Twilight Zone - with Anne Applebaum

this podcast is brought to you by cyber attacks can be prevented checkpoint you deserve the best security arguments in and around the Israeli military this week echoing the pro-democracy protests that are not just confined to Israel but going around the world and a conversation with someone uniquely wellplace to discuss the lessons for Israel from the war on Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and what both might learn from each other it's Unholy I'm Jonathan Friedland of the guardian in London and I'm unit Levy of Channel 12 in [Music] Tel Unholy to Jews on the news from keset podcasts I was thinking this week Jonathan of a quote by Ariel Chiron Israel's former prime minister and this is what he used to say about interviews he said no one ever regretted not giving an interview it was a line he borrowed from his media strategist ruven odler but you know I know this is against our journalistic DNA so let's try and be gamekeepers and not poachers for a moment and talk about that right no one ever regretted not giving an interview I'm not talking about Chris lick for now I'm being more parochial and talking about Israel's foreign minister Ellie Cohen who uh interviewed this week on Israeli public radio was asked about kamla Harris and uh her comments by the way in a very pro-israel speech that she made at the Israeli Embassy uh celebrating 75 years for Israel's independence and he said after she said that it's important to keep the Judiciary independent he said I doubt she read even one part of the judicial Overhill plan it's good isn't it that he is actually Israel's Chief Diplomat I mean he's foreign affairs minister one part of the job is to make nice and have good relations especially you might think with Israel's number one Ally and crucial military you know benefactor extraordinary thing to say massively sexist I think we could probably agree you know you might want to say a little bit of racism thrown in there as well this idea that you know I don't think he said that when Tony blinkin more or less made the same remarks when as Secretary of State when he visited it does seem actually like there's a bit of an effort a sort of self-sabotage strategy coming out of Ellie Cohen's foreign Ministry appointing nominating as Consul General in New York somebody who said that they were a racist this come seems to come from the same Playbook of How To Lose Friends and alienate people um but so this re you know yeah offensive and unwise I would have thought yeah well she they walk that back they're not going to Appo my Golan who by the way called herself a proud racist if you want to be accurate on that but yes definitely in days when there are certain tension in the relationship between the US and Israel and the prime minister is long awaiting his invites to a DC that isn't arriving maybe not the smartest thing to do to insult the uh Vice President of the United States I'm paraphrasing right he what he actually said was a slightly more polite way of saying you know she doesn't know what she's talking about which of course is is quite insulting he walked that back but you know it's another day and another Gaff by an Israeli uh Minister we should add also that uh this is the week that Netanyahu appointed a media advisor gilad that used to say about Biden that he is incompetent that he is ruining America uh supported all of the conspiracy theories about the elections being rigged he of course after being appointed wrote on Twitter in English that anything he said before was as a private citizen and he doesn't believe that now but that is if ever you needed a media advisor to explain something it's to explain this appointee of man as a media adviser for sure yeah I mean you know that one of the rules of political advice is when the advisor becomes the story Uh something's gone badly wrong here the advisor is the story before they've even started the job I mean the advisor should be trying to repair the Damage Done by the foreign minister say rather than repairing the Damage Done by himself so that's bad it does make me think that overall about Net's government whether you know if you can't join them beat them you know in other words if we're not going to have good relations and warm relations with Biden's White House if we're not going to get invited in by the Biden Harris Administration well then the other route we go is sort of culture war and we Stoke our base with seeming to stand up to those liberal cultural marxists anti-zionists in Washington you know as they would frame it and so because we don't get uh warmth from Biden Harris we're going to go on the offensive and Diss and insult them that I could imagine that being it's the kind of move that the sort of Trump crowd would do and you wonder if some of that has rubbed off on the Netanyahu world and therefore they're thinking you know if you're not going to be friendly to us we can be unfriendly back to you yeah well that's assigning a lot of sophistication and maybe this is just malpractice and and and a sign that n is not in control of the people who are working for him look I don't think the Biden Administration is holding its breath wondering what gilsvik is going to say or even what Ellie coin is Minister of Foreign of Foreign Affairs because everyone knows the day Minister of Foreign Affairs the person they're talking to is Ron durmer it's not that they care about every comma that every uh Israeli official is saying but there's a general climate and a general error between the two countries that needs to be cleared definitely when they're discussing serious issues like the an Iran deal that seems right around the corner or Saudi normalization much more important but we need to have a good relationship with our you know most important Ally to to continue on that on that yeah and I think just add it to that file I think you're completely right about the these are moves that net himself would not make never did make and add it to the file of signs that this is um he's not running this government the way he usually does I mean we will talk more about the protests just the sort of political practice and Tra tradecraft he was better at this in the past and you can either say well that's because his hands are tied now he's a prisoner of the right he's got all these more extreme elements in his Coalition or not allowing him to play his natural game or or you say he's slightly off his game and I've spoken to people actually just this week who wonder if you know he's getting to that age where he's just not Nimble or kind of agile anymore or just not as in in control and other people are able to make the running but these sorts of political own goals they didn't really happen with this you know regularity before and certainly you know and if they were if he didn't an insult he meant it you know it was a deliberate move and this time it feels like it's just happening but yeah I go back with the judicial strategy you just know he would have plotted that out differently rather than allow you know in that case his Justice minister to go right out in front early it does feel of a peace somehow even if as you say we don't want to