Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein to discuss the state of U.S foreign policy, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, negotiations with Iran and the Biden administration’s plans to reopen a consulate in Jerusalem to handle Palestinian affairs.

Defending Trump: Pompeo, who served as the country’s top diplomat from 2018-2021, defended the Trump administration’s Afghanistan policy, arguing that negotiations with the Taliban were aimed at forming a common understanding, not signing a binding document. “We did that all the time, knowing that a piece of paper mattered as a guidepost, but not as an operational document,” Pompeo said, “As we began to deliver on President [Donald] Trump’s commitment to draw down our uniformed military personnel there in Afghanistan, we were always mindful we had multiple objectives, not the least of which was to ensure that the United States wasn’t attacked from that place again. We managed that process for four years. We did so incredibly effectively. Didn’t have a single American attacked for the last couple years of our administration, not because of a negotiation or a piece of paper, but because of a set of understandings we had, some of which were documented in that deal.”

Appeasement: “It is difficult to discern precisely what their [Middle East] policy is,” Pompeo said of the Biden administration. “You have to default to the idea that this administration, just like the Obama administration, actually believes that they can convince Iran to be a stabilizing influence in the Middle East. I think that’s crazy….Their policy looks to be that same one of appeasement, we can just buy them off, we’ll send them money and they’ll slow their nuclear program down. That is very dangerous for the State of Israel and is a danger for the Gulf state coalition that we built alongside of Israel to isolate Iran in a way that [it] had never been isolated before.”

Religious organization: Asked if the Iranian regime is a “rational actor,” Pompeo pointed to the fundamentalist rhetoric employed by the government. “This is a religious organization. They are on a religious jihad for the destruction of the State of Israel and the big devil [the U.S.] as well. The leaders are evil. This is ideological,” he responded. “Look at the tactical level, they make decisions. When we struck Qassim Soleimani, their response wasn’t what many had feared — that there would be a major conflict between the United States and Iran. We were convinced that we had containment in a way that prevented that. So you could argue that’s rational as a tactical operational matter. But you can’t rationalize the antisemitism. You can’t. You can’t rationalize their desire to destroy the freedom of every one of their people and the human rights of every Iranian. Those aren’t rational leaders, those are people who are protecting their own power.”

Legal opinion: Asked about the Biden administration’s plan to reopen a consulate in Jerusalem to liase with the Palestinians, Pompeo, who in 2018 consolidated the Palestinian affairs bureau into the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, argued that the administration lacked the legal authority. “I think it’s illegal,” Pompeo said. “We don’t have consulates in the same city we have embassies anywhere in the world.” Asked if a future Republican president would reverse such an opening, Pompeo, considered to be a possible 2024 presidential candidate, called the issue nonpartisan. “I think every president needs to commit to it… It’s unnecessary and counterproductive, and I think, frankly, sends the wrong signal to the Palestinians as well. It signals to them [that it’s] back to business as usual, back to the kleptocracy, and ‘pay to slay’ and all the horrors that the Palestinian leadership and the West Bank [has] imposed on its own people as well,” he said, invoking a term used for the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of individuals who commit terror attacks against Israelis.

Abraham Accords: Pompeo, who helped oversee the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020, said the Trump administration was close to convincing more countries to join before leaving office. “What will it take for the next nation to make that decision? For a capable leader to make the right choice for his country. They have to know that America is going to be supportive of that effort. And I don’t see the conditions for that today. We just talked about this administration’s Iran policy. It would be increasingly difficult for another country to sign onto the Abraham Accords, conceptually, when the United States is playing footsie with Israel’s archenemy.”

Palace intrigue: Asked about reported calls between Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and a top Chinese military official in the closing weeks of the Trump administration, Pompeo described the calls as “nothing, per se, troubling.” But the former secretary of state characterized Milley’s admission that he would warn Beijing if the Trump administration decided to launch an attack as “mind-boggling,” adding, “If he undermined the president of the United States that way, he’s got to be fired, he should certainly resign himself. We need more clarity about what’s actually said.”

Bonus: Favorite Yiddish word? “I think my son would tell you, it is kvetch.” How many bottles of ‘Pompeo’ wine [created for him by an Israeli winemaker] has he consumed? “I can’t tell you how much it meant to me. Because the State of Israel is such an important part of my life as a Christian evangelical. To think that someone would honor me in this way is just, you know, for me, that’s really something.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee focusing on Middle East issues, believes the U.S. should deprioritize Iran deterrence and urge Saudi Arabia to “come to terms” with Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon, he said in Tuesday podcast interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Murphy argued that the U.S. should be decreasing its overall “militaristic footprint” in the region — including its security aid to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“How much does it matter to the United States what share of power Iran and Saudi Arabia have in the region 10 or 20 years from now? We act as if that question is existential to the United States. I’m not sure that it is,” Murphy said, adding that he is skeptical whether “providing security guarantees big enough to provide deterrence against the Iranians — for instance, creating red lines about what they can and cannot do in a place like Lebanon… is commensurate with our interest in the region.” 

“We have an interest in keeping the Iranians at bay,” he continued. “We have an interest in continuing to work with our partners, but I don’t know that it is such a significant interest that we should be dramatically increasing the security presence of the United States in the region.”

Murphy recounted that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif “always reminds” him that Iranian missiles are pointed at Saudi Arabia, not Israel. He acknowledged, however, that he takes “everying [Zarif] says with a large shaker of salt.”

Rather than increasing security aid to Gulf allies, which Iran finds “provocative,” Murphy said the U.S.’s priority should be reentering the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and reaching other long-term diplomatic agreements with Iran.

“I think that having some successful long-term diplomatic agreements between the United States and the Iranians will help build confidence for other diplomatic arrangements — either formal or informal — to be entered into that perhaps lower the temperature in the region,” Murphy said. He added that scaling back the U.S.’s military presence and aid would “create the space for there to be conversations between the Iranians and the Saudis.”

Murphy previously told Jewish Insider that he believes a nuclear deal is the only way for the U.S. to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and will have to make “hard choices” to achieve that end.

Murphy warned that Lebanon, which has been besieged by a series of crises, is on the brink of becoming a failed state and a source of instability and terrorism that could last decades. He blamed the deteriorating situation in part on a lack of Saudi engagement due to Hezbollah’s influence inside Lebanon.

“[The Saudis] are deeply uncomfortable with the role that Hezbollah plays. The Saudis should come to terms with the fact that — at least in the short term — Hezbollah is going to be part of the political infrastructure there,” he said. “It would be much better for the Saudis to be a partner with the United States, with the French and other countries to try to offer the kind of economic support that might provoke political reform that would eventually allow for technocrats and non-sectarian actors to have greater influence in the government. That would lessen the influence of Hezbollah.”

Murphy’s proposals on Iran and Lebanon reflect his broader view of U.S. Middle East policy as severely out of date.

“What we want is to try to midwife a conversation about a regional security architecture, in which the Iranians and the Saudis and the Emiratis aren’t constantly battling with each other through proxy fights,” he said. “I don’t think that our current position in the region — whereby we are essentially giving the Saudi side whatever they need — is actually leading to that détente or to that conversation happening.”

A key part of an altered U.S. strategy must include “play[ing] hardball” with the Saudis,” Murphy continued, dismissing concerns that decreased U.S. influence could create openings for its geopolitical rivals.

“I don’t believe this argument that the Saudis are going to walk away from a security alliance with the United States,” he explained. “They will never get from the Chinese nor the Russians what they get from the United States today… They want us to be tougher on Iran, but they don’t have another potential partner like the United States.”

Murphy indicated he has concerns that China is outpacing the U.S. by providing significant development aid, rather than security aid, in the Middle East, requiring a “radical reform of our foreign policy toolkit.” He pointed to Egypt relations as an example of the failures of U.S. aid policy. China has been ramping up its investments in Egypt as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

“All we have available to us right now in Egypt is public shaming and the withdrawal of military aid, whereas the Chinese will come in with much more significant economic promise than the United States can today,” Murphy said. “We should learn from the success the Chinese have had, and we should empower agencies — whether it be [the United States Agency for International Development] or the Development Finance Corporation — with the kind of economic assets that can be comparable to the Chinese.”

Writer and journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt joined “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein to discuss the latest controversies — including Ben & Jerry’s and the new Netflix show “My Unorthodox Life” — plus her own life as a journalist and a rabbi’s wife, bridging the secular-religious “chasm,” as she calls it, and the politics of kosher certifications.

On the rise of outrage culture: “I don’t know if you saw that meme — you know, that popular meme with the guy walking with the girl and he’s turning around, look at another girl. So that literally is what it’s like. We’re jumping from one to the other….A lot of this is a product of what Twitter has done to our brains, where we’re sort of addicted to the adrenaline, that outrage, and the way that the algorithm rewards it. You know, that’s really what it’s sort of, I think, sparked in us. As a journalist, I find it very disturbing, and partly because I feel that I have been complicit in this as a media person. My job is to actually contribute to that. It’s a very uncomfortable place to be in and I think, simply, in the Jewish community we have let it go really far… I’ve definitely seen that in the wider Orthodox community this past year, where people were sort of pushed to their limits due to the pandemic, due to the heated political climate. And it has really caused strife in families and communities. I say this is a rabbi’s wife who has gotten people, even before pandemic, we had people telling us after a beautiful catered Shabbat dinner in the synagogue, they would walk out and they would say, ‘Thank you so much, Rabbi, but next time never seat us next to people the other side of the political aisle.’ I literally had that happen several times. I think that social media outrage has contributed to it.”

Sped-up outrage cycles: “I think it’s immediate and also, it’s all consuming. It follows you wherever you go. It’s in a device that is glued to your hand and glued to your eyes. There’s no way of escaping unless you’re someone who has an incredible amount of discipline and does not exist online. You’re seeing this constantly. You’re bombarded by it. And not only that, I think you’re constantly pushed to have a take on something, to have an opinion, to make a statement. I sometimes have people reach out to me [and] say, ‘You know, I noticed that you didn’t post something about x outrage du jour?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not a politician. I don’t see myself as that sort of a public figure. I’m not going to respond to absolutely everything that the Jewish world or the larger world is losing its mind over.’ But social media has convinced us of — what a writer at The New Yorker recently called this ‘main character energy’ — where we are all main characters in this big narrative, and we all have to have our takes, we all have to have our positions.”

Secular/Orthodox Chasm: “I will say this as an Orthodox Jew who has spent some years in secular, liberal Jewish media: I felt there was just this huge chasm between us, and our Jewish experiences and what sort of defined our Judaism. For me, my Judaism is not defined by bagels and lox. And it’s not about summer camp.  It’s my own. It’s my entirety of my life, every single day, when I wake up in the morning, and I say a blessing. It’s when I go to sleep, and I say Shemah, with my kids. It’s my entire day in between. I think that’s true for most Orthodox Jews. It’s a constant way of life. And, and there’s unfortunately, a lot of misunderstanding for both sides… As an Orthodox Jew, I feel that it is my responsibility to be able to try to bridge that gap as much as possible. I tried to do that, in my journalism, and in my very tiny, individual way, sort of tell stories of real Orthodox Jews who struggle with different aspects of their lives, but are choosing this way of life. And there are clear reasons for why they choose this code of values.

On living as an outspoken writer: “It’s very uncomfortable, because there’s always attacks on both sides. I think, from within the religious community, of course, I’m too out there; I’m too feminist; I talk too much about issues. And from a secular standpoint, there’s this constant, ‘Well, why are you still religious? You’re still doing that long sleeve thing?’ You know, I get that all the time from people.. This is a really big statement, but I think the vast majority [of the Orthodox community is] living those tensions in some way or another. Not necessarily gender, but with the tensions of modernity and tradition. And you see that in all aspects of life.  And we don’t normalize that enough. So when you were that one person talking about it, people sort of look at you in shock.”

A year into his return to Congress, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein to discuss his early experience in Baltimore politics, the state of Black-Jewish relations and why he opposes the BDS movement that targets Israel. Mfume, who represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District, first represented the district, which covers parts of Baltimore and Howard County, from 1987 to 1996, before stepping down to become CEO of the NAACP. He was reelected in the May 2020 special election following the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Mfume’s friend and successor to the seat.

First Job: Growing up in Baltimore, Mfume, now 72, lived near a grocery store owned by a Jewish man, whom the Maryland representative described as a “father figure” to children in the neighborhood. At 14, Mfume began working in the store, when one day he asked the owner about his unusual arm tattoos. “They were numbers that he was branded. And he began to tell me about the Holocaust, which was hard for me to conceive, because it was hard enough for me to understand slavery at 14 years of age, and how people could do this to other people. And I began to hear those stories. It was like slavery times five, and the fact that so many, many people were murdered. And he told me how he had gotten into this country with a little bit of money. That he and his wife, Hannah, started the store. And I knew that I had touched a nerve. And I didn’t really know what it was. But he began to tell me about the ‘Jewish exodus,’ and how the homeland [Israel] was established in 1948 and why it meant so much. So I got up after he finished, he wiped the tears from his eyes, he rolled his sleeves back down the way he always kept it. And I went downstairs, and did not really comprehend it until much later in life — until I got a chance to go to Auschwitz in the early 1980s and I walked under that big arch sign and walked inside past the suitcases of shaved hair and shoes, and all the memorabilia and then went in and touched the actual ovens. And I understood in a way that I have never understood before, what that must have been like. So I always assumed and have made the association, that those were the two greatest evils that I could think of perpetrated on mankind, and that tolerance, and the lack of tolerance creates those kinds of situations.”

Rat Pack days: Mfume’s start in Maryland politics brought him into early contact with a number of up-and-coming political figures who collectively became known as the “Rat Pack,” named for the famous group of Las Vegas entertainers. “The Rat Pack, if I can use that terminology without getting sued by MGM, goes back to when Howard Friedman, myself, a guy by the name of Larry Max, Philip Klein, and Dave Shapiro, we’re all sort of finding a way to cut our teeth politically. I was a member of the [Baltimore] city council, Howard came on board through his efforts to support me, and we just all kind of grew up together, understanding our different backgrounds and our ways. And I got a chance to better understand Howard and Larry and David and the others, and they got a better chance to understand me. So we were always working on mutual issues in the black and Jewish communities.”

On the intersection between BLM and the Palestinian activist movement: “There were a number of agendas that were starting to creep into the Black Lives [Matter] movement that had nothing to do with Black Lives. But they found a way to creep in and they mixed messages. And it was difficult for persons who are caught up in the movement and the pureness of the movement to always decipher and say, “Now, that’s not what we’re about, or are we really agreeing to the same thing? A lot of that happened with the civil rights movement, and so there are lessons, history lessons here for us. But I just think that those persons, who are opportunists, who wanted to create several different agendas, found a way to do it. You also had the defund the police movement, which really did not begin with Black Lives, but it was rolled in, and now it’s almost synonymous in the minds of a lot of people. And that really is unfortunate.”

Opposition to BDS: “But here’s what I say about BDS. I oppose BDS, and I oppose it on legitimate civil rights grounds. I strongly believe in boycott and divestment when it is applicable to a situation that has historically and continues to find a way to oppress people, when we were protesting the de Klerk regime in South Africa — and I started as a young college freshman with the boycott movement on South Africa, and continued as a young city councilman with divesting our funds from South Africa — we were trying to divest our funds from a hideous regime that had existed for hundreds of years. That was not the majority, but rather the minority in South Africa that had oppressed, murdered, killed and jailed so many South Africans, that that was the only way to draw attention to it….That’s not the case in the BDS movement, as I see it. I understand that there are those who will probably attack me and say, “No, it is the same thing.” But I’ve lived long enough. And I’ve been through enough to know that they are two different things. And it has not risen, in my opinion, to the level that the hundreds of years of oppression by the Afrikaners in South Africa against the indigenous population, which was the majority, it’s not risen to that level.”

