The Elections Are Over. Now What?

The 2024 Presidential election is finally behind us—or is it? In a time of change for the USA and the world at large, panelists Liel Leibovitz, Liz Hirsch Naftali and Nadav Eyal and moderator Oleg Ivanov sit to discuss the future that's coming next -- and what we can do about it. They explore reactions to the U.S. election results, the impact on Israeli-American relations, and the role of American support for Israel. With insight into potential foreign policy changes under Trump and an insistence on ongoing bipartisan efforts to support Israel, the panelists stress the importance addressing antisemitism, and the necessity of community unity in facing challenges. Watch now to get the full conversation.

About Our Moderator & Panelists:

Liel Leibovitz is editor at large at Tablet Magazine, and the host of its flagship podcast, Rootless, as well as of its daily Talmud podcast, Take One. A frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Commentary, and other publications, Liel is also a regular columnist for First Things magazine and a senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute, focusing on anti-Semitism as a national security threat. He's the author or co-author of eleven books, including, most recently, How the Talmud Can Change Your Life: Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book.

Liz Hirsh Naftali is the great-aunt of Abigail Mor Edan, a three-year-old who was held hostage in Gaza for fifty-one days. Abigail was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, from her community, Kfar Aza, after her parents were both murdered in front of her by Hamas terrorists. In the wake of that attack, Naftali became a fervent advocate working for the release of the hostages. Even after Abigail’s release on November 26, she remains dedicated to working for all those who remain in captivity in Gaza.

Nadav Eyal is one of Israel's most prominent journalists and a winner of the Sokolov Award—Israel's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. He writes columns for Yediot Ahronot and Ynet, Israel's most widely circulated newspaper and news website, respectively. He also serves as a senior commentator for Channel 12, one of Israel's two commercial channels, among other roles.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov was born in Odesa, Ukraine, and grew up in San Francisco, where he currently resides. Before becoming the Executive Director of StandWithUs Northern California, he worked on Jewish and pro-Israel advocacy at the San Francisco office of the American Jewish Committee, the Consulate of Israel in Miami, the World Jewish Congress, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Oleg earned his PhD at UCLA, where his research focused on the creation of Soviet antizionism and its international dissemination. He serves on the San Francisco District Attorney’s Jewish Community Advisory Board and was honored to receive the 2024 Swami Vivekananda Award for Advancing Pluralism from the Hindu American Foundation.

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Video Transcript

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. This panel is the elections are over. Now what? So just a small, easy topic. I'm sure we're gonna answer everyone's questions, figure everything out in the next hour and 10 minutes or so. My name is Oleg Ivanov. I'm the executive director of Stand With Us Northern California.

I'm very lucky to have some great panelists with us here today. Liel Leibovitz is the editor at large at Tablet Magazine, and the host of its flagship podcast, Rootless, as well as of its daily Talmud podcast, Take One. Nadav Eyal is one of Israel's most prominent journalists, and a winner of the Sokolov Award, Israel's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

Liz Hirsch Naftali is the great aunt of Abigail Mor Edan, a three year old who was held hostage in Gaza for 51 days. In the wake of that attack, Niftali became a fervent advocate working for the release of the hostages. She is a businesswoman and a host and creator of the Capital Coffee Connection podcast.

Thank you all for joining us today.

So we're gonna just jump right into it. Were you surprised by the outcome of the national elections? Why or why not? Liz, we can start with you.

Liz Hirsh Naftali: First, thank you all. Thank you all for being here. I don't know that I'd say I was surprised, as a hostage advocate, the work that I have been doing since 2000, since October 7th has been with Democrats and Republicans.

So I have been completely focused with the other hostage families, specifically the American families. And what I was seeing was like, Keep in mind, we all had the priority of what was happening in Gaza. We had the priority of what happened on October 7th, but we understood that in the polling that wasn't what was facing Americans.

And we knew this election was going to be close, and I really believed that it was going to come down to what people were feeling at their kitchen table and in their pocketbook. And that was something that wasn't surprising, because no matter whatever good economic news indicators there are people who are suffering.

And for me, it wasn't a surprise, and it's not part of the work that I do for the advocacy of the hostages in Israel, but it is just something for us to keep in mind, which is that we have a country also that is really close in terms of the electorate, and there's a pendulum effect, and people didn't like what they were seeing or feeling, and now they went to this other side, and we'll see how that pans out.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: Liel. During this whole electoral cycle I was like imagine being a 10 year old and it's just like the night before your birthday and you really hope that your parents will get you a pony and you wake up in the morning and they not only bought you the pony, but they bought you the whole freaking farm.

I was elated but not at all surprised. And the reason. is that rather than following the mutually accrediting mediocrities of the mainstream media I was spending months and months following X accounts with names like DataRetard17 who are sharing raw data of things like registration percentages of various demographics in various key states. Which ensured me pretty early on that it's, in fact, not going to be close. That it's going to be something akin to a bloodbath. Even I, in my ruthless dreams, did not imagine the extent of the sweep. The popular vote and inroads in every single demographic in America.

A rejection on this scale. It was just wonderful. It's morning in America again.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: You're gonna hear a lot of you're gonna hear a lot of opinions up here that you may or may not agree with. That's one of the beautiful things about Z3 is that we really bring together people from all aisles, all sides of the spectrum, from Israel, here and from around the world. Thank you, Liel.

Nadav.

Nadav Eyal: I don't see myself first of all, I'm not voting. I didn't vote. I'm not an American citizen. I'm an Israeli citizen. I don't get to be an expert on, on, on American politics. I did cover U.S. Elections since 2008. And Traveled a lot to this country and, wrote a book after 2016 as a result of talking a lot before the elections about the possibility of a Trump victory, although I don't, I'm not arguing that I prophesied it.

For me, let me give you just one vantage point. I came to this country to, to teach. I came in August. And one of the things that struck me, just building, starting to build the life here at Google, Technically speaking, is the extent to which my feeling was that things were not working the way that I knew America to work.

And I again, traveled to this country many times, and I was amazed by anecdotes. Not by data. I didn't have the data to support them, although I did. I saw the two thirds of this country think that it's in the wrong direction. This is usually, something you don't need to go even to voters registration.