overread and ascribe too much sophistication to what's happened I will elegantly ignore the fact that you discussed Israel with other people than me and we will continue to discuss Israel and the United States from a slightly different angle we want to talk about uh what was the new New York Israel parade this week the celebrate Israel parade the annual event that happens you know around Israel's independence day this year it was a few weeks after and this year of course a very different year so you know you have all of the Jewish groups and all the support for Israel which by the way is an Israeli always heartwarming to see but this year as we said this a year in which Israel is is you know in a in a very deep divide and what you saw inside the March were th a thousand Israelis March ing for Israel's democracy and against the judicial overhaul and we talked about this when there were protests in London you said how rare it is that two groups come together the Israeli expats and the Jewish community living in that country this is what happened in this protest uh as well there were 17 members of knesset and ministers who were flying to New York to participate in this parade at the very last minute netan asked some of his leud ministers not to walk not to march in the parade because of those protesters that were protesting against his uh government but generally speaking we have to say the protest movement is working not only in Israel it is trailing the uh Israeli Coalition members and ministers everywhere they go including in the United States yeah I think two big things going on here the first um slightly less important one but interesting is the one you've noted and who knows if it will last or not but for the first time the a coming together of Jewish communities with Israeli as you say exps odd actually once when you think about it why that hadn't happened till now particularly but it it happen people report it in all kinds of cities where the Israelis keep more or less to themselves and don't engage in Jewish community life it may be because often those Israelis are quite secular and Jewish community life in diaspora is often not always often organized around the synagogue that could be a factor but somehow that taboo has broken and that some relationships have formed through this and that's interesting to see if it lasts but the second thing which I think is much more important is this for a long time often on the periphery more or less there were people who were insistent on saying they were pro- Israel they were avowedly supporters of Israel but they criticized the way Israel is working out and how it operates day-to-day whether that's the you know occupation since ' 67 or other uh actions by government that sort of J Street position and for a long time they struggled to argue that that made them legitimately part of the sort of pro-israel community and I think the big diaspora impact of the judicial coup or the J judicial reforms and the argument around it is that that argument has become like it or not mainstream that you now have even at the celebrate Israel March in New York you know a thousand or more people who are there to descent from Israel Poli policy and they are there walking and marching and you know I always mentioned some of the unexpected things but you know there was Alan DT saying and he also slightly walked it back that if I was in Israel I'd be marching Miriam adelon Widow of giant Israel pro-israel funders Sheldon adles and uh criticizing the uh reforms the ADL other big just big Jewish organizations around the world saying No this is too much the head of the Jewish Leadership Council in this country you know right that this is a dark day for democracy and so on or that he was worried about democracy all these things are a change and again is this a genie that gets put back in the bottle or from now on is it going to be impossible for the sort of pro-israel establishment to say to people well look you can't criticize this or that policy because that's not part of the deal it is now part of the deal since uh this year yes and also we should say this moment is a television flagship opportunity for Israeli ministers to be on television surrounded by you know cheering New York Jews obviously it's not what it looked like specifically this year because of the protests against the Netanyahu government and we should say that these protests are crossing uh the Israeli border and they're going global right we saw everywhere that the Israeli ministers and Israeli members of the Coalition are trailed by protesters who are protesting this this uh judicial overhaul um this happened in New York as well well simman who's the head of the Constitutional Committee in the keset and the man who's spearheading this legislation was followed everywhere Trail Everywhere by protesters uh who were you know yelling at him heckling at him he called it harassment and at some point he actually pulled a megaphone from one of the uh protesters who filed a complaint against him uh for this um event but again this is what we're seeing everywhere across Israel and everywhere else and you know if we're saying that Ellie Cohen dissing Carmela Harris doesn't go down well that's also not a great image no for that you know it will have been fleeting in terms of American Media you know if it was seen at all it will have made the American Jewish press it's again just not the public diplomacy a country wants to be doing um it suggests that there is a disunity lack of consensus accurately in Israel but also casts the Israeli government uh ministers in a or or leaders rather in a very unflattering light rotman grabbing a microphone Ellie Cen you know insulting a woman woman of color it's not not a good look as they say nevertheless they you know although these were very sort of eye-catching obviously more intensely uh dramatic news the conflict goes on and on and on never stops this week a picture that went around the world was of a Palestinian boy not yet three years years old Muhammad Al Tamimi who died in hospital this week the photograph that went around the world was him in a hospital bed uh heavily injured he was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers while riding in a car with his father in the West Bank uh the father is still in hospital although not with lifethreatening injuries and the IDF Israel Defense Forces saying that troops had opened fire near the village of nabiis Salah after Palestinian government had fired shots towards a guard poost so that is the story but the image very often worth perhaps a thousand words in this case it's a photograph that did go around the world and not the only death um reported and making news this week yeah well this happened on on Saturday uh an Egyptian policeman shot and killed three Israeli soldier one woman Leah Bon two men or danan this is relatively a quiet border between Israel and uh Egypt in an investigation is being conducted on how exactly this policeman managed to cross the border and stay in Israeli territory for a few hours without being detected but there are other questions uh raised and I want to tell you about the fact that this was a mixed Battalion we