On whether he’ll make an endorsement in the primary for the Ohio 11th special election: “Well, I’m not supporting either one. So maybe that makes me the oddball. I don’t know either one. I’d like to get to know both of them. But, you know, the election is just about here. So I haven’t chosen to support anybody. I’d like to support people who I know, not people who I think I know. And so for me, the better thing here is to let the voters decide. I think they’re both very well qualified. And as you said, they have their own set of endorsements….When this is all over, when the smoke clears, on one side or the other, there’s going to have to be some amending and some handing out of carrots to sort of heal over the wounds and to bring us to the point where we can govern together. One of them will be elected. I don’t know which one, but I’m not in that race. And I think more than anything else, I just want the best candidate to come forward, and I trust  the voters of Ohio’s 11th to do that.”

Lightning Round: Favorite Baltimorean of all-time? Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Favorite Jewish word or phrase? Chutzpah. Favorite Jewish food? Bagel and lox. Reading recommendation? The Constitution. “Legend has it that Ben Franklin walked out, once the Constitution had been adopted, onto the streets of Philadelphia, and a woman came up to him and said, “Dr. Franklin, Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? Is it a monarchy or a republic?” And he said, “Ma’am, it is a republic, if you can keep it.” Well, we almost lost it on January the 6th . And I think it would behoove all of us to kind of just take a moment or two and look back at what they created in that document and to see how close or how far away we are today.”

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer clarified comments he made in an interview last month about evangelical Christian support for Israel, during the second half of a conversation with “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein. At the time of his comments, the former ambassador received criticism for calling evangelicals “the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States,” with some suggesting he had dismissed American Jewish support.

In conversation with Bernstein and Goldberg, Dermer acknowledged the political importance of the evangelical support. “The evangelical move into the Republican Party has shifted views in the Republican Party towards Israel very dramatically,” he noted. But, he contended, “The question that I was asked was, ‘Has Israel spent too much time investing in evangelical Christians?’ And I said, ‘No, they haven’t spent enough.’”

Dermer added that given the size of the evangelical population in the United States compared to the Jewish population — more than 30 percent versus roughly 2 percent — Israel should seek to encourage and engage the evangelical community. “Israel is one of the most important issues for many of them, and because their support is unequivocal,” he argued.

In the same May interview with Makor Rishon, Dermer claimed American Jews are “disproportionately among [Israel’s] critics.” But the former ambassador took a more diplomatic stance in the podcast, telling Goldberg and Bernstein “some of Israel’s greatest champions are Jewish Americans, but you also have some of our fiercest critics. That’s something you tend to not see among evangelicals.”

Dermer doubled down on his argument for increased outreach to the evangelical community, suggesting that while American Jews “tend to be pretty knowledgeable” about the issues facing Israel, the evangelical community requires more education.

“I think we have to invest a lot more time in doing outreach to evangelicals, educate them about the issues, because you have [30]% of people who strongly support you. And that may not be the case, 50 years from now, or 100 years from now,” Dermer added, “That’s essentially what I said [in the interview], this is just the longer version.”

In a conversation about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial 2015 speech to a joint session of Congress regarding the Iranian nuclear program, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer shifted responsibility onto former House Speaker John Boehner for not notifying the Obama White House of Netanyahu’s intention to address legislators, countering arguments made by former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes on the podcast last week. Speaking with Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein, Dermer went on to accuse the Obama administration of politicizing advocacy efforts to reject the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.

The speech by Netanyahu came as the White House pressured Congress to support the soon-to-be finalized Iran deal, which was opposed by the Israeli government. Boehner’s invitation for Netanyahu to speak to a joint session, ostensibly to argue against the deal, came without notifying the White House, which many Democrats decried at the time as a breach of protocol.

Asked about the shift away from a bipartisan consensus in Washington on Israel on the podcast last week, Rhodes did not hesitate to shift the blame to Netanyahu for his address to Congress.. 

“On the Iran issue, we didn’t break norms by the way in which we made the case for the diplomatic agreement that we had always said that we were trying to reach through the Obama administration,” Rhodes argued. “It was Prime Minister Netanyahu, who at the invitation of a Republican speaker of the house without even telling us. We didn’t learn from the Israeli government. We learned from a press release from John Boehner that the prime minister of Israel was going to come and make a speech to the US Congress against a signature foreign policy issue.” 

Asked by Bernstein why the Israeli government did not inform the White House, Dermer, who served as ambassador from 2013 until January 2021, deflected responsibility. “When Speaker Boehner called me, he specifically said to me, in that call, that ‘I will inform the White House.’ He told me in that call that it was his prerogative to inform the White House, and I respected that right.”

Still, Dermer defended Boehner’s request. “People tell you all the time, ‘Hey, Ambassador, I want to tell [Netanyahu].’ I’ve had times, this may surprise you, where — and this happened several times with a very senior member of the Obama administration — [they] will tell me, the ambassador, ‘Don’t tell the prime minister, I want to tell the prime minister,’ he said, “You have to always make judgment calls about how important is this thing that you’re telling them or not telling them. The currency of trust is very important.”

Boehner did not respond to a request for comment.

In the podcast interview, Dermer proceeded to blame the Obama administration for politicizing the opposition to the deal. “The ones who turned this into a partisan issue was the White House,” he said. “And they did it in order to delegitimize the arguments, instead of actually seriously thinking about what the prime minister said.”

“They said, [The deal] blocks Iran’s path to a weapon.’ That’s a lie.” Dermer continued. “If there would be something that would block Iran’s path to a weapon, I, as the ambassador of Israel, would have done anything to support such a deal. We would never have opposed such a deal.

“Instead of understanding that they’re dealing with a sovereign Jewish state that is being threatened with annihilation, and a prime minister of Israel is going to go speak out against the deal that he thinks is a threat to the survival of the one and only Jewish state, they dismiss it as politics,” Dermer complained.

“Had there been a Republican president who had the same deal on the table, we would have acted the same way,” Dermer argued, pointing to a meeting in 2002 convened by Netanyahu, then a private citizen, with 50 senators on behalf of the Israeli government after then-President George W. Bush called on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein for a lengthy conversation on Israeli politics yesterday. In part one of the conversation, released today, Dermer dissects the Israeli political process, giving a detailed history of how prime ministers have risen, fallen, and risen again, and weighs in on the new proposed coalition that would put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the opposition.

Coalition caution: Dermer, who was a senior advisor to Netanyahu for four years before becoming ambassador, advised added caution before anointing the new government coalition led by Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. “It’s not a government until it passes its confidence vote,” Dermer said, “But do I think that the parties will make it to the finish line? I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. It’s going to be close. You may not have a government sworn in by about another 10 or 11 days… So there’s all sorts of maneuvering that’s going on in Israel. But I think they have a good chance. I don’t know if they’re going to get there. It remains to be seen. I will put the odds are better than 50/50, but I can’t put an exact number on it.”

Bennett’s challenge: “I think the issue is, when you’re a prime minister in Israel, governing is really hard. And you really need a strong base of support and you need a strong base of support within your coalition. Bennett’s support among the right has completely collapsed. Whatever was there before now is, you know, sort of totally gone. The left side of Israel’s political spectrum, they’re happy that Bennett is helping them oust Netanyahu but they’re not supporters of Bennett. So you don’t really see that he has the public support. So if you combine no public support, and no political sort of soldiers to help you govern, I think it’s very difficult. He may be an extremely talented individual but.. it’s very hard to see how he’s going to effectively govern even if he had the right policies and on some issues, visa vi Iran, or the Palestinians, or the other big issues that capture the imagination of people outside of Israel, it’s totally incoherent within that government… The glue that’s holding it together is only the fact that they want to oust Netanyahu. There’s nothing else there.”

Netanyahu’s next act: “If the government is not sworn in, then I think Netanyahu is back in the driver’s seat. If the government is sworn in, what the Prime Minister is saying is he’s going to head the opposition. And the opposition here is pretty big. It will be a minimum of 53 out of the 120. And the opposition would be very coherent… The Prime Minister came back to be prime minister… Ben Gurion came back… Rabin came back… So look he is by far the most popular politician within Israel. And one of the things he was hoping to do, and maybe it will still happen, I don’t put the chances very high, but is to have a direct election, meaning instead of going to new Knesset elections, just have a direct election, let anybody run against him and then we can have a decisive victory that way. Because in our system, our parliamentary system, where you have so many different parties, I think we’ve got 12 parties in the Knesset, eight parties would be in this new coalition. If you think you’ve got a problem with your two-party system in America, try 12. See how that works out for you.”

On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein are joined by Ben Rhodes, former White House deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration and author of the new book After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, for a lively conversation on the state of partisan politics, his definition of Zionism, and the Iran deal.

Below is a full transcript of the episode.

[00:00] Rich: The Iran Nuclear Deal stands today as one of the most controversial foreign policy initiatives undertaken by a US president in recent memory. Opposed by a bipartisan majority in Congress, President Barack Obama waged a massive PR and government relations campaign to keep the deal moving forward eventually winning over enough Senate Democrats to block legislation to stop the deal.

The fight was bitter, the rhetoric was harsh, and the results were mixed. Sanctions were lifted on Iran only to be re-imposed a few years later when the opposing party took control of government. 10 years ago, the US Senate passed sanctions on Iran Central Bank, 100 to nothing, over the objections of the Obama administration. Today, however, bipartisanship is hard to come by with progressives pressing President Biden to lift sanctions on Iran and rejoin the nuclear deal while Conservatives warn they’ll reimpose sanctions and leave the deal no matter what.

Today, we’re joined by the person credited with designing the political and messaging strategy that allowed the Iran deal to move forward and that broke the decade’s long bipartisan consensus on Iran. Coming up we’ll go deep on the issues with Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting. Don’t push pause, you’re listening to Limited Liability Podcast.

[music]

[1:33] Jarrod: Today we are fortunate to have with us one of the central figures in the formulation and execution of foreign policy in the Obama administration. Ben Rhodes served as a speechwriter and then-Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications for President Barack Obama. He’s an author and a commentator in a variety of news outlets and serves as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Ben, welcome to the podcast, we have lots to discuss. I know Rich will have a lot of substantive questions on your contrasting worldviews, the JCPOA, and the recent conflict, but first you have a new book out.

[2:06] Ben Rhodes: I do.

[2:06] Jarrod: After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made. For me, the most interesting part right off the bat was where you talk about being surveilled by a private Israeli intelligence firm. Were you surprised that your opponents went to those lengths and has this gone too far?

[2:26] Ben: Yes, as I described in the book, I was surprised at how unsurprising it was when I learned about it. Look, our politics has just gotten uglier over the years and more personal, and traditional boundaries of respecting certain space or norms have fallen away. What was interesting to me about that experience which I relay in the book is like– I learned about this in the press. I wake up one day and someone sends me a link to an article in The Guardian that’s like, “Black Cube has been hired to surveil you and dig up dirt on you somehow.”

I got a call then from Ronan Farrow, who’s become something of a celebrity journalist because he had actually interacted with Black Cube because they had surveilled some of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers and Ronan obviously had broken that story. He had me go back through my email and he cued me up, “Hey, if you get any emails with these kinds of characteristics,” and led me to an email in which somebody had reached out to my wife saying they were a film producer for Shell Productions, which is a pretty ironic name.

They wanted to talk to her about the personal lives of people involved in negotiations with the country to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon and negotiations with a country that has been under embargo for decades. It didn’t say Iran and Cuba, that’s how it characterized it. What happens in people’s lives when those things are going on. It wasn’t that subtle, it wasn’t necessarily the best tradecraft.

Actually, the point that I’ve made in the book that was interesting when I reflected on this incident is, given how overt that email was and given how this thing got out, actually part of me thought that the whole point was actually not to find some information about me. It was actually for it to get out, right.  That there’s an intimidation factor that comes from– and I have no idea who paid for this. I don’t know what the point of origin of it was. There’s lots of different competing theories.

The simple fact is, I actually think that it was more about making people think twice about getting involved in these debates, and it was a demoralizing aspect to it. That to me was the discovery I had when I thought about it. That like, “Maybe, actually, that’s what this is about.” In the same way that there was a brute force to online debates and a trolling that takes place. This may have been a more sophisticated form of trolling in a way.

[5:16] Rich: I’m not a stranger to some of that. There’s obviously left-wing websites and oppo firms that have come after many of us in the past, and you can Google and see our profiles online. I’m sure you have the same on your end. I do wonder, you talk about the ugly rhetoric and the personalization of this. To what extent when you reflect back to 2015, the rhetoric that was used out of the White House and with allies of the White House in trying to sell the Iran deal.We had these phrases like “Israel firster, in the pocket of the Israel lobby, putting Israel’s interest over America’s.” I’ll never forget The Huffington Post with the 16 saboteurs and the democratic senators who were proposing sanctions legislation. You reflect them. That seemed to really personalize in a very ugly way the politics of the Iran deal fight. Do you agree with that?

[6:08] Ben: First of all, we never said that, Israel firsters out of the White House. One of the strange experiences that I had, Rich, is, I was assigned a lot more power than I had by some of our critics. That I was somehow completely masterminding and shaping everything that everybody said in this debate. No, when I look back on that, if you look at the huge volume of material produced by the White House in defense of the Iran deal, it was usually very specific.

We made a concerted effort. “We’re going to get nuclear experts. We’re going to get scientists. We’re going to have Ernie Moniz out in this thing. We’re going to try to make this air tight fact-based case for our argument.” I think the one argument that was more contested, because we never said “Israel firsters or in the pocket of”– You never heard that language emanating from the White House, nor were we encouraging people to do that. The argument that we made that touched a nerve with some people was that there was basically a choice between this kind of deal, Iran getting a nuclear weapon or another war. In a deal versus war framing that people found offensive because people said, “You’re saying we want to go to war.” I still stand by those arguments in the sense of, what we’re saying is there’s three ways to solve this problem. You either are going to have some diplomatic agreement that restricts and restrains and rolls back the Iranian nuclear program. You’re going to have an unconstrained Iran nuclear program, or you’re going to have to use military force to constrain the nuclear program.

I continue. I make that argument today. When I look back on that period, the stuff being thrown at us, the stuff being thrown at me personally, it’s not like I emerged from that not bloodied and bruised. There was pretty brutal rhetoric used against us at that time. Again, I think if you look at what actually came from the White House, it was usually totally fact-based argument for, “Hey, here’s why we think this is a good deal.” We never would have used language like “Israel firsters” or things like that. That never would’ve come from the White House.

[8:33] Rich: I agree with you that there was carefulness to some extent from the White House statements on the official side. You did have the White House press secretary with the infamous press conference basically calling people warmongers. You did have at times the president making references to lobbyists and who was he referencing? Probably AIPAC at the time during the fight. At the same time, it was known and you talk about it in your book, and the excerpts I’ve seen of you gathered with people, you gathered with allies, organizations, NIAC, others, and you gave them talking points, you gave them messaging points. They weren’t out there blindly using this language on their own. There was this so-called echo chamber that was created.

