Where Does the U.S.–Israel Relationship Go From Here? With Amit Segal

0:00Amit Segal: Ignorance has a price, but independent Jewish journalism like ARK Media's is how we guard against paying it. If you're able, consider becoming an ARK Plus member and help keep these conversations going. Join ARK Plus at ARK Media dot org.

0:20Dan Senor: You are listening to an ARK Media podcast. In two years' time, there will be probably a more hostile U.S. president. Israel must make a progress when it comes to the Trump peace plan. First, because the alternative is worse. And second, because it's the first time since the Oslo Accords in 1993 in which there is a substitute for the Palestinian Authority and there is this connection between Gaza and Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. the West Bank. I'm seeing the train wreck in the horizon. The Israeli train opposing a Palestinian statehood meeting the American train that is on the verge of losing the face in the two-state solution even and supporting one state, a non-Jewish state between the river and the sea.

1:07Dan Senor: That's the challenge. So Israel must show that it is willing to acknowledge reality.

1:25Amit Segal: Welcome to Call Me Back. This is typically our members-only episode, but we're releasing this one widely a day later so you can hear the kinds of conversations you would be receiving weekly if and when you join ARK+. Thanks for listening. Today we have a special episode about something our audience cares about deeply. Post-elections in the U.S. and in Israel. Where does the U.S.-Israel relationship go from here? This was the main topic in a live taping I had with Amit Segel at the Israel Hayom Conference in New York City on Wednesday. I began my conversation with my friend Amit Segel by asking him about the latest political developments following the Israeli elections.

2:05Amit Segal: The new Knesset was just sworn in and it was eventful. We'll be right back.

2:15Dan Senor: I'm Deborah Pardes, the host of ARK News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters, but it can be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all. And that's why we started ARK News Daily. Every weekday morning, I walk you through the most important news, give you the context you need, and let you know what to look out for next. I don't try to convince you of anything, and I don't want to waste your time. So on most days, I'll be in your ears for about 10 minutes or less. Then you can move on with your day, hopefully feeling a little smarter than before. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes.

2:55Dan Senor: I hope to see you tomorrow.

3:01Amit Segal: Join me in welcoming my friend and colleague and guest here, Amit Segal. Thank you.

3:08Dan Senor: By the way, the new Knesset is going to legislate and to add something to the law of return. In Israel, you can get an Israeli citizenship if you have a Jewish mother, a Jewish father, or if you listen to Call Me Back.

3:24Amit Segal: Okay, Amit, high level, what's actually going on right now in this process we're in? The mandate has been given, the coalition negotiations are beginning. What actually is happening?

3:35Dan Senor: I feel so ashamed to have flown here 6 ,000 miles only in order to say to you that I don't have a clue. We could have done that like virtually. Absolutely. You know, there is an Israeli joke, an old Israeli joke coined by Ephraim Kishon saying that when the moment of truth comes, it's just the time to start lying. And that's exactly what is going on in Israel. We have actually four options. All of them are based on a lie or breaking an election pledge. Option number one is to go again to the polls. I don't think anyone wants it really, but it can happen because it happened in the past. Option number two is a minority government supported from the outside by 19 Arab Knesset members.

4:22Dan Senor: Option number three is a center-left government with the ultra-Orthodox parties, which equals to 61. It sounded, at least to me, ridiculous because the entire election campaign of the entire opposition was based on being anti-Ultra-Orthodox, defining them as draft dodgers, even in worse terms. However, math is always better than principles, so it can work. The only question is if the minimum the ultra-Orthodox parties are willing to take meets the maximum the center-left parties are going to give. And the fourth option, which is, in a non-objective way, I'll say my opinion, which is the best option, is a unity government.

5:04Dan Senor: I think the only way for a stable government that will be able to tackle the very difficult situations both in the U.S., in Europe, and of course in the Middle East, is a unity government based on the two leading powers in Israel, the center-left and the right-wing.

5:22Amit Segal: Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there. Let's start with that fourth one. In your view, the only way that fourth one happens is if somehow they agree that Netanyahu serves as prime minister, at least the first in a rotation.

5:34Dan Senor: I would even say at least some of the term. Now, Netanyahu prefers to be the first because the first Israeli term is the second and last part of the American term. So Netanyahu wants to work in with President Trump and not with President AOC, for instance. Wouldn't be as much fun. or Assad. The problem is that for reasons I can't explain, the opposition doesn't trust Netanyahu to actually keep his election pledge. I don't know why. What could make them not believing in Netanyahu? He gave them his word. And the second thing is that there are some disputes, for instance, a national committee of inquiry regarding October 7th, the ultra-Orthodox question, Ben Gevier, for instance, etc.

