Transcripts are lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections.
Uri Zaki: To me, and part of the reason I changed my political affiliation from right, where I was when I was a teenager, to left was my military service. I believe that the biggest moral problem is the fact that we militarily control Judea and Samaria’s Palestinians, the West Bank Palestinians. Hi, I’m Uri Zaki. I’m a political thinker.
And this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers by 18Forty.
Sruli Fruchter: From 18Forty, this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers, and I’m your host, Sruli Fruchter. 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers is a podcast that interviews Israel’s leading voices to explore those critical questions people are having today on Zionism, the Israel-Hamas war, democracy, morality, Judaism, peace, Israel’s future, and so much more. Every week, we introduce you to fresh perspectives and challenging ideas about Israel from across the political spectrum that you won’t find anywhere else.
So if you’re the kind of person who wants to learn, understand, and dive deeper into Israel, then join us on our journey as we pose 18 pressing questions to the 40 Israeli journalists, scholars, and religious thinkers you need to hear from today. One of the big challenges I have personally found in organizing this podcast, 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers, is fulfilling our goal in getting the most diverse, important, and effective set of Israeli thinkers who are right-wing, left-wing, centrist, and also in a host of different professional spaces. Some are activists, some are rabbis, some are teachers, some are academics, historians, and so on. And we’ve had a list of at least 100 different thinkers, and there are always more people who we’re adding to the list, taking off the list, and searching for to put on our list.
And of course, we are always taking suggestions from our audience. But one particular challenge is balancing the different political affiliations and identities that we have because all of the different views within those camps of right, left, and center are just so diverse. Not all right-wing thinkers are alike. Not all centrist thinkers are alike.
Where they are right-wing and where they are more nuanced and balanced, where they are left-wing and where they are more balanced and nuanced, is complicated. And so having a thinker who is left in certain policies or in certain viewpoints may not necessarily give space or give voice to other areas. And same thing for right-wing thinkers. And I’m sure you on your own can think of different thinkers who we have had, who identify as right, left, or center, who don’t necessarily fit into the perfect box that we imagine someone with that affiliation might.
Maybe their views on the war, on the Palestine-Israeli conflict, on Israeli leadership right now, on religious life in Israel, on the Haredi draft, and the list goes on. I remember when we had guests like Benny Morris and Anita Shapira, two acclaimed Israeli historians, I thought of them as more centrist Zionists with liberal inclinations. But I remember someone in our audience, one of our listeners, reaching out and saying, you’ve had all these left-wing thinkers, these far left-wing thinkers like Benny Morris and Anita Shapira. And I was so stricken by that because I think it’s just a reminder about how our own subjectivity and biases can affect how we view or categorize different people on the political spectrum.
I still don’t think that that’s an accurate characterization of those two thinkers. Generally, in my mind, I think the most decisive lines of categorizing Israeli thinkers as left-wing relate to their views of the war against Hamas and in Gaza, the future of the Palestine-Israeli conflict, and how they understand the history of the Palestine-Israeli conflict, specifically in terms of how much blame they place on Israel as opposed to the Palestinians. And those thinkers did not seem to stray far from, I think, the more general mainstream of at least what I’ve seen in red from Israeli society. But you can debate that.
Today’s guest, however, is someone who is part of the Israeli left. And I say that with some caveats. Uri Zaki is a Zionist, lawyer, and left-wing political thinker and advocate, and also the founder of the New Israel Fund’s Front for the Protection of Democracy. He was previously the chairperson of Meretz, which is one of Israel’s left-wing parties, or was, before it merged with the Labor Party, a different left-wing party in the Israeli government.
And because they did not think they would get enough seats, or they didn’t get enough seats, both of those merged to form the Democrats, which is a joint left-wing party between Meretz and Labor. Uri’s worked at and with several Zionist and human rights organizations, including the Executive Board of Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the World Zionist Organization, and the chair of the Herzl Center at Har Herzl. His wife, actually, is Tamar Zandberg, who was a member of Knesset as part of the Meretz Party, and was the party’s leader in 2018 and 2019. But what was really interesting to me about Uri’s professional background is that, from 2010 to 2013-2014, he was the founding director of B’Tselem USA.
B’Tselem, for those who are not familiar, is an Israeli human rights organization, and today is one of the most divisive and controversial organizations in Israel. It frequently blasts Israel for alleged human rights violations, war crimes, and currently believes that Israel, the entirety of Israel, is an apartheid state, operating as a one-state reality in which Palestinians live as second-class citizens, and accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And so to be clear, and I’m sure that even just mentioning those things is very difficult for a lot of our audience to hear, that is very much not where Uri is. And when he was working at B’Tselem in 2010, for those three to four years, as the founding director of B’Tselem USA, which represented the organization abroad, B’Tselem was a very different organization and in a very different place.
The views of B’Tselem today, at least in my characterization, is the far left of Israeli society, which is even more fringe than the very small left-wing part of Israel mo re broadly. But Uri’s not in that camp. When he was with the organization, it was different. It was always critical of Israel, which is to be expected from an organization that is documenting a country’s human rights records.
That was several years before B’Tselem came out with the Apartheid label in 2019-2020, which was a big shift and a radical decision that came with other human rights organizations, like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a very prominent and, at the time, critic and liberal Zionist, Peter Beinart. The vast majority of Israeli society, and the entirety of the pro-Israel community, and the vast majority of the Jewish community, denounces that label for what they essentially say is a gross oversimplification and dismissal of the existential security threats facing Israel and the historical context that has set up Israel’s security situation today and ignores the peace processes of the Palestine-Israeli conflict, and so on. I’m not mentioning any of this to now try and litigate the entirety of the criticisms of B’Tselem and the opposition against it in Israel and the Jewish community. I mention all of these things just for historical context and contemporary comparison.
These are not the views that you’re going to hear in Uri’s interview, nor are they views that Uri in any way is endorsing. But understanding the background, or this background rather, I think is very helpful to get the most out of Uri’s answering of our 18 questions. I mention this because I was so fascinated during our interview, and I asked Uri several times, how he relates to B’Tselem today and how he related to it at the time. And what was interesting, as he mentioned in the interview as well, is that in that period of time, he recalls dancing with Peter Beinart at the Israeli Day Parade with an Israeli flag.