[9:14] Ben: Let me take different pieces of that. On the last piece, any White House meets with outside groups and says, “Here are our talking points. Here’s our arguments.” There was an effort to paint us nefarious. What any communications shop in the White House of any political party just does as a matter of course, and it was cast as a diabolical new tactic employed on the Iran deal. Jarrod, you worked in the White House. The ACA, what do you think happened in the healthcare debate? They met with outside groups and they said, “Here’s the case for the ACA, and here are the arguments that people are going to be making against the ACA, and here’s how we’d suggest that you counter those arguments.” Then, by the way, the groups go off and make their own cases. They don’t stick to the script that the White House provides them. Again, I think there was this effort to cast us as the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain when  it really the routinized nature of any White House. I think on the lobbying point, AIPAC put out a statement opposing the Iran nuclear deal right away and said that they were going to lobby against. We weren’t inventing a story that there were people lobbying against the Iran nuclear deal. They also indicated that they were going to spend I think $40 million and they’re going to advertise in states. That’s their choice. They’re more than welcome to do that. Anybody can lobby for any policy or against any policy they want. That’s American democracy. Pointing that out and just saying– we’re just naming that this is going to be a tough debate. I think that’s just the reality of what the situation was. We weren’t the ones that assigned at AIPAC or any other group. FDD, like what you just said, you’re more than welcome to lobby against or argue against or mount opposition to a deal. That just is what it is. I don’t know why– in some ways, the Iran debate, there was a lot of help to it. There was just like, “I’ve never been a part of a foreign policy initiative that was that thoroughly debated in some ways.” That’s just normal.I think on this war point, it’s a basic difference of view and the argument we’re making is like the one I just made, again, which I’ll continue to make as long as this is an issue. There are different ways of solving this, and frankly we don’t see a way– if you define the Maximus version of what should be accomplished in a nuclear deal to include basically– and I don’t want a caricature, but no enrichment or no ballistic missile program, a change in the Iranian foreign policy, all which are things that I wish would happen. I don’t think that those things are possible. I think that that leaves you with a much narrower set of choices for how you’re going to deal with the problem. If you’re saying that the only deal that is available is one that we concluded in the Obama White House, you may disagree. We concluded that’s unachievable. Then what is available to a president to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It’s either some diplomatic agreement that Iran can be brought into, it’s no diplomatic agreement, in which case you have an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program which has again been the case since the JCPOA was left by the Trump administration, or you’re in another war. You’re taking military action to roll back that program. I think that was a legitimate argument to make.

[13:05] Rich: Obviously, president Obama famously would always say the military option was on the table and he wasn’t a warmonger by your estimation. Both sides have a military option on the table. You choose the JCPOA, we choose a different combination of pressure tactics that are non-military. Just to clarify-

[13:24] Ben: They haven’t worked.

[13:26] Rich: Actually, they did work and probably would have worked had the president re-elected but when you go down a $4 billion left in an accessible-

[13:32] Ben: That’s quite a counter factor.

[13:35] Rich: Well, it’s true. We’ll get there. But just to finish this one point. To clarify, for those who were allies of the White House that went out there and used terms “Israel firster”, in the pocket the Israel lobby, all that. You condemn that you’re not for that, you understand that that contributes to anti-Semitic tropes and that kind of language was quite triggering for a lot of members of Congress and for leaders of the Jewish community.

[14:00] Ben: Israel firster? Look, absolutely, I think it is entirely the case as we’re experiencing right now that you have to be mindful of anti-Semitic tropes. You have to be mindful of the history of certain arguments that have been made to tar all Jews. Absolutely. Suggesting, as Donald Trump did repeatedly, that Jews loyalty are somehow first to Israel and not to America. That’s out of bounds. Again, let’s be clear. This comes from the right and the left. It came from the president of the United States, the last president, on more than one occasion suggesting that somehow Jews had a principal loyalty to Israel over the United States. Absolutely. The language is outside of bounds.What I don’t think is fair is to weaponize that charge when people just have a policy disagreement with Bibi Netanyahu, or when people– Again, on the AIPAC point, I’ve said this repeatedly, there are a lot of lobbying groups that represent all kinds of interests that I don’t agree with. Pointing out that that lobbying exists, who are we kidding? Of course, it does. It’s part of democracy. To me, the over definition of what goes into the category of what should be rightfully condemned is ultimately counterproductive. We have to figure out a way where we can have debates, there can be differences between American administrations and Israeli administrations, there can be differences, seemingly increasingly between some AIPAC priorities and some positions in Democratic party. Those debates are part of democracy, we can have them.

Absolutely, people need to be sensitive in the language that they use, and the ways they frame their arguments and making very clear that a policy disagreement with an Israeli prime minister and Israeli government is not with all of Israel itself, never mind all the Jewish people, which would be insane, but I think that you have to be able to separate those things out, but it’s a challenge. It’s absolutely a challenge.

[16:27] Jarrod: Ben, I would tell you that one of the impetuses behind this podcast, because Rich and I agree on almost nothing foreign policy-wise, is that we want to be able to have this conversation like we’re having right now in a fact-based, civil, we were both as patriots heartbroken by what we saw in January, even if we have uncomfortable conversations. Last week, we had a really interesting conversation with the delegate from the US Virgin Islands about Black-Jewish relations, and I want to come back to that, but my question to you-

[16:53] Rich: And about statehood for the Virgin Islands.

[16:55] Jarrod: And about statehood for the Virgin Islands.

[16:56] Rich: Which was uncomfortable for many as well.

[16:58] Jarrod: Yes. I would want to just come back, there were people who talked about people who are in the Obama administration, who were for the Iran deal, who may have been Jewish or partly Jewish, written in Foreign Policy magazine and books that somehow your Jewishness was on trial, that you were some kind of a traitor for being for this deal. How does that make you feel, and should that even be part of the conversation?

[17:29] Ben: In a way, it’s so funny, Jarrod, is that that’s a mirror image of the conversation we’re just having. If the core– if one of them– anti-Semitism is such a cancer, and is at the heart of the opposite of everything I believe in, because as an American, what I believe in is everybody has a place here. Everybody can have their own identities and be an American, a full American. The assumption, the presumption that because you are Jewish, you have a higher loyalty to Israel is playing right into an anti-Semitic trope. The same way suggesting that someone who is not sufficiently in line with the policies of the Jewish state, must not really be Jewish or must be a self-hating Jewish, must have some issues with their parents or something like– That’s the mirror image of the charge because it’s accepting the premise of the anti-Semitic trope. To me, I’ve tried to acknowledge the complexity of these issues in that I’m not a religious Jew. I was not raised in the religion of Judaism. My mother was Jewish. She was a New York Jewish mother. That’s a very, very strong cultural-historical attachment I have to Jewish identity. I was raised– if you’d asked me when I was a kid what my identities were, I actually would have said, “I’m an American, I’m a New Yorker and I come from a Jewish background.” That was my truth. That’s how I thought of my own identity. It was deeply informed by the historical experience of the Jewish people, was deeply informed by obviously the Holocaust, was deeply informed by the immigrant experience in the United States because my family had come from Europe over a course of many years and followed that classic Brooklyn Lower East Side city college pathway. Jarrod, you and I talked about this. That was who I was. When I occasionally get dragged into this, I just think that I didn’t want–Just as I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that your identity, whatever your Jewish identity ism makes you self-hating if you have issues with certain policies of the Israeli government or something. I also think people should be able to determine their own identity and what’s important to them, and where they come from, and who they are. One of the great things about the American Jewish community is just how sprawling it is and how different things mean–Some people they’re different aspects of the way in which obviously that religious practiced, or different aspects in the way in which people think of themselves as being shaped by being Jewish. I know I’m one of those people. This isn’t just a story into the book, but what I was really wrestling with was the rise of Ethno-nationalism around the world and how that can bleed into authoritarianism, and how dangerous that is ultimately to the Jewish people because we’ve seen the dark places that that can lead. I felt deeply informed by my family background and just how I set out to write that book and how I think about things like blood and soil nationalism that you see emanating from lots of different parts of the world today. I’m glad you guys have this space. Even if Rich and I don’t agree I’m sure about the JCPOA matter of things. I’d just love for us to get back to a place where we are accepting of each other’s legitimate and authentic identities without casting it in these other terms.

[21:36] Rich: It’s funny you say that. I think about that every day and a lot of it, in my context, in my career on Capitol Hill before the administration, before state government, was in a real bipartisan manner. I worked for a moderate Republican out of the north shore of Illinois like that Northeast Rockefeller Republican mold and everything we did was bipartisan, is always up for reelection. The D trip targeting was in the house, DSCC target, and the Senate, and Iran-Israel type issues were a hundred and nothing in the Senate. We did the Central Bank of Iran sanctions, 2011, a hundred to nothing, with Bernie Sanders to even supporting it. It felt like there were times when you would say, “Oh, the partisan rancor’s just out of control. Nobody can agree with it,” but we could always come together in this foreign policy nexus and for a lot of people, including me, there is this feeling that you wrecked it. That that fight and the way it was conducted over the Iran deal, wrecked the bipartisan nature of a critical issue and we may never recover. You might find it to be an accomplishment because your worldview is different, then that was an accomplished. For a lot of people with my worldview, it’s like, “Man, that was really nothing. There is nothing we can agree on anymore. We used to be able to just completely agree on this and we can’t agree on this anymore,” and that’s a disappointment.

[23:01] Ben: I’m going to answer this in a longer way, Rich, because I really want to make this point where I’m going to end up, is it that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu wrecked it, but I’m going to start at the beginning. When I moved to D.C. in 2002, 2003, I was an AIPAC donor. I had the AIPAC card that you got. Support for Israel was sacrosanct in my household. There were heroes in my household, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin and the whole founding generation of Israel and I continue to be like a– I wrote speeches for President Obama that I hope people can read. The speech he gave in Jerusalem, the speech he gave eulogizing Shimon Peres, where I felt the unique and historically essential story of Zionism and the achievement of it, is something I still feel very deeply. It’s funny. It’s not like partisanship in the sense that, I never intended to become this big partisan. I was writing speeches for Barack Obama in 2008 about red states and blue states. It’s come together. I think the reality here is that as a Democrat and as a progressive Democrat, over the course of the last 12 years, I felt the Israeli government through its policies and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, moving away from what I believed in. I’ve found it to be the people who blame us for the current state of the relationship between the Democratic Party and the Israeli government are basically saying to us that we have to adjust our views on the Palestinian issue, or on the Iran nuclear issue to be aligned with Bibi Netanyahu’s particular views, or else we’re wrecking the relationship. I don’t think that’s fair because policies– it would have been mainstream like around Oslo in the ’90s up to Camp David about a two-state solution and what that solution would look like.

Now, if you take those positions you’re seen as somehow anti-Israel. It’s the same position. I have the same position today on the Israeli Palestinian issue as I did when I was an AIPAC card-carrying donor in 2004. What’s changed is Israeli politics. On the Iran issue, we didn’t break norms by the way in which we made the case for the diplomatic agreement that we had always said that we were trying to reach through the Obama administration. It was Prime Minister Netanyahu, who at the invitation of a Republican speaker of the house without even telling us. We didn’t learn from the Israeli government. We learned from a press release from John Boehner that the prime minister of Israel was going to come and make a speech to the US Congress against a signature foreign policy issue. That’s not the Democratic Party picking a fight with the Israeli prime minister. It’s the opposite here. We didn’t do everything perfect. I’m sure you find fault with what we did. You guys obviously have mounted a lot of arguments against what we’ve done on our policies, but on this one, I really don’t believe anybody in the Democratic Party got up one day and was like, “You know what we really want to do? We want to start having really intense disagreements with the Israeli government.That was not our intention. It was just the reality of an Israeli prime minister who was already to the right and went further and further to the right over the last 12 years. By the way, don’t take my word for it. Listen to him. A guy who made a speech in 2009 about the need for a two-state solution now says today that there’ll be no two-state solution on his watch. I mean that’s not an evolution in the Democratic party. That’s an evolution in the Likud party.

[27:18] Rich: Jarrod, I want to get in here before we dive deeper into JCPOA, but my one observation and response to that is, the 1990s had a very clear parallel of right and left politics for Americans and Israelis. The second Intifada changed Israeli politics way beyond Prime Minister Netanyahu. There’s a reason why they keep reelecting him. If you look at the polling-

[27:43] Jarrod: Or not.

[27:44] Rich: Well, or not. If you look at the polling, though, on these issues, we have reached the point of departure where the American left still is living in the 1990s and the Israeli left doesn’t really exist in that nature. They do on domestic issues. They just don’t on security issues.

[28:02] Ben: It’s a really good point, Rich. I’d say two things to build on it. Rahm Emanuel– I remember making this point after Bibi was elected. One of the great-

[28:13] Rich: My former mayor.

[28:13] Ben: Yes. One of the great what ifs of history is if Tzipi Livni can form a coalition. Yes, there usually a parallel left, right in both countries like there’s usually been one with us and the British. He’s like, “You don’t make progress on this issue if you’ve got a left-wing government in the US and a right-wing government in Israel.” That’s been the reality. I guess what I say, contrary to probably what the Jewish Insider audience might think, I hate having these fights. It hurts. It’s really painful and I’m sure people might say things like they don’t like the fights either. I’d rather this didn’t exist, but what I keep coming back to is at the end of the day even if you don’t like criticism of the Israeli government, you certainly don’t like criticism of the Israeli government during a Gaza war. You’ve got to answer the question for me. There are 7 million Palestinians. What is going to happen to them? Are they going to have a state? Are they going to have equal rights in one state? Are they going to leave? Are they going to have lesser rights? What is the answer? Because I think that if your point is true, if Israelis have just moved to the right, prioritize security, don’t trust peace, we pulled out a Gaza we got rockets. Let’s say that all those things are true. You still have to answer this question of what happens to the Palestinians? They live there. There’s 7 million of them between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. A bunch of them in Israel, a bunch of them in West Bank and Gaza. I think if the Israeli government could produce better answers, there’d certainly be less criticism. It’s not enough to just move to the right. You still need to answer that question.

[30:28] Jarrod: Ben, how do you define Zionism in 2021?

[30:32] Ben: I think it’s always been that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in their historic homeland. That’s the simplest version. I learned a lot. I’ll tell you a mistake I made. Believe it or not, I can admit error. I remember in the Cairo speech which I helped President Obama write, we made reference to Israel’s history being rooted in a tragic past, and we made particular reference to the Holocaust. Our intention in doing that, by the way, was to call out Holocaust denial in the Muslim world and to speak to the fact that, if you’d had the Holocaust in your recent memory as a people, it’s totally legitimate to be particularly concerned about security. That was our basic argument. I got a bunch of pushback. “Well, you suggested that Israel only exist because of the Holocaust.” That was a totally fair and accurate criticism to discount the fact that this is the historical mind of the Jewish people. By the way, the journey back to Israel didn’t just commence with the Holocaust itself, right. I understand that. What’s also complicated for me, and I admit, I have a totally imperfect understanding of this. It’s probably an understanding that’s not distinct and dissimilar from some other pretty secular American Jews, is in my household, even though Zionism is obviously about a Jewish homeland and the Jewish state, there was a secular component to it as well. In the sense that, Israel was founded and governed on these socialist principles. Again, like the liberal New York Jewish tradition where people looked into the kibbutz. Bernie Sanders could plug into that experience. I remember also in the Obama years, there was a growing emphasis which led into the nationality laws in Israel, on affirming Israel’s identity as a Jewish state not rooted just in that Zionist tradition, but rooted in ways that as it got into those nationality laws start to affect who can be here, what rights are for people who aren’t Jewish, and that’s where it starts to be much more complicated to me. In the sense of, well, what are the rights for people who live in Israel who are Palestinian, who are Arabs, who are not Jews. That’s another area where I think there’s going to have to be a lot of discussion debate about that because I think that if you look at the Jewish tradition and Jewish ethics and how much that has contributed to political thinking around equality, there’s an inconsistency in saying that we’re not going to give equal rights to all people who live here.

[33:55] Rich: All right. Changing gears, as Jarrod would say-

[33:58] Jarrod: As I would say.

[33:59] Rich: As he would say. JCPOA, I do want to get into this a little more. We’ll walk out a little bit for some people but I think it’ll be very helpful to dissect your worldview and also perhaps clear up myths that are out there. To start, I have a lightning round. Not the fun lightning round that’ll come later, but-

[34:22] Ben: We have a fun lightning around at the end.

[34:24] Rich: A serious lightning round. Which is really just your top line worldviews on this region, on this issue. I think there are a lot of things that people would assume about you and I don’t want them to assume. Do you agree that Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and that’s a very bad thing?