6:20Amit Segal: Okay, so you said to me about a year ago on the podcast that this election is basically going to be about who the average Israeli voter, however one wants to describe the average Israeli voter, who the average Israeli voter resents the most. Does the average Israeli voter resent the anti-Zionist Arab parties the most? Does the average Israeli voter resent the anti-Zionist quote-unquote Haredi parties the most? it looks like there could be a government formed with both, at least one or both of those factions that seem to be who were in competition for who the voters hate most. And the warring is actually between the Zionist parties.

6:59Dan Senor: Absolutely. Because in Israel, that's something even Israelis have had times understanding it. When push comes to shove, the decision who the next prime minister is is not taken by 7 million voters. It is actually taken by 120 Knesset members. and the considerations taken by Knesset members are utterly different than those taken by the voters. Voters can go to the polls believing that they somehow stopped the Arch-Orthodox parties from staying in office only to find out that they are the cheapest option and the most available option in the eyes of their representatives. And the other way around, Netanyahu's voters went to the polls some six years ago believing that they are going to stop the Arab parties only to find out that Netelero negotiated with Mansour Abbas, the leader of the party.

7:45Dan Senor: This is a whole new ballgame. And it's hard to understand because when I know that President Trump, the day after the election, called someone and asked him, who won the election in Israel? So from the other side of the line of the phone, the answer was, it's too early to call. So he said, does it take so much time to count the votes in Israel? And said, no, but votes in Israel are the 120 Knesset members, not the 7 million. It might take up to three months in order to understand what happened. And the outcome might be ridiculous, might be counterintuitive, might be opposed to the will of the voters.

8:19Dan Senor: But this is how the Israeli system works. And yes, absolutely, the Arab and the ultra-Orthodox class members can be, or I would say even more than this, I don't see any option in which neither of them are represented in the government. Why? Because from a pure political perspective, the votes of the ultra-Orthodox and the Arab parties are the cheapest to buy. I'll give an example. Naftali Bennett, in exchange for his six seats, five years ago, demanded and achieved the prime minister's office. Now, the ultra-Orthodox parties demand none of this in exchange for the 13 votes they have. All they demand is funding for their biosphere.

9:01Dan Senor: Now, while it destroys Israel in the long run, from a political perspective, which is focused on the short-run and short-term revenues, it pays. It's way cheaper to buy an ultra-Orthodox party than to buy a Zionist party. And the same applies for the 19 Arab votes. They, give or take, offer their votes for free. They say, you can use us whenever you want. That's the reason why we're going to see at least one of them in the next coalition.

9:32Amit Segal: Okay. Yesterday, right before you got on the plane, maybe you were very wise to get on the plane and fly here, there were fireworks at the Knesset. So much so that I find, you predicted rightly, by the way, you and I spoke the day after the election when you were operating on 25 minutes of sleep. The day after the election, you said this next period we're about to go into is actually going to be very quiet from a news standpoint. There's going to be a lot going on, a lot of horse trading, a lot of positioning. But from a news standpoint, things are going to quickly move to Iran, to international affairs, to the U.S.

10:01Amit Segal: Israel relationship. But it would not be about the horse trading, the negotiating. Except yesterday was one of the few days where at least I saw from over here an explosion in news coverage, at least for the day, because of what happened at the Knesset. So tell me why what was supposed to happen at the Knesset and why what actually happened was so unusual that it broke through the news.

10:23Dan Senor: Okay, so usually the event takes place at the Shagal Hall in the Knesset, one of the most amazing places in Israel, in my opinion. Mark Shagal, the famous Jewish painter, donated it to the Knesset, to the state of Israel. It depicts a lot of situations from Jewish history, the Holocaust, the Bible, David and Goliath, etc. And this is against this backdrop. Usually, there is this ceremonial picture of the leaders of the parties. Now, the prime minister always gives a speech, which is like, you know, the local version of raising a toast from the bride's father. OK, so just imagine a wedding in which the divorced parents combined with the cousins who don't speak to each other.

11:10Dan Senor: They're all drunk. OK. And then while raising the toast, the father of the bride decides to speak about the Holocaust. And then the photographer says, cheese, that was the situation yesterday. Netanyahu gave dedicated his speech, his 40-minute speech, to speak against the anti-Zionism of some of the Arab Knesset members in order to talk Knesset members from the opposition out of supporting this government. Now, while I personally agree with every word, I think it's important and crucial for Israelis to understand how the coalition or who is going to support the government, which will be the next commander of chief of the IDF.

11:52Dan Senor: I don't think this is the venue for saying it. I think it was a grave mistake from a political perspective. The entire idea of Netanyahu, and this is something really important to understand. Netanyahu at the age of 77 is now with no more tricks up his lips. He ran out of it because he ended up the election campaign with 46 Knesset members. Even the United Toro Judaism left him officially, which means that he cannot offer jobs for people who might defect from the other parties. He cannot form a right-wing coalition. His only hope is to actually wait or to pull some strings in order for his competitors' coalition from collapsing.