Usually when two thirds of the country are saying it's going the right, the wrong way, the incompetent is going to lose the elections. It's just as a general rule, but what I saw the U.S. What I saw in big cities, and I'm not talking only about New York, when I visited, was very different, but it had a lot to do with I lived in the UK for years and the UK sort of prides itself to being infamous with red tape and bureaucracy, and I couldn't believe the, the amount of demo bureaucracy that I was engaged with in, in this country.

And I can give a host of examples or the way in which I. Got the feeling that American consumers, it's not that they're paying the high prices that they are paying, but that they're not getting what people in other countries are getting for these high prices. And I'm coming from Israel, which is quite an expensive country to begin with.

It just seemed to me that something isn't working. But again, I wasn't, And, surprise or not surprise, I was looking at the polls kept saying that it's a close race, and as someone who's not covering the race, is not an American, I basically told myself, go with the data that you do have, and it seems quite close.

Every element that I saw with my own eyes, for instance, traveling to Pennsylvania and writing about this before the elections. I traveled to areas like Northampton, which is a specific county that goes, with usually with whoever wins the presidential elections. And all I could see there was a lot of paid advertisement with the Harris Biden campaign.

Everything was paid, and everything I saw with people's lawns was Trump, which was unpaid. And again one of the things you need to warn yourself when making observations about America is that it's a big place, and I come from a very small country, so I was very modest as to that And I'm still I want to see you know the results I want to see not only the exit polls But also the analysis that we're going to have in a couple of months to see what really happened and I was mainly, again, impressed by the the way that the U.S. Democracy responded immediately after the elections, and I always wonder, of course, what would have happened if it was the other way around. But maybe the other panelists here will be more experts on that.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Turning from looking backwards to looking forwards, Liz, I want to start with you again. You've been having a lot of conversations with elected officials around the hostages, bringing them home, which we all want to see happen as soon as possible.

What do you think we can expect from a second Trump administration? And how might I, how might it be different or similar from the first?

Liz Hirsh Naftali: The, to expect, first my belief is that you're going to get what he said, Trump said he's going to do. You already see with the nominations of Marco Rubio to be the Secretary of State or Huckabee to be the ambassador.

You see the direction, which is what Trump and his team and his administration has said that they, his potential administration and that's what we're getting, and so there's not like a big surprise in that piece. What I look at it as I say, right now, and I go back to the hostages, and I'm going to use this audience as the people who need to hear this, which is, President Biden a group of American hostage families.

We've met with this administration for a year plus now, and we met with the president in his office in the Oval Office a few days ago in Washington, D. C. And one of the things that he was very clear is that obviously he keeps working in his administration 24 hours, seven days a week. And he has said, though, that there's an incoming administration And that the, by the way, President Trump and President elect Trump, same person, he has said throughout this last few months that the hostages must be released.

That the fighting needs to stop. And he said in many ways that this needed to end before he became president again. And Wednesday, when we spoke with the President, he had just met with President elect Trump, and they had talked about the hostages. I don't know the details, but they had talked about the need to get these people, these 101 people out.

And what I say is, whatever the direction, and we understand the direction, is that we need to do everything we can to ensure that we don't have to wait for a Trump administration to begin on January 20th, 21st, These people cannot make it another winter in Gaza in tunnels. So when you ask that question, it makes me think about what should the first thing that they do before they even take office is to do everything they can to work with Prime Minister Netanyahu and to work aside alongside President Biden and get these hostages home immediately.

So that's my answer.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you, Liz. Liel.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: I think that the question should probably be addressed on, on, on two parallel tracks. There's domestic track and international track. I will go short on the first and given the discussion and given my agreement with Liz that obviously the hostages in Israel are top of everyone's mind.

I'll go a little longer on that. I think domestically we have. A very long road ahead of us to make sure that the mechanisms that were put in place originally by Barack Obama, but kept by Joe Biden to turn American democracy into some third world is nightmare. And I'm talking, for example, about the 51 intelligence officials who swore up and down four and a half weeks before the 2020 election that there isn't any such thing as the Hunter Biden laptop.

It was in fact, Russian propaganda and disinformation, which the governor of this state is trying to legislate against. And lo and behold, it turned out miraculously. After the election, after, by the way, they censored the White House communication Twitter feed so that they can't share the New York Post story, which turned out to be completely true.

Taking care of what happened, the significant, large scale corruption of our intelligence community and the way that they melded with the business community and with the Democrat Party is a very strong domestic priority. Leaving that aside on a happy note, thank you for the one person clapping.

A drink, drink sent me after this. On, on the international scope I think there is an enormous reason for optimism. Again, the signature policy of the Obama administration has been what my colleague at the Hudson Institute, Mike Duran, calls the realignment, which is the policy that holds contrary to, A theory so stupid, only a professor could think it's smart that the way to bring peace to the Middle East is to prop up the Iranians give them anything and everything that they want negate anyone who tries to stand up to them.

And we have seen the outcome of all this. It is not a coincidence that October 7th and for that matter, Putin's invasion of Ukraine happened under the Biden administration, because when Trump came to deal with Iran. You could ask Qasem Soleimani how that went. I think we're going to see a Middle East reality that is very different.

One that cuts the Iranians down to size. One that does not believe in canards It's like saying, oh my God, you can't fight an idea. You can't kill an idea. Ask the top brass of Hezbollah how true that statement is or is not. And I hope most importantly put an end to the dangerous delusional fantasy that it is somehow in our interest to pursue a thing called a Palestinian state.

The appointment of Mike Huckabee is tremendously optimistic on that end, and I think we would have a sane reality based foreign policy once again in America.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you, Liel.

It's great having an Israeli voice here on stage. Nadav, we would love to hear from you on this question.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: Technically

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: I'm also Israeli. I have to be clear about that. There we go.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: Two Israelis are better than one. I This is two ish. Come and live there for a while. Qualify. No. I try,

Nadav Eyal: First of all, I think it, it is to an extent unpredictable.

And I'm saying to an extent because really it's an understatement. Really I don't know, and again, I'm not gonna wade into the domestic political discussion in this country because I have enough trouble back home to deal with and I'm definitely wading into what's happening there, publishing stories about what's happening in the Prime Minister's office and others, and you can read them.