discussed the issue of these kinds of battalions in Israeli military in an episode I think it's one of my favorite it's called Last Man Standing episode 61 about the um women incorporating women more and more women in combat units in the Israeli military what happened was a public discussion on Channel 14 in Israel Channel 14 is a pro- Netanyahu Channel I was speaking to an American friend this week and I said it's kind of like the American Fox News and he he knows Israel very well and he said well it's more Newsmax than F Fox News but you understand the climate in which this discussion is conducted and the military correspond resp of uh the channel a man named halel Bon roosen said this I want to quote this for you word for word if I may he said we should put this on the table a female Soldier and a male Soldier alone 12 hours at night at a guard poost to begin with is improper he said the insinuation here is clear he's talking about two dead soldiers by the way we should uh reiterate and then the anchor in the studio I think he's the anchor Boaz goolan adds to this it's unprofessional it's respectful of the values of the military there is a crazy leftwing agenda we're just scared to say it because soldiers died now this obviously created an uproar in the country and we talked about this right the more and more women that are in combat units the more tension there is with the religious soldiers who are becoming more and more devout in the Israeli military and of course the rabbis who don't like the mixed units uh and this is becoming discussion out in the open a day after the soldiers died so many things to say on this I think first I'm just unbelievably crass and hurtful because of its I think it implied there not very thinly implied is is blaming the victim that these people were in some way indirectly or be you know he wouldn't say it was them it was their commanders but responsible somehow for their own death when it's so obvious that they weren't and so the people who made this attack weren't doing it because it was ax unit they would have killed whoever was there male or female together or segregated just appalling victim blaming first second the timing when the so soon after these F and while these families are grieving I mean extraordinary to me third just amazing that in you know there are places in you know Britain or America you could imagine people being this crass and offensive it just astonishes me in Israel where you know everyone has somebody in the military and and people don't have to go very far to be near a bereaved military family you know it's I don't know whether it's every family has lost someone but it's pretty close to that uh you know going back a couple of generations it will be close to that so on all those levels amazing to me but the the sort of politics of it that are interesting is f you know I think a lot of people outside the country won't be aware of this network that there is a kind of Newsmax type Network on the on the air producing this kind of stuff but this battle over the big social demographic battles that are going on in Israel revealed in a way by the judicial protests so often do come down to this clash between religious and secular and the sort of sight of this Clash is very often the military and so plenty of people have been saying about these judicial protests what they're really about strip away everything else is about this business of uh one part of Israel getting sick and tired of carrying on its back as it were the other Israel one side one part of Israel that pays taxes and fights and does military service and the other section that doesn't namely the ultra Orthodox and that the protest are partly in a way about that secular or older Israel saying enough's enough we've had it up to here with that and then to hear you know that people are casting aspersions in a way on their dead because they're not religious enough in some way when and I know it's different part of religious National Religious compared to ultral THS when other religious people don't serve at all I just wonder if more and more this is these two forces are going to keep colliding and it's going to be about resentment over this because this is such an ultimate Israeli thing that everybody apart from one group um grp jewishly uh one Jewish Israeli group does send their children to serve and fight and potentially die in the military and another section Ultra orthodo do not and the willingness of one to keep taking instructions on how they behave from the other I think that sort of patience ran out this year and uh this episode is another example of how it will get aggravated in this particular case in a really offensive way yes and look I I think if we zoom out on what is happening here if there used to be any criticism of the army it came from the left what is the military doing in judan Samaria here it's criticism coming from the right but it's not really about what the military is doing it's about what the military is and we we talked about you know that integration of women more and more in combat units there's been a huge Spike since 2005 today they're about 6,500 M women in combat operation and when you think of the fact that the women themselves wanted this the military wants this to some extent and it's the religious Zionism part of Israeli society that now has a lot of power in the government that is saying wait a minute this is actually hurting the military and you hear this conversation on air right when the anchor is saying this is a crazy leftwing agenda right that's what he's calling it this as you say is going to become more and more a topic in Israeli life for sure I I one the one thing I would love to know I don't know how one would ever know but is to what extent uh and what conversations are going on at the top of the Israeli military about this phenomenon how they can keep things coherent cohered and together how these strains are tugging away at them they're obviously going on in the society but how they manag to keep all this together and you mentioned that soldiers religious soldiers are getting more devout that's really interesting to me I knowes yeah well I was going to say I've read that Rel you know the religious uh soldiers including settlers are taking more and more prominent more senior command positions often that wasn't the case in the past you know the old stereotype of the Israeli Army leadership was it was the kind of kibuts elite and that now you know people wearing the kipa wearing the skull cap are more prominent you've just added this other layer that within that they're getting more religious I mean if I was sitting there in the sort of top brass of the IDF I'd be thinking how do we keep this thing together and how do we make sure these strains and stresses which are tugging away at the society don't start wrenching us apart it's worth remembering that when uh defense minister Galant gave his warning to Netanyahu he was saying I don't know how we can continue to be a fighting force at full strength and capacity with these reforms because things are pulling apart I mean this is a a national security issue I would say fascinating to me anym I I filmed a documentary