12:31Dan Senor: Now, his only card is that he supports a unity government. In my opinion, his focus should be in the very last moment of the last day of negotiations, where the decision in front of the Knesset members from the opposition will be either to form a minority government with the Arab parties or to go to unity government. He must focus all his efforts on this. So from this perspective, his speech actually distanced those Knesset members from supporting a unity government with him rather than the other way around. And that's why it was a pure mistake, in my opinion. I would have done it differently.

13:07Dan Senor: Ten minutes before, 11 Arab Knesset members had left the plenary because they didn't want to be filmed when the national anthem, Hatikva, is played. Netanyahu used to be Mr. Consensus. He was not the Consensus, but he knew how to attract the median voter. And the median voter in Israel can't understand how a coalition can be formed, supported by Knesset members who are not willing to agree to the words of the National Anthem. Had I been Netanyahu, I would have said, I don't want to waste your time. I just want to repeat the words of the National Anthem and to say that everyone who agrees to these words can be part of a unity government.

13:51Dan Senor: Rather than this, he opened a 40-minute seminar about the origins of the conflict in the Arab parties.

13:56Amit Segal: And do you think he's worse off today because of the speech he gave?

13:59Dan Senor: Yes, but the muscle memory of the Israeli political arena, it's short-lived. Three weeks ago, four weeks ago, a fly Dubai plane almost crashed, was hijacked and almost crashed into the Saudi desert. No one remembers it, right? Three weeks ago, it was about Qatar Gate. In two weeks' time, it might be Iran. But did it help Netanyahu? The answer is absolutely no.

14:24Amit Segal: Okay, I want to come to Iran in a moment. Before I do, I'm just going to tick off quickly different political names. And we need to talk about the American. Your selections. We'll get to the American in a moment. I want to tick off names one by one. And I want you, you know, the way they do that, like arrow up or arrow down, meaning is their stock rising or is their stock falling?

14:42Dan Senor: Okay? Okay. Avigdor Lieberman. A year ago, I suggested everyone on the insiders call me back if they have$1 ,000 to put it on Lieberman on Polymarket.

14:53Amit Segal: I can confirm this. I did not do it, but I can confirm.

14:57Dan Senor: Neither did I. Why? Not because I think he is going to be next prime minister necessarily, but I think his chances are way higher than on poly markets. He actually, when he wants to form a government with the ultra-Orthodox parties, he wants to be the prime minister. Now, in Israel, unfortunately, the kingmakers become kings. The median voters become the prime ministers in the Knesset. Naftali Bennett actually made this idea realistic. When he became a prime minister, it was 5 % of the popular vote. And the same applies for Lieberman. He got seven seats. Who will say to him, no, you can't? Naftali Bennett.

15:30Dan Senor: And that's why I think he has chances. Yes.

15:33Amit Segal: Okay. And just, and his chance is basically convincing Eisenkot that he will help put together this coalition.

15:40Dan Senor: First of all, burying the hatchet between him and the ultra-Orthodox parties. Today, something dramatic happened. Avigdor Lieberman, there was a report that Avigdor Lieberman met the leader for the first time in seven years. in person the leader of the United Torah Judaism. Okay? It's as if the Democratic Party will agree to stop all the abortions in order to attract the evangelical votes. Okay? Something like this. And then Lieberman said, no, I didn't meet him for negotiations. My office is in front of his office, and I ran out of black coffee. Okay. Now, I can assure you that two weeks ago, he would have run to Syria to get black coffee rather than knocking on Yaakov Asher's door.

16:25Amit Segal: Okay, arrow up or down, Naftali Bennett.

16:28Dan Senor: He ended up his election campaign, as usual, with less seats than predicted. As far as I know, Naftali Bennett, he doesn't talk to journalists whatsoever, at least not with me. So I can only predict that he is already on the next stage. I think his party with Lapid, they're not divorced yet, but I think they're separated. Naftali Bennett, in my opinion, desperately wants a unity government. He detests the idea of a minority government supported by the Arabs or a government which is based on giving the Haredes everything they want, which is 180 degrees against his election pledges. That's what he wants to do.

17:10Dan Senor: Will he be able to do it? I'm not sure. But if he does it, then you'll start seeing the long journey home of Naftali Bennett to the right wing. In my opinion, that's the reason why he wants it.

17:22Amit Segal: Okay. And I want to ask you about Iran. There's been a lot of news coverage, at least in Israel, about increasing tensions between the prime minister and chief of staff, General Zemir, about Iran, about whether Israel should ramp things back up against Iran, especially during this very fragile period. What do you make of the reporting and how significant is it?