Which, for those who are more familiar with Peter Beinart’s views, that visual is really unbelievable. But Uri is a Zionist. He fervently opposes and is appalled by the apartheid label and by such claims made that he says are meant to destroy the foundations of a Jewish state of Israel. So that comes up a lot in the interview, and I also want to make space and recognize the sensitivity of bringing on one of, and I wouldn’t say one of, I would say actually the most left-wing thinker that we’ve had on the podcast.
And also position it as an invitation for others to again recommend other voices that you want to be hearing on the podcast, other right-wing thinkers you want to be having on the podcast. Because we are really trying to reflect back the discourse that is happening in Israeli society with the leading thinkers. And I think Uri’s position as a fervent Zionist, a proud Zionist, and a classic leftist in Israeli society gives us a really unique window into how he thinks, what he thinks, and why he thinks it. For more about Uri, you can find him on social media or in Israeli and international media, where he’s a frequent contributor and commentator.
So, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And before we bring you Uri, a reminder that if you have questions that you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, shoot us an email at info@18Forty.org. And be sure to subscribe and share the podcast so that we can reach new listeners.
So, on that note, here is 18 Questions with Uri Zaki.
So, we’ll begin where we always do. As an Israeli and as a Jew, how are you feeling at this moment in Israeli history?
Uri Zaki: Well, on the one hand, of course, I feel devastated. My country has encountered its worst crisis since its creation.
Hundreds of Israelis were killed. As we speak, there’s an ongoing war in seven different fronts. And you add that to a broken Israeli society. So, it’s a moment of crisis.
On the other hand, it might become a defining moment if the Israeli society and the Jewish people would know how to use this moment to reborn.
Sruli Fruchter: What do you mean by a broken Israeli society?
Uri Zaki: Well, the political and cultural differences are boiling, are in a boiling point.
Sruli Fruchter: Different than before?
First of all, up to October 7th, it was the peak of this political and cultural divide. The worst thing is that it was orchestrated by the current Israeli government.
The prime minister and his allies. I mean, I believe in such a diverse society, a significant part of the leader of Israel is to try and bring the people together, not to divide them. And there was an orchestrated attempt to basically spill gas, gasoline on the fire of divide. And specifically the year since the creation of this government.
Of course, it’s not something they invented.
Sruli Fruchter: You’re referring to judicial reform?
Uri Zaki: The judicial reform and the rhetoric around it. We are in an ongoing crisis that peaked with the creation of this particular coalition and its initiatives. And I believe it was part of the lowering of our immune system that enabled October 7th.
If you want, I can elaborate on that, even on a pure security level.
Sruli Fruchter: Yeah, I’m curious briefly what you mean by that.
Uri Zaki: Okay, so apart from the intelligence analysis that this is a moment where our different enemies… This was published before October 7th.
It was part of the news that the intelligence chiefs and the military chiefs and different security apparatus chiefs would say, this crisis in society is what our enemies are aware of and they want to abuse it. Even the fact that the military was preoccupied with this, its chiefs, all levels were occupied with this. It was kind of a constant noise, which was artificial. It’s not something that has to be done right now in this manner.
This took a lot of their energies from what they were supposed to do, which was to defend our country. Even Netanyahu’s own concentration on what is important. So I believe it was reckless. And again, it was obvious, people were speaking about it.
It’s not like we live now in, I don’t know, Switzerland, and we can now think how our democracy is supposed to operate. We’re in a very specific part of the world and we’re not loved here and we have many challenges around us. And you can’t afford being so brutal because at the end of the day, we’re supposed to be to gether fighting this and we see it now. I mean, it’s, yeah.
Sruli Fruchter: What do you think has been Israel’s greatest success and greatest mistake in the current war against Hamas?
Uri Zaki: Well, I’ll start with the mistake. The mistake was October 7th itself.
Sruli Fruchter: It’s funny, a lot of times that’ll be the initial thing people say. I’ll clarify specifically referring to the war itself, post-October 7th, once the war itself or the military campaign actually begun.
Uri Zaki: So the military campaign, and in parentheses, I would say, as part of Netanyahu’s constant reluctant view when it comes to operating force, started kind of slow, which dragged the war, eventually dragged the war, and it’s still ongoing as we speak right now, at least over a year. But I think on a military level, the fact that Hamas basically is defeated militarily, Hezbollah, which was the biggest immediate threat in the last two decades, is highly damaged with its strong leader and one of the biggest enemies Israel ever had, Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel. Of course, also the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, killed in battle with the Israeli soldiers. So in that sense, we have military success.
We also have a direct conflict with Iran, which might be frightening, but it also kind of uncovers the truth. Iran kind of manipulated its proxies and kind of, I’m not part of this, it’s their doing. But right now they kind of took off their masks, which is, I always think that the truth is better than playing charades.
Sruli Fruchter: These are the successes you’re saying?
Uri Zaki: The military success is obvious.
I mean, it took a while, but it’s where Hamas is no longer, at least for the foreseeable future, a military threat from Gaza. Hezbollah is beaten far from the threat it was. The problem is, and this started, again, this is a political and diplomatic problem. It derives from both the nature of the coalition of Mr. Netanyahu and his own beliefs, I believe.
In my view, what led to October 7th was Netanyahu’s old reluctance to deal with the Palestinians and specifically with the Palestinian Authority, with the Fatah, with the more moderate part of the Palestinians, therefore enforcing their rival, which was Hamas. There won’t be, he calls it the ultimate victory, there won’t be an ultimate victory against Hamas if he doesn’t have an alternative. And right now, Netanyahu is doing whatever he can to prevent the alternative to emerge. And that’s strategically dangerous.
Sruli Fruchter: You think that’s the greatest mistake that Israel is doing right now?
Uri Zaki: Yes, yes. And of course, I believe the war has to end in Gaza. I think we achieved Gaza is pretty much destroyed. If someone would try to attack Israel again and see the devastation in Gaza, they’ll think twice, I believe.
Whether you support it or not, that’s reality. Hamas, as I said, is beaten, but it can reemerge unless you give it an alternative. And the alternative has to come from a more moderate.
Sruli Fruchter: So why do you think the war…
Uri Zaki: John Lennon and Yoko Ono do not live in Gaza. But there are two streams of thought within the Palestinian political arena. One is fundamental Islamist, pan-Islamist even, jihadist, which is Hamas. And the other one, a nationalist Palestinian one, with which you can deal.
Sruli Fruchter: So why do you think the war in Gaza is still continuing?