a few years ago about that those two sort of um the tension between the fact that more and more women want to serve in combat units that they were more religious soldiers and as I said I mentioned they're more devout I remember interviewing a soldier who who is a combat in a combat unit he said I can't look at the instructor who's a female who's showing us what to do I need to turn around cuz it's not modest the way she's showing us what you know how to work out or something like that and I asked him tell me something when your father was in the military in the same job did he also turn around and he said to me he was very candid he said no he didn't my dad wouldn't turn around but there were much less women here so you see this being a problem and as you said there's a you know huge issue that the military was dealing with in the last five months and that is a reservist saying they don't want to show up for Duty because of the judicial overhaul under that there's a simmering issue of and as you say it's not going to go away because it has to do with the most important part of the society it's the military and it'sah it's the the the People's Army um and and this is not going to go away so this is another sort of you know moment where we remember that that is an issue that hasn't been resolved thus far there's a lot of religious women going into combat units I think that is also driving the religious Zionist rabbis pretty upset that they're losing the girls in in the the quote to quote one of them a few years ago it's a it's an interesting topic I assume we will return to it in later episodes as [Music] well and now we want to talk about how these protests look from the outside but in the eyes of someone who knows a lot about democracy backsliding in other places in the world and we wanted to hear from Anne Apple Bal is a pulit a prize winning journalist a staff writer for the Atlantic a scholar of Eastern Europe in particular and author of Gulag and a whole string of acclaimed award-winning books about history about Europe uh and about much else and democracy too which we're going to talk about an apple is currently in Israel uh we want to hear all about that and welcome to Unholy thank you and your impression so far I mean they've got you traveling around the whole country it's interesting to know in a way first off just what the purpose of your visit is because I think it does have quite a specific Focus let's not exaggerate the the Deep significance of my short trip here but I'm on The Advisory Board of the Israel democracy Institute and they offered a few months ago to help me meet some of the leaders of the Democracy protest movement here as well as some politicians and and others who have a a stake in the judicial reform that was proposed here in January and it's interesting to me because I spent part of my time in Poland where we went through a very similar process a few years ago it's not exactly the same I don't want to overdo the similarities but the idea of a very dramatic package of judicial reforms or things that were styled as reforms but in fact amounted to a profound constitutional change is something that I'm familiar with and so although I know that the reform here has been stopped for the moment it was halted the story isn't over and I'm interested in trying to understand you know the context here and what's similar and what's different I can say that as an Israeli I was surprised by the sort of masses in the street protesting and and also when you you talked about the similarities between Poland we also talk a lot about Hungary how do you see Israel fairing in that in that regard I mean in a way the way the reforms were presented was similar and that it was just you know a huge package we're doing this whether you like it or not we have a parliamentary majority and we're going to use it to completely change the court system that was very familiar um the the reaction here was in some ways the same in Poland there were also Mass protests across the country over several days and weeks one of the things that's different here is that it's almost as if you already had this organic civil Society in place in the form of Reserve officers army veterans and to some extent the the tech industry that was also interested in figuring out how to make this work and how to make the protest stick um very often in in modern democracies protest movements fail you know it's easy to organize them you can get everybody together on Facebook or Whatsapp or or Twitter but then they're hard to sustain over time because they're built on these kind of loose weak social media links and they aren't based on a real Grassroots organization um and in Israel you have this real Grassroots organization and so you had the ability to organize different kinds of protests across the country over a long period of time and I think the protesters were also very wise to immediately take up the idea that they are patriots that this is about the Israeli State and Nation um and it's not um the private interest of one part of the political Spectrum um of course there are polit Ians here who told me yesterday that this is the private interest of one part of a political Spectrum so you know they didn't win over everybody you know because of the special status of the Army Reserves they had the clout at least to Halt the reform and and send it into a kind of at least temporary chaos I'm I'm interested in that because I'm interested in in what are the tactics that can be used to fight this kind of majoritarian autocratic populism um and here at at least you had a kind of at least temporary success I mean in your book Twilight of democracy you really warned there of others of what can happen how it can work and so I'm sure you've been sort of conveying that message to people you've met there I mean just first off is it overblown those people who say the risk here is that Israel goes the way of orand Hungary or contemporary Poland is that overblown from what you've seen hyperbolic and if it isn't what are the I mean you've mentioned some of them but what are the kind of lessons or Warnings steps tactics even that Israelis should be you know learning from what in some ways I suppose brutally the mistakes that were made in those other cases so it's it's it's not overblown because these things are longer term processes you know so actually the bad signs in Israel emerged some years ago with the nature of netanyahu's rhetoric for example the the um the Israeli Prime Minister's rhetoric where he speaks about him and his party as representing you know the true Israel or the you know the the deeper Nation as against you know people who are maybe not so loyal or not so not so Jewish or not so Israeli or something you know you'll you'll correct me if I've got that wrong but the the the nature of the rhetoric the way of doing politics um the way of talking about politics the way of dividing people you know you're with us or you're a traitor you know this is really familiar from other times and other places and by the way this doesn't always have to be a right-wing way of doing politics you know this is exactly what Hugo Chavez did on the left in Venezuela a