Three Years After October 7

Neri 0:04

Shalom, man, welcome to the Israel Policy Pod. I'm Neri Zilber, a journalist based in Tel Aviv and a policy advisor to Israel Policy Forum. So this week we're officially marking three years to the October 7th attack. There's uh definitely a clear before and after for all of us with respect to that date, uh, personally, professionally, nationally, internationally, but it's even more true for my guest this week, Amir Tibon, which is why I really wanted him to come back on, especially this week. Amir is, of course, a journalist for Haretz and the author of the prize-winning book The Gates of Gaza, a story of betrayal, survival, and hope in Israel's borderlands. He's currently working on a new book about Israel's future, and way back in the day, he was the co-author, along with Grant Rumley, of a terrific biography of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas titled The Last Palestinian. It's a fantastic, fantastic book. For those who aren't aware of the story, Amir and his family are survivors of the October 7th massacre after Hamas terrorists invaded their kibbutz of Nachal Oz in southern Israel. It's a remarkable, harrowing, courageous story that Amir relays in the book and in many interviews in recent years. This week, I wanted him to come on less to take a look back and more to take a look forward at why he and his family recently returned to live in, yes, Nachaloz, what life is like right now in the Gaza border region, three years after the Hamas attack. And of course, I wanted to get his take on the upcoming election on October 27th. But before we get to Amir, let's do a little reporter's notebook segment where I take you behind the scenes and on the ground into the stories that are shaping current events and the big policy moves here in Israel and beyond.

The FlyDubai Hijack Fiasco

Neri 2:10

So uh last Wednesday morning, everything seemed relatively fine and relatively normal as these things uh go here in Israel these days. We had just finished up the Jewish high holidays with the country getting back to uh well, regular programming. Everyone had their eyes squarely set on election day with the campaign uh entering the home stretch. And then Wednesday morning, we're started seeping out that a plane had possibly been hijacked somewhere between Dubai and Tel Aviv. I'm sure everyone is fully aware of the ins and outs of the story with the fly Dubai plane, attempted hijacking and an attempted crash. It's a miracle, an absolute miracle, but it didn't end in disaster. As we all know, uh it's all due to the bravery of Israeli passengers on board and that one Indian pilot. So uh disaster averted, a miracle ensued. But in recent days it's become more and more clear that it wasn't just a miracle, it was a fiasco, truly a fiasco, and a massive security failure by several governments across the world, but especially by this Israeli government. And in recent days, the joint relief of the first, say, 24-48 hours has given way to anger and recriminations and an almost hourly blame game, yes, inside this Israeli government. And uh for good reason, I'd argue. There are red flags everywhere about the system for uh foreign aviation entering into Israel as a whole, and with this Omani co-pilot in particular. Something like this shouldn't have come anywhere near close to actually happening. But uh, why am I telling you all of this, much of which you all already probably know, for uh for two reasons. First, uh it's an indication of how narratives, but especially political narratives, can shift quickly and change uh a dime here in Israel. After the entire incident came to a miraculous and positive end, with 170 plus Israelis still uh alive and well, thankfully, the conventional wisdom was that this helped Bibi Netanyahu's political fortunes. Uh, he quickly rushed that same Wednesday night to Ben Gurion Airport here in Tel Aviv to meet some of the passengers and heroes, uh, playing really the father figure to the nation. There was a sense of uh national unity and national pride in the air. Uh, really, it was it was palpable uh after everyone came back safe and sound. Uh there was definitely no more talk of warnings received or not received way back in September of 2023. That was dominating the conversation early, early last week. There were subsequent tough statements and talk about security and tracking down whoever was behind the attempted attack, et cetera, et cetera. This was in the immediate wake of uh the safe return of the passengers. Uh, and that was the initial narrative. And then it all turned. Since the weekend, all anyone can talk about here is the ineptitude, mismanagement, and corruption of the current government, uh, in almost allowing all of this to happen. Five days after the fact, and as I'm recording this on Monday afternoon, no Israeli official has spoken publicly to the public and provided real answers. They're just a blame game being played out mostly in the media. And now BB is under major, major pressure. Which ties into my second point. Just like no one thought that last Wednesday, an Omani terrorist pilot flying for an Emirati airline would try to turn a plane full of Israelis into a mini 9-11. We need to be very, very humble and cautious about predicting what could happen ahead of election day here to sway the minds of the Israeli voting public and yes, the results of the upcoming election. If the last three years of madness are sadly any indication, we need to be prepared for anything. Fair warning. So with that, let's get to Amir Thibon.

