Who's In Charge? Israel's Angst
5/27/202644 min
Can a country recover its sense of agency when every front — external and internal — refuses to stay resolved?
In this episode, recorded just as Prime Minister Netanyahu issued another emergency call-up of exhausted reservists, Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi wrestle with the deepening Israeli loss of control. They dissect the gap between the Prime Minister's promise of "absolute victory" and the reality of an enemy that has emerged stronger since its recent conflicts, and trace how the trauma of October 7 still haunts a society that thought it had moved past helplessness.
Looking ahead to the coming election, they explore why "who's in charge?" may once again become the defining slogan — and why the answer this time will determine far more than a coalition.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDeborah Pardes0:00
[intro music] I'm Deborah Pardes, the host of Arc News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters, but it can be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all, and that's why we started Arc News Daily. Every weekday morning, I walk you through the most important news, give you the context you need, and let you know what to look out for next. I don't try to convince you of anything, and I don't want to waste your time. So on most days, I'll be in your ears for about 10 minutes or less. Then you can move on with your day, hopefully feeling a little smarter than before. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes. I hope to see you tomorrow.
Speaker 20:44
[outro music] You are listening to an Arc Media podcast.
Donniel Hartman· Host0:56
[upbeat music] The Jewish tradition has a category called Ben Hashmashot, which literally means twilight time. It's a time when it's neither day nor night, and you don't really know where you are. Now, we in Israel have been in twilight time now for months. For months. And it is one of the most disconcerting experiences that Israelis have experienced in decades. But there's this fog in which, in essence,