couple of decades ago and so it's a process that we know and uh you know convincing people that not only they have the you know not only have they been elected to rule but that they have the right to rule and others don't is a bad sign for a democracy um and anything that's done to undermine a Level Playing Field particularly in that kind of situation is dangerous I mean you know in a way democracy asks of people something you almost inhuman namely that okay you elect us and we get to rule for four years and then after that there's going to be a free election you know taking place under Fair circumstances in which our political enemies will be able to depose us you know and on the other hand you know people have to be able to say okay we lost the election but now we're going to leave everything you know as it is and we're going to let our political enemies rule us you know it's kind of um and it it requires this agreement about institutions and the agreement about what is fair and what is equal um that that once you lose it it can be very difficult to regain and politicians can make a lot of Headway by attacking it you know the institutions are bad the system is terrible it's unfair you know it's not really democracy we know there you know there's been all kinds of language used in different countries and once you begin to have that kind of language you know you can lined up with January the 6 in the United States where one side just doesn't accept the result and actually attempts to stop the the peaceful transfer of power you know or you can end up with a political party becoming arrogant and deciding that it not only has the right to rule it has the right to rule as long as it wants and it has the right to change the Constitution even without a an agreement to rewrite the Constitution so sometimes the the tricky part is that it can be very hard to point to the one thing you know the what is the typic point I mean an argument over the committee that chooses the judges and how it should be composed and you know should it have two members from the knesset one from each party or should it not have you that can sound unbelievably Petty you know and maybe that's not the thing that's going to tip Israeli democracy in One Direction or another but usually these things are cumulative and they go on over several years and it can be hard to pinpoint the moment and I think the Israelis are right to shout stop at this moment and to force the government to step back and consider whether there might be you know I should say I am sure in Israel as everywhere else there are legitimate things about the judicial system in the Supreme Court that should be changed you know almost every democracy is in need of some kind of Reform it's just a question of what is the spirit of that reform and what's the point of it and at the very least it seems that the the protest forced the Israeli public as well as the ruling party to ruling parties I should say um to reconsider you know Jonathan asked about the lessons that Israel can learn from or should learn from Poland and Hungary I want to ask it the other way and say what lessons can the world learn from Israel and the Israeli example I think it's safe to say five months after yariv LaVine presented his plan which is netanyahu's plan the protests have been very successful in at least halting the judicial overhaul the Israeli example is very unique and you mentioned the military and I think what happened here is because there's a conscription Army because there's a mandatory service the Israelis said to the government we have a contract with you and if you are breaking the way or or changing the governance system then that contract can't stay the same do you think that's that's obviously something that's quite unique to Israel I mean the the position of you know the reserve army officers in in Israel is not like anywhere else I mean c certainly not like anywhere in Europe or you know North America and so they have a certain kind of power that a a parallel group of citizens in other places wouldn't have I mean somebody also said to me that another difference is that in Israel much of this group is you know very highly educated and what you would call I don't want to use the Expression Elite because it's misused but you know it's a it's an educated and sophisticated part of the country whereas you know in other you know in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela the Army chose the other side partly because they came from um the poorest part of society and the Army was their main source of income you know and so they stuck with the dictator because he could feed their families um and so you have a you know the Army and the nature of it is so unique here that that that that that's different but there was another aspect here that is important that people could learn from and that is that there was a certain amount of preparation for this so I'm talking to you I'm at the Israel democracy Institute which is a body that's been a lot of years studying you know Democratic processes in Israel and there were others who done that as well in other words there was sort of a lot of knowledge in the system about what was wrong and what could go wrong and when something did go wrong people were prepared and they were prepared immediately to start educating the public and there was all kinds of programs to you know um explain to people what was going on and there was a kind of mass education effort could be carried out because it had already been you know sort of underway before that or people had been thinking about it before that in Poland we didn't have that um we had people who thought it might happen you know actually I'm one of them and we had some political leadership who who was ready and we did have a kind of spontaneous protest movement but I'm not sure that there was a well I know there wasn't a mass civic education effort made that was profound enough or long enough I just actually just before coming here I was in Poland and I happened to have seen a woman who runs an organization called free courts and she was talking about something they're doing now which is they uh lawyers around the country to spend I think it's a week a year they call it Constitution week to teach kids about how the political system is supposed to work which isn't something that was done very well in Polish schools if at all we should move on soon in a moment to what's happening in Ukraine which obviously you've been writing about and following so closely but just before we leave this I'm interested to hear what you think from the point of view of these movements towards illiberal democracy how much they are bound up in the person the individual who is pushing for that in other words in Hungary how much is the move to illiberal democracy about Victor Orban in Turkey the erosion of the Constitution how much is that about erdogan and in Israel how much is it about the individual of uh BB Netanyahu or are these movements that are have their own momentum have their own underlying forces that in a way outlive the individual they're associated with and I suppose I'm asking that because is a threat that continues even when