Back On The Nahal Oz Porch

Neri 6:22

Hi, Amir. Welcome back to the podcast. Hi, Neri. It's good to see you, my friend. It's really good to see you, Amir. It's been way too long. For the people only listening to us right now, you're missing out because uh we also are a video podcast, and on YouTube you can see Amir sitting on his porch in kibbutz Nachaloz on the Gaza border. We're gonna get the story of uh his return to Nachaloz, but we're obviously marking three years to October 7th. The the scoop, yes. The scoop, yes. Um I don't think I don't think it was kept under wraps, but uh I want to hear the whole story, uh as I'm sure our audience does, especially with uh the three-year anniversary of October 7th uh coming up this week, and we're recording on Sunday night. Amir, let's get right to it. Let's start with those events almost exactly three years ago. Tell us uh about you, your family, and uh what happened in your kibbutz in Nachalos.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Um, well, you know, uh we are marking three years now, and this is a very complicated week because uh all the uh yard sites, as you will call it, uh, you know, as karot, what we say here in Israel, uh it's all happening this week. Um I I attended one today, I have another one tomorrow. We have a ceremony here in the kibbutz on Tuesday, and this is a kibbutz that lost 16 of its people on October 7 out of a total community population of around 450. And um in this part of Israel, uh, you know, the Gaza border area, the Gaza envelope, sometimes you call it, people are always uh connected not just to their own community, but also to surrounding kibbutzim. And uh so there are all these memorials as well for people in neighboring communities like Kfaraza, Beri. It's really endless. It's a difficult tweak. And we we just got back here um, you know, over the summer, so I would say maybe two months ago. We are still adjusting to this new reality of uh being back in our home, being back uh where it all happened. Of course, if if people are not familiar with the story of Nachalos on October 7th, story of uh my family on October 7th, they can read uh my book, The Gates of Gaza, and and get the full story. Absolutely. But uh these days we are writing a new chapter uh by coming back here and trying to recover from what happened and and take part in the rebuilding of this place after everything we've been through.

Neri 9:03

And absolutely, Amir, I want to ask you in just a second about your uh your return, you and your family's return to to the kibbutz. Uh, and for all of our audience that aren't aware, they should be aware, but if you're not aware, Amir and his family were there on the morning of October 7th, um, and they survived uh the massacre along with the help of his heroic father and mother, uh Noam Tibon, uh retired general, uh, who went down there and fought his way through uh and helped Amir and his family get out. So, yes, we're not gonna dwell on the events of the past of the last three years, uh, but did anything happen? Yeah. No, no, but I'm curious after after your survival, you and your family's harrowing experience, you were evacuated to a different kibbutz. I mean, you only just returned to Nachaloz. So, how have the last few years been before your return?

Three Years Of War’s Toll

SPEAKER_03 9:55

It's been a very difficult three years, Neri. I I don't need to tell you. It's been three years of war and devastation and heartbreak and pain. Uh, you see everything that happened during this period. And you know, we in Israel are very focused on our part of the story. I know many of our listeners in the US are uh also very much aware of the events in Gaza and uh the devastation that the war brought over there and the loss of life on the other side, and that's something I'm I'm also very aware of. But if we look at it from the Israeli perspective, I think yesterday um the military put out official numbers saying that since October 7, Israel has lost uh 1,300 soldiers. These are numbers we have not seen, certainly in such a short period of time since the Yom Kippur war. And we are still these days dealing with the repercussions of this. We have, I think, the highest number in many, many years of suicide uh cases among uh soldiers and reservists. We had a very disturbing and sad incident just a few days ago, not far from here inside Gaza, where two IDF soldiers were killed because of a malfunction of an IDF drone. We had uh recently some uh shooting attacks in the West Bank, and we see what's happening with the violence taking place there and the lawlessness and the anarchy. So, in many ways, the the events that began on October 7 are still with us three years later. It's still not over. It's changing, it's uh taking different shape, uh, but we still live through it uh every day to some degree.

