Being Jewish with Jonah Platt

[00:00:00] Jonah Platt: Most of us have heard the adage that anti Jew hate is the oldest form of hate in the world. And if you haven't heard that, hi, welcome to Being Jewish. We have seen the cyclical emergence and re emergence of hate against Jews all over the world, century after century, for literally thousands of years.

[00:00:18] Jonah Platt: But a core feature of anti Jewish bigotry is that it shapeshifts. In each time and place where this hatred emerges, it does so in new packaging. deftly tailored to most effectively weaponize that specific society's fear and weaknesses against the Jewish people. The current strain of the anti Jewish bigotry virus has a number of strategies and costumes it employs.

[00:00:42] Jonah Platt: But today, I'd like to single out one. Inversion. Taking something connected to Jews, twisting it all backwards, and using it against us. This anti Jew inversion comes in four parts. Allow me to offer a simple example. Imagine a kid, we'll call him Cody, [00:01:00] is standing next to his brother, who we'll call Peter, and Peter is holding a baseball bat.

[00:01:05] Jonah Platt: Cody grabs Peter's bat, hits Peter with it, then cries, Mom, Peter hit me! Did you catch all four parts? Part 1. Ownership. The bat is Peter's. It is his to hold, his to use, his to define. Part 2. Weaponization. Not only is the bat Peter's, but now his own bat has been used against him to cause him harm. Part 3.

[00:01:32] Jonah Platt: False blame. Peter is blamed for hitting Cody, something that factually did not occur. And part four, because it's kind of just straight up villainy, I call The Dagger. Not only has Peter been blamed for harm he did not cause, But the blame is coming from the person who actually victimized Peter in the way for which Peter is now being blamed.

[00:01:53] Jonah Platt: Ownership, weaponization, false blame, the dagger. So now let's look at a few of the most [00:02:00] common examples of anti Jew inversion, shall we? First up, So, Jews are white. Not only are Jews their own distinct ethnicity that precedes and exceeds any idea of American racial construct, but Yidiv Yibat that framework.

[00:02:14] Jonah Platt: At least half of the world's Jews are black or brown. We're talking millions of people, including the majority of all Jews in the Jewish homeland, being erased. So, let's break that down into the four parts. Ownership. Jewish identity is just that, our identity. No one gets to define it for us or take it from us.

[00:02:35] Jonah Platt: Weaponization. Today's elite society, being white, is synonymous with being privileged or oppressive, both of which are bad. False blame. If Jews are white, then they are the evil villains oppressing the rest of society. But again, not only are Jews not white, but aside from a few golden decades here in America, we've always been seen as less than white, or other.

[00:02:57] Jonah Platt: And this is certainly true again today. [00:03:00] Visibly Jewish people are seen foremost as Jews, regardless of their skin color. I mean, ask Jewish kids on college campuses if they feel white. And then of course, the dagger. Many of the folks perpetrating this inversion are themselves white. They are the ones actually persecuting an ethnic minority in the name of their own white guilt.

[00:03:20] Jonah Platt: I mean, that is twisted. Another one we hear a lot. Jews are colonizers. This notion inverts the entire factual history of the Jewish people. Ownership. We were a persecuted nation in exile who returned to our homeland. You cannot colonize the place you are from. Weaponization. As with white, a colonizing imperialist is the most evil thing you can be in today's society.

[00:03:45] Jonah Platt: Despite the fact that, you know, most of us come from countries that were created via colonization and imperialism. False blame. Jews haven't colonized anybody. First of all, half the world's Jews don't even live in the land folks claim they've colonized. So to say [00:04:00] Jews are colonizers is just a bigoted conflation.

[00:04:03] Jonah Platt: And second, Jews are indigenous to the land and have been living in it continuously for thousands of years. If Israel is a colonizer, why are 20 percent of Israelis Arab Muslims, with freedom of religion and public signage in Arabic, in addition to Hebrew and English? Finally, the dagger. Israel has itself been colonized and conquered by many different civilizations over thousands of years, including certain populations of Arabs who now claim to have been colonized by Israel.

[00:04:33] Jonah Platt: Twisted. Let's apply these principles to another outrageous inversion. Israel is an apartheid state. Again, outsiders feel they have free reign to dictate to Israel what it is in the most condescending, overconfident, inaccurate, and oversimplified of terms. The apartheid system in South Africa, where you had a white minority ruling over a black majority under a separate system of laws, was terrible and globally [00:05:00] condemned.