Uri Zaki: I believe, listen, right now, I believe it’s first Netanyahu’s reluctance to have this alternative to Hamas. But unfortunately, also his personal political interests. He kind of plays with his coalition partners, namely Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the so-called Zionist Religious Party. I’m saying so-called because it’s part of the streams within the Israeli society, which I highly respect, which is called the Zionist Religious Community.
But he called his party like that. And the racist Ben-Gvir, the Jewish Power Party leader. Both of them strongly support Israeli settlement in Gaza. Netanyahu cannot say that because Israel is dependent on American and Western support.
But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to show that he’s doing something against it because he might lose his coalition. So I believe that’s the main reason. But listen, there’s another partner here, or not partner, another player here, which is Hamas itself. You can’t stop the war without releasing all the hostages.
And it’s not like you can end the war at any cost. But I think if we would have said we are ready for a Palestinian alternative with strong support from the world, and specifically the Arab countries, which are part of the axis America is trying to build here, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt, so on and so forth, with investment and so on, Hamas wouldn’t have had a choice but to accept that. But we’re not saying that. We’re very passive.
And you have to be proactive right now, especially because of the hostages.
Sruli Fruchter: So very briefly before we go on to our next question, I am also curious. One of the things that I think outside of Israel, and maybe even within Israel, has been surprising or very telling to a lot of people is that for the most part, almost across the political spectrum, right, left, and center, the support for the war and against Hamas was very consistent. Maybe there have been arguments about what is most strategic or what should be done at which point, but support for the war itself was pretty universal in Israeli society.
Very briefly, I’m curious, when did you diverge? Because you’ve been outspoken supportive of the war a very long time, and now you’re saying that the war in Gaza needs to end. When would you say that that shifted for you, or you felt like, at this point, I don’t think that it’s in Israel’s best interest to continue the campaign in Gaza?
Uri Zaki: One of my main concerns is the hostages. And, you know, when six of them were murdered, it was a turning point. And on the other hand, the killing of Sinwar was another point.
I believe, you know, I’m not one of those who say, you know, it doesn’t matter. Israel already proved its superiority, militarily speaking, and so on. I think the killing of Sinwar was symbolic, it was important. And now when he’s gone, and he’s the architect, together with Deif, who was killed before, and this came also after the killing of Nasrallah, kind of, you know, we made our point.
We can afford going backwards or to retreat. Again, not at all costs, but we need to state that we are ready for that, and especially because of the hostages, because we have 101 hostages, many of them alive. It’s crazy.
Sruli Fruchter: How do you think Hamas views the outcome and aftermath of October 7th? Was it a success in their eyes?
Uri Zaki: Listen, these people, it’s very hard for me to get into their minds, because these are fanatics, psychopaths.
Of course, Hamas is not, as all human beings, and even the most evil ones, they’re not a unity. I’m pretty sure that some of them look at things differently than the others, but as a political, theological, ideological stream or sect, I think they see it as a success. First of all, they have to tell themselves it’s a success, because they dragged Gaza into devastation. They have to tell themselves, you know, this is part of Allah’s plan or whatever.
But it doesn’t matter. Objectively speaking, they brought destruction to their own community. Again, these are people who don’t care, who used hospitals and schools and kindergartens as shelters to their military operations. They also see, by the way, and I’m sure that that’s a success for them too, that there are students in Ivy League American universities who chant from the river to the sea, which is their cause.
No two-state solution, no peace, kind of adopting the Hamas line on Palestine, which is crazy. So yeah, they might see it as a success, but it’s not. They brought devastation and destruction to their own people, and that’s what matters.
Sruli Fruchter: What do you look for in deciding which Knesset party to vote for?
Uri Zaki: Listen, I’m, you know, we’re talking about thinkers.
I’m a political activist, and until recently I was the chair of the Meretz Executive. Meretz merged with Labor to form the Democrats. So I’m a member of this party.
Sruli Fruchter: Yeah, it’s a funny question.
I’m curious what things you’re considering, not necessarily who you’re voting for, which, you know, I probably put my money where that would be, but which considerations you have in your mind when you’re thinking about that.
Uri Zaki: It’s a good question. It’s a very good question. Especially now, we’re kind of, as I said before, a defining moment for Israel.
It might also be a defining moment for each voter. I believe the elements in a post-October 7th Israel, for me, should be, on the one hand, strong security approach. I mean, I won’t vote for a party that says don’t support a war just because it’s a war. There are justified wars.
This war is definitely one of them.
Sruli Fruchter: Are there any such parties in Israel that really?
Uri Zaki: Yes, Hadash, the communist party, for instance. Even part of the margins that I’m not sure why they are in Meretz itself. Meretz is no longer part of a new party.
But if now Meretz would have been in existence, I’m pretty sure that some of it would be on that line. I’m not there, as you see. On the other hand, a political or a stated willingness to go for an agreement with a Palestinian party that is interested, that is not Hamas, to go to agreements with the region to understand that we need to compromise as part of our Zionist vision to maintain Israel as a democratic Jewish homeland. This combination, you know, without blinking to the, you know, saying, you know, making it vague that these two elements are important.
And of course, a liberal approach to how Israel should look like. I think right now the division in Israel is not necessarily right or left. It’s what kind of Israel do you want? And I’m part of, I believe it’s Zionist basic truth that the Jewish homeland has to be democratic in the deep sense of the word, not just go to vote. In almost any country, non-democracies, you go to vote too.
But to have a real democracy with checks and balances and all that involves. So these are the three elements, I would say.
Sruli Fruchter: Which is more important for Israel, Judaism or democracy?
Uri Zaki: Both. That’s the Zionist formula.
It’s hard. It has some tension between those two elements.
Sruli Fruchter: And when the two come into conflict, which are you more inclined to preserve or fight for?
Uri Zaki: Again, I don’t think you have to decide between the both. If you have to decide between the both, it’s a failure.
I mean, I think they can coexist, perhaps with tensions. But it’s, you know, life is not formulas. I would not live, at least not in Israel, if it would not be a Jewish homeland or national Jewish state. But I would not live in such a state if it would, for instance, say, you know, we’re no longer a democracy or we adopt the halakhic approach as our constitution or something like that.
Although I’m a, what we call a traditional Jew, you know, I practice some of the halakhic rules. But it can’t be the constitution of this country. Or we would say non-Jews have less rights. Even the situation right now has to improve.
