Israel’s Legitimacy Crisis – with Tal Becker

For years, Israel's international standing has been measured by military strength, diplomatic alliances, and peace agreements. Today, a different challenge has come to the forefront: a growing crisis of legitimacy.

Host Aviva Klompas sits down with diplomat, legal scholar, and former Israeli Foreign Ministry Legal Adviser Tal Becker to explore why support for Israel has eroded in many parts of the world, and whether the roots of that shift lie in Israeli policy, broader cultural and political changes in the West, or something deeper still.

Drawing on decades of experience representing Israel on the world stage—including before the International Court of Justice and during the negotiations that led to the Abraham Accords—Tal Becker offers a framework for understanding the current moment. He discusses the difference between Israel's critics and its enemies, why not all criticism should be dismissed as hostility, and how Israel can engage those acting in good faith while confronting those seeking to undermine its legitimacy.

Guest Bio:

Dr. Tal Becker is a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Counsel at Honigman LLP, and as a leading consultant and public intellectual on geo-politics, the Middle East and peace and security policy. Until recently, Dr. Becker served as the Legal Adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been a senior member of the Israeli peace negotiation team in successive rounds of peace negotiations. Tal has represented Israel before the International Court of Justice, played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the “Abraham Accords”, and served as a key behind the scenes player in many complex bilateral and multilateral processes in which Israel was involved. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think in a lot of the West, war was treated as an aberration and peace was treated as the norm. And in the Middle East, I think it's fair to say that the underlying sentiment, unfortunately, because of the reality and the complexity, is that it's peace that's the aberration.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Today is Wednesday, August 12th. This is Boundless Insights, and I'm Aviva Klampus. Around the world, support for Israel has eroded. Criticism has intensified, and debates that once focused on Israel's policies increasingly center on Israel's legitimacy. My guest today has spent decades at the center of Israel's efforts to navigate this challenge, working on both diplomatic and peace efforts. He's also worked to understand what drives hostility toward Israel and how to distinguish between fair criticism, unfair criticism, and outright hostility toward the Jewish state. Talbecker is one of Israel's leading diplomats and legal scholars. He served as legal advisor to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He represented Israel before the International Court of Justice and helped negotiate the Abraham Accords. Today he's a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Council at Honigman LLP. We discuss what's driving the international legitimacy crisis and what a credible path forward might look like. Let's get into it. Tell Becker, welcome to Boundless Insights.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Thank you, Aviva. Great to be with you finally.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

It is a profound privilege, and as I told you before we started recording, I'm a huge fangirl and a longtime fangirl.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

That's very nice. I remember you way back when, and I've watched your star rise.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I have watched you and your career, which has been spent on the front lines of diplomacy, and you have been privy to the inner circles of decision making. And so you know better than most that there are things that are said in closed rooms, and then there are the screaming headlines. And those can be two totally different realities. So with that in mind, would you characterize what we are seeing play out as a crisis of Israel's legitimacy?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

First of all, I think it's might be good to get our terms right. Like, what do we mean by legitimacy itself? I think is an interesting question.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Tell me he's a lawyer without telling me he's a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Exactly. So like I have a problem with people don't have common metrics to assess things.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yes. Let's ground our starting point.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

So after thinking about it quite a bit, I kind of think that legitimacy, what we mean by it, is what I refer to as the cost of association. Let me give you an example. Like you're really cool, right? So if you have a party and you invite me to your party, I'm gonna want to go to that party because the association with you raises my social stock, raises my reputational stock, right? I, on the other hand, if I'm uncool and I am uncool, if I invite you to my party, then Aviva's gonna think, is it a good idea to be associated with Tal and Tal's party, right? And I think when we talk about a legitimacy challenge, what we're talking about is whether there has been a rise in the cost of association, of identifying of support with Israel. And I think that in a lot of circles in the West, if you're an average politician, an average academic, an average journalist, at least in some of those circles, quite significantly, the social or reputational cost of being seen as identifying with or supporting Israel has gone up considerably. And that's what I think we mean when we talk about legitimacy to some extent, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Can I ask you about that? Because I think the flip side of it is pragmatism. And the example that I'm thinking of, you saw this story about the Irish leader. They removed the navigation system from his plane because it's Israeli made, and now it can't land in bad weather. So he's hooped. Or the better example is actually the Abraham Accords, where there's a lot of pragmatism involved in the relationship. So yeah, there's the popularity, but then there's just what's good for me.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

