Democracy and Freedom

The mood in Israel and the pressure it faces.

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Human rights activist and former Israeli politician Natan Sharansky joins Jamie to talk about his letters to the late Alexei Navalny, the current political mood in Israel, and the spread of anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.

The Agenda:
-Navalny’s murder
-The threat of left-wing antisemitism
-The future of Israeli-U.S. relations
-Comparing Joe Biden and Donald Trump and their administration’s work with Israel
-Pressure against Israeli politicians
-The likelihood of Arab countries helping Gaza
-Reflections on democracy and freedom

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Comments (25)
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  1. Russell J

    I enjoyed the accent. Reminded me of college professors but with no pressure that I need to understand him to pass the next quiz. Haha.

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  2. Bobby D

    This was a good interview. But I wish that there had been harder pushback in a few areas.

    First, I would have liked a few more details concerning this move from polarization to unity. I’d suggest that the events of October 7 occurred because a large sector of Israeli society stopped taking the Hamas threat seriously. It wasn’t American university professors who released much of the Hamas operational leadership from prison in an exchange for Gilad Shalit, provided only light security for the Gaza border, and ignored US intelligence alerts concerning an impending attack. Moreover, many who promote the anti-Western ideas of Said throughout the West and elsewhere are politically progressive Jews who claim that Israel’s troubles relate to the fact that it’s a pawn of the evil West. If the attacks have led many Israelis to ditch this vain progressivism, then that’s a good thing. But I’d like to have a few more details.



    Second, why is a full-scale invasion necessary? In the past, the US and UK have led efforts to degrade the operational capability of Hamas. Israel only cooperated with such efforts intermittently. For example, years of efforts by US and UK intelligence were u done overnight when much of the Hamas operational leadership was released from prison in exchange for Shalit in 2011.Now Israel wants geopolitical cover from the US and UK to carry out an operation that may have been unnecessary if Israel hadn’t previously undermined US and UK efforts to rein in Hamas.

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  3. Ehcorbitt

    I had to stop this one, because I couldn't understand what he was saying. Is a transcript available? Thanks.

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    Ben Connelly

    Once I got past the struggle to understand Sharansky, this was a great interview

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  5. Skyhuff

    A transcript of this podcast would be appreciated. Thank you,

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  6. Brocka121

    Can we get this transcribed as a newsletter? His accent was too thick for me to listen. Apologies

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  7. Sean Smith

    We're not going to pull the world out of the cesspit until we stop listening to pudding-brained celebrities and athletes, gutless, blowhard, grifting politicians and all the other narcissists and sociopaths hogging all the bandwidth and start properly revering the true heroism of those with real courage and conviction. These are people who have suffered for freedom, not merely spent their lives speaking about it in the abstract from places of safety. We need to be listening to THEM, even if they have near-impenetrable accents. Bless them.

    As for Navalny, never forget his name, never forget his face.

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    1. Scroop Moth

      In my corner of the Deep South, there are no celebrities and athletes, politicians and bosses of bandwidth. Living here is too much a sacrifice. Still, we have plenty of pudding-brained, gutless, blowhard, and grifting individuals of magnified importance. It's turtles all the way down. Not taking anything away from Navalny, my hero is Robert, a guy who works in a plywood factory here and has gone through an instance of the gulag.

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  8. Jagoldhor

    Excellent discussion, but so hard to listen to. Please provide a transcript.

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  9. Paul.Teitelbaum

    I have the greatest respect for Sharansky, but this was a softball interview. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is whether Israel is at war with hamas, or with the Palestinian people as a whole. That is the fracture line which makes the mass of well-meaning people vulnerable to neo-Marxist manipulation. Jamie avoided the hard question, “what about the Palestinian babies?” Sharansky is correct—Israel’s most pressing messaging task is to convince liberal Jews not be ashamed to support Israel. To do that, you have to address the issue directly rather than avoid it, as happened in this interview.

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    1. April

      I agree with you. Israel would help its cause if it could supply more humanitarian aid to the Palestinians to show this is not collective punishment. The issue of malnutrition and starvation is only getting worse. The picture on the front page of The New York Times a couple of days ago of a 10 year old boy who starved to death is very bad for the worldwide image of Israel.

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    2. Sean Smith

      I can answer the question about Palestinian babies: Hamas should stop hiding behind them.

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      1. Paul.Teitelbaum

        True, but not an adequate answer. Meanwhile, Israel’s isolation will get worse and worse. I don’t know where that leads, but it won’t be good.

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        1. Sean Smith

          I'm sorry, but it's an absurd question. Is Israel attacking Palestinian population centers outside of Gaza? Are Palestinians within Israel proper (including the 2+ million of them who are Israeli citizens) being rounded up or otherwise persecuted or mistreated? If Israel were at war with "the Palestinian people," the latter would cease to exist in a matter of weeks. Nor has Israel deliberately targeted civilians, unlike those Mongol Klingons on Oct. 7. There's zero moral equivalency here. The people who should care most about Palestinian babies--their "leadership" in Gaza--clearly do not, or they wouldn't have invited this absolutely guaranteed response by executing the atrocity of 10/7. And by the way, the response would have been the same whether Bibi or someone else had been PM. As Sharansky pointed out in this interview, there's really no dissention among those managing this operation.

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          1. Paul.Teitelbaum

            You seem to miss my point. I agree with your factual points, but look around you. There are lots of people—decent people, even Jewish people — who are being shamed into turning their backs on Israel. Everything that is happening in Gaza was foreseen by Hamas’ and is part of their plan. And it’s working. Israel needs to emphatically and constantly publicize the specifics of its efforts to avoid civilian casualties. It is not enough to say that Hamas are monsters, so anything israel does is justified. Don’t surrender the battle for public opinion—it matters.

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    Pastorfbt

    I don't want to sound picky but is it possible to have a transcript of this conversation?

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    1. Deleted Comment

      This comment has been deleted

    2. Philebus

      I had to back up and listen again (several times) largely because of the accent and cadence of speaking - it's hard to follow with my mid-western US ear - text would help. Not a problem; thanks for the opportunity.

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