Neri 11:48

That's true, I think, for all Israelis, also I imagine um definitely for Gazans and other Palestinians. Uh, but not all of us live on the border with the Gaza Strip Amir. Uh, did you have any second thoughts or third thoughts or fourth thoughts about moving back to that part of Israel, southern Israel?

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Uh our

Choosing To Move Back Home

SPEAKER_03 12:07

inclination was always to go back, but we had reservations, we had deliberations, there was a real dilemma here. First, we waited for the war to end. Uh, we we did not want to go back as long as the war was raging, and certainly before the hostages, including our friend Omri Miran, who was kidnapped here from this kibbutz, had returned. And then once the hostages uh were finally, you know, the last group was returned uh just a year, a year ago in October 2025, it was already in the midst of a school year, and we didn't want to move our uh daughters from the kindergarten. They were already going to in northern Israel, where our community had been evacuated to. And decision time for us really came in the spring because we had to enroll Galia, my eldest daughter, to first grade. And we wanted her to start first grade, to start this new and exciting chapter of her life with her friends here in Nachal Oz. And that's when we really had to sit and think about the meaning of coming back here. And uh there are very, very basic questions you have to ask yourself, Neri. Like, for example, can I sleep in this house where my family was almost murdered three years ago? Can I go to work in the morning? Can I drive to Tel Aviv and leave my younger daughter in the kindergarten of this kibbutz? It's not easy.

Neri 13:37

No.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

But after thinking about it and looking at the different options, we decided to give it a try and to try to come back here and rebuild our life in this place with all the complications that it entails. We love this kibbutz, we love this area of Israel, we feel at home here. We have a wonderful house that we built here and we wanted to return to. And I hope that uh this will be seen over time as a good decision for our family, but we are still in trying mode right now when we're speaking. And you just moved back a few months ago? Over the summer, yeah. We wanted to start the school year here. And so that was the the motivating the force at the end of the day to make a decision. There are many things here that we are very happy about, but uh there are also many challenges that remain.

Neri 14:28

That uh undoubtedly must be true.

Life In The Gaza Envelope Now

Neri 14:31

Amir, as somebody who actually lives back there now, uh I'm sure a lot of our audience and people following the news, uh, there's a lot of coverage, including by myself, of uh the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks down in the Gaza envelope and all those communities like Niroz, Berry. Um, and then with the evacuated communities, um, especially over the first year or so and the returning hostages. But what is it like now in Nachalos and the Gaza Envelope communities? I mean, what is it like living there? What are uh has everyone everyone returned? Is it is the kibbutz full? Is it empty? Give us a sense of of what life is like in this part of uh southern Israel.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

So, first of all, I hope the noise that's uh you're hearing now it's just uh the irrigation in my uh in my garden here. It's not uh interfering with our conversation.