I do wanna say something general about, about the Middle East. Neither the Biden administration nor the Trump administration had a reliable, coherent strategy for the Middle East. I'm not saying that, both administrations didn't do things that were calculated or wise at the time. And I think the Obama administration had some things that they did.

For instance, the pressure on Iran before the JCPOA. And I, literally know the people who would ring banks across the world and say to them you're working with the Islamic Republic, maybe you shouldn't. This entire maximum pressure idea began actually with the time before the JCPOA with the Obama administration.

I'm not saying that the JCPOA was exactly what Israel was hoping for. It was definitely according both to the top brass in Israel at the time and the prime minister was not. But if you look then at what the Trump administration did, which was basically. For instance withdrawing from the JCPOA with the agreement, with the arms agreement with Iran as far as the nuclear agreement is concerned.

Or indeed the strike against Qasem Soleimani, which is something I uploaded at the time as an op ed writer. Yeah, but how do you carry on with that? So how do you make sure, if you're leaving the JCPOA, how do you make sure that the Iranians don't just start enriching, So many Trump supporters would say, yeah, but they didn't do that as long as Trump was in power, but then they felt emboldened.

Yeah the thing about strategy is that it's maintaining a line that deals with actual things that might happen in reality. And it tells you where you want to be in five years from now. And I don't think that the Biden administration, The Trump administration, and to an extent, the Obama administration, although they, they tried strategy there, even if it didn't really succeed, that they had a good idea about this, and the fact that the U.S wouldn't have a good strategy for the Middle East, which is coherent and thorough, and it would be maintained, by the way, even through administrations that might be from a different party, that, that's, That's a big problem. And I even would say that we wouldn't have had the kind of events that we had on October seven if the U.S had a coherent strategy for the Middle East. And I'll tell you exactly what I mean. How do you tackle bad actors in the Middle East in the long run? So beyond, ordering this strike or beyond making threats or beyond saying, like the Obama administration said, We need to have agreements and we need to move this into the diplomatic arena or getting something done with the Palestinian Israeli record.

That's fine. That's your wishful thinking. But in a realist world, what do you do in order to make sure that the bad actors, Don't ruin the area and chances of normalization in the long run. So I'll give you a good example to that. A big credit, a big chunk of credit goes to the Trump administration for the Abraham Accords.

And nobody believed that the Trump administration would be able to do that. And they didn't even get credit at the beginning after the Abraham Accords because people were so surprised. And they didn't want to give the Trump administration credit. And I do because, again, I'm an Israeli. I just don't care about partisanship in this country in that sense.

But how do you make sure that the Iranians are not going to ruin the Abraham Accords? What do you do? Is it everything about threat of use of force, credible threat of use of force? Possibly you need to have that, but you need to have other tools. That are operating there in the long run. So one of the things that happened with the Biden administration with the Obama administration to an extent, even with the Trump administration, is that they were saying, Let's move it away from the combatant war armed struggle kind of phase, and let's move it away towards negotiations, Yeah, that's I agree with that. As an Israeli, I want that, but how do you tackle in the long run with Hezbollah, with Hamas, with Iran? And the basic idea, we're going to leave them behind us. We're going to leave them behind us. They're going to become irrelevant. And, maybe we're going to pressure them and then there's something going to happen there.

And sometimes my Republican friends say, yeah, but it's unfair because Trump has been much more aggressive. Towards these bad actors than others. And then I tell them look, if you think that there was no fallout after the Singapore summit, Does someone here remember the Singapore summit? I was there.

I came there to see how the president solves North Korea and its nuclear weapons. And I know how this influenced the Iranians, looking at that, seeing that actually, nothing happened beyond a handshake. And then the president came back home and said, the prob I'm paraphrasing, but not really paraphrasing, the problem is solved, right?

So you need to have coherent, real foreign policy in this country, the way that the U.S. Had before, for instance, the U.S. Kissinger, but not only Kissinger. I'm gonna, I'm gonna balance it with another name. You choose your foreign secretary, State department official of your choosing the kind of this country had before And it's not about public opinion.

It's about managing to explain to people that some things are hard and they take time And they need perseverance and the kind that I don't think that the world is right now reading from the U.S in the last decade or so. And maybe this is going to be a change. I would want that as a citizen of the world, as a citizen of Israel, mostly.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you. Thank you Nidal. Liel, I want to start with you on this next one. I want to take it back down a bit to our community, the Jewish community. So different polls show that there might be greater polarization within the American Jewish community than before, with a greater percentage of the community probably voting Republican in this election.

How do you account for that?

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: It's a funny question. And I'll argue with Nadav's assertions later, though it's hard, because, the British accent makes everything sound so much more so much more profoundly smarter than anything I say in my, straight out of TV accent that I picked up as an Israeli.

I want to say a few things about this. First of all, again if this election was about anything, It comes down to two words, stop lying. This is the stop lying election. Immediately after the election literally this is Tuesday night, we saw exit polls that said, ah, 79, 000 percent, it was actually the number was 79 percent of Jews still voted for Harris.

And I was like, really? That doesn't, sit right. And then you look at the methodology, which no one advertised. And it turns out because among the states that were not counted in the exit poll were New York and California, where like literally all Jews freaking live. And then almost immediately J Street and the Democrats rushed to put out their own exit polls, saying, oh my god, man, It was all us, look at this, we're still Democrats, don't worry, we're still loyal, supplicants of this, single party state.

It will take, as Nadav wisely said, a long time for us to have really good data. My colleague Armin Rosen did Fantastic work. A tablet just the other day published a great piece in which he looked at all kinds of districts, including, by the way, the Upper West Side in the Bronx, where Trump is making headway on DSO.

And so I want to answer your question and then say something larger. How do you explain it? I don't think it's very difficult. I think when you have a person, for example, like Chuck Schumer, who we now know was contacted by the President of Columbia, who said to him Minouche Shafik, who said to him, there are a bunch of, Hamas supporting, Nazis on campus bashing Jews, what do I do?

