Rock Bottom Politics and the Art of the If-Pology

Yonit Levi (0:00)

A scandalous accusation made by Prime Minister Netanyahu's wife against a hero of October 7th, who's also one of the leaders of the opposition, a retired Jewish cop joining the Islamist party, and our mensch award will be split evenly between three brothers, it's Unholy, I'm Yonit Levi in Tel Aviv.

Jonathan Freedland (0:17)

And I'm Jonathan Freedland in London.

Unholy, Two Jews on the News. I mean, it could almost be a sort of comedy opening, you know, the Jewish-Israeli police chief who joins the Islamist party. I thought you'd like the way I phrased that.

Yonit Levi (0:45)

I was thinking newspaper headline.

Jonathan Freedland (0:48)

Yeah, no, it's kind of man bites dog. It's just sort of craziness. But the funny thing is what dawns on me as we have these head spinning headlines is there's huge news in the fact that US and Iran are back into a shooting war again. And yet the kind of reaction even from people who really follow Middle East news is like, okay, yeah, right, you know, now what?

The way we use sort of how you can become inured and what was crazy five minutes ago becomes almost normalized. The new normal in a way now is this thing. I heard one commentator quipping, you know, the US and Iran mission so accomplished, we're fighting again. It's evidence that this thing is not over despite how often the Trump administration say it's over. But obviously I'm interested to know whether those of you who are directly there in the crosshairs, as it were, are feeling it.

Yonit Levi (1:46)

Yeah. Look, there have been these moments over the last couple of months in which it looked like here we are returning to a full blown world like we saw at the end of February. And every time I kind of told you, you know, Jonathan, we're on kind of on the edge of our seat and we're waiting to see how this will affect us. And we should say, right, this we've seen this sharp escalation over the last 72 hours, US attacking Iranian targets, Iran attacking targets in the Gulf, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, but not Israel. I have to say this sort of everyone is so focused on the elections, we might be talking about it on our show today as well.

It kind of goes over your head. It's like, okay, if I am, if I do need to do something and check the shelter, safe room, just let me know. If not, let us go on with our lives. That is the sort of feeling. It's a very strange thing as you say, because we've grown accustomed to this and it isn't a normal situation to grow accustomed to.

Jonathan Freedland (2:44)

No. And there is, I think, between the two, between Iran and the US, there is a tacit understanding of there being limits, lines that neither side want to cross. And I think one of those lines is drawing Israel back in one way or the other.

The element where these two things that we're talking about, these two streams, these narrative streams cross, is if Netanyahu, for political reasons, with the elections coming, thinks, yeah, I know the Americans and the Iranians want me to stay out of this, but I want to get into it. I want to jump into it, because I think it's good for me in the election campaign. That's the sort of, I wouldn't say wild card, but that's the third variable in this equation. There's US interest, there's Iranian self-interest. The third variable is Netanyahu's self-interest. Does he at some point think, peace and quiet isn't so good for me. I'm going to jump in. So, that's the bit we don't know and as you say, yeah, people have got other things to focus on, which we can plunge right into because the politics is hotting up.

Yonit Levi (3:45)

It really is. I mean, look, this is a week in which I think it's important to say, in a way, these elections that we are now very close to October 27th, they're in a way a referendum on what happened on October 7th.

I'm saying in a way because this is the first election that happened since. Now, you might ask yourself, what is the sort of campaign that the Prime Minister, who was in charge then and is still in charge now, what is he saying? What is he saying even to his own voters about October 7th? The answer to that was given this week in yet another interview that Benjamin Netanyahu, we should say, not giving any interviews to mainstream media here in Israel, but of course speaking to his kind of home base on Channel 14 And this is what he said.