Netanyahu is not there with his own motives perhaps for eroding the Judiciary because he's got his own legal issues or is it you know is it a trend or is it about the individual pushing it you know I don't think there's going to be a rule about that I mean uh one example actually is Venezuela Hugo Chavez died he was Then followed by somebody much weaker and with much less Charisma and as far as I can tell absolutely no popularity and yet he was able to keep the system going through much much harsher forms of autocracy I mean through real control through the use of the police through the use of you know plane closed policemen and kind of thugs and so on so once the system has begun to break down you can always push it further um uh you know I mean Putin's Russia even without the big charismatic individual even without the the the charismatic leader I mean once you then have a an autocratic system in which a lot of people are dependent on that system or dependent on the state it's it's conceivable that you can keep it going I me that's that's of course another phase of the of the system that you know I we're not close to contemplating that in Israel or actually even in Poland um what happen after they leave but but you know remember also that these are autocratic movements which Often by definition they appeal to a part so let's not deny their appeal as well I mean they appeal to a part of the population that wants unified leadership that wants you know one person that wants clear explanations that doesn't want a lot of nuance or you know or indecision and you know these kind of male strong men are often in a good position to impersonate that or personify the the state and you know human beings were ruled by monarchs for many many many centuries and you know there is there is something about that form of government that kind of political system that does appeal to people so so yeah the the individuals in all these cases matter a lot we talked on the podcast more than a year ago about the War uh and you said to us about Russia and Ukraine you said that the West has to win this war we have to win this war and I wondered if if that is where we are now more than a year after so since then I mean well what happened I mean the ukrainians won the Battle of Kev they pushed the Russians out of the northern part of Ukraine they they took back harke Province they took back the city of hon they took back large U pieces of territory already already right now in a in a kind of mass of what you know in Russian is called mova and kind of all kinds of games and scops they are they are beginning the process of trying to take back more territory um that's what's going on right now I was in Ukraine uh a couple of months ago and from what I could see there was a lot of confidence about what could be accomplished and really on the as we're speaking right now that's the best I can say um I think it's that we have we the the West plus Ukraine have defeated the original Russian plan so the original Russian plan which was to take over all of Ukraine make Ukraine into a Russian Province you know reduce Ukrainian language to some kind of folklore and literally physically IM eliminate ukrainians I mean kill them put them in concentration camps Deport their children which has been done in occupied territories that has failed they didn't succeed in doing that and I don't think they anymore believe that they can the question now is which pieces of the country can they still hold on to you know Southern Ukraine eastern Ukraine um and Crimea ukrainians want to take all of it back because their experience from 2014 is that when you leave some of your territory in someone else's hands that gives them the inspiration to think they can invade you again a few years later and I think what they want to avoid is some kind of ceasefire that ends with some you know unclear security situation you know that allows the war to begin again in a few years and so the best thing the best way for it to end would be for the ukrainians to win and by win I mean I just mean take back their territory I don't mean they need to occupy Moscow or you know make Putin surrender um that would be the clearest and most effective way to win and that's what we're we're about to watch them try and make that happen and your reading of this destruction of the kovka dam and the terrible damage ecologically and to whole communities in that area is that the sign of desperation if it is the Russians I mean I don't want to put words in your mouth but if it is them is it a sign that they're getting desperate and having to go for ever more extreme tactics or is it kind of a threat saying you go you know you do your counter offensive on us we can hit you much much harder how do you read it so so far the Russ this is not the first Dam that the Russians have destroyed and it's not the first flood they've caused in Ukraine they've been doing this for the last few weeks actually um they've been trying to create floods in the territories that they control presumably to prevent Ukrainian tanks and heavy equipment from rolling over it um so whether this was destroyed with explosives which some people think it is I mean we're only a day or two after it's happened so we don't have a full read on it yet or whether it was destroyed by the Russians filling up the reservoir it had been it had reached very very high historically high levels in water and assuming that the water would sooner or later burst through we don't really know yet but you know they are in control of the dam they were in control of all of the you know all the Machinery that runs the dam you know they are responsible for what has just happened and actually I have no doubt that this was part of their plan I mean they know that they will be outclassed by Ukraine's new weapons and new brigades which have been formed and trained in Germany and Poland and elsewhere over the last few months and they are now willing to do almost anything to prevent the ukrainians from moving forward and that includes flooding um I think it was also kind of sign of just how far there you know we'll do anything we'll destroy anything you know these aren't remember this is so-called Russian territory which they claimed in these fake referendums Last Summer um but they have absolutely no compunction about Mass death there killing people they don't seem to be rescuing people in kison there are photographs of people standing on top of their houses who you know in on the Russian side of the river who aren't being saved I would not be surprised if the next step is an attack on the nuclear power plant which is lies in also on the front line in between Russia and Ukraine I mean there there sending a message that you know okay we can't beat you militarily we might not even be able to defend ourselves militarily but we're going to do anything we can to stop you there are reports in the west of Putin's situation especially coming under the critique of hardliners saying that he's too weak and that his hold on power is shaky is this all kind of Western wishful thinking or is he really sort of losing his grip on no so there's a real critique coming from it's mostly not directed at