How October 7 Changed Israel

Three Years After October 7 Shalom and welcome to Digital Policy Pod. I'm Mary Zilliber, A journalist based in Tel Aviv and a policy advisor to Israel Policy Forum. So this week we're officially marking 3 years to the October 7th attack. There's definitely a clear before and after for all of us with respect to that date, personally, professionally, nationally, internationally, but it's even more true for my guest this week, Emil Tibon, which is why I really wanted him to come back on, especially this week. Emir is of course a journalist for Haaretz and the author of the prize winning book, The Gates of Gaza, 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 was the co-author, along with Grant Rumley, of a terrific biography of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas titled The Last Palestinian 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 Nakhaloz 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 and why he and his family recently returned to live in, yes, Nahalos. 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 a mirror, 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 So last Wednesday morning, everything seemed relatively fine and relatively normal at these things that go here in Israel these days. We had just finished up the Jewish High holidays, with the country getting back to, well, regular programming. Everyone had their eyes squarely set on Election Day, with the campaign 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 insurance and outs of the story with the fly Dubai plane. An attempted hijacking, an attempted crash. It's a miracle. An absolute miracle. It didn't end in disaster, as we all know. It's all due to the bravery of Israeli passengers on board and that one Indian pilot. So disaster averted, 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, a joy and relief of the first, say, 2448 hours, has given way to anger and recriminations and an almost hourly blame game. Yes, inside this Israeli government, and for good reason. I'd argue there are red flags everywhere about the system for foreign aviation entering into Israel as a whole, and with this Omani copilot in particular, something like this shouldn't have come anywhere near close to actually happening. But why am I telling you all of this, much of which you all already probably know for For two reasons. First, it's an indication of how narratives, but especially political narratives, can shift quickly and change on a dime. Here in Israel, after the entire incident came to a miraculous and positive end with 170 plus Israelis still alive and well. Thankfully, the conventional wisdom was that this helped Bibi Netanyahu's political fortunes. He quickly rushed that same Wednesday night to Ben Gurion Airport here in Tel Aviv to meet some of the passengers and heroes playing really the father figure to the nation. There was a sense of national unity and national pride in the air. Really it was. It was palpable. After everyone came back safe and sound, 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, talk about security and tracking down whoever was behind the attempted attack, etcetera, etcetera. This was in the immediate wake of the safe return of the passengers, 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 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 T-bone. Back On The Nahal Oz Porch Hi, Amir. Welcome back to the podcast. Speaker 2 Hi, Mary. It's good to see you, my friend. Speaker 1 It's really good to see you, Amil. It's been way too long for the people only listening to us right now. You're missing out because we also are a video podcast. And on YouTube, you can see Amir sitting on his porch in Kibbutz Nahalos on the Gaza border. We're going to get the story of his return to Nahalos, but we're obviously marking 3 years to October 7th. Speaker 2 The the scoop. The scoop? Speaker 1 Yes, I don't think, I don't think it was kept under wraps, but I want to hear the whole story as I'm sure our audience does, especially with the three-year anniversary of October 7th coming up this week and we're recording on Sunday night. Amil, let's get right to it. Let's start with those events almost exactly 3 years ago. Tell us about you, your family and what happened in your kibbutz in nachalos. Speaker 2 Well, you know, we are marking 3 years now and this is a very complicated week because all the yard sites as you will call it, you know as Karot, what we say here in Israel, it's all happening this week. I attended 1 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 seven out of a total community population of around 450. And in this part of Israel, you know, the Gaza border area, the Gaza envelope, sometimes you call it. People are always connected not just to their own community, but also to surrounding kibbutzim. And so there are all these memorials as well for people in neighboring communities like Farazza Beri. It's really endless. It's a difficult week. And we, we just got back here, you know, over the summer. So I would say maybe two months ago, we are still adjusting to this new reality of being back in our home, being back where it all happened. Of course, if, if people are not familiar with the story of Nachalos on October 7th, story of my family on October 7th, they can read the my book, The Gates of Gaza and, and get the full story. Absolutely. But these days we are writing a new chapter 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. Speaker 1 And absolutely, Amir, I want to ask you in just a second about your, your return, you and your family's return to, to the kibbutz. 