[00:05:01] Jonah Platt: So if you're looking to demonize somebody, it's apartheid all the way. As for false blame, all Israeli citizens, Jewish or not, enjoy completely equal rights under the law. There are Arabs in every level of society and civil service, from the Supreme Court, to the army, to the Knesset. Now the West Bank, which is not part of the state of Israel, has its own issues, of course, that deserve to be fairly investigated.

[00:05:26] Jonah Platt: But the specifics and context are highly unique to that situation, one that deserves to be examined on its own merits, not just be lazily labeled as apartheid for shortcut demonization. And as for the dagger? Um, basically every other part of the Middle East, including Gaza, to even step foot in there as a Jew is a death sentence.

[00:05:46] Jonah Platt: And yet you're gonna say Jews are the ones with different rules for different fools? Fatima, please! Can't forget about ethnic cleansing, that old chestnut. Not only has the Palestinian population grown tenfold since Israel's [00:06:00] establishment, but Jews have themselves been ethnically cleansed by Muslims and Arabs repeatedly from nearly every country in the Middle East and North Africa.

[00:06:10] Jonah Platt: Next, I want to mention the word genocide, though it could be its own monologue entirely, and probably will be at some point. But, it's important to include here, because this one hurts so much, and cuts so deep into a wound that is still raw and fresh. So, yalla. Ownership. The word genocide itself was literally invented by a Jew to describe the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

[00:06:38] Jonah Platt: It is our word, weaponization. There could be no greater crime against humanity than seeking to wipe out a people based solely on its identity. False blame. There are dozens of facts I could point to that illustrate how Israel is not committing any kind of genocide, and never has, but for now, I'll just use this one.

[00:06:56] Jonah Platt: In the Holocaust, 66 percent of Europe's Jews were [00:07:00] murdered. In the Rwandan genocide, 70 percent of the Tutsi population was slaughtered. In Cambodia, 25 percent of the population was systematically eliminated. In Gaza this year, during a defensive war Israel did not want, that number is 2%. And this according to Hamas's own count, which we know also includes terrorists and natural deaths as well as civilians.

[00:07:23] Jonah Platt: 2%. Call it a tragedy, call it an outrage, call it whatever you feel it should be called, but don't call it a genocide. Why? The dagger. It is Jews who were the victims of the worst genocide in human history, and not that long ago. And it is Hamas who tried to indiscriminately butcher as many Israelis as they could on October 7th, including survivors of the Holocaust, and they have sworn to continue this attempted genocide again and again until they finish the job.

[00:07:53] Jonah Platt: And the last inversion, at least of this monologue, is for me the most frustrating. The world's use of the phrase, never again. [00:08:00] Never again is our term. Our pledge that rose with our people from the ashes of the holocaust. It is our ethos, our anthem, our cry of resistance. Its appropriation by other groups and its weaponization against us is a cruelty of the highest order.

[00:08:17] Jonah Platt: By co opting this phrase, the implication is that Jews who suffered the worst genocide imaginable are now perpetrators of the same. Not only is this horrendously false, but it is terribly hurtful. Then there's the updated version. Never again means never again for anyone. Says who? Who says that's what it means?

[00:08:36] Jonah Platt: Because we, the Jews who invented the slogan, did not say that. We meant it for us. And look, obviously, it's not that I take umbrage with protecting people from genocide. Of course not. I take issue with anti Israel folks appropriating our slogan for their own designs and palisplaining to us what our words mean.

[00:08:55] Jonah Platt: And then even worse, weaponizing the words against their actual intent, which [00:09:00] is the promise of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate. The Israeli response to October 7th and to the genocidal aims of Iran and its proxies is precisely what never again looks like. Jews taking their safety into their own hands, whether the world likes it or not, because usually they don't.

[00:09:18] Jonah Platt: We have got to denormalize this crap, point out how bigoted and harmful it is, and create a social cost for its use. To those who have employed anti Jew inversion to demonize our people, well, I say never again, and in fact, in this case, never again means never again for anyone. This is the eighth episode of Being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.[00:10:00]

[00:10:12] Jonah Platt: Today I'm coming to you from the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, my old college stomping grounds. And as part of being a college kid in Philly. I learned the names of all the suburbs around the city, including Bucks County, which was also the name of a short lived coffee shop on campus. My guest today hails from Bucks County, which he calls one of the most divided counties in the country, so it tracks that he has devoted his career to depolarizing politics through his online newsletter, Tangle, which provides thoughts from the left, The right and his own take on a single topic each day.

[00:10:47] Jonah Platt: Tangle has over 135, 000 subscribers, myself among them, and you might think that's his crowning achievement, but he's also a national champion and competitive ultimate frisbee. So, you know, it's a toss up. [00:11:00] Please welcome journalist, entrepreneur, and one time yeshiva boy, Isaac Saul.