him by name in um it's there's a real critique coming from yvi progan who's the leader of this Vagner mercenary Group which is an important part of the Russian fighting force it's not technically part of the Russian army um and he has just a couple of days ago made this incredible statement where he attacked the defense minister and said he was lazy and said something about his daughter living a life of luxury and the Chief of Staff he said you know drinks too much and screams at people and they should all be put in front of a firing squad I mean I'm I'm I'm that's more or less what he said um and he said he he's also claimed that that regular Russian army troops have shot at his at his mercenaries that they put landmines in the way when they were retreating from bakut where where they were fighting a few weeks ago there is clear open competition happening between different pieces of the Russian security apparatus a friend of mine who watches these things carefully told me that she thought it was not a sign that they were trying to get rid of Putin right now but that they are beginning to compete for who replaces him so some kind of competition among maybe not inside the Kremlin but in the second level down has begun and can we just bring together in a way the two areas of expertise because you base you're based in Washington on the one hand and obviously you're completely expert in Eastern Europe on the other and that is American political attitudes to this conflict and particularly on the right we saw Ronda santis and Donald Trump both have tried to play it diminish the significance of this fight and say it's a territorial dispute and I thought very significant this first broadcast on the new Twitter platform by um Tucker Carlson this week attacking directly Vladimir zilinsky president of Ukraine calling him sweaty rattie uh branding him as a persecutor of Christians particularly that rodent comparison had people saying this is a an anti-semitic attack on zilinski it seems as if the well you you you tell us but is it the case that the Republican right is abandoning this struggle and that therefore one of the big things at stake in the presidential election in 2024 will be whether the United States actually stays on in this fight or is it just a fr who are moving away from Ukraine in this way so two things to say one is that while Joe Biden is President I am not worried about American commitment so Joe Biden is committed and you know that gives us clear year and a half um while he's in charge um and I would say that by the way this right now the same of every other leader in Europe of the main you know most largest countries inside each country there are of course people of different views and you could have an election that changed it but you know for the moment I don't see any I'm not worried about it um there Republican party is is quite divided over this so most of the Congressional Republicans including most of the Senate are very Pro Ukraine um I saw some of them at the Munich security conference in February talking very emotively about their you know dedication to Ukraine and you know if it were Texas I would do what you boys are doing you know I would defend my country and so on so it's not a party-wide phenomenon but yes you're right the the far right whatever you want to call it the Maga right the trumpist right has gone the other way I think for a couple of reasons one is that you know whatever Biden does is bad and because this is a Democrat cause you know they're against it two I think because of the language of liberal democracy that zalinski and others around him use and they're against that too um and three because you know the idea of a you know strongman leader appeals to them as well and to some of their followers and so you know they still Harbor some admiration for Putin although Putin losing is going to is is going to do a lot of damage to his image and I think actually some of that has already happened somebody recently told me that in Brazil this there was this kind of popular support for Putin which is now falling because you know if he's going to be a loser then you know the Bulls andaro people don't like him um so so the war has already changed his image quite a bit I think um but yes I I think if Trump is the candidate which seems to me likely uh right now unless unless something happens um then yes that will be one of the most divisive issues of the campaign um right now 70% of Americans approximately say they support Ukraine remember that it's a war in which no American troops are fighting and which mostly so you know up until recently mostly what we were doing was giving the ukrainians older weapons that we weren't using anyway you know and which are you know produced in the United States so it wasn't even as if we were the cost wasn't wasn't even what you know some people tried to pretend it was um and so for the most part there has been a lot of support for it and so right now that issue plays in Biden's favor um what everything will look like a year and a half from now is very hard to say but it is also true that one of the reasons for this counter offensive one of the reasons why it's so important is that it you know between now in January or now in Winter really actually is really the best time for the ukrainians to try and make some progress and take back some territory and that's why there's this kind of anxiety and energy and excitement over this particular campaign it's because everyone knows that this is a very important pie moment in in terms of us political timing you know a big victory for Ukraine before the end of the year could mean you know the issues off the table and you know the it's not part of the US election we did want to ask you um as as our conversation is winding down the the reports about the plaques honoring the victims of the Soviet Gulag forced labor camps being taken down from buildings in Moscow how do you read that I mean this is part of the Putin's you know historical politics that date back some years now and have just become sharper and sharper I mean um you know the the the decision to take you know to to stop talking about the negative side of the Soviet Union to revive the memory of Stalin to decide that 194 5 and the the victory over over the Nazis um is the most important moment in recent history and needs to be celebrated with a parade and Soviet flags and people in World War II uniforms every year you know all this has been this has been going on for a long time the most important Russian historical Association which is memorial who I worked with extensively when I was writing my book on the gulag in the late 90s and early 2000s and was a really powerful and important group they had a team of historians they all worked in the archives they published you know dozens of books um Memoirs but also works of research and so on I mean they've now been disbanded they've been and having now won the Nobel Prize by the way they won the last Nobel Prize together with two other organizations they've now been disbanded and really any attempt to talk about the Soviet past in anything other than you know glowing light of Praise Is Now illegal so this is really