And this is not me, this is a transcript according to a Congressional hearing, thank God for Virginia Fox and Elise Stefanik, through which we know the truth. The senior ranking Jew and the Senate Majority Leader at the time, said, don't worry about it, do nothing, anti Semitism is a problem only Republicans care about.

If you wonder how we got here, this is how we got here. When you have every single Democrat run country, city or state, when you have Chicago, for example, and a Jewish man gets shot by an undocumented migrant who was let in by the Biden-Harris administration, and the entire city of Chicago does pirouettes to never ever say, God forbid, that the motive was anti Semitism, though there's a ring doorbell camera that shows the shooter screaming, Allah akbar.

So how we got here, not a very hard question to answer, but I want to say something a lot more hopeful which is I think it's an amazing thing. I don't want the Jewish community to ever be tethered to this party or that. I think it's a great thing that we show our politicians that if they want our vote, they are going to have to work for it and not take it for granted.

And if the Democrat party uses the data, which I'm sure will come out and show a much, much larger. percentage of Jews voting Republican as an opportunity to clean house and rid themselves from the absolute Insanity of the last 12 years that would be a net gain and not just for America but for the Jewish community as well

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you.

Thank You Liel Liz. You're a New Yorker an Israeli you go back and forth. What do you think of this shift?

Liz Hirsh Naftali: There's so much there to unpack Look, I'm going to turn the question around a bit, because I'm not here to bash either side. My colleague here has a definite opinion, and I really respect it, but I'm gonna turn it around and say, before October 7th, on October 6th, I was a Democrat.

I really worked hard to elect leaders that were women, that looked like America, that believed in an agenda of the Democratic Party. And it wasn't because I didn't want to talk to or be with Republicans, it was just that's who I was, that's who I was raised as. Then on October 7th, I woke up, I was in Israel, I was in a bomb shelter, I learned that my niece and her husband had been murdered by Hamas terrorists.

At that time, I believe their daughter, a three year old, had been kidnapped and taken hostage. I came back to America, people said, my family, and people said, go back to America, you'll be more helpful. And I became a hostage advocate. And what I learned was that we needed, as hostage advocates, as Israel's supporters, we needed Democrats and Republicans.

And I spent a year And I still do this work. Abigail, my great niece, was released in the end of November with the women and children. Thank God. Yes. But keep in mind she was a three year old who had seen both her parents be murdered and then was taken hostage for 51 days. I was desperate. I did not know who to go to.

I had been doing democratic work, truly, but on October 7th, I woke up and I said, I'm an American. That's why, and I'm not an Israeli. I don't have a passport. I've never done political work in Israel. I am an American. And I looked to our American government and I said, who can help me? And I met Republicans and Democrats, House, Senate, Far left, middle Jewish, not, religious, conservative, evangelicals.

And what I found was that we needed really good leaders on both sides. People with heart and humanity that were willing to listen to myself very early on, because I was already back in D. C. But then troves of Israelis came, people from Israel, from other nations came to our country to get our support from our leaders.

And that balance of having really good Democrats and really good Republicans is something that we all should be thinking about. We can clap for a Republican line. We can clap for a Democratic line. But at the end of the day, we need both Democrats and Republicans, one, to continue to fight for the hostages, but two, for Israel's safety and security.

No matter what you all say and what all you think, we need strong American government supporting the Israel future. And I'll just go back to, and I'd like to end on this, which is For our hostages at the State of the Union, when President Biden spoke, there were only two times when Democrats and Republicans stood up.

One was in memory of John Lewis. The second was when he brought up the hostages. Everyone stood, and I say to you all here in this room, people listening, but for you to share this, we must keep Israel, and we must immediately keep the hostages bipartisan, and we must push that in the next weeks and months that we do everything we can to collectively bring home our hostages and to take care of Israel.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Amen. Said. Thank you, Liz. Nadav, I want to pivot a little bit. On a related but slightly different note what do you make of the difference between how Israelis, Israeli Americans, and American Jews perceive the Trump presidency?

Nadav Eyal: First of all, I didn't see a specific poll of data as to Israeli Americans.

My, knowing the community here they're very supportive of generally speaking the people I know are very supportive of Trump and every poll in Israel shows that Trump is very popular in Israel. And he has not lost any popularity since 2020. And his popularity actually increased.

And I think a lot has to do with With Israelis felt reassured by the Biden administration at the beginning of the war, and they were really appreciative of the president's empathy. It wasn't only about support. It was about his empathy that was made public. I remember, tweet after tweet and a speech and other speech and coming to Israel during war for the first time.

The president did that, and I think this president, even if, people didn't vote for him, we can agree that he carries this ability of empathy, which I think is crucial for leadership in general. But for Israelis at that time, and even at this time, it's so important because Israelis are, internationally speaking, first and foremost, lonely.

They feel alone. They feel attacked. They were physically attacked. They went through an attempted ethnic cleansing and then to their surprise, really to their surprise even of the most pessimist Israelis. They didn't expect— And even the most optimistic Hamas supporters didn't expect to see such a far reaching support for something on the spectrum between a pro-Palestinian narrative to an actual pro-Hamas, pro-genocide against Jews in Eretz Israel, the destruction of Israel legitimizing violence against every Israeli.

Defining every Israeli as a settler-colonialist and all we have seen happening across this country and of course, not only in this country, mainly in campuses, but not only in campuses. Israelis felt betrayed by the international community and at the beginning, they only had the United States, which both supported and, you saw that with John Kirby again and again being asked and he, being asked about this argument of genocide that was asked very early in the war and the way that Kirby answered these questions by saying, it's Hamas that attempted genocide.

With the attempted goal of genocide against the Jews according to their charter and the rest. But then as the war progressed, it was clear to many Israelis, and what I'm saying now is not an indictment, it's an observation, that, it was a balancing act. We need to get the hostages back. We need the war to end and Israel to be secure.

There are too many Palestinians. that are dying in the Gaza Strip. Israel should do more to keep, and I can go on with these formulas, which you have probably heard like a thousand times before. And for Israelis, this was, for most Israelis, this was enraging. And they felt, again, that this was a political play by the administration and by, then by Vice President Harris.

And I remember myself specifically writing in Twitter after the vice president encountered someone who was shouting at her that she's supporting genocide. And then he was escorted out of the room, and then I wrote that, if someone accuses you that you're part of mass murder genocide, I don't know if the right answer is to say, we hear you.