We’re not where we’re supposed to be. We’re not at the, you know, I used to be the chair of the Herzl Center. We are not fulfilling the Herzlian vision in full. We’re still far from it when it comes, for instance, to equality.
But if we give it up, that means that this country is broken.
Sruli Fruchter: Should Israel treat its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens the same? Definitely.
Uri Zaki: I think the only place where you should have affirmative action is at our gateways, meaning the law of return. There were in the recent, let’s say two decades, people started saying, you know, you don’t need it anymore.
Jews are no longer in threat. Under threat, I believe the last year proved that even in the most safe haven, which is the United States or Canada, places like that, Jews are still regarded as Jews and not Americans or Canadians or so on and so forth. We still need this basic law of return. But when it comes to rights in this country, they have to be fully equal.
And that’s why, by the way, so you’ll ask me why. So why should the flag has a Jewish symbol in it? Why the anthem has to have Jewish elements in it and so on and so forth? I believe symbols should also, we should also think about how to have non-Jews relate to those symbols. But those symbols reflect a Jewish tradition because there’s a majority of Jews here. That’s why I’m fearful of annexation, because if you annex Palestinian majority, if you annex the Gaza Strip, if you take the Smotrich vision of annexing the Gaza Strip, he talks about expelling them from their country.
I don’t think that’s realistic and I don’t think it’s moral. So let’s say you’re ruling a Palestinian majority, then this country has to follow the majority because it’s a democracy. That’s why the Zionist vision has to have borders where you have a Jewish majority, which is kind of the ‘67 borders with perhaps changes and a Palestinian entity or state. In other words, the route to fulfill the Zionist vision is to have also a fulfillment of Palestinian self-identity.
Sruli Fruchter: You mentioned that you don’t think that Israel is succeeding in its treatment of its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. What do you mean by that? Or there’s room to improve maybe in your language?
Uri Zaki: First of all, the discourse is very problematic and discourse is important in the life of a nation. You see basically racist politicians and groups succeeding more than before and entering the Knesset and bringing up racist notions. But it’s not only that, it’s also the Arab community in Israel, when you look at the data, it’s not as successful as the Jewish one.
It gets less resources, less education. So in that sense, the investment in resources, also there are some, I mean, for years I could say there are no laws that hurt non-Jews in Israel, but now you have that, how do you call it? The nation state law. The nation state law, which is a stain on our constitution or constitution legislation, which I think has no room in our book of laws. But mostly it’s not legislation, it’s policy, not only by this government.
This government is more vocal and blunt about it. But throughout the existence of Israel, you had policies that hurt Israeli Palestinian citizens. There were some improvements in several years, but we still have a long way to go. I believe that we should come to a situation where, like Herzl wrote about, where the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel feel that this is their country.
I mean, yes, it will be a Jewish country, but you have minorities elsewhere in the world and even in the Middle East where you have minorities identifying with a nation state different from their own national identity. And also perhaps if there’ll be a Palestinian self-determination in this land somewhere, regardless of its borders, it will also help to achieve that.
Sruli Fruchter: So one of the things that I think is very interesting, and I came in wanting to ask about this, is that in 2010 to 2013-14, you were working with B’Tselem in the US. B’Tselem, people will hear in the introduction for the podcast intro, it’s an Israeli human rights organization.
And I believe 2019-2020, they came out that they believe Israel’s apartheid. It’s a one state reality. Palestinians don’t have equal rights. Despite your criticism right now, that does not seem to be where you’re at.
I’m curious, having worked at the human rights organization B’Tselem, where do you find yourself in relation to that? And where do you find yourself in terms of, I think at least the deeper struggles that you may or may not have as someone who’s part of the Israeli liberal Israeli left?
Uri Zaki: First of all, I strongly disagree with B’Tselem. B’Tselem underwent a change of leadership just less than 10 years ago. And ever since it, in my view, drove away from its original purpose, which was to analyze human rights and to introduce to Israelis mostly, the human rights ramifications of our military control over the West Bank and Gaza. That was the original purpose of…
Sruli Fruchter: But arguably, they would say that they’re still doing that when they really stopped, meaning for their apartheid determination. They had a few hundred page report that they…
Uri Zaki: That’s a political statement. It’s not.
I mean, they also involved going to the UN Security Council and things that were very political. I think part of the strength of B’Tselem used to be its non-political, almost scientific analysis of the situation. And they adopted a very radical political discourse, which I think fails their task.
Sruli Fruchter: But aside from the strategy and the discourse, is there an on-the-ground reality that you view differently than B’Tselem does, having worked with the organization, having worked with different political organizations in the Israeli left, that you feel like either is the core disagreement, so to speak, that you might have?
Uri Zaki: I think, again, I think they are part now of what emerged, especially after October 7th, it existed there before, a kind of strong, I would even say hatred towards the mere idea of Israel here.
Unfortunately, it also comes from a very, very, very, very thin margin here in Israel. But the mere notion of a Jewish nation state here in the land of Israel, Palestine, whatever your point of view is, mine is the land of Israel. You saw that emerging before and lasting after October 7th. I strongly disagree with, let’s put it this way, I never would have, now I’d be working for B’Tselem, no way.
Mind you, I never worked for B’Tselem in Israel.
Sruli Fruchter: Representative in the United States.
Uri Zaki: Exactly. I was hired to create B’Tselem USA.
By the way, I was hired because I was a Zionist, and this tells you a bit about how American approach to Israel changed. They hired me because they knew I was a very outspoken Zionist, because back then, this is 15 years ago, you could not start a conversation in the US without strong support to Israel. Unfortunately, now there are wider and wider circles where you have to condemn Israel to start a conversation on Israel. So in my B’Tselem USA office, you had the Israeli flag, you even had blue and white candies.
I marched, by the way, with Peter Beinart, who ever since also changes politics.
Sruli Fruchter: You had to get a shift that was aligned, I think, with B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch and a lot of that happening in the same few months.
Uri Zaki: But I marched with him in the Israel Day Parade, holding an Israeli flag and with a B’Tselem t-shirt.
Sruli Fruchter: Oh wow, when was this?
Uri Zaki: This is 2012.
Sruli Fruchter: Oh, it’s a different world, wow.
Uri Zaki: Yes, so I didn’t change, they changed.