This is the place where I wanted to go, Oviva. So there are circles in which, when your calculus of the social cost versus the actual benefit, even the transactional benefit or interest in the relationship, that calibration happens differently in different places. In government places, in defense and intelligence, in economic circles, in social circles, in academic circles, the kind of balance between, you know, your ideal is, I guess, to have them aligned or for it to be neutral. There isn't a social reputational cost in association, and you benefit from the relationship in terms of interests. If it's not neutral, then it could be beneficial in both ways. But sometimes that can be too much. And I think in cultural circles, in particular, in academic circles, in places where there isn't a vested or obvious benefit to the relationship with Israel in terms of economy or defense or intelligence or so on, and particularly in the West, this is not, I think, a global phenomenon. There are exceptions, and even within the West, there are exceptions, and there is a backlash. It's a complicated picture. But fundamentally, I think when we talk about the legitimacy crisis, what we're fundamentally talking about is the cost of association with Israel in circles in the West that has grown very considerably in ways that are very concerning to Israel's story and the legitimacy of Israel's story. And that is a real asset that Israel should not be willing to lose.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

So with that definition and that understanding, you do see it as a legitimacy crisis.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

I think it is, absolutely. I think that, again, I don't know how to measure it, so I want to be careful about it because we've had the assault on Israel's story, it is not new, right? Zionism is racism resolution, we knew. In a way, Israel's constant story of Israel has been this kind of tension between the criminalization of Israel and the normalization of Israel, right? And there have been periods where we moved more towards normalization and places where we were more criminalized, so it's not new. But I think we all viscerally feel that the assault on Israel's story, especially in the West, is dramatic. In the Middle East, we're familiar with it, though in the Middle East we also have the Abraham Accords, which in a way is kind of competition with it to some extent. And, you know, let's not diminish the fact. It's sometimes hard because catastrophic thinking is very in vogue at the moment. But we do have friends. We do even have governments across the world in Argentina and in now Colombia and in Slovenia and in a lot of places. India. And India, and of course, in the Trump administration itself, we have a lot of allies and friends and also communities that are supportive. Not all of them get expressed in social media or in TikTok and in clicks. We have an image that may not be accurate, but nevertheless, we all viscerally feel that basic assault on Israel's story.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

100%. I look in the difference at Israel's relationship with the West and its relationship with its neighbors, and specifically under the Abraham Accords, the UAE, Bahrain, but even countries like Jordan and Egypt, which you wouldn't call warm and fuzzy, but they haven't called back their ambassadors, they haven't broken their peace agreements, and they have, for the most part, stood by Israel's side throughout this war, in contrast to everything that we've seen in the West, with these mass protests, with governments that are recognizing Palestine and so forth. So, how much of this crisis is actually about Israel? And how much is just about political and cultural changes that are taking place in the West?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

So, first I'd push back a little bit on the comparison. I mean, the degree of hostility towards Israel.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

I was looking for a point of optimism, and you're taking it apart. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

I'm Israeli. I have an Israeli passport. I do not want it taken away. The Egyptians and the Jordanians, in terms of Egyptian-Jordanian society, the hostility towards Israel in those societies, I mean, it doesn't match, and it's higher than anything you can imagine in the West, right? I think Jews in the West have experienced the hostility of the West and the protests and so on in ways that are very alarming for them, but I still wouldn't compare it to that. And we have diplomatic relations with those Western countries. To your second point of view, you know, like what does this have to do with? So again, I make this ridiculous effort of trying not to be yet another pundit, right? I try to ask myself, what do we need to know to answer that question intelligently? So if we try to break down what could the potential reasons for the hostility towards Israel be, I think we have a set of different categories, right? For some, it is hostility towards this Israeli government and especially the Prime Minister, right? For others, you have to ask a question in terms of taxonomy. How much is it about the way Israel is seen and speaks about itself and tells its story? How much is Israel's policy and the problematic nature of Israel's policy, right? How much is it pure anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel as a project? How much is it collateral damage of internal politics within the country that is critical of Israel, right? A good example might be America, where the partisanship in America makes it so that if you're against someone who's pro-Israel for a different set of reasons, you might also then be against them on the Israel position, right? So it could be collateral damage. And I also think a very big part of this, and one way to think about this challenge in general, is that the way we listen to people is very much a function of the glasses we're wearing when we're listening to them, right? Of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. So in my mind, one whole category of the way in which Israel's legitimacy challenge should be understood, is what are the stories that the West is telling itself about who it is that shape the glasses through which it looks at Israel as a whole. Now, how do we know how much is each segment, right? So the truth is none of us know. We just have our instincts and we treat those instincts as if they're kind of substantiated scientifically proven facts.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I think kishkas are a Jewish scientifically proven fact.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Fair enough. So if we do the Kishka test, different Jews have their Kishkas in different directions, but if you really wanted to analyze it, you'd need to kind of do focus group analysis and even more, and I will just complicate it just a little bit more. I'm just to say, Aviva, I don't know why you chose me for podcasts, because generally speaking, I don't do the simplicity beyond complexity. I just get stuck in the complexity. So I'm just going to add one other wrinkle to that is that very often what might appear to be one category is in fact another category, right? So someone who says, you know, I'm really opposed to this Israeli government, they might be saying that now, but we might find after the elections and a future Israeli government that the hostility was actually deeper than that. And the reverse might also be true, right? So it's not an easy thing to decipher. And I think it's some mix of all these different factors.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