Neri 15:24

I was like, I haven't had one guest uh that is recorded from you know the Gaza border in kibutz like Nachaloz. So we're gonna make an exception for this. It's fine.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Yeah, yeah, I maybe you can hear it. It's just the water sprinklers uh working. Um, but uh you know, as for the situation, the farther away you get from Gaza, the higher the return rate of residents. You know, the communities that are three and four and five kilometers, first of all, most of them were not impacted as directly and strongly on October 7. And second of all, over there you can see a return rate of 90-95%. When you get closer and you start getting to those communities that are very much on the border, literally, and that were the most affected by October 7, that's where you have a more difficult story, a more painful story to tell. And if you go today to Kfaraza, which is just to the north of Nachalos or Beri, just to the south, and if you continue a little more south to Niroz and Tcholit, which is even more down toward the Egyptian border, those communities are still uh far from uh fully back. I think you have, you know, in the best of them, you will have maybe a third of the people have returned, and probably even less than that. Nachal Oz is somewhat of an anomaly. It's very, very close to Gaza. In fact, it's the closest of all the communities on the border. And it was it went through a very difficult uh day on October 7. Not as bad as Kfaraza and Beri and Niroz, but pretty bad. And yet the return rate, the last I checked, is around 80%, um, which is pretty high. It is important to say that the average age of the community has gone up, meaning the people who are not coming back are overwhelmingly younger people, people with children, families. But if you look even at the neighborhood where we live and that I'm speaking from right now, there are 12 homes in this neighborhood that were all built, as new homes for young families and finished in 2022. Out of the dozen homes, 11 are now occupied. And uh one sadly remains empty. Um, and that's the home of um uh the family of our uh security chief at the time, Ilan Fiorentino. I write about him a lot in the book. He's a real hero. He was killed in battle on October 7, and and his family is uh is not returned for for the time being. Um but that's the only home in this neighborhood that is uh at the moment still empty. And so that that tells you in in a way the entire story. A lot of people are back, a lot of families are back, but the people who are not coming back, it's overwhelmingly younger families, people with children, and and that's the complexity of the story. It's true in Nachalos and it's true in other places as well.

Neri 18:18

Look, uh, I think I speak for everybody listening to us right now. Uh 80% seems incredible. Incredible, Amelia.

SPEAKER_03 18:26

Are there any uh new arrivals? I think I think so. There is one family that has arrived, and we are very fond of them. Specifically, they're really good friends of ours and they have wonderful kids, same age as my girls. And I know there are more families who are kind of expressing interest and checking the option. And hopefully over time people will join. But people also have a lot of questions, a lot of fears. It's natural because of what happened here, and it will take time, it will take time. And and also I have to say, I think in general, right now in Israel, a lot of people are delaying or putting off uh life-altering decisions until October 27. You know, decision day.

Neri 19:08

Yeah, I call it D-Day for other reasons.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Yes. Uh-huh. For Israel, it's D-Day, 100%. You know, it's it's the it's Normandy and uh it's the battle that uh we cannot afford to lose because the stakes are just too high. Stakes are are definitely way too high.

Neri 19:23

Um, that's

The Election Math That Decides Israel

Neri 19:24

a good transition, Amir.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

You should you should be a podcast host as well, because I wanted I wanted you to put your uh I I I I used to do the High Arts podcast in English a few years ago. Yes.

Neri 19:35

But let's put your analyst hat on right now. Uh yes, the stakes couldn't be higher ahead of October 27th. We're three weeks away. It's it's really hard to believe. I'm almost getting a bit um well, it's a family podcast. I'm not gonna describe it, but but yeah, I'm nervous. I'm nervous. Very nervous.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yeah, yeah.

Neri 19:52

Everybody is everybody is You're one of the sharpest political analysts and journalists here in Israel, Amir. Uh, give us kind of the broad strokes before we get into the tahlis. Like how do you look at the race now three weeks, three weeks away.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

In Israeli politics, what really matters is not the top line, but it's the bottom. Whether the largest party is Likud or another party, usually doesn't matter. There's a lot of uh debate about it in the media and everybody likes to look at the polls from from the top. But when you read Israeli polling, you actually need to read it from the bottom because what usually determines election results in Israel is the electoral threshold. In Israel, when you vote for a party, you always have to consider the risk that if this party does not receive 3.25% of the total votes in the country, then your vote will not count. Because our electoral threshold, it's 3.25%. Anything below that, those are votes that go to the trash. In 2019, Netanyahu failed to form a government and Israel entered this uh cycle of elections again and again, because uh two right-wing parties at the time were just short of the electoral threshold, one of them I think by uh 1400.