And we understand that no, you're being accused of murder— Or assisted murder. You need to give an answer to that. Any way you cut it You need to give an answer to that and Israelis saw that no real answer would And they understood that this is about the base and this is about parts of the democratic party They saw that and they weren't happy with it And many of those Israelis felt reaffirmed with their support of Trump.

Now, I need to say another something just to dilute this. Most Israelis, at least those that I talk with, still think that George W. Bush was a great president. And most Americans, and specifically the Trump camp in this country, don't think that, right? They really don't. But most Israelis are like, Yeah, George Bush was for us, and it was A sentiment there, right?

So the fact that and I think the George Bush term in office was tragic to the Middle East tragic and led to much of the destabilization that we're seeing today. And for instance, one example that nobody talks about is that Bush forced the Israelis to have an open election in the West Bank in Gaza and to allow Hamas to participate in these elections against Israel.

The Oslo Accords. This is something nobody knows and Hamas won the elections, didn't get the power it wanted, and did a coup d'etat. In the Gaza Strip and this is how we go to October. That's just one example. So I'm just saying, there, and the difference, of course, with the Jewish community in this country is that most of the Jewish community in this country, unlike Israeli and maybe Israeli Americans, most Israeli Americans, is supportive of the DNC.

I saw the, I completely agree we need to wait for the data, but I just saw, for instance, the Melman data. Which I trust much more than the exit polls. Although he's affiliated, and everything. And the Melman data was also the, it was the same kind of, more than 75%, I think, support. So we're gonna wait for that data.

But Israelis are turning more and more conservative as time goes by. It became, it was founded as a semi socialist state. It's today much more conservative. Many, more people are religious. And the appeal of conservative ideas, and therefore Republican ideas is increasing in the Israeli society.

So it's just a fact. Thank you, Nadav.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: That's a lot of really important historical context also for this question. Lial, you're an Israeli American. What do you make of this difference?

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: The difference Between

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: the way that Israelis, Israeli Americans, and Americans think about the Trump presidency.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: I think it's visceral. First of all, I completely agree with your analysis of the George W. Bush years. I think that the history of American policy in the Middle East is a history of the sort of, criminal stupidity of the Bush years in which we did things like believe the freedom agenda, that our job is to somehow, turn the Middle East into a thriving oasis of democracy and human rights, followed immediately by the weaponization of the same idea by Barack Obama, which is bringing the same ideas here and making this into a third world country.

I disagree with you about Trump not having a foreign policy. I think he has a very kind of, straightforward foreign policy, which is which is a kind of realist foreign policy that most Americans who weren't educated by Ivy League universities for the last 30 years would have no trouble understanding as straightforward.

About Israelis, look I think the difference in many ways between some American Jews and Israelis comes down to the same old saying. When you're having eggs, and this is a very Jewish joke, when you're having eggs and bacon for breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

Israelis really can't afford to make a lot of mistakes in their foreign policy ideas, which is why you see Israelis very rapidly sobering up from a host of fantasies that are, easier. For American Jews to entertain. And again I want to go back and back to the same thing because I think it matters a lot.

This is the big fight that we're going to see that's going to, I think, be very challenging for these two communities. The notion of Palestinian statehood which is something that an overwhelming majority of Israelis, and I've, may correct me if I'm wrong oppose and somewhat, vociferously and vehemently opposed now. Opposed now. And I'd say it's getting more and more, getting progressively more oppositional. Something that a vast majority of American Jews, especially on the non Orthodox side of the spectrum, still believe is some kind of noble goal, because we have, some kind of responsibility to include, the people who are letting us know that there are enemies and wish us dead in every conversation about our future you're going to see this gulf increase more and more.

But at the same time I think that is in a weird way it's good news because we're finally having the conversations that we need to be having. We're finally having a reality based conversation. about, real, observable, tangible facts, rather than each side coming with a fantasy of their own and saying I wish to, incorporate this in the world.

I think this is a beginning of a tremendously painful but absolutely essential dialogue that we'll be having for, four

Nadav Eyal: years and then some. I have a question too, Liel. Because really because I'm fascinated by it. The Trump, it was Trump Unlike the Biden administration that made the deal of the century offer during his first term, which included the Palestinian state So I know that you don't represent Trump what you said But I'm wondering and this goes to my point about not having a strategy, you know Obviously the new ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee Is not fond of the idea of palestinian statehood to say the least but you know The trump administration trump people were very committed to the idea of palestinian statehood and I wonder if you think this has changed and if this has changed How are they going to bring about the saudi arabia?

and normalization, and all the rest, which seems now at least the cornerstone. I really don't know. It's an

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: excellent

Nadav Eyal: question.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: And I have a way of answering it which may sound, too flat and facile but I think actually has the added value of being true.

Nadav Eyal: That's

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: good.

It's a good when it works, it's fine. I think the the Trump. The Trump kind of doctrine, if you could call it that. Call it, and I'll be as crass as I can, call it the shithole doctrine. Which is how he, very purposefully referred to large parts of the world and evidenced that by the fact that, there's a reason everyone wants to come to this country and nobody says, oh I really wish I could, go and live in Jordan.

I hear it's wonderful this time of year. What Trump wants is to keep that part of the world. And it's many kind of neurosis and violent outbursts as far away from America and its politics as is possible. At the same time, he understands that the fights that are fought in many corners of the world aren't just or those guns and bombs, et cetera, aren't just aimed at Israelis or Ukrainians or Armenians or, hurs in China, but rather at a sort of global order, which the Obama Biden people were very eager to embrace the axis of resistance led by Iran.

But also containing, Russia, Turkey, and a bunch of other, no good players. And so Trump, like any good, real estate, New York real estate person. And by the way, this is, I think, key. to understanding what his foreign policy is. If you do New York real estate for one minute, you understand, you have a very almost primitive, this is a good word in the good way term of how power works.