[34:43] Ben: Yes.

[34:46] Rich: Do you believe that Hamas is a-

[34:48] Ben: Although they are getting some stiff competition these days, but yes.

[34:53] Rich: Do you believe that Hamas and Hezbollah are both terrorist organizations, they should be named terrorist organizations, they should be on the terror list, they do bad things?

[35:03] Ben: Yes, absolutely.

[35:04] Rich: Do you believe in a concept of good and evil in the world?

[35:09] Ben: Yes. In the world and inside of individual human beings, yes.

[35:12] Rich: In your view, the Islamic Republic of Iran, does it fall into the evil camp?

[35:19] Ben: I don’t like calling any country evil because I think the countries are made up of individuals. There are evil people in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There are good people who live in that country. Yes, this is core to my worldview. I would not point at any one country in the world and say, “That country is evil.”

[35:43] Rich: Well, obviously, not Iranians, right? Iranians, a lot of them are very pro-Western and hate their government, but the regime that is the Islamic Republic overall.

[35:53] Ben: Rich, this is actually– and here I think we’ll have a difference. I had this experience negotiating with Cuba. I’m much more experienced in the negotiations of Cuba than Iran. We look at that, and we say, “This is an autocratic government. It’s terrible.” Absolutely, it’s an autocratic government. No government is monolithic. Government, there are different people inside of these regimes. There are technocrats in the Islamic Republic of Iran who I don’t think are evil people. There are some evil people who are hateful, and Holocaust deniers, and killers, and the rest of it as well. No, I don’t. I wouldn’t look at any one government or nation and say, “It’s a monolith. All those people are the same. All those people are evil.” I think that the US makes a mistake sometimes in its foreign policy. We deny ourselves opportunities to make diplomatic progress when we look at whole governments which are incredibly complicated organisms filled with very different people, and say, “That whole government is evil.” I don’t think any government is a monolith. I don’t.

[37:13] Jarrod: We can even go back to look at the North Vietnamese regime and say, “They were the bad guys. They were evil,” but the reality was actually much more complicated about what the North Vietnamese regime wanted vis-à-vis the south. You could look time after time in American history.

[37:29] Rich: Listen, most hawkish of people, the people who are for regime change– I have colleagues I know. Reuel Marc Gerecht, big scholar, Ray Takeyh over at CFR, they would all argue there are these pockets of different factions in the regime, it’s not monolithic, as you say, absolutely. But, the core thesis of the regime still includes things like wiping Israel off the map, delivering a second Holocaust effectively, which is also the same mandate thesis of Hezbollah and Hamas which receive funding and support from Iran as well. From that basis, would we agree that those goals, aspirations, that they have are evil?

[38:08] Ben: Those goals are evil. The goal of wiping Israel off the map are evil.

[38:12] Rich: [laughs] Yes.

[38:13] Ben: That’s an easy one. Again, I just think to Jarrod’s point, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire”, but Mikhail Gorbachev was not evil. Mikhail Gorbachev probably saved more lives than maybe any human being as ever lived by allowing the Cold War to end peacefully. I don’t know, man. I respect the impulse towards total moral clarity here. There are some things that cross boundaries that have to be called out and named as evil, as bad, as irredeemable. I think when you start applying that label to whole governments, even ones that do odious things that have odious origins–I don’t think that ends well. I also think it denies you opportunities, and I think it dehumanizes people. Maybe I’m a lefty, but I don’t like to look at the world like that.

[39:21] Jarrod: Ben, can I ask– it’s a little bit of a tangent here, but Rich and I have been talking a lot of late about the far left making common cause with Hamas, maybe with the Iranian regime. I guess the thing that struck me the most during the most recent conflict is how, not far left, but just the left really totally glossed over a lot of the failings of the Hamas regime in Gaza like how awful they are to women, how awful they are to the LGBT community, how awful they are about basic services for their people, and they were lobbing hundreds of rockets into mainland Israel indiscriminately, and they just glossed over all that. What is the Democratic Party and the left in general to do? Because are they being duped or is there something else going on here that we can’t yet explain?

[40:22] Rich: Well, the contrast I would add to Israel, which has really opened up on LGBTQ, on women, there are no gay people in Iran as we’re told, so we know what their record is there.

[40:35] Ben: There’s a lot to say about that. The first thing I’d say is that I wouldn’t want to ever be in a point where the positions of my– I’ll say this is American. It’s been critical of aspects of American foreign policy. I wouldn’t want to say that my actions should not be scrutinized because of the nature of my adversaries. I think that is the slippery slope in this country, I think, that led to some of the excesses of the war on terror, but that’s a whole other thing. That’s another debate. I don’t know. I think obviously the approach I take from the progressive standpoint would be this, “It’s that obviously Hamas is a bad actor.”

Jarrod, one of the things I’m proudest of is the Iron Dome system, which we went above and beyond to support precisely because we wanted to help protect Israeli citizens from Hamas. There are enormous efforts being pursued by the US government to try to be a part of an effort to interdict support from Iran or anybody else that’s trying to go into Hamas in terms of the development of these rockets.

I think there’s two issues that I’d highlight that may go beyond where you guys are on this in terms of criticisms. The first is that, has the current policy worked? We’ve basically had a version of a blockade on Gaza since the 2006, 2007 period when Hamas comes to power and the people there are clearly hurting. They don’t have access to water and electricity for most of the day. They don’t have freedom of movement. There’s a collective suffering in Gaza that obviously Hamas is acutely responsible for, but also this policy that was supposed to be designed to somehow hurt Hamas, it seems to have not hurt.

Hamas is still there. They’re still able to get these rockets, and all these Palestinians are suffering who are not in Hamas. They’re not all in Hamas. If you look at that you’d think–

[43:08] Rich: The persecution of LGBTQ and women doesn’t happen because of the blockade, it has nothing to do with Israel. That’s the Hamas– [crosstalk] My point is why isn’t that an attention grabber for the progressive community? Why does progressive values end at the water’s edge in the cases of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah?

[43:33] Ben: I think because– I’m just trying to explain to you the mindset here, I’m not actually debating this. I’m just trying to clear the mindset. Obviously condemn the persecution of LGBTQ rights, obviously condemn the violent nihilism, terrorism, arson of Hamas, but I think when there’s this constant effort to ask people to focus on that, it sounds like you’re trying to avoid looking at why are these kids getting killed in these periodic Gaza wars. Why are the people there suffering? Is that helping? 60-plus Palestinian kids getting killed is not helping LGBT rights in Gaza. It just feels like–

[44:26] Jarrod: There’s no end state. I think we’re getting you.

[44:30] Ben: Yes. The utilitarian argument I would make here is that even from an Israeli security and anti-Hamas perspective, this approach, which I lived for eight years and which– We supported Israel’s right to defend itself and took a lot of flack from the left at the time. Although not nearly as much as now. I’ve been a part of this approach, it doesn’t seem to solve this problem, and the problem of Hamas and its rockets and its being entrenched in Gaza–the blockade is clearly hurting the people there, but it doesn’t seem to be dislodging Hamas. Isn’t there a better way of doing this? I also think though that the broader issue is that the lack of– It’s the question that came back to earlier. The reason that you see more voices on this, on the progressive side, some of it is what I talked about earlier, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Some of it is the new generation of progressive activism in this country is very focused on structural inequality generally. They look at the progression of events in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza and it fits into a broader worldview of, “Well, that’s a structural inequity. What rights do Palestinians have? What opportunities do they have?”  What’s interesting about it is it’s not like the old, we’re singling Israel out. That’s actually like, they’re making versions of that criticism in a lot of places now. You’re right to flag for them, “Hey, what about these guys?” It’s not like Hamas is for equality. Absolutely. You should point that out. I think what progressives say is, “Yes, but that doesn’t justify an approach that seems to both not be working and dislodging Hamas. It seems to be perpetuating and exacerbating structural inequality, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank, but even in places like Haifa, and certainly in Jerusalem.” I think it’s important though, that we have conversations like this, because better to air all these different perspectives rather than just have conversations with our own team on these things.

[46:45] Jarrod: I don’t want to deny, Rich, his JCPOA question–

[46:48] Ben: Oh, yes. Go for it, Rich.

[46:49] Jarrod: -because he’s been talking about this for–

[46:52] Rich: I’ve waited my whole life for this [unintelligible 00:46:53].

[46:54] Ben: You know what I’m going to say but if you are in the lightning round.

[46:57] Rich: I do. The senior administration official, I know what he says a lot.

[47:02] Jarrod: The senior Senate aid, I feel like you guys have been a lot in the same news story over the years.

[47:07] Ben: Honestly, I thought the question about the Islamic Republic, that is a difference, but I want you to know it doesn’t mean that I don’t see the horrific excesses of the Islamic Republic. I just happen to think that the most important part is to stop them from getting nuclear weapon. I happen to think that the JCPOA was the best way to do that.

[47:29] Rich: That is a great segue to my question. Great segue. It stems from the lightning round question. It stems from what you just said as well. When you tried to sell the JCPOA to Congress, everyone from President Obama and down, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of State, Undersecretary, one of the things that was repeated over and over again, because it was one of the criticisms, was no matter what, we will be able to impose terrorism sanctions on Iran going forward. I have a copy of the White House explainer on it. It goes very detailed, very specific into the exact executive order, 13224, that we can use. Lifted sanctions, call them all nuclear sanctions. I won’t debate that for the moment, but obviously overtime during the Trump administration, a lot of the Executive Order 13224 sanctions were applied based on credible evidence, Treasury Department, State Department, Justice Department, all of that. You know how sanctions work. They’ve been imposed on the Islamic Republic. This is now a point of tension because Secretary Blinken testified in January during his confirmation hearing, saying, we support terrorism sanctions, we’re going to leave them. They’re not inconsistent with JCPOA, which sounds very much like what we were told back in 2015. Now you have Rob Malley, the Special Envoy for Iran, who has been trotting out there and now says, “Well, actually some of those sanctions are inconsistent with the JCPOA.” Sounds like he’s saying that if sanctions were ever lifted for a bank, for a company, for a person under the JCPOA, to begin with, blanket immunity for all of them to finance terrorism, which to me is totally not what we were told. Where do you come down on this, the issue of terrorism sanctions on Iran? Were we misled in 2015 when you all told us that we could impose those? Are we not allowed to impose terrorism sanctions when there’s evidence of it?

[49:25] Ben: First of all, we’ve imposed additional terrorism related sanctions than I think in 2016. We continue to pursue designation vendor existing executive orders even after the implementation of the JCPOA. As you know, Rich, there’s a whole sanctions architecture on Iran that continued even after the implementation of the JCPOA. It’s not like American businesses were able to pour into Iran here, as well as even European businesses and others had to be very careful, even during that period of implementation, to not run afoul of sustained US sanctions. I think what Rob is speaking to, and look, this is one area where I think there was I think the perception, and you heard this in some of the reports that came out of the Trump administration, and even from folks at FTD. Towards the end of the Trump administration there was a flood of these that felt like they were designed to prevent or make harder the return to the JCPOA itself. The pace of sanctions in the last few months of the Trump administration felt like it was designed to be blunt sabotage an effort to get back in the JCPOA, and that the very hard work that I’m sure is happening in these negotiations is not like Rob or anybody else saying, let’s get rid of all these sanctions entirely, it’s just trying to sort out what do we think is a nuclear-related sanction and what do we think needs to stay in place. You and I, and I’m sure you and Rob would have– I’m not there. It’s hard for me to look at all these designations and sort one from the other. I think the simple explanation I give is that you and I and Rob, you probably have different definitions for that, but that doesn’t mean, no, by no means. I think that if the Biden team, let’s say they’re successful, let’s say they get back in the JCPOA. I’m sure they would continue to pursue additional terrorism-related designations going forward. As they should. I just think that there’s a belief that is not unique to Rob Malley. I don’t want to speak for Rob. There’s a belief that’s not unique to me that there was a particularly broad use of designations, particularly towards the end of the Trump years, that felt like an effort to undermine any return to the JCPOA not just pure terrorism the way he did policy.

[52:08] Rich: Let me push back on that a couple of ways. One, if you have evidence of financing terrorism, you have to produce that as you know. The intelligence community has to validate it, it has to get declassified; it becomes a sanctions package. Career civil servants at State and Treasury have to validate. DOJ has to validate that it can withstand legal challenge, and that means that if you’re using the executive order for financing terrorism, exact evidence of terrorism finance, not nuclear, right?

If you’re talking about a period of time when you would be trying to stop a Biden administration coming back in, it would have to be a period of time where you expected a Biden administration to be in office, which would have to be, at least mid to late 2020. If you believe things are going bad and you have given up on hope of reelection. If not, after the November election itself and you’re in transition. I’ll give you a specific example. The Central Bank of Iran is designated in late 2019. There’s no pandemic, September 20, 2019, full evidence of terrorism finance, using the executive order for terrorism that Barack Obama said we could use and that is now reportedly on the table to be lifted. There’s no way that Donald Trump or anybody worked for the administration believed that he wouldn’t win reelection in September of 2019. It clearly was not used to stop going back in the JCPOA. My question is, when clearly they go ahead and lift those sanctions and claim whatever they’re going to claim, do we have the right to reimpose those sanctions on a terrorism basis if the Central Bank of Iran continues to finance terrorism?

[53:49] Ben: I want to answer a couple of things here. First, again, not having all the evidentiary basis in front of me, I think the reality is that there was a much greater pace of designations towards the end of the Trump administration that again would suggest that something changed. When there’s a directive given in the US government to do something, people do it. Yes, they’re experts, and yes, they have to form a basis, but certainly I think the appearance was that there was an effort to pile on as many sanctions. “Look, I’m assigning a motive here in ways that we’re going to make it harder to get back in JCPOA.” On the central bank, that was done after the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA. You guys know it’s core to the capacity of the United States fulfilling its commitments under the JCPOA to facilitate Iran’s ability to access some of their own revenues. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. We wrote them a check for X billion dollars. No, that is central to the formula JCPOA. It doesn’t work without that. I don’t think anybody should be surprised that they’re looking at this question of the Central Bank, because it gets to whether the United States and the P5+1 can basically just live up to our own obligations under the JCPOA.

[55:21] Rich: Wait, so this is a huge, huge, huge issue because you sold the Iran deal on this basis. If you’re saying that we have the right to impose terrorism sanctions but not on any bank that makes Iran money. Those banks are immune from terrorism sanctions because they make Iran money but they can be used to finance terrorism. That means the deal is providing a blanket immunity on terrorism finance. We are not allowed to impose terrorism sanctions.

[55:49] Ben: I don’t think so. Rich, you and I have a different view of this. I don’t think that’s the case, because if you look at the web of sanctions that continue to exist for Iranians, they were not even when we were implementing the deal, precisely because there are so many secondary sanctions. There are so many punishments that can meted out, not just on the Iranians but on people who do business with sanctioned entities and individuals in Iran, precisely because of that, they were not getting some flood of investment from around the world, even when we were in the deal.

[56:21] Rich: That’s a market risk issue. That’s not the technical, “Can we impose sanctions?” We were told we can impose sanctions.

[56:26] Ben: We can. We actually can. I would never rule anything out. By the way, we also built in the whole snapback so that all the sanctions can snap back. Not me, I leave it to the Biden administration. I’m sure they would say– Again, I don’t speak for them. I don’t really know. I’m not talking to Rob.

[56:48] Jarrod: He’s got a book to sell.

[56:49] Ben: Yes, exactly. They probably think I’m a pain in the ass too, at this point.

[56:54] Rich: Tell Rob come on. He’s welcome on. We can talk about it on the show.

