Sneak Peek: Tal Becker on whether new divides are becoming irreparable

**Dan Senor** (0:00)
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**Tal Becker** (0:46)
You are listening to an Ark Media podcast.

**Dan Senor** (0:58)
Welcome to Inside Call Me Back, our members-only edition, where we open the door and let you shape the conversation. Today in the hot seat addressing your questions and personal dilemmas is Ark Media contributor Tal Becker, who is also a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and counsel at Hanegman LLP. Tal, welcome back to The Inside.

**Tal Becker** (1:19)
Great to be with you again, Dan.

**Dan Senor** (1:21)
Lot of news, obviously, coming out of Israel and coming out of Washington and coming out of Tehran and coming out of Ankara. But one piece of news, which interestingly seemed to be a bigger story over here than in Israel, was Rahm Emanuel's visit to Israel and speech at Tel Aviv University. I'm going to be speaking to him about the speech soon in the next couple of days. But I'm just curious, you have been thinking about how American politicians and leaders around the world are trying to explain or articulate their problems with Israel. And maybe just before we jump into these questions, maybe it'd be interesting to spend a minute on that.

**Tal Becker** (1:58)
I maybe should cave it by saying that I didn't study Emanuel's speech too carefully. I think I do appreciate that he kind of engaged Israel directly, which is important. But it raises a broader question, which I think Israel needs to struggle with, and those who care about the US-Israel relationship need to struggle with, which is when you're looking at this dynamic and the different positions of different people, especially to some extent on the Democratic side, also on the Republican side, about how they think about the US-Israel relationship.
You got to ask how much of this is about this particular government or the personality of Netanyahu?
How much of it is the way the government is speaking or the voices coming out of Israel, the loudest voices and how they've been produced some friction? How much of it is really about Israeli policy?
Unless Israeli policy changes or for that matter, US policy changes, it's going to be more friction. And how much of it is the kind of Israel can do a no right category where it really doesn't matter what Israel does. There are also, I think, bigger dynamics here because one of the big challenges to bipartisanship at the moment and for a long time, I guess, is it's really hard to imagine strong bipartisan relations when everything else is partisan, when everything else is fragmented. So how much of this is about opposition to Trump, which Israel is kind of collateral damage for, is another question as well.
And I think maybe not this Israeli government, but the next Israeli government after the elections. There are those things that we need to think about that maybe we can't change, but there's that area which we can change, and that deserves a lot of attention. I didn't study Emanuel's speech as I mentioned too much, but I would hope that also on the US side, there's some thinking about how to move this in a different direction. One of the things that's most troubling for me, Dan, is that it's almost like Israel has become a symbol rather than a real thing, right? It stands for something. Like the issue of genocide is not an issue to inquire anymore. It's the entrance into the door. Your position on Israel or on APEC or these issues is not up to debate in certain circles anymore. It's just what gets you into the conversation. And that I think is particularly troubling because there's very little you can do about it. So we need to ask, what is the area within the US-Israel relationship that has room for real work? And try to kind of marginalize those who have turned this into this kind of symbolic thing where it just doesn't matter what Israel says or does. Doesn't matter what Israel really is. It's kind of drawn to it, these kind of labels that you can't even argue against. One last thing I'll say. I was reading this article about a memoir of a KGB official, and he was talking about KGB tactics. And he said that one of the key tactics was to repeat something a lot. And he said the repeated becomes familiar. The familiar becomes credible. The credible becomes self-evident. And the self-evident no longer becomes questioned. And I think one of the things that's happened in the noise of social media and how many things get repeated is almost this kind of KGB quality to things, where things are repeated and so familiar, they become self-evident. Like for example, on shared values or shared interests, like some of the accusations against Israel, which there's obviously room for criticism and debate. But these things are not self-evident. And I think if we're in the self-evident space where things can't be questioned and have a serious discussion, it's going to be really difficult to engage those kind of people. But if there are people who are interested in a real conversation, where should the US-Israel relationship go, then I think there's a lot of room to work.