Keep all those forces at bay while paying as little as you can for the privilege. So I think that this theory in practice, what it means is basically Support your allies, have allies, and let them finish the job according to their desires. Now, when an Israeli government comes and says, as it did for a very long time, we're still committed to this kind of Oslo framework, we have some problems, but our main goal and wish is to end up in, a state where we have two, a two state solution where we could live side by side with security guarantees, et cetera, et cetera, the Trump doctrine would say, okay, fine.

If you believe, as the front line people who would have to answer this problem if and when it becomes a problem, that this is the best way to go about it, then sure, we'll support you. However, if you believe that a better way to do it is to go ahead and sit on the Litani River and kick every single civilian in Lebanon north of that and have a real security buffer, not like the first time around, and devastate all of Hezbollah by killing all of them, that's fine too.

That is your prerogative as a sort of American ally Bye. In this region the Obama Biden years have been So you're saying that they're going to allow Israel to do whatever it wants? Whatever Israel believes is necessary for its own security. Now, what Israel is going to choose to do, that's a whole different question, and I'm curious, because this is your expertise.

Israel may not choose to do the things that we think, for example this is one reason why it's currently engaged in this preposterous notion that we need some kind of quote unquote agreement in Lebanon because yeah we've not had enough agreements with this failed Hezbollah run state. But I think a theory of holding your allies accountable for their regional security and letting them have the tools that they need to win Biden just changed the rules a little bit over the last couple of days but Remember who it was who gave Javelin missiles to to Zelensky?

It was Trump, the first time around. Because that's how you win wars. Not by negotiating, but by killing a bunch of people and then taking their land. None of this is very hard. We're just so smart that it seems like, really, distasteful for us because we were reared on this notion that everyone wants, universalist peace and we're all the same and there are no cultural differences between human beings and if you only give them 15, 000 more work permits a month, they will never attack you.

Man, we've, we're in a very different place now.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Liz, I wanna shift to you. You go back and forth between Israel and New York all the time. What do you think that American Jews can learn from Israelis, but also that Israelis can learn from American Jews? What's great about a place like Z3 is that we really come together as you see on stage.

We have all of these different voices. This relationship is incredibly important. It's all one community. It's all one people. Just pivoting the question a little bit, I wonder, what do you think of that exchange?

Liz Hirsh Naftali: In the perfect world, the Israelis would learn, or I don't know, say learn, but would see that the Americans. 100% in terms of the government, and when I say 100% does mean everybody, but as a government, the United States government supports Israel to defend herself, to be secure, to be strong and I think that should be the overriding message.

But I also think that the Israelis have to understand or should understand, I don't like to say have to, should understand that the president, the administration is the president administration of the United States. That doesn't mean that they don't have a strong ally and they won't do everything to support Israel.

But at the end, they are the president of the United States. And so when you ask that, like there's this nuance, which is that America is Israel's friend, Israel. President Biden has said he's a Zionist. He had done everything. For the last year to support Israel and I know you'll disagree and you'll say There was some munition that didn't get there and a couple things that didn't get there But overall most of that stuff was for future fighting most of stuff they needed for this war was there When they were bombed by Iran on April I think 13th bombed by Iran at the beginning of September or missiles were sent hundreds and hundreds of missiles were sent America was there.

President Biden was there with Vice President Harris, with Secretary of State Blinken, with Lloyd Austin, with, Jake Sullivan. They were all there to support. And so what I want to say to the Israelis is, You have an administration that was there for you. We can disagree on certain things. I will also say that the administration of President Trump was there for Israel.

So we have different ways we look at it, but we have to be very clear that no matter what. And look, on October 7th, when Abigail was taken as a hostage, President Biden came to a warring nation within 10 days. That was the first time a president had shown up in Israel to support and to show what it could do.

And I will say to this audience, I'll get to the second part of your question, but I'll say to this audience, Abigail and 104 other women and children were released at the end of November. That was because there was negotiations and it was led by President Biden and his administration, and it was mediated by the Qatari.

We're not talking about the Qataris today, I'm not going to go into a geopolitical discussion, but they were the ones who mediated and negotiated. And I can tell you this because I was there in the rooms hearing this, watching it, and knowing that this little three year old who turned four two days before she was released Every day wondering if I was doing what I could do if the U.

S. Government was doing what they could do, and I bring it up because if it weren't for President Biden, and this is what the Israelis need to know if it were not for President Joe Biden and the Qataris, I don't think 105 women and Children would have been released. From captivity in Hamas and that is not, I would hope that if it was a Trump administration that could say the same thing.

So I believe that now as you ask that question of what we can, give to the Israelis or learn from the Israelis is, listen, love of country. And I will say this other part, after October 7th, seeing the country come together, the people, the government, there was nobody that showed up on Kfar Azza where my family was all day long from the IDF.

That was a failure. It was a failure that they got in the first place. That was a failure from the leadership and from the Israeli government. And others. The military, the intelligence. And I take it very personal, that failure, because my niece and her husband were murdered that day. Abigail was taken hostage.

But what I can say, and there's going to be a reckoning and that will happen, but what I can say about the Israeli people, they showed up. They were there. There were people who came, reservists that came, and they lost their lives to protect people on those kibbutzes. There were Bedouins that came and showed up and took people back and forth.

There were parents that came and found their kids, if they could, at the Nova Music Festival and brought them back and forth. They, there was no equipment for the soldiers that ended up coming. They didn't have they didn't have vests, they didn't have helmets, they didn't have socks. The Israelis showed up for them.

They didn't have food. Israelis were cooking for them and bringing them food. And that is what a sign of an incredibly beautiful country is. And so when you ask that question, those are my answers. And that is how I really feel at this moment, sitting here today.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Said. Thank you, Liz.

Nadav, I want to turn back to you and I want to pull back a little bit and take maybe more of a macro approach to some of these questions. Israel doesn't exist in a bubble. The same Iranian government funding and guiding Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis sends drones to Russia to use against Ukraine.

How will this incoming administration's policies regarding Ukraine and other global hotspots like Taiwan and the Korean peninsula affect Israel?

Nadav Eyal: Israel, like many other countries in the world, needs a strong U.S. In the global arena. A U.S. That is committed to the values of freedom, liberty, and peace. and the defense of democracies. And when I say democracies, I don't mean popular democracies like or illiberal democracies like Viktor Orban calls them, or religious democracies as Turkey defines itself.