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 and they survived the massacre along with the help of his heroic father and mother, Noam Tibon, a retired general who went down there and and fought his way through and helped Amir and his family get out. So yes, we're not going to dwell on the events of the past of the last three years, but. Speaker 2 Did anything happen? Yeah. Speaker 1 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 Nakalos, so have the last few years been before your return? Three Years Of War’s Toll It's been a very difficult three years nearly. I, I don't need to tell you, it's been three years of war and devastation and heartbreak and pain. 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 also very much aware of the events in Gaza and the, 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 they're aware of. But if we look at it from the Israeli perspective, I think yesterday the military put out official numbers saying that since October 7, Israel has lost 1300 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 cases among 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 the recently some 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 seven are are still with us three years later. It's still not over. It's changing. It's taking different shape, but we still live through it every day to some degree. Speaker 1 That's true, I think for all Israelis. Also, I imagine definitely for Gazans and other Palestinians, but not all of us live on the border with the Gotha Strip. Amir, did you have any second thoughts or third thoughts or fourth thoughts about moving back to that part of Israel, southern Israel? Speaker 2 Our inclination was always to go back, but we had reservations. Choosing To Move Back Home We had deliberations. There was a real dilemma here. First we waited for the war to end. We, we did not want to go back as long as the war was raging and certainly before the hostages, including our friend Omri Milan, who was kidnapped here from this kibbutz had returned. And then once the hostages were finally, you know, the, the last group was returned just a year, a year ago in October 2025. It was already in the midst of the school year and we didn't want to move our daughters from the kindergarten they were already going to in 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 Gallia, my eldest daughter, to 1st grade and we wanted her to start first grade to start this new and exciting chapter of her life with her friends here in Nakhaloz. And that's when we really had to sit and and think about the meaning of coming back here. And there are very, very basic questions you have to ask yourself, Mary. 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 these kibbutz? It's not easy, no, but after thinking about it and looking at the different options, we decided to 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 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. Speaker 1 And you just moved back a few months ago? Speaker 2 Over the summer, yeah, we wanted to 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 there are also many challenges that remain. Speaker 1 That undoubtedly must be true, Amir. Life In The Gaza Envelope Now As somebody who actually lives back there now, I'm sure a lot of our audience and people following the news, there's a lot of coverage, including by myself of the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks down in the Gaza envelope and all those communities like Neroz Berry. And then with the evacuated communities, especially over the first year or so and the returning hostages. But what is it like now in Nahalos and the Gaza envelope communities? I mean, what is it like living there? What are, 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 southern Israel. Speaker 2 So first of all, I hope the noise that you're hearing now, it's just the irrigation in my, in my garden here, it's not interfering with our. Speaker 1 Conversation. Look, I mean, we, we chatted before we started recording. I was like, I haven't had one guest that is recorded from, you know, the Gaza border in, in kibbutz like nachalos. So we're going to make an exception for this. It's fine. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I maybe you can hear it. It's just the water sprinklers working. But 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 kilometres, first of all, most of them were not impacted as directly and strongly on October seven. And second of all, over there you can see a return rate of 9095%. 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 7th, that's where you have a more difficult story, a more painful story to tell. And if you go today to Farazza, which is just to the north of Nakhaloz or Berry just to the South. And if you continue a little more S to Nil Oz and Kholit, which is even more down toward the Egyptian border, those communities are still far from fully back. I think you have, you know, in the best of them you will have maybe 1/3 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 day on October 7, Not as bad as Farazza in Berry and near Oz, but pretty bad. And yet the return rate, the last I checked is around 80%, 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. It's new homes for young families and finished in 2022. Out of the dozen homes, 11 are now occupied and the one sadly remains empty. And that's the home of the family of our 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 seven and and his family is is not returned for for the time being. But that's the only home in this neighborhood that is 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 Nacho Laws, and it's true in other places as well. Speaker 1 Look, I think I speak for everybody listening to us right now. 80% seems incredible, incredible. Amil, are there any new arrivals? Speaker 2 I think, I think sure, 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 in in 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. We'll 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 life altering decisions until October 27, you know, decision day. Speaker 1 Yeah, I call it D-Day for other reasons. Speaker 2 Yes. Oh, for Israel, it's D-Day 100%. You know, it's, it's the, it's Normandy and the, it's the battle that we cannot afford to lose because the stakes are just too high. Speaker 1 Stakes are are definitely way too high. The Election Math That Decides Israel That's a good transition, Amir. You should you should be a podcast host as well 'cause I wanted, I wanted you to put. Speaker 2 Your I I I used to do the podcast in English a few years ago. Yes. Speaker 1 But let's put your analyst hat on right now. 