Sneak Peek: Tal Becker on whether new divides are becoming irreparable
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Over the past couple of years, Call Me Back has grown into something much bigger than we ever expected, a place for clarity, context, and honest conversations at a time when those things can seem hard to find. That's what ARK Media is all about, building a truly independent voice, which means no one shaping what we say or how we say it. To help support our rapidly expanding operations, we created Inside Call Me Back, our members-only feed. If Call Me Back has been meaningful to you and you want to be part of what we're building, I hope you'll join us. You can subscribe at arcmedia.org or through the link in the show notes. And to our insiders, thank you. You are listening to an ArcMedia podcast.
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 ARC Media contributor Tal Becker, who is also a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and counsel at Honigman LLP. Tal, welcome back to the inside.
Great to be with you again, Dan.
A 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.
I maybe should caveat by saying that I didn't study Emmanuel'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 U.S.-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 U.S.-Israel relationship. You kind of 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 producing friction?
How much of it is really about Israeli policy? And unless Israeli policy changes, or for that matter, U.S. policy changes, it's going to be more friction. And how much of it is the kind of Israel can do and 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 Emmanuel's speeches, 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 AIPAC or these issues is not up to debate in certain circles anymore. It's just what gets you into the conversation.
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