17:43Dan Senor: So there is a constant play on the Jerusalem stages. Bibi versus the center-left general slash head of Mossad. Now, Eyal Zamir is not a natural candidate for this. I'm not sure, to say the least, that he's such a leftist. He's really proactive. he really believes, he truly believes that Israel must attack Iran before it becomes a nuclear power or a ballistic superpower. And that's why it's not a binary issue whether to attack Iran or not. More than this, I think that the decision whether to attack Iran will not be taken in a room with Zamir Netanyahu, but on a phone call between Netanyahu and Trump.

18:30Dan Senor: So if Trump wants it to happen, it will happen whatsoever, even if Zamir, and he doesn't, opposes it. And the other way around, even if Zamir is talked into attacking Iran today during the coalition negotiations, as long as Trump doesn't want it to happen, it won't. And that's why I think it's exaggerated the discourse about the tensions between Zamir and Netanyahu. It is true, however, that this government, unfortunately, has a habit of nominating senior officials and then fighting them as if they were nominated by a far left coalition. I can't stand this practice. And I think it's futile and it's damaging and it should stop.

19:10Amit Segal: So we'll talk about the U.S. in a moment, but you and I have talked about this from time to time on Call Me Back. And it's one of the questions I get on Call Me Back from listeners, from our subscribers, from the members of the fold, our private community. I constantly get the question that basically Israel performed masterfully during the three years following October 7th on multiple fronts, performed masterfully militarily. But diplomatically and in terms of marshalling the narrative war, they performed disastrously. and there's much talk about what Israel has learned from its war fighting and what has changed, how it's changed its concepcia.

19:48Amit Segal: But is there a similar such conversation happening about Israel and the war over narratives?

19:54Dan Senor: But how do you say in English concepcia, by the way? I really say, no, we just say concepcia. You know, it's like the joke that two reformed Jews meet each other in New York City saying, how do you say in Hebrew tikkun olam? So how do you say in English concepcia? You say concepcia. So the concept, as we call it in Hebrew, in biblical Hebrew, there is a common belief in Israel, and rightly so, that the concept led Israel to October 7th. The concept was we should avoid using raw military force at almost any cost. Why? Because we have walls, we have the best technology, we have cyber, and there is no point in having soldiers killed in order to do something that can be done by technology.

20:37Dan Senor: This died, and for a good reason. But the post-traumatic Israeli society, I think, has switched one concept with the other. And the second concept says that having raw military force operated in every corner of the Middle East comes at no costs. And I think it comes at a cost, a huge cost. I think we should, we must prioritize. We have six open fronts. We have Gaza, we have Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, maybe it's five. Okay, Israel should prioritize the most important three ones and to sophisticatedly trade the others. I'll give an example. For Israelis, controlling the peak of Mount Hermon is crucial.

21:28Dan Senor: Why? Because I guess I see some familiar faces in the audience. I visited the villages, the neglected villages in Syria that the IDF is there. And to be honest, while I'm not, I was only a sergeant in the army and in the IDF radio. But I haven't heard a single convincing explanation that explains why Israel should be there at the cost of confronting, I'm saying, unfortunately, a popular Syrian president. So we must prioritize. Should we negotiate with Syria in exchange for this? Yes, Israel must show the world that it can negotiate in a sophisticated way. The same applies for Gaza. Unfortunately, the current situation will not last forever.

22:14Dan Senor: In two years' time, there will be probably a more hostile U.S. president. Israel must make a progress when it comes to the Trump peace plan. Why? First, because the alternative is worse. And second, because it's the first time since the Oslo Accords in 1993, in which there is a substitute for the Palestinian Authority. And there is this connection between Gaza and Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. the West Bank. So those are just two examples. But I'm really, I'm seeing the train wreck in the horizon. The Israeli train opposing a Palestinian statehood and meeting the American train that is on the verge of losing the face in the two-state solution even and supporting one state, a non-Jewish state between the river and the sea.

23:00Dan Senor: That's the challenge. So Israel must show that it is willing to acknowledge reality. We'll be right back.

23:09Amit Segal: You're going to hear me ask for something here and I'll be up front. I don't love doing these reads. But the truth is, the kind of conversation we have on this show only works if we're not chasing an algorithm or softening what we think just to avoid offending people. We get to have these conversations because the only people we answer to are our listeners. So if this show is valuable to you, consider becoming an ARC Plus member. You can join ARC Plus at ARCmedia.org.

