamas. We're going to resign them to the dustbin of history.
--:-- Michael Koplow: How would you describe Israel's military strategy in Gaza? What are the stated and maybe even unstated objectives here? Israel wants to do two things. It wants to degrade Hamas' military capabilities and remove Hamas from power entirely. But whichever one of these it is, make sure that Hamas does not present a security threat to Israel going forward.
--:-- Michael Koplow: And it also wants to secure the release of nearly 250 hostages who are being held by Hamas. Men, women, children, elderly. But it may not be effective in getting the hostages released and back to Israel safe and sound.
--:-- Michael Koplow: On the other hand, if you negotiate with Hamas for the hostages and the deal that Hamas has publicly floated is this idea of what's being called in Israel all for all. Hamas requesting and saying that they would be happy to immediately release all of those held captive if and as long as all of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are released.
--:-- Michael Koplow: Of course, there's more than 6,000 of them. That will get the hostages back, presumably, assuming that that deal is actually a real offer. But it will probably mean that you have to at least temporarily suspend military operations. There still is majority support for a ground operation, but it has lessened because most Israelis tend to think that if you want the hostages back, that's going to have to mean some sort of halt or cessation of the military operation in Gaza.
--:-- Michael Koplow: We don't know how long this war will last or, in fact, where it will lead. But with that in mind, how do you think this changes the legacy of the already controversial Benjamin Netanyahu? Before this, Netanyahu was known as the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history.
--:-- Michael Koplow: He was known as someone who dominated Israeli politics for decades. He was known as the person who really modernized Israel's economy as finance minister in the early 2000s. And his nickname was Mr. Security because many Israelis saw him as being the greatest safeguard of Israeli safety.
--:-- Michael Koplow: And he has also historically been a really cautious prime minister when it comes to the use of military force, the most cautious in Israel's history. And so he had this image, which I think in many ways was well-earned, of presiding over a period in which Israelis were not dealing with terrorism inside of Israel, in which Israel did not have to fight wars on its borders.
--:-- Michael Koplow: Since October 7th, Israelis have a very different view of him. Yahoo has not only been on trial, but he divided Israeli society in an unprecedented way through pushing through a judicial overhaul that was extremely controversial and that was also extremely unpopular.
--:-- Michael Koplow: And now we have this unprecedented security disaster when Israel suffered its heaviest and most damaging and most psychologically scarring blow in its history. And ultimately, that is going to be his legacy.
--:-- Noel King: That was Michael Koplow with the Israel Policy Forum. Coming up on Today Explained, a father's view of this crisis. Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
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--:-- Noel King: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say.
--:-- Noel King: So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything, from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more.
--:-- Noel King: Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com. You're listening to Today Explained. My name is Noah Efron, and I am a professor of science and technology studies.
--:-- Noah Efron: I'm a candidate for Tel Aviv's city council, and I am a podcaster, have a podcast called The Promised Podcast on Israeli politics and culture.
--:-- Noel King: Noah, can you describe your political views? I understand you're on the left. What characterizes the Israeli left? What do you believe?
--:-- Noah Efron: Well, I don't know if I can say that I'm completely representative of the left, but my views are that our future is somehow linked to the future of Palestinians here and that any future that is safe and secure where we thrive can only happen if Palestinians are safe and secure and can thrive.
--:-- Noah Efron: And so that means necessarily an end to the occupation. In my mind, the future that I imagine and that I hope for is a future where there are two states side by side, Palestine and Israel.
--:-- Noah Efron: You know, I'm a college professor, so obviously I'm a Marxist of some sort. I'm a socialist. And I pretty far to the left about economic issues about issues of social and economic justice.
--:-- Noah Efron: I also identify as a Zionist. I believe strongly that there ought to be a Jewish state whatever that means.
--:-- Noel King: Now that you sort of characterized where you sit and where you coming from, I want to ask you about the events of October 7th. So there is this brutal attack by Hamas on Israel.
--:-- Noah Efron: Where were you and how did you learn what had happened?
--:-- Noah Efron: So at 6:30 in the morning when the first missile attack siren went off, I was in bed. And I got up and I gathered the dog, Lucy, who shivers in terror from the sirens.
--:-- Noah Efron: And we went into the stairwell because our building was built in 1936 and does not have a fortified room. And we let the 10 minutes pass.