Sruli Fruchter: So what I am curious about, and then we’ll move on to a different question, is in a 2020 interview on the Nice Jewish Boys podcast, you were speaking about how theoretically, it was about annexation. You were saying theoretically if Israel were to annex the West Bank and not give total rights and citizenship to all the Palestinians who were there, which obviously poses a demographic issue for Israel in terms of goals for a Jewish state, then it would be apartheid.
And the crux of what B’Tselem at least seems to say in terms of the apartheid argument is that maybe they haven’t annexed it, but it’s a one state reality. And so I’m just struggling to see, meaning it seems like the real disagreement that you have with B’Tselem is one about whether or not it’s a one state reality, not whether or not the West Bank is or is not part of Israel. Because the core of it underlying of whether it is or is not, it seems like after that most conclusions would be quite similar.
Uri Zaki: Again, I think before we go to the specifics, the premise is different.
When reading B’Tselem’s statements and reports now, it seems to me they don’t believe with the fundamental need, or not need, even reality of a Jewish national democratic state. I will say differently that the mere fact that Israel is a Jewish homeland, self-stated Jewish homeland, is a problem, is part of its apartheid. This goes to the core of my beliefs. Again, I would not live here unless it would be a Jewish national state or a democracy.
So I think there are things that have to be fixed, but that the core is good. And I feel that they think that things have to dramatically change, that the fundamentals have to change. If you want to talk about it philosophically, they have kind of a very black and white approach where Israel is the villain and the Palestinians are the victims. And I do not see the division like that.
I don’t think we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys either. I think it’s a complex situation. And once you lose the complexity, and in B’Tselem’s case, even objectively speaking, their only advantage on Human Rights Watch, all the other human rights organizations, is their Israeli identity.
Sruli Fruchter: But you group them essentially the same in terms of their credibility?
Uri Zaki: I mean, they gave up on the Israeli public altogether.
So it’s something that when I debate with some of those radical leftists from the U.S., they tell me, oh, but B’Tselem said that and they’re Israeli. They don’t represent anyone. They do not even represent yes, they’re Israeli citizens, but that’s how it comes up to that. And that’s it.
So I think they lost their justification.
Sruli Fruchter: What role should the Israeli government have in religious matters?
Uri Zaki: I believe that Israel should have separation between state and religion. I could have said church, but church is irrelevant here, but also churches.
I believe it’s chilul Hashem combining a secular structure like a state with a spiritual structure, which is the religion. I don’t even know what the model is for a religious state. You have so many different streams within the Jewish people or Jewish religion that if you’re Orthodox, you’re sure that you’re the seal keeper. But then within Orthodoxy, you have Haredim who are sure that they are the real seal keeper and the the Modern Orthodox are wrong.
And you can’t have that. What does it mean to keep Shabbat or not? You see in Israel that the examples where you have respect for religious traditions are those which are not coerced by law. For example, bris not driving on Yom Kippur, but when it comes to coercion, for instance, weddings, I haven’t looked at it for a while, but at least for a very long while, the number of weddings, the ultimate number of weddings in Israel, you can only marry through the Rabbinate in the halakhic way, was the exact one in the 2000s like it was in the 70s. But our population doubled itself.
So that means that fewer and fewer people are actually getting married in Israel because they don’t want the rabbis to be part of it. I’m pretty sure that if it would not be coerced by law, more people would marry that way. And also you see people who hate Judaism because of that. For instance, I have some family members, unfortunately, who told me for the first time, I’m going to eat hametz this last Passover, not this one, the one before the war because of all this hametz legislation that was talked about.
This is crazy. And it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, again, you should have the Jewish calendar as an official calendar. You should have Jewish symbols, Hebrew, of course, spoken here.
You have enough. By the way, there are fields where you can increase the exposure to Judaism. For instance, myself, as a graduate of a general Israeli school system, I never opened a Talmud page. This is part of the Ben-Gurion approach that everything that was done after the exile is irrelevant.
We should go back to the pre-exile, exilic period. We should have that. A Jewish student or a Jew who graduated from high school in Israel should know we have an amazing tradition here. Judaism is Gemara. It’s not the Old Testament. I mean, that’s Judaism. So things like that. You could even have compromise on what it means.
I mean, it’s crazy not to have 24-7 public transport in Israel. You can’t afford a modern country in the 21st century not having public transport with 10 million people living here, expected 15 million people to be living here in a few decades. You can’t have that. You can have compromises that go with the halakha.
For example, having a non-Jewish owned company running the weekend public transport, including the trains. But we can’t go on with this.
Sruli Fruchter: Yeah, there needs to be some…
Uri Zaki: Yes.
Sruli Fruchter: Now that Israel already exists, what’s the purpose of Zionism?
Uri Zaki: First of all, to have Israel as a safe haven for all Jews. And again, if somebody would have probably thought that it’s no longer relevant, I believe in the post-October 7th world we see how important it is. And second is to fulfill what I see are the kind of general principles of Zionism. Having a democracy here, again, a Jewish state, but a full democracy.
And this is a line that brings to gether Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, Begin, Rabin, you name it, to work on Tikkun Olam and not only be a great nation for its people, but also for other nations. In our first 75 years of existence, unfortunately, we had to be self-centered. But the vision was that from here you’ll have a kind of peace corps that you have in the United States. This is something that a successful Zionist vision should have produced here too, using our knowledge.
We do that, but it’s not a national task right now because we have to defend ourselves. I think this is part of what it means to be a Zionist these days. The visionist will of Herzl, he had a very famous sentence. Treat the other, and he meant Arabs, the minority, or you will be judged by how you will be treating the minorities in your future state.
So if that’s Herzl’s will, this is also part of being Zionist.
Sruli Fruchter: Is opposing Zionism inherently antisemitic?
Uri Zaki: Academically speaking, no, you could say. But in reality, I increasingly think it is. Because you see the hatred towards Jews who are called Zionist.
They don’t even know if they’re Zionist or not. But knowing they’re Jews, they’re accused of the word they use is Zionist. It’s kind of like not using the N-word, but using some other word, but it means the same. And to say that the Jewish people…
You could argue before the establishment of the State of Israel whether Jews are entitled to have self-determination or not. To say now that you oppose Zionism and to chant from the river to the sea, meaning what these Jews are supposed to do? Be killed or expelled? Or live under a Hamas regime? What are these people? So I think in practice, whether philosophically or not, you can have the debate, philosophically speaking. In practice, people who are against Zionism in its original form. If Zionism is Ben-Gvir, no.