23:41Dan Senor: ever listen to call me back and think to yourself this would be so much better if a meet went on a rant about the latest celebrity who said something stupid about israel or if

23:49Amit Segal: nadav ranked every member of knesset by how hot they are tune into our show chosen people problems for the real news yeah because that's what the world needs more jews in media yeah like more jews with strong opinions about things i think we should do it one more time i don't want you yeah i can't you could say it i just don't want to say it what did i say we both did yeah Like, we're not. Why are we doing that? It sounds so. Sorry for those listening and editing this. It's going to get worse from here, by the way. Listen to our show. Chosen people problems. This should actually be the intro. OK.

24:24Amit Segal: Chosen people problems. We're like a meat and a dove, but more so.

24:28Dan Senor: Please tune in or Dan Cena will be mad at us. You can find chosen people problems wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad free and get access to our weekly exclusive bonus episode by joining ARK Plus at arcmedia.org.

24:42Amit Segal: And we're back with Amit Sego. So I was in Israel about a month ago. I saw you when I was there a little over a month ago, and I was struck. Every conversation I had with Israelis, right, center, and left, whether they were in positions of influence or not, but just the single question, it was so predictable. The single question I got when they would say, oh, you call me back. You're here. You ask the Mamdani. Tell me about Mamdani. Like everyone, I was struck by the degree to which Mamdani is like a household name in Israel. And the reason I was struck by it is I said, you're focused on the wrong politician.

25:21Amit Segal: Mamdani, while he has a big megaphone and he can use the bully pulpit, and he is to try to reshape the narrative on at least democratic politics, progressive politics as it relates to Israel in the Jewish community here. At the end of the day, he cannot run for president. And even in his current job, again, while he has a huge megaphone, he can't directly impact U.S. foreign policy because he doesn't serve at the federal level. So I was telling everyone I spoke to, forget about Mamdani. The person you need to focus on is Abdul Al-Sayed. And they're like, who, what? People were just, even like a month ago, people were just...

25:57Amit Segal: Now they know, now they know. I know. So they'd say, why do you focus on Abdul Al-Sayed? that? I said, well, first of all, he can run for president. And they're like, sure, but a lot of people can run for president. Like what? I said, two, he has a very good chance of getting elected and he has not moved his position one iota on Israel. In other words, he ran aggressively against Israel and I thought an openly anti-Semitic campaign in the primary. And some thought, oh, he'll moderate once he gets the general. He did not moderate during the general. He ran right through the tape of those positions he held in the primary.

26:28Amit Segal: And even now he's still talking about them, meaning he wanted to have a mandate in his own way on those issues. He didn't want to be able to be accused of, well, you moved away from that position, you got elected. He did not move away from his position. That was clear to me when I was in Israel a few weeks ago. That's number two. Then people would say, oh, yeah, yeah, but, you know, these progressives who get elected, they're from these blue states or these blue districts. It doesn't really matter. I was like, if he gets elected from Michigan, this is the first test of someone with Mamdani's views getting elected from the heartland, from a state that Donald Trump won twice.

26:58Amit Segal: OK, so this is a genuine swing state. If he can win there, as AOC said, if El Sayed can win in Michigan, candidates like El Sayed could win anywhere in the country. I mean, we've seen how senators like Lindsey Graham and John McCain and Joe Lieberman and some of the senators today, like Tom Cotton and Dave McCormick, how they use their positions on the relevant committees to actually significantly influence U.S. foreign policy. That is not something that Mamdani can do. I'll say it would be able to do. And lastly, Michigan will become an important state in the Democratic primary process for president.

27:34Amit Segal: So even if he chooses not to run, and I think he will run for president.

27:37Dan Senor: He will.

27:38Amit Segal: I think he will run for president. In clear his time? 28, yeah. If he does not run for president, he will be definitely on the short list for vice president. Now, when people say to me, that's nonsense, he's too young, tell that to freshman Senator Barack Obama, who got elected in 2004. And basically by 2006, he was already planning his presidential campaign and he was running by 2007. J.D. Vance gets elected in 2022. And by 2024, he's Donald Trump's running mate.

28:05Dan Senor: So I'll ask you a hard, a difficult question. Provide me with the silver lining, the reasons for optimism post the elections.

28:14Amit Segal: Sure. So I'll give you a couple of threads of optimism. One, this is going to sound counterintuitive. The Democratic wave was so overwhelming. By the way, it's difficult to overemphasize how big the win was for the Democrats last Tuesday. I was just looking earlier today just because it's still being accumulated calculated. But if you just look at the Democrats overall vote share, so they are up over the Republicans in terms of total vote share nationally by about 15 points. So just Democratic brand against the GOP brand in actual votes is about just to give you a sense. In 2024, it was about even meaning Trump got a slight edge in the Electoral College.