100%. And I've constantly said that there are so many Americans, including American Jews, who are saying, I'll like Israel as soon as the current prime minister is gone. Well, my suspicion is that should he not be the next prime minister of Israel, they're still not going to like us very much. We're doing some research at Boundless that tries to unpack some of the categories. So I tell you, for example, 42% of Americans look at Jewish Americans, so their neighbors, their colleagues, but they see the Israeli government. As a result of two plus years of war, there is this blending that comes together, and the horrific imagery that they've seen on social media has now come to color how they're seeing their fellow Americans. Social media creates a dystopia. It gives you a perception of what the world is like. And if you spend enough time in a dystopia, and if you are led to believe that is what mainstream thinking is, it comes to be your opinion as well. With that, when you look at those various buckets that you outlined, do you have a hunch of which the most significant are?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

So, first, just I wanted to react to one thing you said, which is, I mean, I think for a lot of Jews, that itself is a really disturbing conflation. The idea that you see a Jewish American and you associate them with Israel. Do people, when they look at Russians, associate Russians with the Ukraine war? Is there any kind of parallel with any other ethnic group or people that that that kind of conflation is done so immediately? Because I think, of course, that's very problematic, certainly. So to be honest, when it comes to my hunch, to go back to your point, my hunch is with different audiences, it's a different thing, right? And it really you have to divide the audiences up. I do believe that we have to focus on those people who can be changed, right? Now, it is kind of common today to think that nobody can be persuaded about anything and there's no room for a shift. And I think it's true we live in a very different kind of environment in that respect. And the whole science of how people form and change opinions deserves a lot more attention than it gets. You very rarely change someone's opinion with a PowerPoint presentation, right? Or just an effective argument thrown in their face. It's a really complicated thing. But I do think it matters, for example, that Israel has been on people's screens a lot in a certain context. And you have to believe that a different context will affect that, right? Even a different tone. I'll share with you, for example, one kind of difficulty, right, that I've been thinking about lately. I think in a lot of the West, especially after World War II and the tragedy of World War II, essentially war was treated as an aberration and peace was treated as the norm. And I think after Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, the kind of mind, at least for a certain group of people, the kind of conventional wisdom set in, that war is never a good thing. It never leads to a good outcome, it's never necessary, and it is a constant aberration, right? There's those uh, you know, four words that make America exceptional, you know, ocean, ocean, Canada, Mexico. Your geography matters a whole lot to be able to feel that, right? But you do have, I think, for a long time, a period post-Holocaust period in the West, this feeling that war is the aberration. And in the Middle East, I think it's fair to say that the underlying sentiment, unfortunately, because of the reality and the complexity, is that it's peace that's the aberration. And it's conflict is just unfortunately a permanent feature, right? And so you have two societies almost with two different assumptions, right? And Israel, if it's in the business of broadcasting that it's in an endless conflict because its neighbors are never going to give it up, and you have a society that not only thinks that war is an aberration, but is very allergic to forever wars, right? Those things are going to create an underlying current of tension. And so the best way that Israel can help overcome that tension is by constantly broadcasting that it aspires for a peaceful future without giving up and without taking risks that endanger it, its aspiration at least is a positive aspiration. And I think that in these last three years, just to give one example, because Israel has been so preoccupied with its survival and felt so viscerally the kind of annihilationist threat around it, that it has had a difficult time articulating aspirations. And I believe that there's a certain audience, not all, you know, there's plenty who are in the hostile Israel can do no right camp or whatever. But if they're unpersuadable, they shouldn't take up too much of our time, except perhaps to try to delegitimize them as much as possible. But there is an audience for whom a different kind of posture and a different set of messaging could help. Now, it's not just about the storyteller, it's also about the story listener, and those are important parts, but I do think that there's a segment of the West that a shift in Israeli posture and to some extent a shift in Israeli policy, especially in places where we just do pointless things. We don't need to alienate friends and empower enemies needlessly. I think Jewish violence in the West Bank is a very good example of that. And I think the first rule of this needs to be that we have to be true to ourselves and our story, right? It can't be that we're just saying something because we think it appeals to a certain audience if it's not an actual reflection of where we are. And in my view, we have to do first what's right and only then ask, okay, are we being understood properly? Is it being appreciated properly? And in that sense, I think it's really important to ask ourselves at this moment, first and foremost, what are our interests? Now, one of our interests is, as I mentioned, not alienating friends, we don't have to alienate and not empowering enemies to the extent that that's in our control. And I think that that's quite limited.