Neri 21:14

Neftalibrana's old party.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yes, exactly. And then Faglin also in that election. Now, in 2022, in the last election, Netanyahu was able to form a stable government with a clear majority in the Knesset, despite winning only 49.5% of the popular vote for the block of right-wing religious parties that support him, because two left wing parties were very close to the electoral threshold but fell beneath it. Uh, Meretz uh was four thousand votes short. Yeah. So the most important question in Israeli elections is always who is closer to the electoral threshold, who falls beneath it, and how many votes do they waste along the way? And that's the Also, the most difficult numbers to predict, and the most difficult thing for a polster to highlight. Because if a pollster predicts that uh Likud will receive 22 seats and they receive 25, or if they say that the Naftali Bennett's party, which my father is a member of and running for the Knesset on their slate, we should give a full disclosure. I was gonna get to that. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, if if a poll says this party will get 13 seats and they end up getting 16, or they end up getting 11, it doesn't matter so much. In the grand scheme of things, you know, two seats here or there, for a pollster in Israel, it's not a big deal. But if you predict that a certain party will receive four seats, which is the just above the electoral threshold, but then they receive enough votes for three seats, which translates to zero seats because three is beneath the threshold, that's a huge difference. That's already a four-seat, maybe five-seat difference for the bloc that this party belongs to. Right now you have two right-wing parties, maybe even three, but for sure you have two, that are very dangerously close to the electoral threshold, sometimes just above it, sometimes just below it. And their results impact the bigger picture in ways that are very hard to predict. If both of these parties pass the threshold, it's one of them is the party of uh Othyr Winter, a retired brigadier general, uh right-wing uh religious uh Hardliner. Yeah, you can say a smotrich type of guy. And then there is the party of Joaz Hendel and uh Jaron Zelicha. I mean, just two megalomaniacs, if you ask me, but one of them is uh Pro-reservist. Yeah, one of them was a minister in Naftali Bennett and Yery Lapid's government of change, and then he served hundreds of days in reserve duty in the war, for which I uh greatly respect him. Then he founded a new party uh appealing to reservists. It didn't succeed, it it barely passed the threshold in any polls, and then he joined forces with uh an economics professor who tried to get elected several times and never succeeded, and now they have this weird merger. Yeah, that's the Ron Zelicha, this weird merger of like reservists and economic populists. We'll see where it goes. Um, but though both of these parties, if they pass the threshold, it becomes almost mathematically impossible for the anti-Netanyao bloc to form a government. It also doesn't make it easier for Netanyahu to form a government, but it certainly hurts the chances of a Gadi Eisencoot or Naftali Bennett uh becoming uh prime ministers. If one of those parties falls beneath the threshold, the numbers change a little bit, things improve for the anti-anti-BB block. And if both of them fall, that actually puts the anti-Netanyao bloc in a very strong position. But it's almost impossible to predict because these are differences in polling of sometimes 10 respondents. That's it. And you also don't know, I'll try to explain it in better words. We know that the electoral threshold is going to be 3.25% of the total votes cast in the country. Any party that does not receive 3.25% of the vote, then you know it doesn't enter the Knesset. But what we don't know is how many actual votes will be needed to reach 3.25%, because we don't know how many people are going to vote in the election. The higher the participation rate, the higher the voting percentage among the overall population, the higher number you need to have 3.25% of the total vote. If there is a very high level of participation, then the chances for these two parties to pass significantly go down. If uh for some reasons there is a low level of participation, their chances go up. So what I'm saying, Mary, is it's very hard to predict. Uh, but those are the numbers that people who care about this stuff should be following.

Neri 26:15

That's a very good and honest overview. When you said if the two right-wing parties make it in, it'll be almost impossible, or at least difficult, for the anti-Netanyahu opposition to actually go ahead and form a uh a coalition.

