Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

The new edition of The Economist Magazine features a photo of an Israeli flag, blowing in the wind…all alone. The cover title of this issue’s editorial is just that — “Israel Alone”. The editorial reads: “Today Israel has destroyed perhaps half of Hamas’s forces. But in important ways its mission has failed. “As estrangement from the West deepens, so deterrence may weaken. Firms could be blacklist...

In the days ahead, Minister Dermer will be flying to Washington with a small delegation to meet with the Biden administration about the IDF’s options for Rafah, which we discuss. We also discuss where the overall military operation in Gaza stands now, the hostage negotiations, whether the Israeli Government should be expected to have a day-after plan rolled out now, what role the Arab world can or...

On October 6th of last year there was a long-standing ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas. On October 7th, Hamas launched a massive war against Israel. Israel responded to this war that Hamas launched. Wars are violent. In all wars, civilians tragically get killed in the crossfire. What is unique about this war is how Hamas has used violence against civilians – Israeli civilians and Palest...

Since October 7, we have heard from more and more friends in Israel who came of age -- politically -- in the 1990s. Some of these friends were key political figures on the Israeli Left and were committed to working on a two-state solution as the final resolution to achieve regional peace. Dr. Einat Wilf joins us to discuss the sobering of many of these figures and what it means for Israel's future...

As Ramadan begins, many analysts are speculating on what this means for Israel’s coming military operation in Rafah. There is a threat from Hamas to deter a Rafah operation. There is a threat from the Biden administration seemingly designed to encourage Israeli’s War Cabinet to re-think the operation. Are these real threats? How does Israel evaluate these threats? This is what we unpack in our wee...

Micah Goodman is on the speed-dial of a number of Israeli political leaders – from right to left, but especially on the center-left and the center-right. He is a polymath, a podcaster and one of Israel’s most influential public intellectuals, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel’s geopolitics. One book in particular, had an outsized impact in terms of its...

Will there be a negotiated pause in fighting in advance of Ramadan, or will the IDF move against the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah? At the same time, what to make of the new external and internal pressures on Israel? Externally, there is mounting pressure on Israel regarding delivery of humanitarian aid, and increasing internal pressure — specifically on Prime Minister Netanyahu — relating t...

PART 1 of 2 For more than 30 years of ‘on again-off again’ peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, many Israelis, and certainly most interested observers in the West, looked to the 1967 Six-Day War as the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If only we could reverse the results of that defensive war in which Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the problem would be solved,...

PART 2 of 2 For more than 30 years of ‘on again-off again’ peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, many Israelis, and certainly most interested observers in the West, looked to the 1967 Six-Day War as the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If only we could reverse the results of that defensive war in which Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the problem would be solved,...

Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu released to his cabinet what could be interpreted as a first sketch, an early blueprint, or a statement of principles for post-war Gaza planning. At the same time, and much more newsworthy, it appears that there is some progress on the negotiations to return more Israeli hostages. To help us understand what’s going with both tracks, our guest today is NADAV EYAL...

Every day we see news accounts “reported” by reputable journalists. There is typically one frame in the post-10/07 War: ‘Gazan Palestinians are the victims of Israel.’ How does this happen? How do journalists actually operate in Gaza and around the world? And is this a window into what had Hamas figured out long before 10/07 — that the forces of barbarism could manipulate the intentional press rea...

On Sunday, Israel’s cabinet unanimously issued a statement rejecting efforts by the international community to force immediate recognition of a Palestinian State, especially so soon after 10/07. This was following an extensive article in the Washington Post last week that revealed plans — according to background sources — for Washington, the EU, and Arab capitals to accelerate the path to recognit...

While there has been a lot of resentment inside Israel towards its political and security leadership, Israeli society has stepped up in ways sometimes impossible for me to describe. So, when I was in Israel, I asked Wendy Singer to join me for a conversation about what most Israelis are seeing and experiencing at the grassroots level, day-to-day, that we may not see. Wendy Singer is an advisor to...