I'm talking about the model that has existed in this country. Since its inception without a strong U.S. Israel cannot survive. I need to make this as clear as possible. And I, I wouldn't have made this I would have altered this without hearing this. And let me tell you from who I heard it.

The director general off the former director general of Israel's nuclear commission gave me an interview. It was an exclusive. It was the first interview he gave in his life and he says it's the last interview he'll give in his life. And that interview was during the judicial overhaul in Israel. And the reason he gave the interview is because he was so worried because of what the government was doing.

And he was worried because he thought that it is incredibly important for Israel to be aligned with democracies around the world. And he believed that the judicial overhaul is going to tilt Israel away from these democracies. So I was sitting in his living room, and this man, according to foreign sources, is responsible for Israel's nuclear arsenal.

So he is responsible for the prime guarantor of Israel's security and survival, physically. And then he says to me, without American support, we will not survive. And I say to him, look, this is ironic. I know that you're not going to. Recognize that, but you were responsible, allegedly, according to foreign sources, to Israel's nuclear arsenal.

So Israel can survive anyway, and he says, listen to what I'm saying to you. We will not survive without the US. We will not survive. But what does it mean without the US? The U.S. For that needs to be the beacon and the shining city on the hill that it was for people around the world. And I was one of those people in Israel that thought that the Israeli policies as to Ukraine were very misguided.

And this is not only an Netanyahu government thing, this happened also during the Benet Lapid government. So it's not a partisan issue that I'm criticizing. Israel did not give enough support to Ukraine during the war. And I think that was a mistake. I think that was a mistake because in the 1970s, I don't know if people remember that, Israel had no problem during the Cold War, when it was the USSR to send its Israeli Air Force and take down Soviet airplanes that were flying in the Middle East.

So it's not about, Russia deterring Israel. Israel in the 1970s, which was a much weaker country and the USSR, which was, a much more powerful country, didn't have trouble doing that. So it's true that this thing is your own security. And the other thing in Ukraine is not your own security, but I see this as an alliance of democracies around the world.

And one of the things that I find incredibly important is for the U.S. To retain a coherent foreign policy that supports democracies around the world and supports them really in a robust way. And I think this is a measure of security for small countries in general. Look, countries survive through the liberal world order.

that was built by the United States since 1945 because the U.S. Is there. And small countries suffer most when the order collapses. And I think that what we are seeing in Israel today, and I actually wrote an entire book about that, is what we're seeing in Israel today is Israel suffering from this order starting To crumble and it begins at the outwards and the provinces of the benevolent empire.

And then it proceeds to the center. And this is what we're seeing. And this is why I know that some of the things that I'm saying sound completely distanced from some of the things that were said by some people in the circles around this administration. But I still maintain the hope that they will have a coherent, Strategy to support democracies around the world and to stand against the type of axis of chaos or axis of resistance, but actually axis of terror and hatred that we're seeing stretching from Iran and Russia and North Korea and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, and you can name those, and we're seeing, at least their propaganda spreading into this country.

And it's, I think it's very dangerous for Israel security. So it's first and foremost, not about me talking as a, a general liberal in the world. I'm saying liberal in the classic sense, not in the way that it's used in the derogatory term in this country for one side or the other, but a classic liberal.

It's about really Israeli security.

Liz Hirsh Naftali: I'll just add on to that, which is, yes, I agree. And a strong America is a strong supporter for Israel and these other nations. And you look at this whole hostage crisis. Where is the world? Where are people's outrage in other countries? There are people currently being held from 23 nations.

Yes, there are seven Americans, but there are people from 23 nations. You do not hear the same outrage, but you know that America is strongly Fighting and that you know that both the president and the president elect have said we are here for israel We are going to fight for these hostages And I look at it like the icrc and other organizations.

We have not had any sign of life from any of these hostages None of these organizations have gone in. So what I also remind us all is that we do need to have a president Trump come in and be a leader, not only for America, but to show strong leadership for the world because that does benefit and that does help Israel.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Definitely. I can tell you, I'm a Ukrainian Jew. I was born in Ukraine when I was part of the USSR and my family came here as religious refugees. Many of the Ukrainians in the Bay Area are Jewish. There are of course many Ukrainian Jews in Israel. What's happening in Ukraine is very close to our hearts.

It's very near and dear to us. Many of us still have family and friends there and I can tell you from personal experience that the week after October 7 last year, when we had a rally in San Francisco, the only diplomat who showed up to speak on stage other than the Israeli consulate was the Ukrainian consul general, who said in no uncertain terms, this is one fight.

This is one enemy. We're in this together. Now, of course, the way Ukraine votes at the UN, other considerations, we need to keep this in mind. It's not so simple and straightforward, but again, as someone coming from this community I think that there are many, again, in Ukraine and especially from the former Soviet Jewish community who really see this as one fight.

Liel, I know you, you had brought up this issue before, what's your take on this the way that. This incoming administration's policies to these other hotspots is going to affect as

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: well. First of all I wish to have a very profound disagreement with my colleague here. I would argue that, the only real guarantor.

of Israel's safety, security, and well being is Hashem. But that is that is neither here nor there. And now back to the real world. Look I love everything you're saying. And I love these sentiments. But it's a pesky thing in the real world. To have actions and consequences.

Liz, you brought up Qatar. We learned this weekend that the Qataris kicked Hamas out. All of Hamas leadership, those who still sadly remain, and hopefully it's a temporary thing are now in Turkey. You could believe it's a complete coincidence that this happened a week after Donald Trump's reelection.

You could believe that the Houthis surrendering literally on the Friday after the election and saying, we hereby announce all an end of all aggression against against, Israelis and American vessels. Is a complete coincidence because this administration sat on its ass while 25 percent of all global commerce was held hostage by a bunch of morons on boats paid for by Iran.

Now hopes and dreams and prayers and wishes are all very well and I don't have any reason to doubt you that the people in this administration had, lofty. aspirations never, never ascribe a malice when stupidity and incompetence are a far better, closer to us reasoning but I think we're already seeing a beginning of a shift.