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. Well, it's a family podcast. I'm not going to describe it, but but yeah, I'm nervous. I'm nervous, very nervous. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Everybody is. Everybody is. Speaker 1 You're one of the sharpest political analysts and journalists here in Israel, Amir, Give us kind of the broad strokes before we get into the talk list. Like, how do you look at the race now? Three weeks? Three weeks away. Speaker 2 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 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 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 cycle of elections again and again because two right wing parties at the time were just short of the electoral threshold. One of them, I think by 1400. Yes, exactly. And then Fagley also in that election. Now in 2022, in the last election, Natanya 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 bloc of right wing religious parties that support him. Because two left wing parties were very close to the electoral threshold but fell beneath it. The merits was 4000 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 pollster to highlight. Because if a pollster predicts that 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. Speaker 1 Full disclosure. Speaker 2 Disclosure, I was going to get done. 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 4 seats, which is the just above the electoral threshold, but then they receive enough votes for three seats, which translates to zero seats because 3 is beneath the threshold. That's a huge difference. That's already A4 seat, maybe 5 seat different for for the block that this party belongs to, right? Right now you have two right wing parties, maybe even 3, 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 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 Arthur Vinter, retired Brigadier General, right wing religious. Speaker 1 Hardliner. Speaker 2 Yeah, you can say a smart, rich type of guy. And then there is the party of Yoaz Handel and Yaron Zelikha. I mean just two megalomaniacs if you ask me, but one of them is a. Speaker 1 Pro reservist. Speaker 2 Yeah, one of them was a minister in Naftali Bennett in year Lapid's government of change, and then he served hundreds of days in the reserve duty in the war, for which I greatly respect him. Then he founded a new party appealing to reservist. It didn't succeed it it barely passed the threshold in any polls. And then he joined forces with an economics professor who tried to get elected several times and never succeeded. And now they have this weird merger. Yeah, that's the owns the lechl, this word merger of like reservists and economic populists. We'll see where it goes. But both of these parties, if they pass this threshold, it becomes almost mathematically impossible for the anti Netanyahu 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 Eisenko or Naftali Bennett becoming 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 Netanyahu 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, you 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 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 for some reasons there is a low level of participation, their chances go up. So what I'm saying there is it's very hard to predict, but those are the numbers that people who care about this stuff should be following. Speaker 1 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 a coalition. Coalition Options And Arab Parties But this is without using the Arab parties, at least one of the Arab parties. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think the relationship between the four Zionist anti Netanyahu parties, Eisenkot, Bennett, Lieberman and Nyer Golan, and then the two non Zionist anti Netanyahu parties, which is the Joint List and Mansour Abbas's party, 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, replacing the chairman of the Knesset and choosing a new chairman from one of the four Zionist anti Netanyahu parties and then even passing legislation together. The prospect of creating a coalition and the government, it's much more complicated. Even Gadi Eisenkott said said something interesting. He 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 in a window there, but also presenting 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. Speaker 1 OK, you're being again quite honest. I'm hoping that they do play ball with at least Mansour Abbas's ROM party and that they at least go and try to form a minority government for to start. Speaker 2 I'll, I'll say, 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 distribution will be. But I will say that the government that Naftali Bennett in Yehilapit formed in June 2021, which included Mansour Abas's party and then sadly lasted for only a year and a half. It was the best government in Israel in the last almost 2 decades. Yeah, OK. It's a government that provided security, 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 massacres and no hijacked airplanes and no way 1300 dead soldiers and all of these terrible things that happened under the current government. Speaker 1 Or attempts to undermine the judiciary. Speaker 2 Yeah, and, and, and, and, and it did. Yes, it did. Includes in the coalition, not in the government, but in the coalition. It won our party. And still it was the best government we've had in almost 