[56:57] Ben: I think the whole point here, and Rich, you understand this as a sanctions expert, is there is such an intricate web of sanctions that there is a capacity to provide them the relief that was agreed to under the JCPOA while still going after individuals and entities and having a broader chilling effect so that it’s not just open for business here in Iran. It just says I think if they get back in the JCPOA they will say we reserve the right unilaterally to do whatever we think is necessary. They’re not going to rule out sanctioning any entity in Iran in a post JCPOA 2.0 world.

[57:36] Rich: I think that’s exactly what Rob and I were saying, and what you are saying, that you will rule out sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran for terrorism because it would deny them revenue.

[57:43] Ben: I would not say that we’d rule that out. What I’m saying is that if we’re going to get back into the deal, we have to return to the terms of the deal that we walked away from. It wasn’t the Iranians who walked away from deal; it was Trump who walked away from the deal in 2018. We have to return–

[57:58] Rich: An interesting modification. The idea would be you have to lift those sanctions to get back to day one of implementation but then you still believe we could reimpose sanctions for terrorism. If that conduct continued, you could reimpose those sanctions even on the Central Bank of Iran.

[58:14] Ben: No American policymaker should or would I think rule out any particular sanction. I do think though that there’s these two issues that you’ve identified that we just have a difference on, which is; one, was this flurry of sanctions towards the end of the Trump administration excessive and intended to make it more difficult to return to the JCPOA? I think so, you probably don’t. Two, how can you have pulled out of an agreement that you negotiated, the United States government, and then negotiate the re-entry to that deal not starting from the baseline of where that deal stood in 2018 when the United States pulled out. Look, there are going to be additional sanctions I’m sure that were put in place post JCPOA withdrawal that stay in place too. The very tough job that Rob has to figure out is what is necessary and fair to get back into this deal and what is necessary and fair in terms of obviously we’re preserving our capacity to sanction on non-nuclear related issues. I would also say that if you are the US president and you’re assessing what is more important to me. This again I think, Rich, is where you and I have a difference. What is most important to me probably if I’m the US president, certainly Barack Obama, I can only speak for him, is that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons and that we have verification of that, that we are rolling back their program to JCPOA levels from where they are now or where they were in 2015. That policy objective is more important than one particular terrorism-related designation that we’re going to make because we have so many terrorism related designations that we are going to be able to continue to use that tool and continue to deny resources to the Iranians, never in totality but you have to be able to say–Saying that we were going to deny ourselves the capacity to have a nuclear deal because we just want to sanction these people is a view. It’s a maximum pressure view. My criticism of that is I don’t see any evidence that that affects Iranian behavior.

[1:00:37] Rich: That’s not really what it is, right? This is based on conduct.

[1:00:40] Ben: Rich, no this is really important. This is the core difference. Sanctions are not an end in themselves. I hear sanctions-

[1:00:46] Rich: Correct, I agree with you. We agree on that.

[1:00:47] Ben: -described as an achievement. No. The end is using sanctions. We could sanction anybody. We’ve sanctioned Cuba to the end of the world and it’s achieved nothing.

[1:00:59] Rich: I agree with you. I don’t agree with you on Cuba but I agree with you on the point that sanctions are not an end in of itself. However, sanctions on a bank do stop finance of terrorism, and the budgets obviously of Hamas and Hezbollah did go down during the sanctions period. They will go back up when you relieve the sanctions. That’s just how sanctions work. We could talk about this for a while. I do want to ask just a couple of questions.

[1:01:22] Jarrod: Then we’ll get to the lightning round, okay, Rich?

[1:01:24] Rich: It’s coming. It’s coming, it’s coming. I know. I have so many questions. I’ll narrow this down.

[1:01:30] Jarrod: I think you and Ben should get a podcast.

[1:01:33] Rich: It could be fun.

[1:01:34] Jarrod: Right. Okay.

[1:01:34] Rich: Here’s my question, would you support nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia for Saudi Arabia to have a nuclear program in which they enrich uranium on their own soil?

[1:01:46] Ben: No.

[1:01:48] Rich: Would you support amending the 123 Agreement with the UAE to allow the Emirates to enrich uranium on their own soil?

[1:01:55] Ben: No. Look I–

[1:01:58] Rich: The obvious question I’m coming to, why on earth would you accept an Iranian enrichment program if your answer to the first two were no?

[1:02:06] Ben: We’re not the one’s building– We’re not providing them with the inputs for their nuclear program, Rich. I would love for there to be no enrichment capacity whatsoever inside of Iran. We’re dealing with reality. Policymakers have to deal with the world as it is to use the title of my first book. Yes, I’d prefer there be no enrichment whatsoever but it’s not like the United States is through some agreement providing that enrichment capacity into Iran. What we’re trying to do is limit that enrichment capacity, put it under exceptional verification and monitoring measures to make sure that they’re meeting their obligations. The 123 Agreement is a very different beast than the JCPOA. The JCPOA is not a 123 Agreement.

[1:02:57] Rich: If we wanted to stand for something as a common non-proliferation policy as a gold standard of no enrichment then why wouldn’t we continue to demand Iran’s halt to enrichment?

[1:03:11] Ben: Because I would rather have the restrictions of the JCPOA than have a policy that is never going to achieve its objective. That’s a recipe for Iran continuing to develop its enrichment capacity until it has a nuclear weapon.

[1:03:23] Rich: In 2031 under the sunsets, of course, they’re allowed to enrich as much as they want up to weapons grade.

[1:03:29] Ben: As we’ve said a million and a half times, all the same options are available to the United States at any point in the duration of the JCPOA to determine that we want to reimpose sanctions on the central bank if we so choose. Military options are all available. You hear this from Israeli military planners. This is what drives me insane, Rich. If the argument is that there are circumstances that could take place in 10 or 15 years from the original negotiation of the JCPOA, why would you then pull out of the deal so those circumstances happen today? Which is what’s happened since we pulled out of the deal. Even Israeli military planners tell you like, “I’m worried about those sunset provisions but I’d rather pocket the 10 years and worry about it in 10 years.”

[1:04:20] Rich: JCPOA which didn’t know there was a nuclear archive, which didn’t know there were nuclear sites, which didn’t know there’s nuclear material, which by the way there is still an NPT investigation going on today which you didn’t know about in 2015.

[1:04:32] Ben: We did. Most of those files were rooted in years and years before. They weren’t about present activity. You’re talking about like past activity.

[1:04:41] Rich: No. You knew in 2015 that Iran was concealing undeclared nuclear material in sites that we’re just learning about thanks to that material?

[1:04:50] Ben: I’m not going to talk about exactly what I knew in 2015, you know that. There’s no way I’m going to talk about that.

[1:04:54] Rich: I’m pretty sure you didn’t know.

[1:04:57] Ben: I’m not going to say I knew everything that Prime Minister Netanyahu was going to publicize but let’s just say that the United States government did a lot of homework about the Iranian nuclear program.

[1:05:09] Rich: Let me just say that thanks to Israeli intelligence somehow doing, which will be a great Netflix movie, going and finding that archive, we have an active NPT investigation today that didn’t exist in 2015.

[1:05:20] Ben: Which is great. Again, the JCPOA didn’t foreclose any of that. That’s the thing. What I don’t understand about these arguments is like the JCPOA didn’t foreclose all these other policy options and investigatory options and the rest of it, it just said we’d rather live in a world in which Iran has these limits on enrichment capacity, limits on it centrifuges, this soup to nuts inspections regime, and all that other stuff is still available. I’ve never understood this.

[1:05:53] Rich: If all those things were true I would sign up in a heartbeat. Jarrod, lighting round.

[1:05:57] Jarrod: Okay. Ben, we like to leave with a little bit of a lighthearted round here, where we ask a couple of questions to learn a little bit more about folks. The first question I have is, do you have a favorite Yiddish word? Growing up in Manhattan I’m assuming you do. We’ve had you and you wouldn’t be the first person to use profanity on this podcast, you should feel free to do it. Maybe not in direct relation to my co-host.

[1:06:26] Ben: I like the sound of the language. Even though it’s just lost the meaning, but I just love the word shvitzing. I still say that about sweating because it’s a better word than sweating is shvitzing.

[1:06:41] Jarrod: Or to go to the shvitz.

[1:06:42] Ben: Yes, exactly. It’s just a great word.

[1:06:45] Rich: Or I have a shvitz in my house. What is your favorite Jewish food?

[1:06:50] Ben: Hey, that’s a really good question.

[1:06:53] Jarrod: [unintelligible 01:06:53] right there.

[1:06:57] Ben: I have to say it’s because my grandmother made it particularly well is matzo ball soup.

[1:07:02] Jarrod: Okay, that’s a solid answer.

[1:07:03] Rich: Very traditional.

[1:07:05] Ben: Or a Zabar’s babka, but that’s a different– Chocolate babka from Zabar’s, man.

[1:07:10] Jarrod: Oh, there you go.

[1:07:11] Ben: I still order that delivered to my house in LA.

[1:07:13] Jarrod: Oh, that’s awesome.

[1:07:15] Ben: They have these gift baskets.

[1:07:16] Jarrod: Other than After the Fall, what should we be reading that you’re reading right now?

[1:07:23] Ben: There’s a great book that I read while I was writing this book, because doing deep reading on authoritarianism is not a fun read. I read a book called Darkness over Germany. It was written during the ’30s by a British woman who went and just traveled around and interviewed ordinary Germans, teachers, business people, people who were not really Nazis but we’re making decisions about whether to resist, whether to acquiesce. It’s just a fascinating insight into how people rationalize complicity and passivity. “Well, if I quit my job, there’ll be someone worse.” The priests will have to put pictures of Hitler over the altar saying, “Well, if I refuse to do that, then I can’t preach to my flock.” Teachers thinking like, “If I refuse to teach the Nazi propaganda, then who else will teach my kids?” You just feel because it was written in the moment it wasn’t retrospective, it’s just this amazing document of a society allowing itself to be consumed, and a warning for all of us about it can happen anywhere. Darkness Over Germany, it’ll blow your mind.

[1:09:08] Rich: A warning to both sides.

[1:09:10] Ben: Yes.

[1:09:11] Jarrod: Yes, absolutely. One last one. If Wikipedia were to be believed you once interned on the mayoral campaign of Rudy Giuliani. I would tell you that there’s no shame in that because I went to intern for Jesse Helms when I was in college, so I think I have you beat. If I said Rudy Giuliani, what’s the first word that would come to mind?

[1:09:34] Ben: Now?

[1:09:36] Jarrod: Right now as we sit here.

[1:09:36] Ben: Nuts.

[1:09:38] Jarrod: [laughs]

[1:09:39] Ben: Dude, I was paid staff on that campaign. I actually worked my way up from being an intern. I don’t want to say it was a conservative Republican, but that was 97, Giuliani was obviously not the figure he was today. I worked for an amazing woman named Sunny Mindel, who was his communications director.

[1:10:06] Jarrod: Oh, Sunny, sure. A legend.

[1:10:08] Ben: A total legend. She would chain smoke cigarettes and curse out reporters and then laugh with the reporters. It was this hard edge education in politics in New York politics and union politics and ethnic politics. I went to a  left-wing high school on Upper East Side and I’m a bit of country in speak, so I zag right a little bit because I didn’t like to conform to the conventional surroundings I had. I write about this. I’m just going to say something embarrassing here. I was already beginning to my journey leftward around this time, in part, because then I had gone to college in Texas. Then I was rebelling against that dynamic. I was going through that moved towards the last, but I was supposed to work at city hall in the Giuliani administration in the next summer, the summer of ’98. I got fired before I started that job because I had gotten a summon, and I’m just going to own this on the Jewish Insider podcast, turn down if you have kids, for public urination. Let’s just say I was out with friends. You guys are New Yorkers, if you’re like barking 19, 20-year-old, you are a meathead, you’re an idiot. You do something stupid. You get that ticket. By the way I’m also mindful that I was like a white guy, so I got a ticket. It could be worse. That was not in line with the law and order ethos of the Giuliani administration. One grade, what if of history is, what if Ben Rhodes went to work in the Giuliani city hall administration and started some career in that way. I tell the story in my book. This leads nicely into part with my book. Then by 2001 I was working in democratic politics in New York. I was working for a city council campaign of a woman named Diane arena who was basically running for the Vito Lopez machine in Brooklyn. Peter Lopez who became the chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic party and then had his own fall from grace because all these kinds of sexual harassment allegations came out. This is a book that somehow has–and New Yorkers will appreciate this–a book about global nationalism authoritarianism and how we got here. Also has the names Sonny Mendell, Vito Lopez, Rudy Giuliani and Diana Reyna  in it. That’s my life story right there.

[1:12:56] Jarrod: Ben Rhodes author of After the Fall, former deputy national security advisor for president Barack Obama. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. Great to have your welcome here anytime. Rich every time I think we can’t get to a more weighty and potentially more uncomfortable space, we do it every week that was a great conversation. I don’t think there’s been a fuller accounting and a fuller conversation about diverging worldviews as it relates to Israel, the United States, the Obama administration in the Middle East probably ever. What do you think?

[1:13:34] Rich: Listen, he has become a polarizing figure for many and I give him credit for coming on and taking our questions. I think it was a thoughtful discussion. I think we highlighted some key stark differences in worldview. Would have loved to delve in a little more into JCPOA but there’s only so much JCPOA you can do in an hour. What I would say is a couple of takeaways. Number one there is a clear tension on the left in the progressive circles between the lack of inclusion and diversity, equity, treatment of minorities LGBTQ women, ethnic-religious minorities within societies like the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas run Gaza, Hezbollah, and the values that those progressives preach. The fact that they line up with them a little bit more on foreign policy. That’s clearly a tension that I took away. Number two on the JCPOA re-entry fight, this issue of terrorism sanctions is also a clear problem for the Biden administration. They’re going to have to clarify to Congress whether or not the US has a right to impose terrorism sanctions on the central bank, the Iranian oil company and others because it has justified the evidentiary basis is there. We were told in 2015 we could do that.

[1:15:05] Jarrod: Listen, I agree. We’ve been talking about at least the first question for quite a while. I think I liked the way Ben put it when he talked about or maybe I put it when we talked about the progressives wanting an end state to the conflict. What do we do has been put it with the 7 million Palestinians who are living in the west bank and Gaza. What is their status and I think that the longer that remains unresolved the harder and harder it’s going to be for pro-Israel Democrats like myself. I think I also liked this insight of hearing about Ben Rhodes as an AIPAC holding an AIPAC donor card. I don’t think that’s ever been talked about before but maybe he still gets the newsletter who knows? 

Anyways we appreciate him coming on. Appreciate the fact that he has a new book coming out and appreciate him spending the time with us here on Jewish insider. If you have any comments questions show ideas and tips. Send us an email at [email protected]. Please come follow us on Twitter @JIpodcast. If we’re on the Clubhouse hope you’re hanging out with us and remember to follow and subscribe to the limited liability podcast on your podcast. Listening medium of choice.

This is the Limited Liability Podcast. Thanks so much for listening and see you next time.

On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein are joined by Ben Rhodes, former White House deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration and author of the new book After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made. In a spirited discussion, Rhodes, who is credited with designing the political and messaging campaign that allowed the Iran nuclear deal to move forward, discussed the merits of Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement as President Joe Biden negotiates reentering the agreement.

Looking back: Rhodes reflected on the heated debate as the agreement was being negotiated in 2015. “The argument that we made that touched a nerve with some people was that there was basically a choice between this kind of deal, Iran getting a nuclear weapon or another war,” Rhodes said. “I still stand by those arguments in the sense of what we’re saying is, there’s three ways to solve this problem. You either are going to have some diplomatic agreement that restricts and restrains and rolls back the Iranian nuclear program, you’re going to have an unconstrained Iran nuclear program, or you’re going to have to use military force to constrain the nuclear program. I’d make that argument today. When I look back on that period, the stuff being thrown at us, the stuff being thrown at me personally, it’s not like I emerged from that not bloodied and bruised. There was pretty brutal rhetoric used against us at that time.” Goldberg replied, “Obviously, President Obama famously would always say the military option was on the table and he wasn’t a warmonger by your estimation. Both sides have a military option on the table.”