28:55Amit Segal: But if you just actually looked at vote share between Democrats and Republicans, it was about even. Democrats are up about 15 points. Now you could say, oh, OK, so the Democrats got a bigger big piece of the pie, but the pie is not so big. Turnout nonsense. Turnout was huge. I mean, so in midterm elections, turnout is typically lower than a presidential election. So the turnout in the 2024 election was roughly nationally about 60, 60 percent. And the turnout in these midterms was about 50 percent, which is super high for midterms. Like if you look at 22 to 24, the 22 midterm turnout was about 32 percent relative to the 50 percent in the.

29:32Amit Segal: So it's a massive turnout. We have 77.7. Oh, you're showing off, you know. And we don't have vote by mail with no need for IDs. OK, but I mean, I'm not going to compare U.S. and Zia. But so turnout was super high. And so all you can take away from this is there's no way to slice and dice it. It was a massive repudiation of the Republican brand. however you want to define it. You want to define it as Trump. You want to define it as MAGA. You want to define it as Republican writ large. It was a massive repudiation of the Republican brand. And I think people are spending too much time trying to strip away all the like, was it the tariffs?

30:08Amit Segal: Was it Iran? Was it, you know, cost of living? My answer is yes.

30:12Dan Senor: All of the above.

30:13Amit Segal: Yeah. In different regions, it's different things. But the point is, it's not uncommon during what we call the six-year itch, which is the midterms during the second term of a presidency for one party, the party had a power to do very well. It is pretty unprecedented. You have to go back to 1974, which were the midterm elections after Watergate, to see this kinds of numbers. But still, this is not uncommon. So if you look at 2006, Democrats did overwhelmingly well during the six-year itch of President George W. Bush's second term. And then two years later, Obama gets elected. 2014, Republicans perform overwhelmingly in the six-year itch of the second Obama term, and then Trump gets elected in 2016.

30:52Amit Segal: So I know you want me to get to the silver lining, but there is obviously a concern about this now looks like a very favorable environment for the Democrats heading into 2028. Here are the silver linings. One, this will, as I said, this will sound counterintuitive. The fact that the Democrats did so well means that the progressives and those that are looking to try to break the U.S.-Israel relationship will have less influence than many of us thought they would, meaning there was a concern that the victories by the Democrats, the majorities, would be so narrow that, you know, back to your Avigdor Lieberman example, that any one of these progressives could basically dictate to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries the direction of U.S.

31:32Amit Segal: policy towards Israel and the leadership of the respective caucuses would have to be responsive to them because they could barely hold a majority together. You're talking, you know, if the Democrats have 54, 55, 56 senators, Schumer will not have to be overly responsive to Abdul al-Sayed.

31:48Dan Senor: But he supported him nonetheless before.

31:50Amit Segal: No, no, of course, of course. But I'm just saying it won't be like the Democrats won't be, the majority won't be hanging on these progressives. So they won't have, they'll have a lot of influence. I don't want to understate it, but they won't have as much influence, I think, as many of us thought. Okay, so this is the Number one. Do you want the second one? Yeah. Second one is this. There is a lot of hand wringing among some Republicans about whether or not we need to think, rethink the U.S. relationship with Israel because it's a political liability. I would just point out if you look at some of the exit polling, specifically the ABC News exit polling, which I'll in when we release this podcast, I'll link to in the show notes.

32:27Amit Segal: They asked Republican voters who turned out. So keep in mind, Donald Trump told Republican voters, I need you to turn out as though I'm on the ballot, right? Turn out as I'm on the ballot. So a bunch of Republican voters, not as many as Republicans needed, but a bunch of Republican voters did turn out. Of those Republican voters that turned out, they were asked, among other questions in these exit polls, how do you evaluate U.S. policy towards Israel? Is it just the right amount of support? Should there be more support or should there be less support? among Republican voters who turned out last Tuesday, those that actually want to dial down support for Israel is actually small.

33:05Amit Segal: It's the real minority. I think we tend to overreact in the public discourse to certain podcasters and others who have, not this one, of course, but certain broadcasters on the right that have an outsized voice. They get a lot of attention, but it's not necessarily representative of where the Republican electorate is. It's not to say there isn't a problem on the Republican side, but it's nowhere reflective of where the Democrats are or where some of these public personalities are in terms of who are getting a lot of attention.

33:38Dan Senor: And then J.D. Vance wrote his longest suicide letter in the history of American politics.

33:44Amit Segal: Historically, even sitting vice presidents have to fight for the nomination. George H.W. Bush, after two terms of Reagan, wasn't just handed the nomination. He had to fight against Bob Dole and Jack Kemp and others in the Republican primary. In 2000, after two terms of Clinton, Al Gore had to fight for the nomination. He was fighting against Bill Bradley and others. So this is not a judgment on one candidate versus another. I think it's unlikely that any candidate in 2028 on the Republican side is going to walk into the nominating process and just own it. So I think if Vice President Vance runs, there are candidates already talking about running.