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Limited because a government could collapse if you disagreed with the wrong person or party.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Yeah, I mean, it's not just that. It also has to reflect where Israeli society is, right? So the idea about is it good to articulate an aspiration? I would say first, is it right for us in respect to ourselves to articulate an aspiration? And only then ask, is it a useful tool? Because if it's going to be just superficial, it's not going to be effective and it's not significant, in my view. So my personal view is that it would be a kind of defeat if Israel broadcasts to itself before it broadcasts to others, that we've given up the hope for a better future, and that we're kind of destined to be in constant conflict and we've not even thinking about the possibility that something could be better. The way I describe this in Hebrew, if you'll forgive me, I'll translate it, is the difference of Lichyot Imcharbeka or Lichyot al-Kharbecha, whether you live by the sword or with the sword, right? There's been a feeling these last years now that we are living by the sword. In other words, the sword defines us, right? The conflict, we don't have a choice, we're constantly with our enemies, and that is going to define who we are. That language of live by the sword, paradoxically, is the promise that Isaac gave to Esau, not to Jacob, right? And it would be a real tragedy if the Jewish people returning to their homeland defined who they are by the promise given to Esau and not to Jacob. Now, if you do not have a sword in the Middle East, you will be killed. So you do have to live with a sword, but I don't think it should define who we are as a people. And we need to have an aspiration. And there's, in my view, nothing wrong with having an aspiration, even you don't completely know how to articulate it. But you signal to yourself, to your society, to your friends, to your potential allies that this is my North Star. And I'm willing to take seriously any possibility of moving to a better future. Without, again, being naive and without giving up on your defense. So the reason why I'm saying all this, Aviva, in a conversation about legitimacy, is if it isn't authentic, it's unlikely to be effective. And I think we have a real desperate need to be in the business of articulating aspirations. And only then do I worry about whether it's going to have an effective message to some audiences.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

I noticed that you were quite careful with your language. I heard you talk about peace. I heard you talk about aspirations. I did not hear you talk about with whom? Because I think a lot of Israelis could say, look, we're talking about peace with Saudi Arabia, the biggest prize of them all. And we can't have peace with the Palestinians. That's just not in the cards right now. So do you actually mean peace with the Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza?

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Again, I think that we can articulate an aspiration that we would love to see a future where both Israelis and Palestinians live in peace, prosperity, dignity, and security. We don't know how to get there. Like we're very far from that at the moment. We see, from the Israeli perspective, we see a Palestinian society, the dominant narratives of which see Israel as illegitimate in one form or another, either as a colonial entity or as an affront to Allah. Frankly, they think that about us as well, right? They think in reverse. And so the idea that we're close to a breakthrough is a little hard to maybe accept, though, though I don't think that there's a degree you can get in whether peace is possible from any university. So I don't want to rule out surprises, but it looks really, really difficult. Does that mean that we can't articulate an aspiration, right? So some people maybe listening will say, why articulate an aspiration if you don't think you can realize it? So the answer is, in my view, because even if you can't achieve peace, you can make things better. You can ask yourself, how do I improve this relationship? How do I ensure there is a little bit more security, a little bit more prosperity, a little bit more stability? And the reality is the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians has gone from being better or worse over time. And so I don't think it's a dangerous or naive thing to ask how do we make this relationship better than it is? It's pretty bad at the moment, right? Not only do I not think it's dangerous, I think it's necessary. And the added benefit of that is that I do think that there are audiences in the West, especially our friends, people who care about Israel, people who want to support Israel, for whom a message that Israel is looking for any opportunity to make things better will be helpful. I can't measure it, but I think it'll be helpful.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