Are we witnessing a dramatic change in the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas? Are these changes just rhetorical to mollify either US domestic political constituencies or Middle East regional actors (or both)? Or do they represent meaningful policy changes? Should Israeli leaders be concerned that the US-Israel relationship is entering a new phase? To help us u...

Today we look back at the history of Palestinian violence against the Jews in Israel (and in the pre-state Yishuv) -- from the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917 through the myriad efforts to establish a Palestinian Arab State alongside a Jewish State in the 1930s and the 40s. In our discussion today, we follow this pattern all the way through the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, and now today....

Haviv Rettig Gur of the TIMES OF ISRAEL returns for his weekly check-in from Israel. There has been a recent flurry of statements coming out of London, Washington, Brussels and the UN about the need to move on the recognition (or establishment) of a Palestinian state. Some have even argued for bypassing discussions about conceptualization, timelines, and milestones, and instead proceed straight to...

The UN has one central agency responsible for handling all refugees globally, but Palestinian refugees have their own UN agency, UNRWA. Why? The number of Palestinian refugees has increased from 360,000 in 1948 to to 5.9 million today. And those Palestinian refugees or descendants of refugees that have citizenship in other countries maintain their refugee status, according to the UN. What’s going...

Al Jazeera is constantly blasting a steady stream of stories and images to the Arab world about 'tens of thousands of Palestinians dead,' according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. Condemnations against Israel are issued all over the place, with charges of Israeli genocide leveled on U.S. college campuses to the International Court of Justice. And, yet, those Sunni Arab countries that hav...

In today’s weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur from the Times of Israel, we discuss intensifying debates within Israel over the leadership of the government, how to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable war aims as Israel transitions to a new phase in the war, is there an actual disagreement on concrete policy objectives between different members of the War Council, and what to make of the growing...

Will we look back at the past few decades in America as the Jewish ‘golden age’? And is this ‘golden age’ now over? Did October 7th mark the end? Or should the signs have been obvious years ago? John Podhoretz recently wrote a long essay for Commentary Magazine describing how we got here. He writes: “Several seemingly unconnected arguments and controversies in the United States that had been caref...

Having recently passed the 100 day-mark of Hamas’s massacre against Israel, two events in recent weeks occurred that should have occurred some time ago. The New York Times published a major investigative piece on the details and the scale of Hamas’s use of sexual assault in its warfare against Israeli women. And, in recent days, Pramila Patte -- the U.N. special representative on sexual violence i...

This past weekend, Israelis marked 100 days since the Hamas massacre -- and 100 days that 136 hostages, of all ages, still remain captive in unimaginable conditions. We resume our weekly conversation with Haviv Rettig Gur of THE TIMES OF ISRAEL to discuss where the war goes from here. Does it end? Can it end? How? And what has Israel learned about how to proceed? This conversation is divided into...

This past weekend, Israelis marked 100 days since the Hamas massacre -- and 100 days that 136 hostages, of all ages, still remain captive in unimaginable conditions. We resume our weekly conversation with Haviv Rettig Gur of THE TIMES OF ISRAEL to discuss where the war goes from here. Does it end? Can it end? How? And what has Israel learned about how to proceed? This conversation is divided into...

In recent days, two big stories have gotten a lot bigger. The U.S. and U.K. have launched air and missile strikes against Houthi targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Thursday and today, marking a significant response after the U.S. Government warned that this Iran-backed (and Iran armed, trained, and financed) militant/terrorist group would be held responsible for its attacks on commerci...

What do Israelis know about the political tensions within Hamas’s leadership? About their decision-makers, their motives, their processes, and Hamas’s internal disagreements and rivalries? Matt Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Ehud Yaari of Israel’s Channel 12 news set out to try to answer these questions. Are tensions heating up between Hamas’s internal and and external...