20 years. So that should also be remembered. Speaker 1 Hopefully a lot more Israelis do remember it come October 27th. Disputed Territory Podcast Spot Talking about Israel has gotten so hard. Speaker 2 Last two questions for you. Why Netanyahu Still Stays Competitive Amir And just on on that point, how do you explain as both an analyst and 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, after almost four years of this embarrassment of a government? I mean, again, we don't have to list everything. How do you explain it as a as an analyst, as an Israeli as well? I think that the. Speaker 2 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 favourable to the anti Netanyahu 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 bloc again. And remember, this block had 64 seats in the Knesset after the last election because Gidon Sal betrayed his own voters. It went up to 67, I think 58. Yeah. Now in. Yes. Now in most polls, it's getting 5250. The most optimistic is 54. Today there was a poll on Channel 11. They had 51. Yeah, so, you know, they are crashing, but the votes that left them are not necessarily going to the anti Netanyahu 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 different. 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 7th. He failed in Gaza. We are three years after October 7th. Hamas has 30,000 armed terrorists inside Gaza right now. It controls all the 2 million Palestinians living there. It receives everyday 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 everyday about Hormuz. How many shapes, 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're 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 the cockpit, the cockpit, and then yeah, and 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 5 minutes. But nobody did it because the transportation industry 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 Israeli 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 whatever is comfortable for him. The miracle on the flight instead of the failure that almost led to the deaths of 200 Israelis 3 years after October 7th. 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 kilometres 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 Nelly. 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 5th election, which was in November 2022, he managed to win, and the only reason he won was because of reckless, irresponsible behaviour on the part of the Israeli left that split into small parties. The former chairwoman of the Labour. Speaker 1 Party first and foremost. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. Speaker 2 Even necessary to mention her name, she's a forgotten figure in history. But this kind of behaviour is what gave Netanyahu the coalition he has right now. So it's all also important to put that in context and remember those 5 election rounds as we prepare for October 27th. So fair to say you're. Speaker 1 Not voting for BB Netanyahu. I'm here. I'm not going to ask you who you're voting for, but I am curious. This is going to be our last question before I let you get back to the family. Three years after October 7th, people are are like we talked about earlier, are returning to the Gaza envelope community, especially the keyboard team. Fear, Suspicion, And A Long Road Back It's known, or at least before October 7th was known really as a as a stronghold of left wing ideas, left wing politics, supporting law. Obviously the left wing parties has I don't want to talk about the party politics, but has the philosophy ideology changed in your communities and the neighboring communities since October 7th? I think Israel in. Speaker 2 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 seven. But there is a shift even within the anti Netanyahu bloc, right? It is LED today by Eisenkoed Bennett, Lieberman and and Yere Golan is is part of that leadership. But you know, the the right wing elements or centre right elements are obviously stronger within the block. And I think generally speaking, if we look above politics, 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 experienced. So the level of today of animosity and suspicion and 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. It will take a long time to overcome. Having said all that, you know, when my book came out to 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 book tour to promote it and have some speaking events. And so I started in Germany and then I crossed into France. And these are two countries that killed millions of each other's people just 100 years ago. But even less than 100 years ago, 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 the 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 overcoming the damage of the last three years is going to be a very, very long process. I think it's an important point. Speaker 1 To end on Amir, it'll take time to heal, it'll take strong leadership to heal, and you shouldn't expect it to shift overnight and here in Israel. Speaker 2 Right now, really the focus we should have first of all, is on fixing our own country. You know, people talk about Palestinian state, 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 27th is about, on that note. Speaker 1 Amir, thank you so much. It's nice to hear the sound of sprinklers and Nahalos and not any other sounds. Yeah, and then never. Speaker 2 You, you, you know, come down for coffee someday and not for a pot, I was going to say. Speaker 1 I'll be down there soon hopefully my friend. It's good to see you there looking. Speaker 2 Forward to it, be well. Thanks. Speaker 1 OK, thanks again to the great Amir T-bone for his generous time and insights. Thanks, Emails, Donations, Subscribe 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 Forms work, just a reminder, you can e-mail us with any feedback or questions at [email protected]. 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.