I'm gonna try to measure it. You spoke about the skeptics that are gonna just say, look, there is no point. They're rabid anti-Semites and their minds can't be changed. And I've actually heard you go out and make a point about drawing a distinction between Israel's enemies and its critics. Because not everybody who criticizes Israel is acting in bad faith. You have ideological anti-Semites for sure, but you have opportunistic grifters. These are the people that I think are going on news shows and podcasts and saying things because they know they'll get enough clicks to buy a new yacht. There are people who are confused, they don't understand the words that they're using. How do we make distinctions between all these classes and figure out who's it worth spending time on?

SPEAKER_00 21:50

It's very hard, to be honest, and I think it's dangerous in multiple directions. Like it's dangerous to legitimize those who are so Completely hostile to us, and you kind of bring them into a conversation where they're just kind of using whatever you say in ammunition against you. But it's also dangerous to taint someone who's almost a friendly critic as someone who is like immutably hostile to you and so on, which will just empower that. So doing that is difficult. It depends who is doing the talking and who's doing the listening, right? Who is engaging with who. If you're a student on campus, right, and you're meeting students in campus, I would say don't paint everyone with one brush, right? Build relationships and make a decision if you have time, right? Usually, it's very rare to have influence with anybody without actually building a relationship with them one-on-one. There are others for whom the very engagement itself is a kind of act of legitimizing something you shouldn't be legitimizing. When it comes to Israel or the state of Israel, right, I think that we're not really in the business of engaging individual people. We're in the business of broadcasting who we are first to ourselves and then to the world, right? There, I think there is a real need for us to demonstrate what are the moral communities or the values we uphold so that we create space for those who want to be in relationship with us to be able to say, yeah, this is a country that I can identify with, not just on the basis of interest, which is very important, but also in that legitimacy contest about where our values lie. One other point is that, you know, Rabbi David Hartman famously said that people should try to criticize Israel like a mother and not a mother-in-law, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Yeah. And I think what he meant by that, you know, the core idea he's trying to reach there is that there are people who criticize not because they're trying to see an improvement, not out of an act of support and love, like a mother might criticize, for example, a loving mother. There are also loving mother-in-laws, but let's just put the category out there. But it's almost like the criticism itself is the act of identity, right? You're seeing a lot across the West in political terms, where it really doesn't matter what Israel says or does. It would kind of be a problem if Israel improved itself because it wouldn't be as easy for you to demonstrate which tribe you belong to in the political games you're playing. So that kind of critic is a critic that it's very hard to engage in. But I think at our peril, do we treat every critic as an enemy? Again, it's understandable. We're still under assault, we're in a very defensive posture. We need to be able to protect ourselves to a certain extent. But if we want to deal with this challenge, and I think that defeatism and saying, you know, everybody hates us, there's nothing we can say, there's nothing we can do, it's not only self-defeating, it's also wrong. It's wrong in the sense that it just can't be. And I know this from my own experience, that everybody out there is, doesn't matter what you say or do. I don't think that's the reality. If we're going to be effective, we also need to be measured in how we analyze our situation.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

I like that mother versus mother-in-law analogy. What I've always used is are they a bridge builder or are they a bullshitter? And the difference is the bridge builder is standing at your side and telling you difficult truths that you need to hear, which you might not want to hear but are important, and they're willing to be your partner in working through them. The bullshitter is pointing at you in an accusatory manner, and they're using every weapon at their disposal, legal, economic, military, social, cultural, etc., to undermine you because they don't care about the enterprise and project that is Israel.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