[00:11:04] Isaac Saul: Thanks for having me Jonah, glad to be here.

[00:11:06] Jonah Platt: So when I say earliest Keystone Jewish memories, like what image pops into your mind?

[00:11:11] Isaac Saul: Oh man, uh, JCC, Ewing Township, New Jersey, you know, being a three year old running around playing soccer in the gym and basketball, uh, and then definitely, you know, You know, snickering and whispering and misbehaving in the back of synagogue with my family for sure at the Har Sinai temple in Trenton, New Jersey.

[00:11:33] Isaac Saul: So those are those are my early earliest Jewish memories, probably along with the. The beautiful smell of my grandmother's brisket, you know, that barbecue brisket, nothing better than that good old Jewish grandmother brisket. I love that wafting from the kitchen and then, you know, fighting my brothers to, to get there for the first bite.

[00:11:52] Isaac Saul: I think those are some of my, my earliest Keystone Jewish memories.

[00:11:57] Jonah Platt: It's great. Um, so you, [00:12:00] you like played at the JCC, you went to synagogue. Did you go to Jewish school or summer camp?

[00:12:04] Isaac Saul: Yeah, I did like, you know, Tuesday school, Sunday school. Um, and, but, but like a lot of American Jews, I mean, I was raised reform, pretty low key, uh, Jewish upbringing.

[00:12:15] Isaac Saul: And remember quite vividly after I was bar mitzvahed, I was 13, 14 telling my parents that I was an atheist and I wasn't going to go to synagogue because that was like the cool radical thing to do in the early 2000s when you were a teenager. Uh, and really between the ages of 13 and 18. Had very little connection or contact with the Jewish rod.

[00:12:39] Isaac Saul: I mean, culturally I was still in it and you know, Hanukkah and Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and the high holidays and stuff my family would observe and go to synagogue. But I was sort of in those rebel years where I, you know, I'd been forced to go to Tuesday school, forced to go to Sunday school, forced to move on.

[00:12:56] Isaac Saul: Yeah, exactly. I

[00:12:57] Jonah Platt: rebelled too in like middle school. I was like, this sucks. [00:13:00] Yeah. What's interesting. I've had a lot of guests who are reform on the show so far. And then they all like, like you just did, list a litany of like, observances they do. It's like, we're Reformed, but we go to synagogue for this holiday.

[00:13:12] Jonah Platt: We celebrate this holiday. I went to Hebrew school. It's like still like a very legitimate and strong connection.

[00:13:18] Isaac Saul: And when you grow up the way I did, I mean, You sort of have all these different friend groups and I had one friend group that I was really close with that was like all my Jewish friends and they're my oldest friends because I met most of them in preschool or elementary school at Temple or at the JCC.

[00:13:35] Isaac Saul: And so when you stay connected with them, you sort of don't leave the kind of cultural melting pot, I think, and that that kept me connected enough that later in life. When I sort of came back to the Jewish community, it felt in a lot of ways, like I hadn't really left. And, you know, it's sort of, it was easy to plug back in.

[00:13:53] Isaac Saul: I would say

[00:13:54] Jonah Platt: I can relate to that on a level that like, I'm still tight with some of my earliest childhood friends from Jewish day school [00:14:00] and like my groomsmen, my wedding, where my Jewish summer camp friends, we've known each other 30 years or whatever now. And even when you go away and you come back, you're like, You're plugged right back in.

[00:14:09] Isaac Saul: I think I'm probably more observant and more tied into the Jewish community now that I've ever been. I, so I, I went to the university of Pittsburgh and I think it was the second week of being on campus as a college freshman that I was walking through the quad. And one of the campus rabbis just, you know, pointed me out.

[00:14:30] Isaac Saul: Hey, are you Jewish? I'm like, yeah. How'd you know? Uh, there's just a, everybody kind of has their, their Jude are when you, when you've been in the tribe for a while. And he invited me to Shabbat dinner at his house and, you know, broke college freshmen away from home for the first time. Been two weeks since I had a home cooked meal, free dinner.

[00:14:47] Isaac Saul: I'm way in. Yeah. I'd say less, you know, I'm coming. And, uh, and it was beautiful. And he was an Orthodox rabbi and he just. Made it a really warm, fun experience, [00:15:00] and I basically went every Friday for all four years of college and over that experience became really connected to the experience of doing Shabbat dinner and then went to Israel on birthright.

[00:15:10] Isaac Saul: And then after I graduated college, I ended up going and living in Israel for a bit, and I think all that kind of just snowballed. into being a little bit more observant, caring a little bit more about the religious side, thinking more critically about that stuff. And now today, you know, I, I say the Shema every morning.