--:-- Noah Efron: And after that, I got ready to go to services. And so I just ignored the fact that missiles had just fallen. But a little bit later, my phone rang.
--:-- Noah Efron: And though I don't usually use the phone on the Sabbath, I saw that it was from my boy who was in college in California. And I figured that if he was calling on the Sabbath, not that it means anything to him, but he knows it means something to me, it had to be an emergency.
--:-- Noah Efron: So I answered it. And he told me that Hamas fighters had poured into the farming villages and towns outside of Gaza.
--:-- Noah Efron: And he said that the news was saying that 22 people were killed, which was an ungraspably high number for a terrorist attack. Six is terrible.
--:-- Noah Efron: And he told me that he'd already gotten a message from his reserve unit here calling him back to the country. So he was buying a ticket.
--:-- Noah Efron: Could he have my credit card number to get on the first plane from LA to Tel Aviv? And at first, I discouraged him saying, it sounds like it's a terrible terrorist attack, but won't it be over before he even gets there? Is it worth coming?
--:-- Noah Efron: And he said, Abba, I'm coming. And after that, I began to scroll through the phone, like almost everyone here, and see this thing unfolding in front of my eyes on social media as people posted, we're in our fortified room, terrorists are outside the door, what should we do?
--:-- Noah Efron: Or we're in our fortified room and our house has been set on fire, should we leave or should we stay? And people posting, my son is down there, can anyone help him? Will someone go to this kibbutz and find my son?
--:-- Noah Efron: And you're following these stories as they unfold from minute to minute over this long day. And the news says that it's not 22 people, but 45 people who were killed.
--:-- Noah Efron: And then it's 80 people. And then it's 120 people. And then you start to see the very first videos that Hamas actually posted of people being thrown onto motorcycles and dragged back off to Gaza, unclear whether they're alive or dead.
--:-- Noah Efron: And my boy is on the way to the airport to come here so that he can be part of this. And he's on an airplane and he's coming. And it was the saddest day of my life and then the beginning of a period that still hasn't ended that is the saddest period in my life.
--:-- Noah Efron: When I went to the airport the next day to pick up the boy after his plane landed, and by then, you know, it was now, I guess, 36 hours since the thing had begun, then there was a lot more information, and the news really started to come in about that music festival outside of Kibbutz Reim, down in the south, where in the end we now know that somewhere between 260 and 280 people were killed.
--:-- Noah Efron: And their pictures were starting to appear in social media. So I was scrolling through them and every one of them looked like my boy in that they were all in their early 20s and they were all gorgeous.
--:-- Noah Efron: They were all illuminated from within in the way that young people are. By the time my boy came through and I hugged him, he just looked like, just exactly like any one of those 200-odd people who were dead.
--:-- Noah Efron: And it was impossible to make sense of. And then you go into the days that followed were just days of funeral after funeral after funeral. Everywhere you looked, there was a picture.
--:-- Noah Efron: Everywhere you listened, there was a story. And of course, Israel being what it is, everyone went to school with someone whose brother or cousin or child was killed.
--:-- Noah Efron: And so there was no escaping it at all. And then because the state largely stopped functioning, it took days and days and days for the institutions of the state to address all the huge needs of people living and dead immediately after the attack.
--:-- Noah Efron: Then we were all pushed into this kind of manic activity to help the people who needed help. So a notice came over a WhatsApp group that they needed people to dig graves because, of course, they can't dig 1,400 graves in two days.
--:-- Noah Efron: They need clothes. They need food. People going into the army need warm clothes. It became an economy of what is mine is yours.
--:-- Noah Efron: The meaning of property shifted in no time at all, where suddenly if somebody asked you, do you have a bed because there's a family that needs to sleep all night in the hospital near their eight-year-old who lost his leg, then you gave the mattresses that you had.
--:-- Noah Efron: And there was this feeling as though the world has ended and there is a new world there and the grief is enormous overpowering, but the need is the only thing that there is that's bigger than that.
--:-- Noah Efron: And I pick up my boy at the airport and take him home to change his clothes and then take him right to the army. And 36 hours before that, he's a college kid at USC and now he's a soldier going down to outside Gaza to join his unit and God knows what will happen.
--:-- Noah Efron: And I am insane with worry. I mean, I don't use that word insane as an intensifier. It precise I have lost my wits with worry about that boy who I seem to have grown fond of over his 22 years.