But Zionism is not Ben-Gvir, and people know that. Zionism is a self-determination movement from the 19th century that brought about the State of Israel. If you’re against not only the mere idea, but you want to change the reality that was created in the last 100 years, where you have a country that has 10 million people here, I think you can fairly say it’s a form of antisemitism.
Sruli Fruchter: Is the IDF the world’s most moral army?
Uri Zaki: I don’t think armies…
I’ve never read of a rating of moral armies or non-moral armies. I don’t think it’s necessarily more moral than… Listen, there are probably militaries that do not even fight, so they don’t encounter… Maybe the Swiss army, they have a great knife, by the way.
Maybe it’s more moral because it doesn’t have to deal with moral issues. Armies are not meant to be moral. There are definitely cases, especially due to the ongoing military occupation of a vast area and population. I mean, to me, and part of the reason I changed my political affiliation from right, where I was when I was a teenager, to left was my military service.
I believe that the biggest moral problem is the fact that we militarily control Judea and Samaria’s Palestinians, the West Bank Palestinians. And a military can’t have its main task in controlling a huge civilian population. That brings about moral issues. And something that, like many things in Israel, that was supposed to be temporary became a regime.
And that’s morally wrong. It doesn’t mean that the idea of the rating of moral armies in the world is more moral. It doesn’t matter to me. I mean, war is ugly.
War is violent. You should do a lot to avoid war. Once war occurs, there’ll be death and injuries and destruction. It’s not nice.
But sometimes it’s a must. This last war was a must. And you started by one of your former questions. You said most Israelis, like a huge majority, supported this war, supports this war, because we’re fighting for our lives.
We saw what happens when our military is down. We were butchered and raped and kidnapped. So, you know, we’re defending our home. But the biggest problem is the ongoing occupation, the regime of occupation.
Sruli Fruchter: To touch back on the question of the West Bank, so we actually had a listener who reached out and he emailed and he said, you know, if you have a thinker, you think it’s a good question, you know, maybe pose it to them. And so I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Again, I think that one of the things that is interesting to me and that I kind of keep coming back to is Zionist left and what that means in Israeli context. Given the moral issues that you’re seeing in the West Bank with Israel’s presence there, with military rule, occupation of the West Bank, as you’re saying, how does that form your view of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state? Meaning, how are you understanding those moral issues and how are they in some way contained for you as opposed to defining your overall view of Israel?
Uri Zaki: They’re eclipsing the longer we are the military occupation, which is now a regime in Judea and Samaria and the West Bank continues.
Sruli Fruchter: What’s the distinction you’re making between… I mean, it seems like you’re recognizing development that used to call it an occupation and now you’re calling it a regime. What do you mean by that?
Uri Zaki: Because I think that the laws of occupation, which the jurists of the IDF in ‘67 smartly used, the Geneva Convention, number four, the fourth Geneva Convention, so on and so forth, although they are not time-defined, they never thought somebody would use them for over 50 years. They thought about Europe in the post-Second World War, something like that, when American allies forces held Germany and things like that.
Maybe something similar to Iraq or Afghanistan, a temporary situation. The combination, by the way, of the abuse of Oslo, which was, again, an interim five-year agreement and the laws of occupation into one regime with areas A and B and C and all that are all part of a regime of control of the territory and the people. That’s increasingly eclipsing this almost holy combination of Jewish and democratic in the Zionist formula. That’s why I’m talking about a regime.
It’s not, especially under Netanyahu, even the stated obligation to reach a different final status faded away. It’s very problematic.
Sruli Fruchter: If you were making the case for Israel, where would you begin?
Uri Zaki: Now I would start with the need, which I haven’t done in years, the need. Jews, we deserve self-determination.
Look at this. We achieved an amazing, almost a man-made miracle where you have a flourishing country with, of course, the high-tech, the startup nation, but also agriculture and universities and academia and schools and culture and the Hebrew language. It’s unprecedented what we achieved here in so few years. That would be my case for Israel.
We have problems. Most countries have problems. Most democracies are undergoing crises right now. Our unique situation is our location.
It couldn’t have happened elsewhere, but it’s tough. But even there, we’re making progress with the acceptance of our neighborhood of us newcomers, newcomers, of course, but we need to do something with the Palestinians that would fulfill the establishment of the state of Israel. The fact that we didn’t end this conflict with the Palestinians, I’m not talking about ending the conflict between the peoples. I don’t know whether it’s going to, but to officially have an agreement with the Palestinians or a different reality with the Palestinians is kind of overshadowing our…
Israel is not full in that sense.
Sruli Fruchter: Can questioning the actions of Israel’s government and army, even in the context of this war, be a valid form of love and patriotism?
Uri Zaki: Can you elaborate?
Sruli Fruchter: Can questioning the actions of the Israeli government … and army, even in this war or in general, can doing that be considered a valid form of love and patriotism?
Uri Zaki: Of course.
I think part of being patriot is not being a robot, accepting everything you’re… whether it’s in Israel or anywhere else in the world. I think a Russian patriot should question the aggressive, violent attack on its neighbor, the Ukraine, which would be an act of Russian patriotism rather than supporting a crazy invasion by their leader. Of course, questioning your leadership’s actions is the truest form of patriotism.
But you should not be dogmatic, both in support or criticism.
Sruli Fruchter: What do you think is the most legitimate criticism that’s leveled against Israel today?
Uri Zaki: I think our ongoing occupation of the West Bank and also Gaza, not occupying it, but what we did there was also mistaken.
Sruli Fruchter: What we did there and what?
Uri Zaki: You know, there was the siege on Gaza.
Sruli Fruchter: Oh, you’re saying pre-October 7th?
Uri Zaki: Pre-October 7th, yeah.
It was a siege only on the population, not on Hamas. They got everything they wanted in suitcases full of millions of dollars. But yeah, I think the criticism against Israel and especially with this prime minister and especially with this government not wanting to change the situation vis-à-vis the Palestinians is legitimate. I don’t see our leadership, and I think that’s anti-patriotic.
I think it puts Israel in a… Not because of security. We know how to defend ourselves, as you see. But in our moral core, in our mirror, as I said, the formula works on those two pillars.
That’s the structure of Zionism, the Jewish self-determination and democracy. And at one point, democracy is eroding… By the way, it’s not surprising. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the great thinker here in Israel, said that once you occupy people, it would end up eroding your own democracy, and we see that happening too.