[00:15:26] Isaac Saul: I have Shabbat dinners, host Shabbat dinners at my house with my wife, um, and try and plug in with the different Jewish communities, depending on where we're living, which has been a really fulfilling experience for me.

[00:15:37] Jonah Platt: Right on. I keep just hearing so many parallels with you to me. Like, I, There was a rabbi in college who invited me to his house for Shabbat, who I'm still like in touch with.

[00:15:45] Jonah Platt: Yeah. And I say Shabbat to my son every night. So we got, we got a lot of the same, same ideas. Yeah. Um, I'm, I saw you wrote your unique spin on Shabbat observance is no social media and no news over Shabbat for 24 hours. I love that. Yeah. [00:16:00] And what, what does that say to you about like the individuality of being Jewish?

[00:16:03] Isaac Saul: What I've sort of come to is, You know, it's my relationship with God that matters. It doesn't really matter what other people think about it or how they view it. And I have to develop that kind of on my own and private. And for me, uh, you know, I, I know what makes it easier for me to connect in the way that I'm supposed to connect on a holiday like Shabbat and that's unplugging from the news.

[00:16:24] Isaac Saul: Cause that's my dominant thing that happens throughout life. And I also know that like, you know, I connect a lot with some of the sacrifice of certain observances like fasting or. You know, eating kosher, whatever. So on Shabbat, I try and be like, as observant of a Jew as I can be, you know, I might like sneak a piece of bacon on Sunday morning, but on Saturday morning, no way.

[00:16:45] Isaac Saul: That's cool. Like I do. So I, like, I, I try and plug in in that way too. And, um, it helps me, it helps me connect. It keeps me grounded. I think it's like a really, it's a powerful tradition for me personally. And the unplugging from the news [00:17:00] stuff just related to my work is such a relief. It makes me look forward to sundown at Friday night, you know, uh, it really does.

[00:17:09] Isaac Saul: Give me that kind of anticipation that I feel like I'm supposed to have for shabbat where it's like I want it to come I welcome it and uh, it's a relief honestly when I get there.

[00:17:18] Jonah Platt: I love that

[00:17:19] Isaac Saul: Every guest talks about how

[00:17:20] Jonah Platt: shabbat's like the greatest thing and most meaningful thing. Yeah, so we're just you know, we're trying to Bread, Shabbat, love everywhere.

[00:17:25] Jonah Platt: Yeah. So as, as you just mentioned, you studied in Israel, um, at Yeshiva, right? Uh, what was that like?

[00:17:33] Isaac Saul: I was there for about six or seven months. It was a Bolshevii Yeshiva. So for people who grew up secular and are sort of considering converting to be more religious. So very specifically designed for Jews with, with my background.

[00:17:47] Isaac Saul: It's called, yeah, it's called Ur Samayach in East Jerusalem, actually. So, uh, a place that especially right now is really interesting and at the center of a lot of Israeli conflict because, um, for those not familiar, it's like a very [00:18:00] diverse part of Jerusalem. A lot of Muslims, a lot of Jews, a lot of Arabs, lots of different kind of faith leanings and layers of different Judaism that exists there.

[00:18:10] Isaac Saul: And it's, it's one of the really core melting pots and a place where there's a lot of friction. And I think that was really interesting for me. I was. I mean, personally, it was the most intellectually stimulating time of my life because all my fundamental worldviews were being challenged as somebody who was, you know, culturally Jewish, but not religiously Jewish and a lot of Questions that I was asked about why I believe certain things I didn't really have great answers for and I realized that my worldview is pretty half baked and I just had kind of adopted the worldview of a lot of the people and a lot of the Jews that I lived around and being challenged in certain ways made me think more critically about why I believe certain things and why I didn't.

[00:18:53] Isaac Saul: And I found it just tremendous fun.

[00:18:55] Jonah Platt: Everyone in life should face a moment where they have to question [00:19:00] their held beliefs where, Huh, I never thought about where that came from or why I actually believe that. Yeah. It's great that you had that opportunity. You gotta get out of your comfort zone to get it.

[00:19:09] Isaac Saul: Definitely. And it's a good way to do it. If you ever want to get out of your comfort zone, go to Yeshiva in Jerusalem for six months and it'll do the trick, I'm sure.

[00:19:16] Jonah Platt: And like, If you could distill your experience in East Jerusalem down to like, what was like a big takeaway from your time that surprised you?

[00:19:25] Isaac Saul: You know, I would say that the people who fundamentally disagree about what happened over the last 3000 years in a place like Jerusalem, Are very capable of living side by side in harmony and peace and With those, you know contradictions and challenges and disagreements Perfectly present and on the surface and I saw it.