34:18Amit Segal: Ted Cruz is talking about running. Ron DeSantis is talking about running. And I'm sure there are several others who are thinking about it. I'm not endorsing here even softly one or the other. I simply think it's going to be a robust nominating process. And in a world in which there's a robust nominating process and coming back to where I think most of the, not all, but most of the Republican primary electorate is as it relates to the U.S.-Israel relationship, the demographic in American politics that I'm worried about these days as it relates to the Jewish community in the U.S.-Israel relationship is not the Republican.

34:49Amit Segal: party.

34:50Dan Senor: Okay, so I would like to show you my feelings towards the experience of being Jewish in the United States from 6 ,000 mile distance. And tell me if you agree or not. My family, my mother grew up in the US. My grandparents actually lived in Beverly Hills 90211, unfortunately. Yeah, before it became famous. You could have really milked that. Yeah, absolutely. But I ended up in a settlement in Judea and Samaria, so nobody's perfect. When I was a child and we visited the United States in the 80s and the 90s, it was the golden era of the Jewish community. It was, I mean, I think there was almost no anti-Semitism.

35:31Dan Senor: It was a singular point in time. I didn't understand it as a youngster, but now I understand, in which Jews have reached a certain point of influence exactly at the very same time when racism seemed to have been vanished, to have disappeared from our world, especially the Western part of it. So the outcome was that Jews were the number one model of being American. 20, 30 years on, it feels every time scarier and scarier to be Jewish. By the way, when people talk to me about Call Me Back, 90 % of them, of the American Jews will say, it gives me oxygen. It gives me oxygen. I understand that they don't get this crucial commodity any other place.

36:20Dan Senor: Hollywood is no longer pro-Israeli. Networks aren't. You see more. I heard today that when you want to say that someone is arrogant and artificial, you say he's very Tel Aviv. Did you know it? I've never heard that. Wow. Google it. You will see it. Or chat GPTs. and I would like to ask you if my impression is exaggerated from the outside.

36:43Amit Segal: I don't think it's exaggerated. I think there is a push in many corners of this country right now and the situation I'm about to characterize is even more alarming in places outside the United States like Canada, the UK, France, Australia but in the US it's still bad and depends on where in the US but there is this push to basically drive Jews underground. That's what it is. it is to make Jews uncomfortable. That golden age you're referring to, and I'm dubious that it was as golden as we tend to remember it as, but one thing that was golden about what you would call that golden age is Jews had no concern about expressing their Jewish identity.

37:23Amit Segal: Their Jewish identity could be expressed in how they carried themselves. You wear a yarmulke, you could walk around anywhere in the United States wearing a yarmulke, you wouldn't think twice about it. Jews today think twice about it when they're out in public wearing a yarmulke. You wouldn't worry if you were involved with a Jewish institution, a synagogue, a Jewish day school, a Jewish camp, a JCC, whatever, it didn't occur to you that there could be a real threat of violence against the institution or anti-Semitic violence. It just wasn't on your radar. Maybe there were these freak incidents, but they were outliers.

37:51Amit Segal: And these events are now pervasive to the point that Jews spend, sadly to me, way too much time having to think about whether or not they just need to low-key their Judaism. And that's something about driving it underground. And that's what I think the campaign against Jews is largely about. And the real worry I have about it is not the discomfort that Jews have to endure. Obviously, it's tragic that Jews have to experience discomfort based on the Jewish identity, but that's actually not uncommon in Jewish history. So that's not the true sadness of this situation. The true sadness is in a world in which so many American Jews are raised without real pride in their Jewish identity and a real connection to Israel and a real love of Jewish life and a real connection to Jewish communal life and real literacy about Jewish ideas and Jewish ritual in a world in which too many Americans raise their children without those things, then when those young Jews go out in the world and they're confronted with what we're talking about here, the sense to drive them underground, many of them will say, it's just not worth it.

39:00Amit Segal: Like I wasn't raised with the upside of Judaism. So I'm not opposed to being part of the Jewish community, but it's not like I gained great joy and love from it. It hasn't been a big part of my life. And now I'm being told that if I want to engage with it, it's actually going to create real friction in my life. So you know what? I want to lead a frictionless life. And so I'm not going to be hostile to Jewish life and I'm not going to be hostile to Judaism and I'm not going to be hostile to America's relationship with Israel. I'm just going to be apathetic. I'm just going to walk away. And that, to me, is the biggest risk for the Jewish people here.

39:32Amit Segal: I think it has implications for Israel. And so that is what I'm most worried about.