Coalition Options And Arab Parties

Neri 26:29

But this is without using the era parties, at least one of the era parties.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

Yeah, I think the relationship uh between the four Zionist anti-Netanyao parties, Eisencoot, Bennett, Lieberman, and Yahir Golan, and then the two non-Zionist anti-Netanyao parties, which is the Joint List and Mansoor Abbas's party, uh, are going to be difficult no matter what happens, because the ideological gaps between them are huge. I can definitely see them cooperating in the parliamentary arena, uh, replacing the chairman of the Knesset and choosing a new chairman from one of the four Zionist uh anti-Netanyo parties, and then even passing legislation together. The prospect of creating a coalition and a government, it's much more complicated. Gadi Eisencott said something interesting. He said, I'm not going to invite into a government any party that does not accept the Israeli Declaration of Independence, supports military conscription or civilian service, national service for all, and recognizes that Hamas is a terror organization that must be destroyed. These are very concrete demands, but at least theoretically, any party that accepts them can become a coalition partner. So I think he's leaving a crack and a window there, but also presenting uh a political argument for what would be necessary for such a coalition to actually succeed and function. So we'll have to wait and see.

Neri 28:07

Okay. You're being uh again quite honest. Uh I'm hoping that uh they do play ball with at least Mansur Abbas's ROM party and that they at least go and try to form a minority government for to start.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

I'll I'll say what I'll say one thing about it. You know, without commenting on what they should do, because I have we don't know what the results are going to be, we don't know what the siege distribution will be. But I will say that the government that Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid formed in June 2021, which included Mansur Abbas's party and and sadly lasted for only a year and a half. It was the best government in Israel in the last almost two decades. Yeah. Okay. It's a government that provided security and quiet and responded very strongly to any kind of threats, taking initiative in action. It was very proactive, using the military to protect Israelis, but also was not hot-headed and was not crazy and was not embarrassing. And you know, they spoke with action, not with words. You had no uh massacres and no hijacked airplanes, yes, and no uh thousand three hundred dead soldiers and all of these terrible things that happened under the current government, or attempts to undermine the judiciary. Yeah, and and and and and it did, yes, it did include uh in the coalition, not in the government, but in the coalition, a one-Arab party. And still it was the best government we've had in almost 20 years, so that should also be remembered.

Neri 29:39

Hopefully, a lot more Israelis do remember it come October 27th.

Disputed Territory Podcast Spot

Shanie 29:47

Talking about Israel has gotten so hard. People are angry and dug into their positions, and most of the time it feels like the conversation is over before it even begins. But what if we kept talking? I'm Shady Reichmann from Israel Policy Forum, and this is Disputed Territory, a podcast for real talk about Israel.

SPEAKER_05 30:04

I don't find that shaming people works very well and getting them to listen to you. What I try to do is at least open up a space that people can listen. I also try to ask people questions to like push them to ask themselves to evaluate their own ideologies.

Shanie 30:20

We can believe that there needs to be an is a Jewish state and also work every day to make it better. And I see my work as really digging in there, trying to fix the hardest and most challenging parts of Israel. And it doesn't take away from loving it.

SPEAKER_04 30:34

You can call these things wrong, you can call these things unacceptable, one, two, et cetera, but you should not dehumanize an entire society.

Shanie 30:43

We're going to talk about Zionism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish identity, the relationship between American Jews and Israel, and the questions that don't always have easy answers. You'll hear from people with different perspectives. Sometimes I'll agree with them and other times they won't. But that's the point.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

When I criticize Antonio and Begging Fear and the settlements, and when I speak about a two-state solution, all of this is because of my love for the Jewish people.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

I feel like my responsibility is to be a diaspora Jew and to stay compassionate and to stay nuanced. Why that is so incredibly difficult in this moment, I don't know.

Shanie 31:18

I believe the conversations about Israel don't have to drive us apart. They might actually be the only productive way forward. This is disputed territory, real talk about Israel. Follow along on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Neri 31:35

Last

Why Netanyahu Still Stays Competitive

Neri 31:36

two questions for you, Amir. Uh, and just on that point, how do you explain, as both an analyst and a citizen, the fact that the race is this close? How is it that Netanyahu at least has an option, if not winning outright, then at least playing the opposition to a draw after the worst loss of life of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust, uh, after almost four years of this embarrassment of a government. Uh, I mean, again, we don't have to list everything. How do you explain it as a analyst, as an Israeli as well?

