How do Israelis see the U.S. role in all this? It’s hard to talk about “Israelis.” There are different Israelis. I’ll start with the Israelis on the right. You have Itamar Ben-Gvir and other people on the right say we are not another star on the U.S. flag. We are an independent sovereign country. You don’t tell us what to do. There are other Israelis. Israelis who, beforehand, were like, “this is a domestic issue.” I think there’s now a lot of yearning for U.S. intervention, because there’s understanding that the pressure from the outside can really help here. What matters more to the ruling Israeli coalition: the U.S. response or the domestic response? There are different parts to this coalition. There were reports that Netanyahu was going to announce stopping or pausing this plan even before he fired [Israeli Defense Minister Yoav] Gallant but then he was pressured by some other more radical factions in his coalition and his family. I think for him, the U.S. pressure and being considered a world leader and not a pariah was important. This is on top of how there’s a lot of money going out of Israel, investments going out of Israel. You have Israelis applying for foreign passports. You have the [Israeli defense forces] with people just not reporting for duty — the reservists. For other members of Netanyahu’s coalition, they don’t care about the U.S. They are messianic, they are religious, they’re xenophobic, they hate Arabs. They want to annex territory — their motivations are really ideological. They’re not national security experts — they don’t understand that Israel is dependent on the United States. There are critics who say Israel took an authoritarian turn a long time ago, especially in its treatment of the Palestinians. Is that an argument that resonates among Israelis now worried about their democracy? In the mindset of most Israelis and even Israelis that are on the left — okay, I’m not talking about the left left — the occupation, the conflict with the Palestinians, it’s just not on their minds unless there’s a flare up. It’s just not a topic. They don’t vote on it. It’s just not an issue. When you ask them, “But look, there are issues with your degree of democracy anyway because of the occupation,” they say “Well, but [the Palestinians] are not citizens.” We still separate between Israel proper where everyone is a citizen, and the West Bank and Gaza. There are groups saying now is the opportunity to bring back the Palestinian issue to the forefront, and you saw signs in protest: “There’s no democracy with occupation.” But there is a discussion within the protest movement itself saying “Will it help us now? It’s an issue, but should we deal now with the more imminent threat?” It’s discussed, but it’s really not at the core. What is something that people should be thinking more about when it comes to this crisis? You look at this country — 75 years, right, coming from after the Holocaust and stuff. I’m putting the Palestinians aside, because to them Israel’s creation was their catastrophe, and it’s an unresolved issue to this day. But just focusing on Israel for a second: It’s a miracle, right? You have startups, you have academia, you have a great health care system. You have physicians, you have a great military. We all assumed that everything’s great, hunky dory. Now, within 12 weeks, we feel that things are unraveling. On the other hand, you’ve had an awakening, a social awakening with connections between the tech community and the physicians and the teachers and the parents and the students. That can lead to discussing these fundamentals. What country do you want to live in, and what is democracy, and what are minority rights? Hopefully, it will also get to those very difficult conversations of what it means on the Palestinian front. Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Andrew Howard.
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