Charged rhetoric: The former Obama advisor acknowledged that mudslinging came from both sides of the aisle, as some vocal opponents of the agreement were accused of putting Israel’s interests over the United States. But Rhodes said the White House never engaged in such rhetoric. “We never would have used language like ‘Israel-firsters,’” Rhodes said, describing the language as “out of bounds.” “I was assigned a lot more power than I had by some of our critics that I was somehow completely masterminding and shaping everything that everybody said in this debate,” Rhodes argued. “If you look at the huge volume of material produced by the White House in defense of the Iran deal, it was usually very specific.”

Good and evil: Asked if he views the Islamic Republic of Iran as evil, Rhodes hesitated. “I don’t like calling any country evil,” he said, “because I think that countries are made up of individuals. There are evil people in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There are good people who live in that country. This is core to my worldview: I would not point at any one country in the world and say that country is evil.” Rhodes argued that “there are technocrats in the Islamic Republic of Iran who I don’t think are evil people. There are some evil people who are hateful and Holocaust deniers and killers and the rest of it as well.” But, he added, “I wouldn’t look at any one government or nation and say it’s a monolith, all those people are the same, all those people are evil. I think that the U.S. makes a mistake sometimes in its foreign policy, and we deny ourselves opportunities to make diplomatic progress when we look at whole governments, which are incredibly complicated organisms filled with very different people, and say, ‘That whole government is evil.’”

Terrorism sanctions: Citing recent comments by US envoy to Iran Rob Malley, who has said the U.S. would lift terrorism sanctions on key Iranian banks and companies as part of rejoining the Iran deal, Goldberg asked Rhodes whether he and the Obama administration misled Congress and the American public by claiming that the U.S. had the right to impose terrorism sanctions on Iran regardless of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Rhodes acknowledged that the U.S. has the right to impose terrorism sanctions — including on the Central Bank of Iran — if evidence exists of terrorism finance. Rhodes rejected the suggestion that the 2015 deal was soft on terrorism-related sanctions. “No American policymaker should, or would, I think rule out any particular sanction,” he said. “If the Biden team, let’s say they’re successful, let’s say they get back into JCPOA,” Rhodes added, “I’m sure they would continue to pursue additional terrorism-related designations going forward, as they should.” But Rhodes was critical of unnecessary sanctions, in particular pointing to sanctions under Trump as an “effort to undermine any return to the JCPOA, not just pure terrorism.” 

Counterpoint: Goldberg, who served as Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council under Trump, pushed back against Rhodes arguments, countering “if you have evidence of financing terrorism, you have to produce that, as you know, the intelligence community has to validate it to get it declassified, it becomes a sanctions package, career civil servants that state and Treasury have to validate, DOJ has to validate that it can withstand legal challenge. And that means you’re using the executive order for financing terrorism, exact evidence of terrorism, not nuclear.” Goldberg pointed to the timing of the sanctions in September 2019, arguing “There’s no way that Donald Trump or anybody working for him in the administration believed that he wouldn’t win reelection in September of 2019. It clearly was not used to stop going back to JCPOA.”

Former White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes revealed during Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” that he was formerly a member of and donor to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group with which the former Obama administration official has repeatedly clashed over the group’s opposition to the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.

“When I moved to D.C., in 2002-2003, I was an AIPAC donor. I had the AIPAC card,” Rhodes told co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein. “Support for Israel was sacrosanct in my household,” he continued, naming former Israeli prime ministers Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin as his “heroes” growing up.

Rhodes did not reveal when he stopped being a member of the group.

“The reality here is that, as a Democrat, and yeah, as a progressive Democrat, over the course of the last 12 years, I’ve felt the Israeli government, through its policies and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, moving away from what I believed in,” Rhodes said, adding, “I found it to be the people who blame us for the current state of the relationship between the Democratic Party and the Israeli government are basically saying to us that we have to adjust our views on the Palestinian issue, on the Iran nuclear issue to be aligned with Bibi Netanyahu, his particular views, or else we’re wrecking the relationship? I don’t think that’s fair.”

The former Obama official went on to defend his support for Israel, telling Bernstein and Goldberg, “I wrote speeches for President Obama that I hope people can read — the speech he gave in Jerusalem, the speech he gave eulogizing [former President] Shimon Peres — where I felt the unique and historically essential story of Zionism and the achievement of it is something I still felt very deeply.”

Former deputy White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes called a controversial Holocaust reference in a 2009 speech by then-President Barack Obama in Cairo “a mistake,” during Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast.”

The admission came in response to a question on the definition of Zionism. “I think what it’s always been,” Rhodes said. “The Jewish people deserve a homeland in their historic homeland. And I mean, that’s the simplest version.”

Obama’s speech, made to an audience of students at Cairo University, came less than five months after his inauguration, during a aimed at resetting U.S.–Middle East relations. “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” Obama said towards the start of his remarks. Later, while calling for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Obama sought to explain the Israeli claim to its state.

“America’s strong bonds with Israel are well-known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied,” Obama said. “Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and antisemitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust,” Obama said at the time.

The reference to the Holocaust drew criticism from politicians and historians, who noted that the movement for Jewish statehood pre-dated the Holocaust.

On this week’s podcast, Rhodes, who wrote the 2009 speech, acknowledged the criticism, calling the reference “a mistake I made.”

“That was a totally fair and accurate criticism, to discount the fact that this is the historic homeland of the Jewish people,” he admitted. “Israel didn’t just commence with the Holocaust itself.”

Rhodes, who also spoke on the episode about his background as a secular Jew, explained that the aim was not to speak to the origins of Israel. “Our intention in doing that, by the way, was to call out Holocaust denial in in the Muslim world and to speak to the fact that if you had the Holocaust, in your recent memory, it’s totally legitimate to be particularly concerned about security.”

In this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein are joined by Rep. Stacey Plaskett for a frank discussion on Black-Jewish relations in America and representing a U.S. territory in Congress.

The following has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jarrod Bernstein  

Delegate Stacey Plaskett is the non-voting member of Congress from the United States Virgin Islands, a dear friend of mine, and we’re really thankful to have her on the podcast to talk about lots going on today. Why don’t we start off with, Delegate Plaskett, what is it like to be a non voting member of Congress?

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Well, I think that’s an interesting way of putting it, I would say it’s a limited voting. And the limited vote depends on who’s in power, how much of that limit is there. So all members of territories, or as I would say, all members of the American colonies have a right of voting in committees. And so we vote fully in committees. And when the democrats have control of the House, we vote on the floor on amendments. And when we are on the Committee of the Whole. We do not vote on final passage. When Republicans are in control, then there is no voting on the floor, and we are relegated to the votes and committees and just doing the other business of members of Congress. That is, you know, passing, sponsoring legislation, co sponsoring, debating, etc, etc. So one of the things that I have just noted, it’s interesting, I was talking to a group earlier today, is that in this position, I feel like I am, it’s the same as my life. Because I sit on the floor quite often and find myself being an observer rather than an actor. And I think it gives me a greater sense of members and strategy and thoughts about members than other members of Congress have. I can sit there and I know which member of New Jersey is going to vote first and which ones are waiting to see who another particular member votes ahead of them. Which members of the front line are waiting for the last minute because ‘I don’t want to take the vote,’ are waiting to be whipped by the majority leader or the whip team to ask them to vote a certain way. You know, it gives you a much greater observation. But it also means that you’ve got to work harder because you don’t have those votes to negotiate with,  with other colleagues and with the leadership. And so you’ve got to really be creative and a hustler. To get your skill done.

Jarrod Bernstein  

You’ve achieved quite a bit of notoriety for a delegate from a territory. You know, you don’t often hear a ton of news out of the territorial delegations, but you’re one of the house impeachment managers, you’re on Ways and Means. You alluded to it a minute ago when you said you’re a hustler. How is it to do advocacy as somebody who is using all the instruments of soft power? It seems like you’ve mastered this, but I’d be interested to hear more about how that actually works and how you make those deals.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Soft power. Huh, soft power. I don’t know. I just have always felt that, you know, I was raised in a house where my mother explained to me that you’ve got to be better than everybody else. You’ve got to have more hustle than everybody. I’m putting you in the same places where people have much more resources than you and you’ve got to figure out a way to come out on top. I don’t want you to come home in the middle, or average or at the bottom, you’ve got to be on top. And so that’s always just kind of given me a drive. I came here knowing that I was going to make this position very different than the position had been previously.  I wanted to be outside of the box of what was expected, I asked not to be put on the same committees that the other territorial members had been placed on, because I wanted to forge a very different path. And interestingly, I think what I’m doing is so much about what we, as Caribbean people do in America. From the first Caribbean people who came to this country and offered support in its formation, we have always kind of had a chip on our shoulder and felt that we have more to prove. From our boy, Alexander Hamilton, right on through to today, we have to step outside of the box. People are looking at us a little askew. And so we’ve got to prove ourselves. And, you know, that’s the only way I feel that my constituents, who are often completely underserved, forgotten, and behind the eight ball, are going to get ahead.

Rich Goldberg  

When you look at other territories that have taken the step to have referendums to say, you know, ‘do you want to be a state not just a territory?’ Puerto Rico obviously comes top of mind, we had the referendum last Fall with with the ‘yes’ succeeding narrowly. The last referendum, I can think about the Virgin Islands is probably over 20 years ago, maybe there is one more recent. Is that something that’s come up? Has anybody thought about doing that? Where do you sort of stand on that idea of statehood for the Virgin Islands,

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

So we just recently had a referendum that we would adopt the Congressional Organic Act as our Constitution, so that we can amend that. That passed overwhelmingly. And for the last two and a half years, I’ve been petitioning our local government, our local legislature and our governor, asking them if they would allocate a really small amount of money to educate Virgin Islanders on what the different status options are, and the pros and cons of each one. You know, what does it really mean, financially and economically, to be independent? What does it mean to be a state in terms of the politics of that? Or to be a Commonwealth? Or you know, any of the other possibilities that are there. Not so that people are just getting that off of the internet or off of somebody on a talk show, but really having a true understanding about each one of those and what that means. And then for us to have a referendum on it in the next two years. Two years from now, we will be 175 years from our emancipation from chattel slavery. And I believe that’s a prime time for us to, as a people, say, internally, this is what I want us to be. I can have my own ideas about where we should be, but that is not necessarily the will of the people. And I think that’s what should drive the decision making. And then, my final thought to that was that whatever that outcome is of that referendum, that should be the position that whomever represents us in Washington at that time, as well as the governor and the local government should be pushing for.

Jarrod Bernstein  

And to ask you a question a little bit closer to home, for me, at least. You know, I’m one of those obnoxious people who thinks the world ends at the Hudson River. So you did spend quite a bit of time growing up in New York City, in the five boroughs, and between there and St. Croix, we’ve talked a lot on the show about the relationship between the far-left and antisemitism and how some, you know, have tried to take the imprimatur of the Black Lives Matter movement and stretch it beyond its breaking point into something that is not particularly related to the Israel-Palestinian  .

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Do you talk about the far-right’s antisemitism?

Jarrod Bernstein  

I talk about the far-right’s antisemitism all the time.  But what is your take on the state of Black-Jewish relations generally, as as somebody who spent a lot of time in New York and as an observer and a thoughtful person about this, is it getting better? Is it getting worse? What can we be doing to build that relationship? As people like, Rich and I, have a big bully pulpit in the Jewish community. Knock on wood. What should we be talking about?

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

That’s an interesting question. You know, I grew up Between Bushwick and Williamsburg, you know, so you’re getting different groups of the Jewish community, some which actually don’t even get along with each other, right. And then moving home to the Virgin Islands, which is a very interesting place, because we have one of the oldest, continually running synagogues in the Western Hemisphere, started by a Sephardic Jewish community. And then we also has a have a very sizable, Palestinian-Jordanian community as well, in the Virgin Islands. And they both coexist very well together. And so what is the position that I have taken on that as an African person of African descent, as someone who lives in America and African-American and Afro-Caribbean person? You know, I do think there are different groups of Jewish and Black communities think very differently about this, right? I think back on the protests this past summer, and there were Jewish people who were out there repping the fact that they were Jewish and supporting that Black lives do matter. And so when you say the term Black Lives Matter, are you talking about an organization or a theory? And for me, it’s a theory that, yes, our lives matter. And that’s what we’re trying to get across that until Black Lives Matter, then all lives don’t matter. And there were Jewish people, you know, Amish people who supported that. But there’s also, I think, a dichotomy and a belief that I brush up against, and that worries me, that my Jewish brothers and sisters think that if I support the existence of Palestine, that means that I don’t support them as Jewish people. And so that’s worrisome to me, like how do you navigate that? How do I believe that there should be a two state solution? That what is happening on both ends are problematic. That there should be a ceasefire, that we need to have peace and not feel like I am saying that one side is better or the other side is not? I’m supportive of the Jewish state, but I did not believe that Netanyahu is necessarily the best leader of the Jewish state at this time. I believe in a Palestinian state, but I condemn Hamas. So does one cancel out the other? I’m not sure. And that’s for me, to ask my brothers and sisters who are Jewish and that are of Palestinian descent, to educate me, and to help me figure that out, in the same way that I asked my white friends — I’m happy when they want to be educated, and want to be thoughtful about their position on Black people in America.

Rich Goldberg  

Yeah, I think, and I’ve contemplated this in the last few days and we’ve had lots of conversations. My synagogue was very active, like you talked about, in, you know, we’re in the middle of COVID lockdowns and, you know, we saw what happened with George Floyd and the protest movement started and people were very moved to go out to the streets and join and show their support. And, you know, they’re connected now to a lot of feeds, a lot of influencers, a lot of movements, networks, social organizations, that they got involved with from last summer, and they just, I think assumed, ‘okay, you know, we’re in solidarity here.’ And now with rockets raining down on Israel, we’re seeing real venom from some of these social media feeds within social organizations of comparing people who support Israel, to white supremacists and Nazis and the language — I think Jarrod was referring to — the language of anti-racism theory being hijacked for a different agenda. I think that’s what worries a lot of people is to see that kind of language which then moves from what you’re talking about, which is, ‘I don’t agree with this selected government. I support the right of a Jewish state to exist obviously in safety and security. I don’t like Netanyahu,’ to There’s a fundamental hostility in some of these messaging of the idea of a Jewish state that defends itself.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

I think you’ll find…I hear what you’re saying. I think also for a lot of Black people were concerned, because we also see Palestinians as Brown people in some respects. And so that, in some ways, makes us feel that we have an obligation to use our platform to maybe speak for a group that does not have the same platform as we do. And while I have a discussion on the floor, like, ‘Well, you know, not every Jewish person is white.’ The general consensus or cultural message that has been put to African-Americans is that Palestinians more likely represent the type of oppression that Black Americans have had, or Native Americans have had. It’s similar, as opposed to what, you know, a Jewish state created by the predominantly Ashkenazi European Jews.

Rich Goldberg  

It’s so stunning to me, because I reflect…and by the way, thank you for this conversation. This is such an important conversation that we haven’t had…I remember as a kid at the Passover Seder and the comparisons of the Civil Rights movement to the Passover story, and that being one of the major connection points for Black Jewish relations. And we remember, you know, that the Jewish leaders who were out there in the streets, you know, side by side with Civil Rights leaders at the time, and, and that sort of imagery, that song, you know, the Black Moses, right like that, there’s a lot of these sorts of things we talk about, where, where we bring that that comparison together. And yet, it’s evolved over the last few decades, it really has, into more of what you’re saying, where, I think that the early Jewish state had that sort of feeling of camaraderie, and somehow we’ve evolved into this narrative which has shifted. Even though, to your point, Israel rescued Ethiopian Jews and integrated Ethiopian Jews into Israel, the Misrathi Jews, you know, from all around North Africa and the Middle East. I don’t know how we I don’t know how we fight back that narrative, I don’t know.