So that’s a legitimate criticism. But when it goes to… One thing is to criticize the occupation, to say, to chant, from the river to the sea, and saying Israel itself is the problem, that’s antisemitism, hatred. It should be condemned in all means possible.
Sruli Fruchter: Do you think peace between Israelis and Palestinians will happen within your lifetime?
Uri Zaki: Yes. Yes, I believe…
Sruli Fruchter: What do you think it will look like? And how do you think that it’ll happen?
Uri Zaki: I think… By the way, not even closer than you think.
I think it will happen in the next few years.
Sruli Fruchter: Oh, really?
Uri Zaki: Yes. I think, unfortunately, the historical pattern shows that political change in the Israeli-Arab conflict, and specifically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, come after a crisis. If you take…
Sruli Fruchter: But many would respond to that and say that if people look back, and this is a narrative many people are familiar with, that pre-’48, Israel offered this peace deal and that peace deal and this peace deal and that peace deal, and despite whichever wars were going on or whichever new developments happened, peace didn’t occur, and the Israelis and Palestinians couldn’t come to a consensus or an agreement about that. Why do you think that now would be different? And I think on top of that, I’m curious, how, if at all, October 7th, and what some people feel is almost the greatest validation that the mistake with Gaza was giving it up, how does that resonate with you? How do you think about that?
Uri Zaki: First of all, I think the biggest mistake was to giving it up unilaterally, not in an agreement. If you take Israeli history and its relations with its neighbors and the Arab world, whenever we had an agreement, it was fulfilled. Even the Oslo Accord, that is so much truly so, as I said before, it now became a part of the regime which enables Israeli control over the West Bank.
Even it, after now, it’s fulfilled by the Palestinians. You have this security cooperation. So agreements do last. The agreement with the Egyptians, the Camp David Accords, they lasted through the killing of the president who signed them, Anwar Sadat, an Israeli invasion to an Arab capital of Beirut in 1982, two Palestinian Intifadas, and even the Muslim Brothers taking over Egypt.
So that was Sharon‘s mistake. He wanted to avoid, like Netanyahu in a sense, he wanted to avoid touching the West Bank, so he separated them both by pulling out of Gaza and basically handed it over to Hamas. That was the mistake, not pulling out of Gaza. It was crazy to have such a small Jewish population with a vast Palestinian, in the midst of a vast Palestinian population.
They should have done, be part of an agreement. So what you’re telling me is kind of like, you know, we were good, they were bad, this kind of discourse, it doesn’t interest me. Historically speaking, both sides sometimes need to undergo a crisis understanding the limits of power in order to proceed to diplomacy and political agreements. And unfortunately this was, I couldn’t imagine a more horrific disaster for Israel, but I think it will, again also with the tension of the world, which kind of Netanyahu succeeded for years in kind of shelving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Now it’s, you know, in the midst of all Western countries, including the United States. I don’t think it will be shelved again in the foreseeable future.
Sruli Fruchter: But what I find interesting about that is that it doesn’t seem like October 7th has drawn people closer in terms of, I think it’s recognized as a crisis, but it does seem as if it’s pushed both right and left towards right, towards acknowledgement that at the very least what we had before we need to maintain. And at most we need to, you know, at most extreme push out the Palestinians.
We need to de-radicalize whatever process that would happen there. And then it’s convinced many proponents who were two-state solutioners or were in that camp that only a one-state reality, secular, binational, confederacy, whatever formulations people want. And I’ve heard you say in the past that, you know, two-state solution, you’re a proponent of it and I assume you’re still a believer of it. The fact that that model seems to be dying, I think in the eyes of many, I mean, do you agree with that assessment? And do you think that that is telling at all about what the options for the future might be?
Uri Zaki: If you have a referendum on the Camp David Accord before it was signed or on the Oslo Accord before it was signed, you will get poor minorities supporting it.
Nowadays, what is it? Almost 50 years later, it seems that, of course, it was the greatest thing to do. But back then, back then the chief of staff, was sure Sadat’s visit was a trick to bring over Egyptian commandos and kill the Israeli government. Again, I’m not saying that right now that’s a direct result of a massacre. By the way, both sides, the way they see it, will be supportive of Kumbaya and let’s have peace.
And I’m not even talking about a Kumbaya kind of peace. I’m talking about a diplomatic agreement but I believe that’s where we both should be heading and I think we’ll be heading there. I mean, we’re now talking about a week, less than a week before the American elections. I don’t know who’s going to be elected there but even if you listen to Trump, talks about peace.
Yes, eventually, you don’t have many formulas to get there. We always saw it that we are only the ones giving up. They’re not giving up on anything. Perhaps now when we see the support even amongst our strongest allies, not in its leadership but gradually also in its leadership to the Palestinian cause, maybe we’ll understand that they’re compromising too with a two-state solution.
I’ll say the following. I do not think that we can have right now a bilateral agreement without any, in a future agreement, the security element will have to be stronger than we thought a few years ago even to an extent that the Israeli military would stay on the borders somehow but we can’t rely only on the goodwill of Palestinians. I think it will be part of a regional agreement. Israelis would, when you read the polls, what you said is correct.
If you have a referendum or a public opinion poll, how many of you support a Palestinian state? It dropped from October 6th to October 7th probably from 15% to 2.5%. I don’t know. But if you’ll ask, in the context of a regional agreement with Saudi Arabia and the moderate Arab countries, would you accept a Palestinian self-determination? You’ll get perhaps even a majority. So it’s also, and the Israeli public is smart.
It’s not just the candy you get. They understand that you need to, in order to survive here and to flourish here, you need to be part of a wider circle and the path to go there is also through de-escalation of our relationship with the Palestinians.
Sruli Fruchter: What do you think should happen with Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the war?
Uri Zaki: I increasingly think of a Gaza-first kind of policy, that Gaza, in a sense, should be a test case for Palestinian self-determination under the leadership of both the US, Saudi Arabia, and the region, with a large investment, by the way, also by Israel, a kind of a Marshall Plan. You have to, I mean, many times disaster is an opening for change.