SPEAKER_03 32:07

I think that the emergence of these two smaller right-wing parties, Winter's Party and Handel's Party, changed the game. Because until they began to pass the threshold in multiple polls, the numbers were much more favorable to the anti-Netanyo bloc. And they emerged on the scene basically offering right-wing voters who are disappointed with Netanyahu and this government an alternative that does not require crossing the river completely to the other side, to the forces that oppose Netanyahu. And for a lot of people, that's a comfortable choice because they don't want to vote for the Netanyahu block again. And remember, this block had 64 seats in the Knesset after the last election. Because uh Gidon Saal betrayed his own voters, it went up to 67, I think. 58, yeah. Now in yes, now in most polls, it's getting 52, 50. The most optimistic is 54. Today there was a poll on Channel 11, they had 51.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

So, you know, they are crashing. But the votes that left them uh are not necessarily going to the anti-Netanyao bloc. Some of them are, but some are going to these smaller right-wing parties that are changing the calculation. If they don't pass the threshold, the numbers could look differently. On top of that, I will add that you know, Netanyahu is the worst prime minister in the history of Israel, and he's a total failure on everything. He failed on October 7. He failed in Gaza. We are three years after October 7. Hamas has 30,000 armed terrorists inside Gaza right now. It controls all the 2 million Palestinians living there. It receives every day 600 aid trucks and it steals the aid and uses the taxes to pay the terrorists and buy weapons. It has a smuggling industry with drones from Egypt and from inside Israel because crime in this country is out of control. So Hamas is on its feet already preparing for the next round of fighting. Iran still has the last time I checked, hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium. What happened to the uranium? We're talking every every day about Hormuz, how many ships, how many containers, the price of oil, the price of diesel, but where's the uranium? Inside Israel, if you look at every parameter, crime is at an all-time high. You had 2025, the highest number of murders ever, and the highest number of car fatalities in 20 years. The test scores for Israeli students are the worst they've been ever. You know, we are the last in the OECD, time and again. It's like becoming embarrassing to report about it. And then even last week, we had this story with the fly Dubai incident, which brought a lot of pride because we were proud of the brave Israelis who stormed the uh the um the cockpit and and yeah, and took over. But it's also a major, major failure. It could have been total catastrophe because there was no screening of this pilot. And there is actually a responsibility to screen pilots that are coming to land in Israel within the Israeli Ministry of Transportation. But of course, this ministry received all the information about this pilot. They had his name, they could check his background, they could Google him and find out everything that journalists are now finding in five minutes. But nobody did it because the transportation ministry is full of idiots that were appointed by the corrupt minister Miri Regev. So that's the background of what a big failure Netanyahu is. But there's actually one thing Netanyahu is really good at, which is campaigning. He's terrible at running the country, he's terrible at managing war, he's terrible at managing the US-Israel relationship, which has never been worse. But he's a wonderful campaigner and he knows how to distract a large segment of the population from the facts of life here and make them focus on uh whatever is comfortable for him, the miracle on the flight instead of the failure that almost led to the deaths of 200 Israelis three years after October 7? We killed this terrorist or that terrorist, and yeah, let's celebrate that we killed them. But what about the people who replaced them and the 30,000 armed men just, you know, a few kilometers behind me here? What about that? What about the promise that there would be no more Hamas in Gaza? What about the promise that the Iranian nuclear threat has been removed from Israel, which is something he said a year and a half ago. So he knows how to campaign. And in elections, campaigning matters. And he's very experienced at it, he's done it time and again. But it's also important to remember, Nairy. We had five election rounds in this country between 2019 and 2022. In four out of five, he failed to win a majority and he could not form a government. Only in the fifth election, which was in November 2022, he managed to win. And the only reason he won was because of reckless, irresponsible behavior on the part of the Israeli left that split into small parties. The former chairwoman of the Labour Party, first and foremost. It's not even necessary to mention her name. She's a forgotten uh figure in history. But this kind of behavior is what gave Netanyahu the coalition he has right now. So it's all also important to put that in context and remember those five election rounds as we prepare for October 27th.