Jarrod Bernstein  

And I would just observe, you know, the person who in this world taught me the most about the meaning of Passover was not a rabbi or a Hebrew school teacher, it was Barack Obama, when he pulled out a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation at the conclusion of the Seder, and sat in his home and made us read from the Emancipation Proclamation to really understand the American nature of the holiday. But, you know, I think the first step is having conversations like this, right, that are slightly uncomfortable, but very real. And, and confronting the issues. And this is how I’ve gotten to know the delegate and sort of my day job. It’s not to be shy, not to shy away from uncomfortable conversation.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Yeah. I wonder, you know, for a lot of my colleagues when we’re having the discussion, you know, they bring up and help me with the pronunciation, the Nakba. Right? They talk about the displacement of the Palestinians, as a major inflection point in their shift in attitude, and I don’t know what you guys think of that. Can we come? Can we recognize a point when that has changed which could maybe be instructive to us about how to reevaluate that relationship?

Rich Goldberg  

Yeah, the Nakba is a troubling term, for me at least, because the reference historically is to the creation of the State of Israel. And so if somebody says, you know, ‘we were triggered by the Nakba,’ or you know, ‘we have to, we have to respond to the Nakba.’ To me, and again, maybe it’s becoming sort of general terminology that’s just being used without knowing the etymology, to me that represents ‘we have a problem that the Jewish state was created in 1948.’ And and in its root there, you know, to us again, as Jews, that can be sounding like antisemitism as well. ‘You don’t even believe that Jews have a right to exist as a Jewish state.’ Fundamentally, that’s a problem. But I guess the question is, where can we go as a community to have these sort of dialogues, you know, whether it’s closed door, you know, if it’s with the Black Caucus, if it’s with individual members. It sounds like either it’s Israel’s problem as a government, and obviously, I’m not here to advise the Israeli government. But as an American-Jewish community, I feel like we need to be doing more to bring some modern education to members and information of ‘Here is the diversity that exists in Israeli society. And by the way, here’s the lack of diversity that exists in the Palestinian territories.’ No LGBTQ rights, flourishing LGBTQ rights in Israel. No women’s rights in the Palestinian territories flourish and women’s rights in Israel. I think there’s a great progressive message here. It’s just it’s just getting lost somehow.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Yeah, you’re assuming that all Black people are progressive?

Rich Goldberg  

No, I’m not saying that. Trust me as a Republican. I welcome as many conservatives to the party, trust me.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

I’m sure that members, particularly Black Caucus members are happy to have those conversations. I think what some of them may feel is that they’re not conversations, they’re being told what they are supposed to think or are supposed to do. And, you know, numbers and resources are being utilized as bludgeons to make them think they have to take a certain position.

Jarrod Bernstein  

I think, Rich, we should, use our bully pulpit to help advise the Jewish community as they engage with progressive members black and white, and any color.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Some of us moderate members too.

Jarrod Bernstein  

Can I ask a House politics question, because we have a member of Congress on and I just I, I got to ask you, did McCarthy just sign a blood oath with President Trump from what he asked of Liz Cheney? And are the Cheneys going to have their revenge? Like, how is this gonna play out? It’s shocking to me that this all played out the way it is, but what’s your take on it?

Rich Goldberg  

By the way, Chicagoans, when you say blood oath, we can only think of ‘The Untouchables.’

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

You know, I don’t. I don’t have an opinion on the Liz Cheney portion, as much. I mean, I understand her removal, because she isn’t following the message of leadership. And it’s very clear what the message is right now, of the House Republicans. I’m not saying all Republicans, but the House Republicans and her inability to agree with them about what happened on January 6 is a reason for her not to be in leadership. What I find more shocking is today, as we are about to vote on this commission, is that, McCarthy is now putting another member out to dry, because he had John Katko, who was the ranking member, the Republican on Homeland Security, negotiate for several months now, what this commission is supposed to look like. And he was able to get the concessions that McCarthy wanted only now for McCarthy to turn around and say, I’m not going to support it. Of course, he can’t support it, because the leader of his party, which is still Donald Trump, has said he doesn’t want to support it. And so, you know, I allow them to let them continue to have that battle. We’ve got our own issues on our side of the aisle. We’ve got, the far-left, going after moderate, thoughtful members, making people take the plank on issues that in some instances is going to cost them their seat. So those are the things that I’m concerned about on my own side of the aisle, and you know, keeping my head on a swivel to make sure that some of the wackadoodles on that side, on the other side. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Boebert and some of the others recognize that they can’t step to everybody they think they can talk crap to. I’ll keep it…we have to stay clean.

Rich Goldberg  

Not in Yiddish, you’re allowed to swear.

Jarrod Bernstein  

Yeah, you’re allowed to curse in Yiddish.

Rich Goldberg  

We’ve had Congressmen do that before. I actually have a follow up because you’ve said a couple of times, you’re a moderate, we know you were formerly a member of the Republican Party, a Republican appointee in the previous administration. You know, when you look at that state of polarization right now on both sides, is there a middle that exists, that you’re a part of the you’re talking to other members, you’re doing bipartisan things that just we’re just not watching because it’s not good television? Or is it very much stressed even on that level?

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

It’s stressed, but there’s some going on. But it’s not interesting. You know, it doesn’t make the news. I am in leadership with the New Democratic Coalition, which are the pragmatic, you know, moderate Democrats. And we just had a press conference on legislation, you know, a series of legislation that we’ve been working on with Republicans that we’re hoping the President will put in his jobs plan, you know, and it’s infrastructure bill, but I’m sure CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are not going to put that on the air. But even within that, Richard is extremely. There’s a heightened tension here in Congress every day on the floor, you can feel the tension. In previous years I would have stepped in an elevator with any member of congress and said, ‘Good afternoon, what’s going on? How’s your family?’ There are some, some members I won’t even get in the elevator with. At this point, I just don’t want to share any space with them.

Jarrod Bernstein  

Can you tell us about your experience on January 6? Tell us where you were and how that all went down for you?

Rep. Stacey Plaskett  

Yeah, I mean, I do not have the same trauma some of my other colleagues have. I was in my office. Was about to go to the floor. Had actually just put on my suit jacket and was walking out of the office when I was stopped at the front by one of my staffers and told, ‘They just told us to lock the door and you can’t leave the office.’ And so it’s interesting, because I look at the levels of trauma that are actually real trauma that I see in some of the members. And the ones who were up on that balcony, who for 45 minutes could not leave, were only Democrats and members of the press were up in the balcony area. They say they have their own support group counseling for some of them that they’re going through. You know, I kind of watched from television, went down into the holding area where all the members were at a later point, and eventually went back to my office. That evening, seeing what the Capitol looked like — the windows knocked out, feces on the walls in the Capitol. It was horrendous. It was a shock. Really a shock.

Joining from Tel Aviv after over a week of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein to talk about the atmosphere in Israel’s economic capital.

The following has been lightly edited for clarity.

Rich Goldberg  

William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is in Israel. Joining us now to talk more about what’s going on William, welcome to the podcast.

William Daroff  

Thank you very much. Rich, it is a pleasure to be here. I’m a longtime listener, first time guest.

Rich Goldberg  

William, first of all, obviously a lot going on, you’re in Israel. Can you tell us the mood on the ground this week as the rocket attacks have dragged on?

William Daroff  

Yeah, it’s been remarkable being here in Tel Aviv we flew in on Sunday. It was difficult to get here. Had three different flights canceled, but then came in on the old, reliable El Al and arrived. It’s sort of a mix. Israel is amazingly resilient. Israelis have been through conflicts and crises on a monthly, daily, weekly basis, and they figure it out. When I cleared the quarantine — there’s a quarantine here upon arrival — and when I cleared the quarantine after my serology test came back showing that I had the vaccine, I went for a run along the beach here in Tel Aviv. And it was just like any other beach day in Tel Aviv, there were women wearing bathing suits you can barely see; men wearing bathing suits, you can barely see; playing that crazy game they play on the beach with those Boomerang type things that hit people; dogs running. It was just like a normal day on the beach. Notwithstanding the fact that 24 hours before you can see images of towels on the beach as people ran from the Tel Aviv beach to get into bomb shelters in the midst of it. So on the one hand, it’s business as usual. On the other hand, I know that many are on edge, particularly in the south in Ashkelon, Ashdod and then the communities that are on the sleeve surrounding Gaza, where there have been rocket attacks on a daily basis. Here in Tel Aviv, thank God, there has not been a rocket attack since Saturday. So it’s been five days or so since the last rocket attack. But I’ll tell you it’s affected me in a way that I have never been before. We have about four minutes from the time we hear a siren till we get to the bomb shelter in the basement of the building that we’re staying in. And so taking a shower is perilous. Every minute that you’re in there, every second that you’re in there, you know, wet, soap filled, is a minute or a second, that’s keeping you from getting down the steps. And it’s very scary. And it’s very nerve wracking. And it really connects me, I think, to a part of the Israeli mentality that I had just never been a part of before, which is just the sort of immediate realization and recognition that at any moment, rockets might be coming down on you, your life may be in danger, and you have to find a place to secure yourself. And it is unbelievable the way that Israelis are resilient around it, but also unbelievable that the international community looks on at this and is basically ignoring the fact that Hamas is indiscriminately firing upon civilians, or certainly to the extent they’re not ignoring it. They’re not giving up the right size concern that they should, nor the concern that they would have to happen to just about any other country in the world.

Jarrod Bernstein  

So William, speaking to that, and speaking that maybe a little bit closer to home, we’ve seen more conversation this go around within the United States, about how people feel about this conflict. Particularly there are elements of the Democratic Party. Maybe you could talk about some of the reasons why we’re seeing this conversation like we’ve never seen it before and what should the pro-Israel community be doing about it?

William Daroff  

So absolutely, there is a lot of noise out there. I think that a lot of it is amplified by social media. The social media atmosphere in 2014, the last time there was a big Gaza event, was not as robust as it is now. And so we see on social media, a great deal of attacks on Israel, total distortions of the facts by celebrities and other influencers and certainly by the news media, who are pushing one narrative out there without really in large respect taking account of Israel’s narrative. I think as a pro-Israel community, we should be grateful for the support of President Biden, who has been steadfast in recognizing and stating over and over again that Israel has a right to defend herself, that these indiscriminate attacks by a terrorist organization should not be countenanced. And to date has given pushback on the United Nations Security Council, I think four times now on statements and resolutions that would be condemning Israel, and continues to give support at a time when there are very, very few world leaders who are doing so and so I give a big thumbs up to President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken for standing with Israel despite the pressures from the international community, the human rights community, as you implied, or inferred, Jarrod, from a parts of the progressive community in the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Rich Goldberg  

So we have headlines from this past week US House speeches on Gaza, exposing growing rifts in the Democratic Party on Israel. We obviously saw the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, maybe even more concerningly, make an announcement originally that he was going to try to hold up an arms sale from the administration in Israel, he’s since reversed that position under some backlash. Are you worried, from an organized Jewish community perspective, that this is not just fringe anymore, that it is getting some legs in mainstream offices on Capitol Hill?

William Daroff  

I am certainly worried, I get paid to worry, on a daily basis about American support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. And for sure, a number of the statements that have come out from friends of Israel, who are a little bit more edgy than they would otherwise be, are concerning. But I’m reminded of the fact that just a couple months ago, three quarters of Congress came out opposed to any sort of conditioned aid for Israel, including, well more than half of the Democratic members of Congress. Two summers ago, almost 400 of the 435 members of the House voted to condemn the BDS movement. So I think the fundamentals of support for the U.S.-Israel relationship are there on a bipartisan basis. I think for sure — call it the fringes, I would call it the edges — there are loud folks and there is concern. I go back to Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader’s comments at AIPAC’s policy conference a few years ago, where he said ‘There aren’t four freshmen, there’s 64 freshmen,’ talking about the squad and their influence and their impact. I think that it’s certainly concerning, but I don’t think it’s the lead. I think it is a paragraph or two down. I do believe that when there is a hot war, a hot conflict like the one we have now, with the images that we’re seeing on television, from Gaza, that that certainly exasperates those tensions and causes — I think a technical term is tsuris — as it relates to these issues. But the bottom line is that the leader of the Democratic Party is Joe Biden, and, to date, Joe Biden has been precisely where, where the pro-Israel community the United States would want him to be. And from all I can tell where the government of Israel would want the United States to be.

Rich Goldberg  

With the caveat perhaps being that at the same time, his negotiators are in Vienna negotiating massive sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic of Iran to subsidize the terrorism we see conducted against Israel. You could respond to that, you don’t have to. But I would just point that out.

William Daroff  

You’re switching ledger’s on me, Rich.

Rich Goldberg  

It’s all one ledger in the Middle East.

William Daroff  

I’ll let Jarrod get me out of this. But I would, I would say it’s definitely a consideration that as the administration is standing firm for Israel and has Israel’s back, that that will definitively be a talking point that the administration will use to assuage fears by the pro-Israel community and by Israel, should there be some sort of deal about the extent to which the United States will continue to have Israel’s back, should the a new Iran deal go bad. I think that that is a definite consideration and something that’s in the mix, to the extent that that has the Biden administration standing stronger and firmer, I think that’s a good thing. That as it relates to an Iran deal, you know, we cross that bridge, when we come to it, we have expressed concerns about going right back into the JCPOA 1.0. But I think until there’s more there, you know, at this point, it remains it’s a separate ledger.

Jarrod Bernstein  

So William, I am gonna change topics on you a little bit here. But Rich, I’m sure we’ll find a way to come back to the JCPOA momentarily.

William Daroff  

I’m always happy to talk about veganism. Jarrod, you want to talk about that plant base,

Rich Goldberg  

The rockets raining down in Israel get paid by somebody from somewhere else, that’s all I’m saying.

William Daroff  

And you know, Rich I don’t want to dismiss that. It is a fact that but for Iran, Hamas would not have the wherewithal to do what they do. And that absolutely should be front and center. I absolutely add that to the parade of horribles of Iran, period.

Jarrod Bernstein  

We’ve been told for a long time, the balance of a presidency, in fact, that the Trump administration had this grand bargain and was was able to do, to give them credit, what nobody else had been able to do for a long time and achieving peace between Israel and many of the Gulf, many of the Arab states around it, and and start commercial ties, and really begin to usher in what we all thought was gonna be a era of prosperity. I guess my question is, what’s the end game here for Israel? They’re fighting this war with Hamas. You can already see cracks in the Abraham Accords starting to show up. Are they worth the paper they’re written on? And is this continuing conflict with the Palestinians and the inability to have any closure there going to compromise long term peace that we all thought was on the way.

William Daroff  

Excellent questions all. My sense is from talking to folks in the region, and talking to folks in the Gulf and talking to folks here in Israel, who engage with the Gulfis on a daily basis, that what we’re hearing from the Gulf is much more muted than what we would have heard two years ago. That the few statements that have come out…

Jarrod Bernstein  

I agree with that. But the question is, can conflict like this coexist with the accords and what they were supposed to produce?

William Daroff  

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the bottom lines of the accords was that not everything in the Middle East must run through Ramallah, that giving Abu Mazen the power and authority to dictate those issues was not something that was productive towards peace, not something was productive towards any sort of regional harmony. I think that is maintained today. I think, perhaps, the extent to which the UAE, the Saudis, Bahrain and others have influence over Israeli action. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. To some extent. They give a hescher, they make kosher, Israel’s activities and actions. And my understanding is they’ve been a productive player over this last 10 days of conflict. I don’t think that there were many of us who thought that it would be the end of the Palestinian conflict, or issues with Israeli Arabs and others because of the Abraham Accords, but I think it does set a template and a sort of a better view from that 20,000 feet of the possibilities here in the region. Despite the road bumps and clearly the critical issues that this conflict over the last 10 days has brought to the fore.