When you have an administration like Biden, which, for example, With standing up to China kept Trump's tariffs, which, by the way, Obama, of course, vehemently rejected, but then reversed course on every other sort of pressure. When you have an administration that immediately jumped back to undo all the sanctions against Iran and make sure that Iran receives all the dollars that are then necessary to buy the missiles that would then, go, there's this meme on the Internet In which there's like Iranian missiles and and American kind of American sponsored Iron Shield and the Iron Dome.

And the meme is U.S. Taxpayer money, somehow also U.S. Taxpayer money. I think this is going to change, and it's going to change just by virtue of people feeling that there is a leadership with a very clear worldview that sees America and its national security interests. First, this is American power, not, Oh, let's have a whole host of diplomatic negotiations.

And it's okay to be in the Paris Accord for climate change, even though no other nation here is pulling its weight and China will continue to pollute at an unbelievable rate. But we should definitely tax American businesses because, quote unquote, diplomacy. When sanity returns. When a correct understanding of power returns, when actions return, this Qasem Soleimani thing wasn't a fluke.

It was a real, clear statement that if you dare raise your head, America would take care of its interests. We haven't had that in four years. We're having that again. And I think it would be incredibly beneficial to Ukraine, to Israel, and to a whole host of other nations fighting tyranny around the world.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you.

Liz, I want to turn back to you. You've really, again, been doing this incredible work on behalf of the hostages with both sides of the aisle, making sure that there's bipartisan support for this. I think most of us agree the, about the importance of maintaining this kind of bipartisan support here in the U.

S. for Israel. Elections come and go. People are going to be, we're going to have another election in two years, and then another bigger one in another four years, and we've seen how the pendulum can shift, and how unstable some of these alliances can be. How do we continue to maintain this bipartisan U.

S. support for Israel, and what are some of the greatest challenges to this goal?

Liz Hirsh Naftali: There, we got through this, we got through this election. And we managed to maintain as hostage families this bipartisan nature. And, you, one of the things I, it wasn't in my bio, but I wrote this book called Saving Abigail.

And the purpose was to tell what happened to Abigail on October 7th and her family. And what the truth is that happened in Israel. Because going back to October 8th, we saw that there was already this denial, this revisionism. And I speak about What the truth is so that the world can see it. But one of the things that I really wrote about, which I wanted people to understand was just this, and I'm repeating myself a bit.

But just the importance of this bipartisan nature of the work. And it was that ability to talk with a Republican, a Democrat, people all over from both sides, and to actually see how much they love Israel, they support Israel. So we have people on the far left and the far who will be able to, on a, take a microphone and condemn it, but to see that incredible support for Israel, That, to me, was one of the greatest pieces that came from this incredible tragedy.

And so when you ask that question about how do we keep it, and we have to keep it. It is incumbent upon all of us to keep it. And it is also incumbent upon the Israeli leadership to keep it. And for the Prime Minister, whether it's Netanyahu or somebody else.

Or Knesset Members, to keep that in mind, because it goes both ways. And for me, right now, I look at Israel's only greatest, best friend, whether it's Biden administration or Trump administration, is the United States. For, I can say how important it is to keep it bipartisan. But I can also remind people in Israel, and many of you have— are Israeli Americans, and you have relatives in Israel, is to keep in mind the importance of having both Democrats and Republicans that you are supporting and that Israel is supporting.

It goes both ways.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Thank you so much. I know we're running out of time here, and I think that is really a fantastic point, and I think it's, again, this idea that was brought up here on stage earlier that one of the reasons we have conferences like this here at Z3, it's about the unity of the community.

It's not about uniformity necessarily. You've heard a lot of different opinions here on stage, a lot of different perspectives. Again, I think this represents the richness, the diversity of our incredible community here in Israel and around the world. And I'm incredibly grateful to our amazing panelists up here.

Please join me in thanking Dr. Liel Leibovitz, Nadav Eyal, and Elizabeth Hirsch Naftali for an incredible panel. Thank you so much.

Also, if you wanted to make a last statement here in the last two minutes we have, please.

Nadav Eyal: My only statement is the way that I finished the last panel. I'm sorry for saying this again. For me, the most important thing right now is to put pressure on getting the hostages back. And I wrote this. I'm saying this now. I think there's basically one person who can actually make it by inauguration, and that is President Trump.

I think he has a unique leverage in the region, with all sides. Liel mentioned some of this leverage. I might not agree with every fine detail to the extent that things are happening, because The American people made their call, but it doesn't matter right now. It's president Trump that can get this done.

I believe that I think that the hostage families believe that in coordination with the Biden administration. And this is something that he should know that this is a great thing to achieve. They simply cannot survive another winter. There, there was a meeting this evening with the security chiefs, with Netanyahu, trying to persuade the Israeli government to take a new initiative there.

Not everything has to do with Israel or with the U.S. A lot has to do with Hamas just refusing to end this war and to release the hostages. But this doesn't mean that we don't need to do the best we can so that we will be able to come to the Israeli public, we Israelis, we Jewish people who feel involved, and say we have done our best to get those souls back.

And I don't think that there is anything more important for Israel's future Then getting the hostages back. Now,

Liz Hirsh Naftali: I'm going to add to that. And I agree for our family to get a child back after her parents were murdered. It was the only way our family could move forward. There are 101 families in Israel that have not been able to move forward.

But also, those 101 families are all the nation of Israel. And Israel cannot heal and it cannot move forward until everyone comes home. And it is the priority of Prime Minister Netanyahu. It must be his priority. It must be the work both of President Biden and President elect Trump. And it can't wait for the, it cannot wait the winter.

But it also takes upon us, whether we're Democrats or Republicans, Reform or conservative or Orthodox is for us to stay together in this. We all in this room and in our Jewish communities across America must stay together.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: I want to end by agreeing very strongly. With everything that Liz and Nadav have said here, though, we've each expressed support for different political parties and different policies et cetera.

I think the key point is to remember that at heart we're neither Republicans nor Democrats. We're Jews. And our top priority is to do whatever we can and whatever we must to make sure that klal Yisrael the whole of Israel Is safe beginning, of course, with bringing every single hostage back home right now.

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: Amen.

Dr. Liel Leibovitz: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you again to our incredible

Dr. Oleg Ivanov: panelists.