I just wanted to make one more observation. So let's say I have a stain on my shirt, right? And someone points out to me that I have a stain on my shirt. Now, do I say, well, the only reason I'm going to check if there's a stain on my shirt is if that person doesn't have a stain on their shirt. In other words, if there is hypocrisy, right? If they're saying, oh, you're talking about my stain on my shirt, but you're not talking about your stain on your shirt, then I'm not willing to listen to you. And that is a very common phenomenon that I'm describing in the way we do this stuff, right? We always say, and there's real reason for it. There's such selective outrage, right? There's such a tendency to be so obsessed and critical of Israel. And then you say, but what about, you know, what about all these other things? What about you? And so on. And you can actually be in this position of never being willing to look at yourself because anybody who's criticizing you actually hasn't looked at the entire context, hasn't seen what's happening in the world, and so on. As far as it relates to our own conduct, our own moral health, the capacity to examine ourselves, the capacity to ask how do we improve has always been an important quality of the Jewish people, right? It's actually quite fundamental to the success of the Jewish people and to the survival of the Jewish people. Sometimes I describe this that you may not want to hang out your dirty laundry in public, but it's not a reason not to do your laundry, right? You've still got to look at how to improve ourselves, and we shouldn't lose that ability. In the rough and tumble of defending your name in the world and making sure when do you make an argument, when do you give legitimacy, there is, of course, relevance to that question about what about the other person's conduct and what about their hypocrisy. But it also shouldn't end there, in my view. Sometimes it's worth taking, at least to some extent, criticism on board, not in a kind of defeatist way, pointing out the hypocrisy, yes, pointing out the selective outrage, which is in places like the UN, it's just unbelievable. It's to the point where it's just a circus and a joke. And yet it doesn't mean that you should not ask yourself, what can I do better?

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Give us our marching orders. One thing that we can go out into the world and do to try to make things better.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

So I would say that we do not spend enough time on a core question, which is how do people form and change their opinions? And I I guess one thing I would say that's really worth thinking about is that most people will not change their opinions because you presented a really effective argument if the consequence of accepting your argument is kind of social exclusion.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

So part of the engagement with someone or shattering their identity if they've built an entire identity around that.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Right, exactly. You know, the idea that you can somehow humiliate someone into an agreement by overwhelming them with facts and powerful arguments, it might be impressive on a debate stage, it may have a certain role in a court of law, but it's not the way you kind of win friends and influence people. It's not the way you engage. And I think demonstrating to people, especially as it relates to the war in Gaza, that we belong to the same moral community. We are a people who care very much about conducting wars in ways that as much as possible minimize civilian harm. We face an impossible reality in Gaza. I'm not saying that there was conduct that doesn't deserve criticism and shouldn't be accountable, and you know, there isn't room for accountability. I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying that as a person, the first way in which you connect to another person is by demonstrating that their moral commitments are shared by you. Now, there may be people we meet who you can't share their moral commitments, right? If they reject the idea of Jewish self-determination, for example, I think you're going to have a hard time being engaged in them. But I think at the first level, connecting at a human level, connecting in a way that makes people realize you share their moral commitments, you share the aspirations that they have, but you happen to know a lot more about the complex reality of the Middle East is better than just throwing arguments down people's throat, which tend in general to make you feel good about yourself. But they rarely have the impact you think they have, even though you moved yourself incredibly while you were speaking. Be a mensch. That's the lesson. It starts with that, but also be tough. Have respect for yourself. It's okay to be a little vulnerable, but not to be a supplicant in that sense. I often used to say to people that in the Middle East, if you try to be liked too much, you will be disrespected. Right? It's not about being liked, it's about being respected because of the commitments, the moral commitments you have, the values, your willingness to protect yourself, but also see the humanity in others. And I think once you determine what audience you want to be in relationship with, then that determines also like if do you share the values with that community, then those are the efforts you need to make to demonstrate that. And also to expect certain things of them in return. That's okay too.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

And that's why I admire you so much, because I've watched you in your career talk the talk, but also walk the walk to model for us what it means to be intelligent, analytical, level-headed, thoughtful, and truly a mensch. Tell thank you.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Thanks so much, everyone. Nice to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

That's a wrap on today's episode of Boundless Insights. Whether you've been with us from the start or are just discovering our show, we're so glad you're here. If today's conversation sparked a question, challenged your thinking, or made you shake your head, I want to hear from you. Email me at podcast at boundlessisrael.org. Your feedback gives us ideas for new topics and new guests. And if you believe these conversations matter, there are three ways to support the show. First, hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. Second, help us spread the word. Share an episode with friends and family, post about it, or mention it in a group chat. It really does make a difference. And third, consider supporting our work. Boundless is a nonprofit and we rely on donors to keep the show going. You can make a gift at boundlessisrael.org slash donate. Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, and keep the conversation going.