[00:19:52] Isaac Saul: It can be done. It can be done. Yeah

[00:19:54] Jonah Platt: now moving into Journalism, how would you describe the state of journalism in [00:20:00] america today?

[00:20:00] Isaac Saul: Journalism is broken in a lot of really fundamental ways. I think You We live in a information ecosystem that is pretty corrupted. I log onto Twitter, Instagram, and I see a bunch of news, quote unquote, that is pretty much nonsense.

[00:20:18] Isaac Saul: And I open up, you know, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or Fox News. And I see slightly more reliable information that's been edited and fact checked, but is often presented in a way that's clearly trying to tell a specific story, which I don't think is the job of journalists. So I see an industry that is definitely in need of some reform and some help and some introspection.

[00:20:41] Isaac Saul: I think the industry is going through that right now. I think we're living through it. And, you know, I'm, I'm trying to play my role in producing something that's a little bit more big tent and reliable and, you know, North star of transparency and honesty and balance. And I think we're doing that, but, uh, it's, it's [00:21:00] really not easy.

[00:21:00] Isaac Saul: I mean, you realize when you do the work that the truth is very subjective.

[00:21:06] Jonah Platt: Was identifying this, you know, brokenness of the system, the impetus to begin Tangled? Did it come from somewhere else?

[00:21:13] Isaac Saul: Yeah. I mean my, you know, I, I have a pretty classic kind of startup entrepreneurial story, which is I wanted a product and I went looking for it and it didn't exist.

[00:21:23] Isaac Saul: So I tried to build it. I mean, the, the story for me was I, you know, I'm, I'm politics journalist by trade. That's my background writing and reporting on the things that I tend to be pretty good at. And I would hear something happen in the news, a proposal maybe comes up, say Trump wants to build a border wall.

[00:21:41] Isaac Saul: And I want to know. What's the pro argument for this border wall? And what's the against argument for this border wall? And who are the people making the best arguments for and against? And I want to just go to one place and read it for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and figure it out. And my [00:22:00] experience was, okay, I'd read about the story in the Associated Press or Reuters.

[00:22:04] Isaac Saul: Then I'd read the New York Times coverage, then the Wall Street Journal coverage. Then I'd watch some Fox News. Then maybe I go listen to the Pod Save America guys. Then I go on YouTube and check out my favorite political pundit. And I do 10 hours of this. And then at the end of the day, I'm like, okay, now I feel like I have a good understanding of the best arguments for and against Trump's border wall.

[00:22:24] Isaac Saul: Why couldn't I just go find that all in one place? Why isn't there a news organization putting all those things in one place? And I didn't really see it being done. And the places I saw it being done, I thought were doing it pretty poorly. And so I created this product that was basically founded on that idea.

[00:22:41] Jonah Platt: So anybody who's been following me for any length of time would not be surprised to hear like this is right up my alley. Yeah. So I, I'm a big fan. But I hadn't heard about Tangle until our mutual acquaintance, Adam Grant, hooked us up for this interview. Who are you trying to reach and have you been successful in reaching those people?

[00:22:59] Isaac Saul: The [00:23:00] North Star for me is, I want to bring conservatives and liberals and everybody in the middle under one roof. One of the biggest issues that we have in media and journalism today is people are just operating on different set of facts or different set of narratives, whatever you want to call it. So.

[00:23:17] Isaac Saul: You know, Fox News watchers tend to not read the New York Times and vice versa. That strikes me as a massive problem. We don't have a shared reality that we can agree on, even a foundational reality. And so the conversations become basically impossible. So what I'm doing. Would not be a success in my view if we weren't bringing people Under one roof who disagree with each other the audience And so the biggest pride point that I have is that about a third of our audience self identifies as liberal about a third Self identifies as conservative and a third says that they're independent or they don't view themselves as you know associated with any political ideology And that, that's an audience now that's, you know, over [00:24:00] 150, 000 people on the newsletter, a YouTube channel, podcast, whatever, and they're all coming together.

[00:24:05] Isaac Saul: They're interacting with each other in the comments. They're, you know, talking to each other when we do live streams. They're doing all these things where they get to see and experience each other together. I would say the other element of it is that. I really want to provide representation. So if you're a conservative Trump MAGA voter and you read our newsletter and you don't see your worldview represented somewhere in the newsletter, then we're failing.

[00:24:32] Isaac Saul: If you're a diehard Bernie, progressive bro, whatever, and you read our newsletter and you don't see that leftist opinion that you think is part of the conversation represented somewhere in the newsletter, Then we're failing. We, you know, we, we can't possibly cover a hundred percent of all the views that are out there, but I want to get that 90%.

