Is Israel’s Global Standing on The (Israeli) Ballot? - with Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal

Dan Senor (0:00)

Quick note before we start, big things are coming to ARC Media. Somewhere in the small gaps of time between putting out three episodes each week, we've been secretly working on something we think all our listeners are going to be really excited about. We're announcing everything live on October 5th. If you want to be the first to hear about it, RSVP to our virtual announcement event. You can find the sign up link in the show notes. See you there.

Nadav Eyal (0:28)

You are listening to an Art Media Podcast.

Amit Segal (0:33)

Every appearance or every speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu in the United Nations is first and foremost a musical which is played on Broadway, but the audience is Israeli.

Nadav Eyal (0:44)

He grew up in America. He studied in America. He speaks with an American accent.

But the America that he understands to a large extent is not the current America. If you compare it to back to 2018, Israel had a negative swing of over 70 percent against it. And of course, it's very much related to your question to Netanyahu.

Dan Senor (1:19)

It's 7 a.m. on Wednesday, September 23rd here in New York City. It's 2 p.m. on Wednesday, September 23rd in Israel. By the time most of you will be listening to this episode, when it drops on Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu will be in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly.

And his visit is, in some ways, a perfect snapshot of the question we want to explore today. This will be one of Netanyahu's shortest trips to the United States as Prime Minister. He is expected to arrive in the morning, address the UN in the afternoon and leave shortly afterward without spending a single night in the United States. There's no meeting scheduled with President Trump. No major meetings with golf leaders have been announced. The visit is essentially the speech. And the atmosphere surrounding that speech is quite extraordinary. New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani campaigned on a pledge, part of his agenda, to arrest Netanyahu when he arrives in New York City based on the International Criminal Court warrant against him. Mamdani has since acknowledged that the mayor of New York City does not have the legal authority to enforce that warrant. But he continues to say that Netanyahu is not welcome in New York. Netanyahu, for his part, has said that he intends to respond to Mamdani from the UN podium. All this is happening against a much bigger backdrop, a significant deterioration in attitudes toward Israel in the United States, particularly among younger Americans. According to recent surveys, 85% of young Democrats and 64% of young Republicans hold an unfavorable view of Israel. And there are increasingly serious arguments that this could eventually move beyond public opinion and diplomatic isolation into economic consequences. A case study published last month by FDD, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, some of whose experts we often have on Call Me Back, lays out a scenario in which sanctions mechanisms used against Iran could eventually be used to target Israeli officials, Israeli companies and Israeli banks. For Jews in the diaspora, particularly here in America, Israel standing in the world feels very immediate. It intersects with our politics, our institutions, our educational institutions, schools, colleges with anti-Semitism and sometimes our own sense of security.

But here is the tension. Is this how Israelis see it? And will it be on the ballot in the upcoming elections in 34 days? As Israel's global standing is becoming a more urgent subject of discussion, Netanyahu's political position at home has improved. He is still short of a governing majority in the polling, but the movement in the polls over the past two weeks has brought Netanyahu considerably closer to at least denying his opponents the ability to form a government. The opposition remains divided, and new parties on the right have complicated the electoral map. What would another Netanyahu government mean for Israel's standing in the world? Are Israelis and diaspora Jews now looking at the same problem through fundamentally different lenses? To discuss all of this, we are joined by ARC media contributors, Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal, two of Israel's leading political analysts, who also have a real sense for attitudes towards Israel over here in the West. My conversation with Nadav and Amit, right after this short message.

In the United States, if there's an emergency, you're dealing with several different systems. One organization runs the ambulances, another handles disaster relief, a third manages the blood supply.

In Israel, it's one organization. Magan David Adom. MDA is Israel's national emergency services system. It's mandated by the government, but it is not a government agency, which means it runs on philanthropy. Most of Israel's ambulances were paid for by generous donors from around the world. Something else worth knowing, MDA's medics are Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze, serving Israel's entire population, regardless of religion, nationality or ethnic background. In a country that argues about almost everything, that diversity is sacred. You can support their important work at afmda.org/call me back, or follow the link in the episode description.