the end of a process rather than something new another chilling uh song sign really of where things are and where things could go an apple Bal currently in Israel thanks so much for coming back to us on Unholy uh thanks for having me thank you very much [Music] an an apple Bal Polish American journalist I say that partly because it was um striking how she said in the first person about both the United States and Poland you know we in Poland and we in the United States obviously sees it from both Vantage points but a brilliant journalist and absolutely for of this moment because she has this uh really unusual perspective on a part of the world that for let's face it a couple of decades people sort of Switched Off being interested they thought right the burlin wall is down that's fine that's sort of over and actually how important what the trends and signs in Hungary Poland were for democracy all around the world a lot of the populist movements trumpism Leen and everything there were signs of it coming out of Central and Eastern Europe from the start and obviously you know her hosts in Israel have thought she's got huge insight and lessons to teach about what happened there and what resonance and Echoes that might find in Israel now yeah and you know I was thinking when we talked about Israel and and the comparison to to Poland and to Hungary a little bit and you think the fact that Israel managed to Halt uh the judicial overhaul is that connected to the fact that Israel while not being a very new state still has always been a democracy does that also make sense when you look at that that comparison but it was definitely a um a very interesting conversation with her so we should uh hand out some awards as tradition demands and I think it's fair to say you and I agonized a little bit over the this week's uh recipient of our uh hser award because on one level you shouldn't kick a man when he's down and yet on the other hand I do have in my ear the voice of my old now late politics tutor at University who said when you would hear someone say don't kick a man when he's down he would say when else can you kick him and uh with that in mind I think our hsbor award winner may be the now departed uh chief executive I think and then chairman of CNN Chris L out this week um fired from his job running the Cable News Network after a whole rout that was started by a profile of him in the Atlantic magazine in which a whole lots of things were revealed generally people at the network not happy with how he' been running the network ratings and so on but the sort of last straw was a combination of this profile in the Atlantic in which it showed some um sort of behind the scenes color of that CNN town hall meeting with Donald Trump lot of criticism for CNN for giving Donald Trump this huge platform but particularly in front of a whole lot of Republicans and Trump supporters and uh you know there were questions about did they know this anyway it emerged from that piece in the Atlantic that he had been aware of in his words the extra trumpy crowd at that uh widely criticized town hall meeting in other words he can't claim he didn't realize it was going to be the way it was which was kind of a propaganda rally for Donald Trump so Chris left out I think the huta though is a you know that [ __ ] up and handing a megaphone to Donald Trump using his Network as a sort of platform but also really the intense vanity of having a profile writer follow you around for a whole year and in a way if it's gone wrong because of that there will be limited sympathy I think it's fair to say probably in his own network and elsewhere you know those who live by the flattering media attention of a magazine profile can also die from it there was a little bit of vanity there and I'm afraid Chris L has probably paid a bit of a price for it so he gets I don't think it's probably the worst thing that's happened to him this week when he when he hears that he's won this week's Unholy hser of the week award yeah well it does connect to the beginning I told you no one ever regretted not giving an interview um yeah well if you go into U you know your tenure in CNN the first thing you have to do is close CNN plus and then maybe that was the first uh sign and I I can agree with the what you said about the huis and letting someone follow you around Tim Alberta of of the Atlantic this case for a long time um okay now after we kicked someone when he's down let's you know LOD someone when they're up what do you say um so let's talk about the Israeli National Team uh playing soccer or football what offends you less I should remember obviously football yeah obb I remember the first episode we ever did and we were talking about something and I called it soccer I got a friend calling me up and saying never say that to Jonathan I was like okay that was the only great tip I got about doing this podcast with you so anyway um the Israeli team playing at the World Cup for age 20 and under we call it the mundialito they have been successful in ways we did not imagine they won Brazil the game against Brazil last week Israel won a football match against Brazil it's something that you never thought you'd ever say out loud we should say the last time the adult team uh Israel ever sort of qualified for being uh in the world cup that was 1970 if I'm not mistaken that was a while ago uh and so they are really succeeding now this tonight we're not going to be updated on this because it's Thursday but they're playing against Uruguay in the uh semi-finals and so we're going to keep our fingers crossed this is a really lovely team of young Israelis Arabs Jews all playing together in a really great team under the leadership of aim their manager and and I think that they uh you know we can wish them luck um you're quite right about Israel's record in the world cup and you do have to go back a very very long time although uh I do know that erit Israel or mandatory Palestine did compete in the World Cup tournaments of 1934 and 1938 one day I will tell you the story of uh an encounter with the goalkeeper of that team many many years later who who I did actually meet it's a long story um but so Israel has a long and stored history in international competition not so good in recent decades it's got to be said it's not really fedw well but maybe this young team are a sign of the future and who knows maybe Israel will beat Brazil in a world cup that would be a story for Unholy in quite a major way if and when that happens but we will watch this young team and see uh how they Advance if you have enjoyed un this week remember Unholy podcast on Instagram and on Facebook that's where you can be in touch with us any suggestions thoughts reactions we do uh take those and of course do spread the word and we will say our thank yous to G glaz Om andan I'm waiting for embarrassing photos of you playing football and we shall meet next week yeah talking about it is one thing playing is really something else we don't need to disturb the dreams of the Unholy list with that till next [Music] time this podcast is brought to you by cyber attacks can be prevented checkpoint 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