[00:24:49] Jonah Platt: How do you draw the line between what's a valid opinion to feature versus what might be just harmful? Like, is there an extreme that's too extreme to be legit or in an impartial [00:25:00] newsletter? Is it all on the table?

[00:25:01] Isaac Saul: Yeah. So this is the biggest challenge of our work. I would say, you know, one of the things that informs my view on this is, you I think the way a lot of other media organizations have failed trying to do this Is they don't fundamentally represent kind of the new trump right that exists So there's magazines like the week out there where they

[00:25:21] Jonah Platt: I was going to ask you about the week Yeah, i've subscribed to the week for years great magazine.

[00:25:25] Jonah Platt: I read the same thing that you're doing.

[00:25:27] Isaac Saul: Yeah, and I I love it It's a great magazine. I i'm a subscriber. I read it. I recommend other people subscribe to it I will criticize it now by just saying that I think like the conservative views that are represented in a magazine like the week are traditional Establishment republican views almost always a lot of like

[00:25:43] Jonah Platt: david french

[00:25:44] Isaac Saul: exactly which like Is a small sliver of what the actual right is in america today So I think a lot of people fail in that regard and I think actually similarly kind of the reflection of that is that This sort of leftist far left progressive view is [00:26:00] often also underrepresented like, you know, everybody hates the new york times that talks about it and criticizes it because the new york times really represents kind of an establishment democratic left that is out there in the world and pretty well represented in the media.

[00:26:14] Isaac Saul: So progressives hate them because, you know, you know, They read the New York times and they think there's no Palestinian voices being represented in the conflict or whatever. And then middle of the road, Democrats or conservatives hate them because they're just like, this is classic democratic leftist stuff.

[00:26:29] Isaac Saul: They get hit from both sides and it's because they do actually underrepresent sort of that progressive leftist view. Sometimes you have to go to somewhere like the new Republic or Vox or something to get it. And they also underrepresent the kind of center to the right out in my view. Um, so. I try to not be the arbiter of what's an acceptable opinion or not.

[00:26:48] Isaac Saul: And that's a really hard part of my job because sometimes we publish stuff that I find really fundamentally offensive, where we draw the line is, you know, real true facts or something that [00:27:00] can be backed up with a cogent argument. I mean, this is the thing that's really difficult about my job is I might read something that I find really offensive.

[00:27:08] Isaac Saul: But if I can see the person's logic, they show their work and there's an actual argument there, then I'll publish it and we piss a lot of people off doing that. But that's part of the work. We have to accept the fact that, you know, a lot of people are not going to like the things that they find in our newsletter.

[00:27:22] Isaac Saul: It's really hard. There's no, I mean, there's no, I know that's a little bit of a squishy answer.

[00:27:27] Jonah Platt: Yeah, no, I mean, it makes sense. It's probably a case by case kind of thing and you

[00:27:30] Isaac Saul: can't draw hard lines because the truth kind of moves in the story moves, you know, like, um, I'll give a really quick example and then I'll stop talking.

[00:27:37] Isaac Saul: But the quick one is like, you know, we had a really big debate early on in covid about whether it came from a lab or not. Right. And. Early days of COVID, it was a quote unquote conspiracy, the idea that coronavirus leaked from a lab. And early on in Tangle, we represented that view because a lot of people were saying back then, and we didn't frame it as a conspiracy theory.

[00:27:59] Isaac Saul: We said, some [00:28:00] people are arguing this, they have scientific backgrounds, here's what they're saying. And a lot of people were really pissed that we did that. Colt said that we were elevating platform and conspiracies, whatever. Three years later, it looks like it's a pretty legit kind of, you know, both sides have a very strong argument to make their case.

[00:28:15] Isaac Saul: And it's been a much more legitimized by mainstream science that maybe it's possible it came from a lab. So that's why we treat it that way is because the truth kind of moves sometimes. And what's a conspiracy, you know, three years ago might not be one today. And that's why it's important to allow people to kind of have the debate in the open.

[00:28:32] Jonah Platt: Yeah, I find it interesting that people coming to your newsletter would be upset by certain viewpoints. It's like, this is what you're coming to get. So you, if you don't want them all, go read something else.

[00:28:44] Isaac Saul: You know, I've been doing this for over five years now. I feel more encouraged about the kind of psyche of the country and the state of polarization than I ever have after doing this work for five years, because I don't think it's that people aren't capable.

[00:28:58] Isaac Saul: I don't think it's that people don't want this [00:29:00] kind of news or want to be exposed to opinions they don't like. I think in their normal day to day, it just doesn't happen very often, and they're not good at it. And it's a muscle they have to learn to flex, and I think they can learn to do it. I learned to do it, uh, from doing the work.