Neri 37:58

So fair to say you're not voting for Bibi Netanyahu, Amir. Um, I'm not gonna ask you who you're voting for, but I am curious. This is gonna be our last question before I let you get back to the family. Three years

Fear, Suspicion, And A Long Road Back

Neri 38:09

after October 7th, people are like we talked about earlier, are returning to the Gaza envelope community, especially the kibbutzim. It's known, or at least before October 7th, was known really as a stronghold of left-wing ideas, left-wing politics, supporting a lot, obviously of the left-wing parties. Has I don't want to talk about the party politics, but has the philosophy, ideology uh changed in your communities and the neighboring communities since October 7th?

SPEAKER_03 38:36

I think Israel in general has shifted to the right. It's not necessarily going to benefit the current right-wing coalition because that's the coalition that failed on October 7th, but there is a shift even within the anti-Netanyao block, right? It is led today by uh Isencot, Bennett, Lieberman, and Yer Golan is part of that leadership, but you know, the the right-wing elements or centerite elements are obviously stronger within the bloc. And I think generally speaking, if we look above politics, uh, you know, from 10,000 feet, I think Israelis and Palestinians today are much more suspicious of one another, much more hateful toward each other. People just fear one another more than before. And I think this is a sad but obvious result of October 7th, of three years of war, of all the death and destruction and pain that both sides have uh experienced. So the level of today of uh animosity and suspicion and uh like I said, fear is the highest it has been in my lifetime. And and I don't know what it will take to overcome this moment, but it's not going to happen soon. This is a reality we have to come to terms with, and it will take a long time to overcome. Having said all that, you know, when my book came out two and two years ago, it was also translated into German and French. And I was invited by the publishers in both countries to do a little uh book tour to promote it and have some speaking events. And so I started in Germany and then I uh crossed into France. And these are two countries that uh killed millions of each other's uh people just a hundred years ago, but uh even less than a hundred years ago.

Neri 40:25

Less, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

But if you go there today and you cross the border, there's no checkpoint, there's no border crossing, you don't even get a stamp in your passport. It's like crossing from Minnesota to Wisconsin. So things can change, but it takes time, and there is no way to rush it. It's important to understand what kind of moment we are in right now in terms of the relations between Israelis and Palestinians, to understand why we are in such a difficult moment. And um overcoming the damage of the last three years is going to be a very, very long process.

Neri 41:00

I think that's an important point to end on, Amir. Uh, it'll take time to heal, uh, it'll take strong leadership to heal, uh, and you shouldn't expect it to uh shift overnight.

SPEAKER_03 41:11

And here in Israel, right now, really the focus we should have, first of all, is on fixing our own country. You know, people talk about Palestinian state, uh yes or no. Right now we have to save the state of Israel because we we could be approaching what I call the zero state solution, where there is yeah, no, no Palestinian state, but also no more state of Israel, because it will be run to the ground by a failed, corrupt, extremist, insane government. Yeah. So let's start with saving the state of Israel. That's what October 27 is about.

Neri 41:46

On that note, Amir, thank you so much. Uh it's nice to hear uh the sound of sprinklers and nahalos and not uh any other sounds.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

Yeah, and Neri, you should you you know come down for coffee someday. Not for a potential.

Neri 41:59

I was gonna say, uh, I'll be down there soon. Hopefully, my friend. It's good to see you. Looking forward to it. Be well. Thanks.

Thanks, Emails, Donations, Subscribe

Neri 42:05

Okay, thanks again to the great Amir Thippone for his generous time and insights. Also a special thanks to our producer, Jacob Gilman, and our editor, Tracy Levy, as always, and to all of you who support Israel Policy Forum's work. Just a reminder, you can email us with any feedback or questions at policypod at ipforum.org. That's policypod at ipforum.org. And do consider making a donation to Israel Policy Forum, so keeping a credible source of analysis and ideas on issues such as these that we all care deeply about, including this podcast. And most importantly, thank you for listening and please subscribe and spread the word.