39:42Amit Segal: Thank you. On that optimistic note. No, no, no. I want to end with an optimistic note. All right. I feel I feel I will say one update is that my son, my 18 year old son, who's studying for the year in Israel, the school year, you met him when we were in there. He told me two days ago, he says, Dad, everyone now in Israel is talking about Abdul Al-Syed. He says, I know you said no one was talking about it. I said, yeah, but that was four weeks ago. He goes, now everywhere we go, that's all we want to talk about. So he has made his mark. I want you to describe, Amit, and you've written a little bit about this over the last few days, but I just want you to describe a little bit about the makeup of this new Knesset, of these members, because one thing, you know, we, the greatest generation for America, those GIs who fought in World War II, while they are so definitional in American life and in a romanticized view of American history, well-deserved, they represented a large but not that high a percentage of America's population.

40:37Amit Segal: And if you look at those Israelis who fought either in the Standing Army or in Milouim in reserves over the last three years, it's a higher percentage of Israel's population than Americans who fought as a percentage of the U.S. population in World War II. And I'm often struck by that, but I've been most moved by it, to be honest, when I see it manifest itself in the Knesset.

40:58Dan Senor: Okay, so here's the contradiction. I just saw today a report, an amazing report, about the voting patterns in Israel. And here's a quiz. Let's say there is a ballot somewhere in Israel of 100 voters that actually represents the Israeli voters. Out of 100 voters that, let's say, 50 of them voted for Netanyahu's block in 2022 and 50 for the other block. Okay? A hundred voters go to the polls on the morning of October 27th. How many out of the 100 changed the vote from one block to the other? 71 ,000 votes out of 7 million changed blocks. The changes that you see emanate from three things. New voters.

41:45Dan Senor: Voters who didn't show up in the last time. And changes because of the threshold. Last time, Bibi got 64 seats, but effectively it was only 58. And now he got 56 that turned into 53 because Winter and Handel failed to pass this threshold. What I'm trying to say is that if you take a look at the ballots in Sderot, Be 'eri and Kfar Aza, by the border, the main victims of October 7th, you wouldn't know that something happened between 2022 and 2026 based only on the outcome. The results are the same. Sderot still votes by and large for the Nikud and Behrin Farazah still votes by and large for the Democrats and the Sunneleft.

42:27Dan Senor: And this is quite amazing because if you pay a visit to the Knesset, if you paid the visit yesterday to the Knesset, without knowing about October 7th, you would have known that something had happened Because you would have seen Elisha Meidan, who was critically injured and almost died exactly three years before he became a Knesset member. And the Knesset gave you an amazing standing ovation when he was sworn in. Yeah, it was very moving. I saw it. And you could see the mother of Anir Shapira, Shira. And you could see the amazing number that exists only in Israel. The 12 out of the 120 Knesset murders are bereaved family members of soldiers and citizens who were killed by terrorists, including the two leaders of the major parties.

43:15Dan Senor: Netanyahu's brother, Yoni, was killed in Entebbe, and Gadi Eisenkot's son was killed in Gaza three years ago. and many, many other names and relatives of hostages and a grandfather of a soldier who was killed in Gaza and grandson, a granddaughter and cousin and so on and so on and so on. And the most frustrating question is, how come that there is such a gap between the nature of the New Knesset, the faces of the New Knesset and the fact that we feel like in Groundhog Day that you have to experience the nightmare time and again of falling short of majority for both sides and feeling really stuck.

43:55Dan Senor: I think that the real upset in Israeli politics, which is going to shake the very foundations of our political system, will emerge in three, four years' time. I'm afraid to say in the next election, because the next election can happen in May. But in the next election without the current leadership, then you'll see the real difference between pre-October 7 and post-October 7.

44:20Amit Segal: Do you think it'll change the tone of the debate inside Israeli politics, that you have all these new voices who came to politics?

44:27Dan Senor: We will always have voices, and it's natural, it's positive in my opinion. But yes, you'll see for the first time the real agreements between the two sides. It was too early this time. We're still post-traumatic. We still live in the past because we have the leadership from the past. each and every leader running for prime minister in this election were used good or damaged good. We'll see the newcomers in three, four years' time, and then Israeli politics is going to be really interesting, unlike today.

44:58Amit Segal: All right, we'll leave it there. Amit Segel, thank you all for being part of this conversation. Thank you, Dan. Thank you so much.

45:14Amit Segal: At ARK Media, we're not sponsored by a government, nor are we an advocacy group. We are only accountable to our listeners. That means we're free to cover Israel and Jewish life honestly and without compromise. When you join ARK +, you support that mission. And you also get access to members-only episodes of Call Me Back, For Heaven's Sake, ARK News Daily, and Chosen People Problems. Each of these shows covers everything from Israel's security and rising anti-Semitism to American politics and what it means to be Jewish in this moment. If you're able to, consider becoming a member. You can sign up for ARK Plus at arcmedia.org or follow the link in our show notes.