[00:29:13] Isaac Saul: But it's, it's not easy. It takes a lot.

[00:29:15] Jonah Platt: I, I think that's a great way to frame it for people. So here's a specific, uh, thing that you covered of the claims that the 2020 election was stolen. You wrote, we have to accept the fact that ignoring those views or pretending that there is zero validity to them or that they are totally not worth engaging is not a productive way to get closer to the quote unquote truth.

[00:29:35] Jonah Platt: Now, what I think you meant is that refusing to acknowledge one side of an argument, even if just to debunk it doesn't really help anybody. Is that the right read?

[00:29:43] Isaac Saul: 70 percent of conservatives in our country believe that the 2020 election was somehow fishy stolen, not quite right. That's the world that we live in.

[00:29:52] Isaac Saul: I disagree with those conservatives. I agree with them about a lot of other stuff. I don't agree with them about that, but the way to get through to them is to [00:30:00] not just tell them that, you know, some democracy group looked at the election and determined that it wasn't stolen and you're an idiot if you believe that.

[00:30:07] Isaac Saul: That's not an effective way to communicate with somebody. So what I do is I take the claims seriously. I look into them with an open mind and I acknowledge the fact that election fraud does happen. Voter fraud does happen. These are things that are rare, but they occur in the country. They occur in every election.

[00:30:23] Isaac Saul: We know that people get caught, people get arrested, people go to court. So it's okay to say those things happen. And also. The idea that, you know, Democrats organized this plot where thousands of people in all the swing states were stuffing ballots into mailboxes didn't actually change the election and wasn't a real thing.

[00:30:41] Isaac Saul: You can hold both those things at once and the people who need to hear you. Will hear you a lot more easily if you acknowledge some of the stuff that they want you to acknowledge that like Elections could be more secure. We could improve the system. We have all that kind of stuff

[00:30:53] Jonah Platt: 100 So i've seen a lot of this kind of like defensiveness with the presidential election [00:31:00] Where i'll raise some legitimate point about all of this And I just get sort of like a knee jerk defensive response that doesn't actually speak to any part of the concern as you just sort of outlined.

[00:31:10] Jonah Platt: Does that sound familiar to you in regards to the selection?

[00:31:13] Isaac Saul: Yeah, I would say we're living in a time where people are really emotionally tied to the outcome of national politics and national elections like this, which In some regards, I think it's great. People are dialed in. You know, we had, I think in 2020, 63 percent of Americans voted in the election.

[00:31:32] Isaac Saul: It was one of the biggest turnouts we've ever had. That's good. I want people to participate. I want them to care. I want them to be engaged. I think we could do a much better job of kind of hearing each other. And one of the core things that I think is driving sort of what you just described, the knee jerk reactions, the emotional attachment people have to certain candidates, whether it's hating them or loving them, is that we really fundamentally don't understand the quote unquote other side.

[00:31:58] Isaac Saul: So yeah, You know, the [00:32:00] perception gap is kind of the academic term for it. But the basic fundamentals of it are, if you ask a Democrat how, what percentage of Republicans think that immigration is bad for the country. Their estimate of that percentage is wildly off on average. They think that 80 percent of Republicans feel that way when really 40 percent of them do.

[00:32:20] Isaac Saul: If you ask Republicans, you know, what percentage of Democrats think police are fundamentally bad people, they'll say 90 percent of them think that when it's 20%. Right. There is a huge massive ocean between the reality of what these sides view and what their kind of political opponents think they view, what they, what they hold.

[00:32:39] Isaac Saul: So because that's the case, when somebody hears that, you know, Donald Trump did X, Y, or Z. They view whatever the bad extreme thing Trump might have done as representative of Republicans as a whole and it makes them hate half the country, which I don't think is very good, but it's kind of the world that we're operating in right now.

[00:32:57] Jonah Platt: Would you ever do a newsletter of like that [00:33:00] gap, that perception gap, like talking about you all think these wrong things about each other?

[00:33:04] Isaac Saul: Yeah, we've actually, we interviewed one of the authors behind a study that sort of fleshed out the perception gap a couple of years ago. And. Just ask them questions about why the gap exists and how drastic it is.

[00:33:17] Isaac Saul: And it was, I mean, for me, it was pretty revelatory. I mean, you realize how far apart our views of people we disagree with really are. And, you know, even As someone who studies this stuff for a living and covers national politics and has views that are pretty moderate and centrist, I would say there were some stats that surprised me in terms of not just the perception gap, but also I misunderstood Republicans and Democrats in some ways, you know, maybe I was closer than the average American to guessing right, but I was also wrong on some stuff that I was like, Oh, well, I'm actually surprised that that is, uh, The real way most Republicans answer this question a real way.

