On Israel with Ben Caspit, an Al-Monitor podcast

Ben Caspit speaks this week with the former head of the Israel Mossad's Intelligence division, Haim Tomer. Contrary to the IDF, the Mossad holds the view that Israel should not commit to stopping its activities against Iran. Tomer explains that according to the Mossad’s estimate, clandestine warfare against Iran could actually accelerate Tehran’s receptiveness to an agreement. "The pressure inflicted on Iran makes Iranian leadership more flexible for a possible agreement with the US and the world powers ... Israel must preserve maneuverability [vis-à-vis Iran]," he claims.  

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Ben Caspit talks this week with Gil Messing, the Chief of Staff and Head of Global Corporate Communications at the Israeli software technologies company Check Point. Messing recounts how his company recently stopped a sophisticated fishing campaign by Iranian hackers, which targeted senior Israeli political and security figures. “We constantly need to be under the assumption that such campaigns, such hacking operations, are taking place as we speak by the Iranians and by others,” he says.

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Ben Caspit talks this week with Dr. Shivi Greenfield, Deputy Director General at The Jewish Agency and author of the recently-published Hebrew-language book “Judaism and Liberalism.” Addressing the cleavage in Israel between secular and religious, Orthodox and Liberals, extremists and moderate, Greenfield argues that “the Orthodox assume as granted that the Judaism as they understand it today is the authentic one, from ever. On the other hand, Liberal Jews have very little knowledge on what Judaism says aside of what Orthodox tells them it says.” He says that the great challenge is to make people understand that there is more than one version to Judaism. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Hagit Ofran, co-director of the Settlement Watch Project at the anti-occupation NGO Peace Now. Police recently detained three Peace Now activists who allegedly intended to reach the West Bank outpost of Homesh with a bulldozer in order to demolish the illegal yeshiva operating there. Police also prevented dozens of the Peace Now activists and Meretz Knesset members from demonstrating there. Without the bulldozer campaign, the media and public opinion would have ignored the activists, explains Ofran. "We want to change a bit the language, because the settlers are completely violating the law. They are practically holding the Israeli public and government hostage. They decide where to go and they decide what Israel’s security considerations should be," says Ofran.  

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Ben Caspit hosts this week on his podcast Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll. The coalition Roll is part of is fragile, with only 60 parliamentarians supporting it at the Knesset, compared with 60 parliamentarians for the opposition. Still, the deputy minister strongly believes in the precedent set by the Bennett-Lapid government — that of true partnership with an Arab party. For him, the success of this alliance is of historical proportions. "We are determined to make it work. Not just for this coalition to hold on, but also for this country of us to have a better future," he notes.  

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Yarden Vatikay, the former director of the national information directorate in the prime minister’s office. The senior strategic adviser speaks about the killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh and the ensuing media storm Israel found itself in the midst of, noting that "being in the middle of a storm over international public opinion is not new for Israel. It is somewhat of a routine for the country, to move from a crisis to a crisis, though each crisis is different." Vatikay argues that Israel responded quickly and accurately when it proposed to the Palestinians to hold a joint investigation over Abu Akleh’s death. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov caused a diplomatic incident with Israel, Ukraine and the Jewish world last week when he claimed that Hitler had Jewish roots. For Dayan, the conspiracy theory advanced by Lavrov was antisemitic by any account. The Yad Vashem head expresses his satisfaction over the reported apology made by Russian President Vladimir Putin for Lavrov’s words. Still, he regrets that the apology was not included in the readout published by the Kremlin after Putin’s talks with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. "What Lavrov said is what we call an inversion of the Holocaust. The victims suddenly become part, and even the head, of the perpetrators. And this is classic antisemitism."

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Ben Caspit speaks this week to Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. He notes that his mother survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, while Gantz's father fought in Israel’s 1948 Independence War. Gantz, who himself has lost many friends and comrades in the battlefield, says, "We have the privilege, the duty and the honor to continue their legacy, to guarantee Israel’s security." Speaking about the biggest threat to Israel’s security and existence — the Iranian nuclear program — Gantz notes that Israel is doing it utmost vis-à-vis its partners and allies to improve a possible agreement with Iran, should there ever be one. 

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Ben Caspit hosts this week Brig. Gen. (res) Nadav Zafrir, the former commander of the elite IDF 8200 intelligence unit and currently the founder and managing partner of the cyber company Team8. Israel has suffered three terror attacks within the span of only three weeks. Zafrir notes that while these attacks were obviously terrible and tragic, numerous other attacks have been foiled recently via very sophisticated intelligence that IDF unit 8200 members and others in Israel’s defense establishment have collected. "It is true that young men unaffiliated directly with terror organizations who suddenly decide to perpetrate terror attacks are creating an almost unprecedented challenge. However, the world has become hyper connected, and the digital footprint of all of us is constantly rising. And so, the best response to these kinds of attacks would probably be based on very sophisticated, relevant and very big data."

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Boaz Ganor, the executive director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism and the Ronald S. Lauder Chair for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Israel has suffered in the past ten days three terror attacks of different types and by different kinds of perpetrators, explains Ganor. He notes that the method to thwart any more attacks should be the same in principle — gathering as much intelligence as possible. He also says that when we are dealing with a lone attacker, as was the case of the first attacks in Beersheba, the intelligence-gathering challenge is obviously much more complex.  

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