It happened in Germany, for instance, or in Japan, where the destruction was so vast, but those who caused the destruction as a reaction to the aggression of both Germany and Japan it was a justified destruction, but they invested, they understood smartly, the Truman administration back then, that in order to prevent that, you have to stop punishing the aggressors. I mean, that was one of the lessons of the Versailles Agreement, which was when the victors continued the revenge on Germany and its allies in the First World War. The Second World War attitude was much smarter, and I think we can do that, and Gaza is a perfect area to do that, but you have to have also a Palestinian-run, you can’t have it as an Israeli-occupied territory. This is crazy.
Nobody would accept that, and truly so. You have to have a Palestinian-run region with, of course, with Israeli freedom of movement wherever you see a security threat and a heavy investment by the world, by the Arab world, by even Israel, to reconstruct Gaza as a model, and I think it will have positive effect also. You can’t have it. It has to come together.
It can’t serve the purpose of separating the West Bank from Gaza. The Palestinians see themselves, there are folks who say there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people. On the other hand, I met not a few Palestinians, and recently not only Palestinians, Westerns, who say there’s no such thing as a Jewish people in the sense of national identity. Nations are all invented.
Once you have enough people who feel that there are people, there are people, and the Palestinians are definitely a people in that sense, and you can’t separate Gaza from the West Bank.
Sruli Fruchter: Is Israel properly handling the Iranian threat?
Uri Zaki: First of all, the results show that it doesn’t, and again, the person who led us in the last 15 years or so is the person who, in his rhetorics, made the fight against Iran the number one issue, but within his term, very too long term, Iran is on the verge of getting to a nuclear bomb and directly attacking Israel with missiles twice, not by proxies, directly attacking. So we’re definitely not handling it right. I believe it was a mistake by Israel to encourage the Trump administration to drop out of the nuclear agreement.
I wish that now an American administration would understand that it’s the world’s interest to militarily end the Iranian nuclear program or at least have an agreement that makes it impossible for them to get there. We can’t afford having North Korea like Iran. North Korea is a huge, huge failure by America and specifically the Bush administration, and whoever will get a nuclear Iran on its shift, it’s a major threat to world peace. Mind you, the Iranians are now part of the attack on the Ukraine.
It has an axis with China and Russia. It has, of course, all its proxies, as we see now in the Middle East. It will be a different world if Iran has a nuclear program. So right now it doesn’t look very well, but there are openings of understanding, I think, around the world that we need to deal with this.
Sruli Fruchter: Where do you identify on Israel’s political and religious spectrum? And do you have friends on the quote-unquote other side?
Uri Zaki: How do I identify myself?
Sruli Fruchter: Politically and religiously, and then do you have friends on the other side?
Uri Zaki: Politically, I’m on the Zionist left, I would say. Although I must say again, I believe this definition of right and left is not as important as it used to be. It’s not the dividing, it’s not the watershed in Israeli politics. I believe now it’s authoritarian vis-à-vis democratic.
When it comes to my own personal beliefs, I’m on the spectrum. I was born and raised in a secular community, but in a slightly traditional Jewish home. I took it much further, or farther. For example, I pray Shacharit every morning with all the parts, but I do it on my own.
I don’t go to shul, but I do go to shul at least once a month, and of course on my holidays and different holidays. Maybe I should, the main thing is I’m a person of faith. I do not do that. I do not practice these parts of Judaism out of tradition, but rather out of faith.
Sruli Fruchter: Do you have friends on the other side?
Uri Zaki: I’m one of the, of course, I’m one of the most, the level of outreach I have with the different, all by the way, all segments of the Israeli society, starting with Arabs, Jews, but also Haredis, National Orthodox, settlers. I’m one of the most, one of the only ones that regularly get invited to speak with such audiences and visit because of my kind of peculiar identity, being a kind of a symbol of the left, you know, and on the other hand, with a strong Jewish high profile, Jewish religious high profile kind of, you know, showcasing my Jewishness, I would say, my religious practices. So I talked in Haredi yeshivas, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi. I spoke, I was the first and I believe the only one who was invited to speak at the Mechinat B’nei David in Eli, the pre-military, I don’t know how to call it, academy in Eli, which is one of the symbols of the National Orthodox community here in Israel.
I had debates with, for instance, with Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, by the way, many times I get criticized by my own community and or political affiliated community for doing that. But I believe that I make a difference. I come to listen, but also to talk and have the ability to talk. And I believe that people, for instance, with those students that invited me to speak at Eli, which is a settlement in Samaria, in the West Bank, some of them still keep in touch with me.
And this was like 10 years ago. So definitely I keep constant touch with all segments of Israel. And I visit regularly. I have friends, Arab friends, Jewish friends.
Yeah. Also myself. My father is Mizrahi. I have a Mizrahi last name.
But my mother is Ashkenazi. And he made Aliyah from Egypt himself with my late grandmother. And she was born here at Sabra. So I have all these complexities within me, kind of secular, religious, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi and everything.
So I guess it’s I used to be a member of the Likud. And so, you know, I kind of my own persona is complex. So I think it’s easier for me to reach out to other segments of our society.
Sruli Fruchter: And our last question.
Do you have more hope or fear for Israel and the Jewish people?
Uri Zaki: I’m a hopeful person. So I always have more hope. So I believe Israel and the Jewish people would overcome these challenges. I think we already have gained great openings to change.
But I could have made the case for fear. There are many things, many elements in the current Israeli society, especially from within, by the way, that can make you fearful. The choice is ours. We are in a juncture right now.
I’ll do my utmost to push us to the right direction. But it’s not determined yet which course we’d take.
Sruli Fruchter: All right. Uri Zaki, thank you so much for answering our 18 questions.
How was this for you?
Uri Zaki: It was great. Interesting.
Sruli Fruchter: Well, any questions we didn’t ask that you think we should have?
Uri Zaki: No, I think we’re good.
Sruli Fruchter: Okay, great.
Uri Zaki: Thank you.
Sruli Fruchter: So thank you so much for listening to our interview with Arizaki. There is so much more to unpack, to explore, to challenge. And I hope that you found it insightful.
If you have questions or comments or feedback, shoot us an email at info@18Forty.org. And if you have questions that you want us to be asking our guests and thinkers who you want us to be asking our 18 questions to, shoot us an email at info@18Forty.org. We have a very long list, but we are always looking for the best and the brightest Israeli thinkers to speak to today. And as always, thank you to our friends Gilad Brounstein and Josh Weinberg for editing and video recording the podcast, respectively.
And so until next time, keep questioning and keep thinking. Thank you.
This transcript was produced by Sofer.AI.