Rich Goldberg  

William, if I’m a listener at home, anywhere in the United States, and I’m thinking to myself, I’m worried about family and friends in Israel. I’m worried about William in Israel right now. But no, I’m very worried about this conflict. I’m worried for Israel’s safety. I am shaken by the social media feeds I’m seeing from people I was following last summer during Black Lives Matter. I was very supportive and now I’m getting whiplashed and seeing all kinds of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian propaganda thrown my way. What can people do? What’s your message to the Jewish community out there of the three, four things people can do to be proactive, so they don’t feel like they’re just sitting around being victims?

William Daroff  

I think the first thing to do is to contact your member of Congress and your senators and the White House. And let them know that you are a voter and an activist and someone who is supportive of a strong U.S. relationship and recognizes the importance of the ability for Israel to defend herself against these terror attacks. That would be, I think, issue number one, and something that we can all do to ensure that our members of Congress are in the right place and that the administration stays focused, as they have over the last week plus of this conflict. I think secondly, is to engage on social media as well. Everybody started out with just one Twitter follower. My dog Miss Snuggles has, I think, over 700 followers on Twitter. I opened an account for her to sort of show that anybody can get followers and even a six pound Yorkshire Terrier, feel free to follow her @MissSnugs. And so you can tomorrow, get on Twitter, get on Tik Tok, get on Facebook, and express yourself to your universe of friends. Just looking on Facebook, as I’ve been doing a bit over the last few days, there are real conversations going among friends. The people who are Facebook friends, you know, not from our Jewish universe, are people who see us as a reliable source of information and someone who is a friend. If they’re a barber, or a neighbor, or PTA president and not engaged in the pro-Israel world, they need to hear from us and to hear our narrative as distinct from what they may be hearing on BBC or CNN or Al Jazeera, or reading in the mainstream press. So I think those are clear things they can do. And I think, thirdly, is to really express unqualified support for a strong Israel. There are many, many issues here in Israel that people are arguing about and disagree about. At Shabbat tables here and across the world you’ll hear more criticism of the Israeli government than you hear just about anywhere, including the Knesset. We all have issues that we work on, but right now is not the time to be piling on. Right now is the time to be hugging an Israeli. To be holding them in solidarity. To show that we, in the diaspora, we in American Jewry, understand the pain that they are going through. The fact that they are being attacked for one reason, and frankly, that one reason is because they’re Jewish. That is something we need to stand arm in arm with our Israeli brothers and sisters so they know that there is a wall of support, not just with the American government with American Jewry, from left to right from top to bottom.

On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein were joined by Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) to discuss her support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, the current nuclear talks with Iran and the growing threat of antisemitism.

On whether to return to the JCPOA: “I don’t understand how you can go back to a deal that was put into place under different circumstances, many years ago,” said Manning of the negotiations to return to the 2015 Iran deal. “Some of the sunset provisions have already expired. We no longer have the arms embargo at the U.N. We were hoping that being in the deal would cause Iran to curb its bad behavior and perhaps even cease from some of its malign behavior in fostering terrorism around the globe. And what we’ve seen is that they’ve done exactly the opposite. We also see that when faced with real economic trouble for its own people, rather than use their resources to take care of their own people, they are using that money to continue to foster and support terrorists around the world. So when you think about all those things that have changed, or that we’ve learned from since when the deal was put into place, I don’t even understand how you can say, ‘Let’s get back into the same deal.’ We’re not in the same world today.”

Praise for Blinken: “I think in our new Secretary of State Tony Blinken, we have someone who is the consummate professional. He understands Iran, he understands Israel. Frankly, his knowledge of the world is extraordinary. And I believe that he has the right goals and also the right instincts. So we had an opportunity on the Foreign Affairs Committee to take testimony from him. And he was slated to stay for two hours, he was kind enough to expand that to four hours so that each one of us could ask our questions. And he was just fabulous. And the way he responded, and particularly on the Iran issue, he understood that we’re looking for a deal that is longer, stronger and broader. And I believe that he endorses that.” 

Middle East in a phrase? “‘The best of times, the worst of times.’ I wish it were original. We had a hearing yesterday on Syria. And when you get into the details of what has happened over the past 10 years in Syria, what a possible resolution could be, it’s extraordinarily complicated. And the fact that we have Iran trying to get a foothold there, that we have Russia establishing a foothold there, it adds a new dimension to the region. And you know, Russia won’t give up easily because it really wants to be there. On the other hand, I think the Abraham Accords are incredibly good. Give us hope. Somebody corrected me the other day when I said ‘Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood,’ and somebody said, ‘Well, it’s not quite as dangerous as it used to be.’ I hope that’s correct. I think that the Abraham Accords certainly have been in the works for many years. And I think it is a demonstration of the fact that there are countries in the region that see Israel as, as a model.”

On succeeding former Reps. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Nita Lowey (D-NY): “I could never fill the shoes of either of those two individuals. But I am a strong pro-Israel Democrat, and I’m not shy about it. And I will stand up for Israel, and I will also stand up for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

On UNRWA: “I am going to be leading and getting my colleagues to sign on to a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations objecting to using funds for the kinds of textbooks that we know they continue to promise not to use and yet they continue to use. Textbooks that are filled with incendiary, antisemitic comments and language and anti-Israel teachings. I believe, that’s got to stop and in this moment, when there’s such attention focused on discrimination of all types, I think this is the moment to step up to this issue as well.”

On how leading JFNA prepared her for Congress: “I was sitting in the House Gallery when the [January 6th] insurrection took place. And when all the commotion started, they told us to take off the gas masks. Because I was in the Gallery, we were the last group that was taken to safety. And when they finally got us to the other side of the gallery, they told us to get down on the floor, take off our member pins so that they couldn’t identify us if the insurrectionists broke into the doors. And then there was just quiet while we all sat and waited. And I thought to myself, I’ve been through much worse, I’ve had to run to bomb shelters in Sderot when you could actually hear sirens going off and the rockets coming over. And you know, I laugh about that, but I seriously thought about that and thought, ‘okay, I’ve been prepared for this. I’ve been through worse.’ I didn’t know that that was going to be preparation for being in Congress. And, of course, at the time, we couldn’t see what was going on outside the building. Nor could we have ever imagined what was going on outside. But I think my work in the Jewish world prepared me well.”

Favorite Yiddish word? “I think machatunim, because there is no English equivalent. And when you try to describe what that word is to non-Jews, first they get confused, and then they say, ‘Well, why don’t we have a word for that?’” When told she had chosen the same word as former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Manning cheerfully replied, “We have something in common!”

Jewish geography: Manning revealed the recent family discovery that she and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) are fourth cousins. “It is a very small world.”

Former Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) joined Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein on this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast.” Cantor shared his thoughts on the state of the Republican Party and the trajectory of bipartisan support for Israel in Washington.

Who leads the GOP: “Clearly Donald Trump has demonstrated that he’ll do what’s good for him, no question about it,” Cantor said. “And so it’ll be an interesting primary season for the midterm elections in 2022 to begin to understand what Donald Trump will do. If he wants to maintain his importance, obviously, he’ll need to play ball with the party, if you will. If he wants to do what’s good for him and believes he can be of outsize [importance] on his own. That’s a different story. And then in the meantime, clearly, the other leaders in the party nationally, [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has stated very definitively that it is his job to go in and make sure that Republicans regain the majority in the Senate. My former colleague and successor, [Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)] has said, without qualms, that his job is to make sure that Republicans regain the majority in the House. So at that point, I don’t think you have a national voice speaking for the Republican Party. And naturally that will come as we then pass the midterms and begin the primary season for the presidential race, which will occur in ‘24.”

Suburban living: Asked about the key steps Republicans would have to take in order to win back the House and Senate, Cantor recalled his early days in Congress with fellow Republican (Goldberg’s former boss) then-Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL): “I first went to Washington, and I was in Mark’s class, and Mark was famous for the suburban agenda. I will say today, that that’s what my party needs to regain its footing within the electorate that it seems to have lost during the last four, six, eight years. And it is about speaking to the suburban professional voter, because I worry that without those voters, states — like mine in Virginia, and others throughout the country — it’s just becoming increasingly difficult for my party to be electorally competitive….You’ve seen it take place in a state like Colorado, obviously, you’re seeing it increasingly take place in sunbelt states like Arizona and Georgia. So there is a real question.”

Growing up Jewish: “I grew up in a not-so-Jewish community. It was, obviously a suburban Richmond city in Virginia, small Jewish population, fairly prominent, but small. And so the district had maybe 1%, or less Jewish [population]. I went to a private school in Richmond, and I went to chapel every single day — it was a Protestant school. I often tell people I was exposed to prayer in school early on. And at the same time, in the afternoon, I’d go to Hebrew school. So it was sort of a great upbringing for me, because I think it brought it closer to the faith and who I am as a Jew… When I first got elected to Washington, being in such a minority within a minority, it was almost like people would parade through my office just to see this individual, like this creature — like a freak show. But again, I do think that I was able to project the notion that both of our parties should be open to all faiths.”

Special relationship: “Increasingly, I think two things happened on Israel. One is, as we saw, the more radicalization, if you will, of the progressive left. That term they use of intersectionality — I don’t quite understand all of it — but if you’re a victim, then we’ll be for you because we’re a victim. And it almost became [like] Israel after the Yom Kippur War proved to the world that it was no longer the underdog, and that it was actually the strongest player, certainly in the Levant, and in the eastern Mediterranean, if not throughout the Middle East… Secondly, during the Obama administration, there’s no question about it, [then-White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel — [Rich’s] fellow Chicagoan — was unequivocal at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: he was not supportive of Bibi [Netanyahu] as prime minister. And the sharing of political talent on both sides that played out in Israel reflected what we had going on here. So I do think those two issues really started to cloud the support for Israel? I do think it’s still somewhat bipartisan, but there’s definitely a lot more difficulty at it.”

Lightning round: Favorite Yiddish word? “The term, for which there is no English word and only Yiddish, is Machatunim” said grandparent-to-be Cantor, who earlier in the episode described meeting his wife, a Florida Democrat, on a blind date in New York City. Favorite part of Passover? “The eighth day at sundown.” Current reading list? Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower by Hank Paulson, and We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump — A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution by Gerald Seib. Favorite place in Virginia nobody has heard of? “Colonial Trail, which is a new bike trail between Richmond and Williamsburg and goes along the plantation alley along the James River, is a great new addition.”

On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein were joined by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to discuss her relationship with New York’s Jewish community, the recent allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and her take on how to approach Iran’s continued nuclear development.

Community ties: Gillibrand, who represents the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, spoke at length about her ties with New York’s Jewish community. “It’s a very diverse community,” she said. “It’s a community that cares deeply about New York and their fellow citizens. It’s a community that truly believes in the greater good; a lot of the not for profits that are run by Jewish leaders are among the best in the state. So it’s a real joy to spend time and to work with people in the Jewish community across our state.” Still, Gillibrand emphasized the dangers facing the community, which has seen a dramatic increase in targeted hate crimes. Calling antisemitism an “exponential” and “constant growth across the country,” she specifically blamed former President Donald Trump. “When they had the Charlottesville riots and chants were done that were deeply offensive against the Jewish community… President Trump did not stand up to it.”

“What I try to do in the U.S. Senate is be a galvanizer for legislation and policies to fight antisemitism.” Gillibrand — who later named “chutzpah” as her favorite Yiddish word — continued. “I typically lead the legislation and the bills that relate to fighting against antisemitism at the UN, which unfortunately, the Human Rights Council is often used as a platform for antisemitism. I also lead the letters and the funding to fight against antisemitism and to keep our community safe.”

On Cuomo: An early advocate supporting the #MeToo movement, Gillibrand came under pressure this past week to address the sexual harassment claims leveled against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Calling the allegations “obviously serious” and “deeply concerning,” the Albany native offered her support for the independent investigation requested by New York Attorney General Tish James. “I support her doing that. And I think that is the appropriate next step to allow people to be heard and allow facts to be gathered.”

“Many survivors, men and women, who have endured sexual violence, sexual harassment in the workplace, when they told the authorities what happened to them, they were disbelieved. And so the investigation never took place. So justice had no possibility of ever being done,” Gillibrand continued.“That’s why we have things like the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commision], and we have other systems to guarantee that we fight against antisemitism, that we fight against racism, [that we] fight against sexism, that we fight against harassment in the workplace. And so what I do is work on a bipartisan basis to change the way we deal with these cases.”

On Iran: Gillibrand reiterated her opposition to the U.S. leaving the 2015 Iran deal under Trump, explaining that her support for the deal fit with the evidence presented to Congress. “I sit on the Armed Services Committee, I now also sit on the Intelligence Committee, and at that time, our national security experts — our CIA, our Department of Defense — all said that the deal made such a better position for America in terms of national security,” she explained, “because we would gain all the knowledge of the minds, the mills, the centrifuges, the production, and we’d have hands on eyes on each production facility and and that they believed was the kind of intelligence that could not be passed up for any future conflict that might be necessary if Iran did breach…So that’s why I supported it. If we’re going to enter into it again, we need to have the same national security priorities”

Asked about [International Atomic Energy Agency] reports of undeclared Iranian sites, Gillibrand mentioned a trip to Vienna before the pandemic to meet with IAEA officials on the issue. “I certainly hope as soon as COVID is under control that we can take another trip out there and to not only meet with the IAEA again, but meet with our partners in the region, to assess the credibility of the review and where and how the US should stand with the world community against Iran,” she continued.

Lightning Round: Favorite Yiddish word? Chutzpah. Books she’s currently reading: Presidents of War: The Epic Story, from 1807 to Modern Times by Michael Beschloss and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (with her son). Favorite upstate New York delicacy? Apples, especially Honeycrisp and McIntosh, and Stewart’s ice cream. Most admired New York politician past or present? Former Senators Hillary Clinton and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Freshman Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) cautioned about the rise of antisemitism in progressive politics during a wide-ranging conversation in the inaugural episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” hosted by Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein.

Torres, who describes himself as “the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive,” said he is mindful of anti-Israel elements within the Democratic Party that have the ability to turn antisemitic. “We have an obligation to combat antisemitism no matter where it emerges, whether it’s from the right, from the left. It has to be fought at every turn and in every form,” he said. 

“My concern is that the pro-BDS left could be to the Democratic Party in American politics what Jeremy Corbyn has been to the Labour Party in British politics,” Torres cautioned. “It only takes a few demagogues to pump antisemitic poison into the bloodstream of a political party. And so I see it as my mission to resist the Jeremy Corbynization of progressive politics in the United States.”

Torres, a freshman representing New York’s 15th congressional district, addressed his hard-fought primary victory, which pitted him against a diverse group of Democratic candidates, from the conservative Rubén Díaz, Sr. to Democratic socialist Samelys López, who had the backing of high-profile progressive leaders and groups.

“New York City has become ground zero for Democratic socialism. In the latest election cycle, the [Democratic Socialists of America] won every single race in which it endorsed, except mine,” noted Torres, who on Thursday endorsed New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang.

“I had powerful forces arrayed against me — I had Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], the [Working Families Party], the DSA, all endorsed Samelys López against me. And not only did I win, but I won decisively,” Torres said of his primary victory. “And I sent a powerful message that you can run as a pro-Israel, pragmatic progressive without catering to the extremes and you can win decisively in a place like the South Bronx.”

“Limited Liability Podcast” is a new weekly podcast for readers of Jewish Insider. Hear from the key players generating buzz and making headlines in conversation with two top political operatives, Jarrod Bernstein and Rich Goldberg. One Democrat, one Republican. Both hosts have extensive experience in the political arena and a deep rolodex to match. It’s Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff brought to life.