--:-- Noel King: Noah, I hear you saying you are insane with worry in Israel. You have a son involved in this military campaign.
--:-- Noel King: And so I want to ask you about what has happened since this awful attack. Israel then launches a ground invasion into Gaza. That invasion is controversial, which you know. Are you in support of this response by your government?
--:-- Noah Efron: If you ask me if I think it's the best and most proper thing for my government to have done, then my answer is I just don't know.
--:-- Noah Efron: But if you ask, like you did ask, am I in support of the invasion now that it is underway, then the answer is yes.
--:-- Noah Efron: And a word about that, because a lot of people think that the aim of this invasion is to seek revenge, and it is not. I've been to these shivas where parents are talking about their dead children, and I have heard no one use the word revenge at all.
--:-- Noah Efron: I know that a lot of people think that Israelis are unaware or uncaring about the numbers of Palestinians killed by this invasion, which, as I speak to you today, is about 9,000.
--:-- Noah Efron: But by the time people hear this, it will be even higher, which is such a huge number. And every Palestinian civilian killed is a tragedy. Every one is a whole world.
--:-- Noah Efron: And every kid killed, there is its own kind of cataclysm, just like every innocent Jew killed. But this war, as I think most all Israelis see it, is not a war against Palestinian civilians.
--:-- Noah Efron: It is against Hamas. And Hamas is a brutal fundamentalist death cult that has said for decades that they will stop at nothing until Israel is destroyed.
--:-- Noah Efron: They made me believe them. And it might be the case that so long as Hamas remains, no one in this region, not Jews, not Palestinians, will ever know peace.
--:-- Noah Efron: And if that is the case, it is possible, though I don't know to say that it's true, that by some infernal calculus, it might be best in the long run to destroy Hamas, even though hundreds of Israelis will die doing it and thousands and thousands of Palestinians.
--:-- Noel King: Did this attack change your beliefs at all? Did it change the beliefs of the left?
--:-- Noah Efron: I think that for most of the left, it shattered the illusion that we are fellow travelers with most of the left in America and in Europe, who seem to have a hard time saying without equivocating that burning babies is bad in all circumstances as an absolute, or that taking nine-month-olds or 90-year-olds as captives is wrong.
--:-- Noah Efron: I think that the realization that we are working from a very, very different moral system than the leftists abroad is something profound.
--:-- Noah Efron: I think that maybe we'll understand those deep, deep, deep existential fears that a lot of other Israelis who don't find it so easy to say we must end the occupation and the sooner the better feel.
--:-- Noel King: Okay. I've seen polling, as I'm sure you have, suggesting that Israelis are very unhappy with how the government handled this situation, both what was happening before and what's happening now.
--:-- Noel King: What do you think this translates to politically? Does this translate to the ouster in an election of Benjamin Netanyahu? Does it translate to something sooner than that? Where do you think this is headed politically?
--:-- Noah Efron: Well, I think that it definitely leads to the ouster of Benjamin Netanyahu to the end of his premiership and political career.
--:-- Noah Efron: The only question is, when? Will it come only after the guns have fallen silent, or will it come while the war is still underway?
--:-- Noah Efron: And I think that we will hear more and more calls for Netanyahu's immediate resignation while the war is still happening, which would be unprecedented here, where we tend to close ranks whenever there's anything like a war or an attack.
--:-- Noah Efron: But then everything about our situation is completely unprecedented now.
--:-- Noel King: Do you think Israel will be changed forever by this attack on October 7th? Can it be the same country that it was?
--:-- Noah Efron: Well, changed, yes. I mean, I think that just the grief and the pain of 1,400 murders will leave a mark that will never entirely fade.
--:-- Noah Efron: When historians look back on this, the question of whether this was a point at which history turned even for the worse or history turned for the better, I think that that is an open question, and that is a question that it remains in our hands to determine.
--:-- Noah Efron: And I think that we will continue forward, changed, but not necessarily worse, save for all the suffering that will follow us for generations.
--:-- Noel King: That was Noah Efron. He hosts The Promised podcast, and he's a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
--:-- Noel King: Today's show was produced by Avishai Artsy and Amanda Llewellyn. It was edited by Miranda Kennedy and fact-checked by Laura Bullard.
--:-- Noel King: David Herman was our engineer. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
--:-- Noel King: Videos, social posts, flyers, and more. Meet Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content. Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business.