[00:33:58] Isaac Saul: Most Democrats answer this [00:34:00] question.

[00:34:00] Jonah Platt: Okay. So speaking of the election Uh, this episode is going to air on election day on November 5th. You just released your predictions for what's going to happen in this election. I read that. You believe Harris is going to pick up North Carolina and this state, Pennsylvania, but ultimately she's going to lose the election to Trump.

[00:34:18] Jonah Platt: How did it feel to analyze the data and come to that conclusion?

[00:34:22] Isaac Saul: This is a coin flip election. I mean, it really is. It's razor thin and it's super close and I think anything that happens in the next two weeks as we record this. Could change the outcome of the race. I was a little shocked to get there.

[00:34:35] Isaac Saul: Not because Trump is in my view is a little bit at the advantage right now and is going to win, but because the idea that Kamala Harris could win Pennsylvania and North Carolina and lose the election box, most sort of mainstream understanding of how this race will go. But when you take all the states individually, as I did, and you just look at the fundamentals on the ground, the polling, the funding, the, [00:35:00] you know, Democratic and Republican politicians who are in different races, whether it's gubernatorial races or Senate races or house races, it's just where I landed and, you know, living in Pennsylvania, I look around, I see Harris running a really good ground game here.

[00:35:13] Isaac Saul: I mean, she's in the state a lot. They have a popular governor here, governor Josh Shapiro. The sign wars are pretty even out in counties like Bucks County, which is not good for the Trump side. I would say typically, you know, the Trump right kind of dominates the sign wars and a lot of the on the ground stuff and these weird little quirky things we all watch.

[00:35:32] Isaac Saul: And she just has momentum, I think, in the state and Pennsylvania is a state that tends to be pretty kind of purple and moderate in a lot of the places that matter. And I think Trump's turned off a lot of moderate voters here. Uh, but then, you know, the idea that she's going to win Pennsylvania, North Carolina and lose Wisconsin and Michigan.

[00:35:50] Isaac Saul: You have to have an explanation for that divergence, you know, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, they typically all go together. And they, in most elections, they kind of swing the same way. But the truth [00:36:00] is we've gotten some really good reporting from, you know, Democratic insiders who are on the ground running campaigns in states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

[00:36:07] Isaac Saul: They're very worried about what they're seeing. They have bad internal polling. The ground game is a mess. The funding isn't what they want it to be. And I think to me, that's going to matter in a race where there's, you know, 000 voters that are probably going to decide the outcome, especially in a state like Michigan, where, you know, we have the protest movement around the Israel Palestine conflict and a lot of Arab American voters are saying they're going to sit out.

[00:36:31] Isaac Saul: If 20 of them actually follow through and do that, that could decide the election.

[00:36:35] Jonah Platt: That was an excellent response from the journalistic point of view. What about personally? What did it I think Trump's going to win this thing

[00:36:43] Isaac Saul: for me, personally, one of the things that I've really struggled with covering Trump is that he did something after the 2020 election that is just like an indelible mark on his record forever, which is he denied the results and he oversaw the only non [00:37:00] peaceful transfer of power in U.

[00:37:01] Isaac Saul: S. history. Yeah. I think those things will be the lead on him when the history books are written about him in 50 or 100 years, and I think they should be, and a lot of my readers and supporters and, you know, Trump supporters who follow my work, they hate that I talk and frame the issue that way because he did things during his presidency that were good, that I think were good, that they think were good, and, uh, I understand why they don't like my framing there, but I My sensibilities, that's something that I just have a really hard time forgiving.

[00:37:31] Isaac Saul: So the idea that he's going to come back into office makes me very nervous because I think he was incredibly divisive as a president. I think he, he tore the country apart in a lot of ways with his actions and his words. And I lived through that. I, you know, my friend groups that are very politically eclectic.

[00:37:49] Isaac Saul: I felt that I felt the divide. I felt the way it was so hard for people to talk to each other. Yeah. And I worry about what happens if he gets reelected because I think a lot of people are going to basically lose [00:38:00] their minds about it Not me personally, but a lot of democrats and liberals. I think are going to be kind of driven into a really really really Difficult dark mindset where they're very upset and feel very disconnected from the country And that's going to be a really hard thing to work through, you know, we try and cover every Politician president whatever in a really critical way Mm hmm I think our job as the press is to be adversarial.

[00:38:25] Isaac Saul: One of the things I say is, you know, the way the media treated Donald Trump. I don't think was wrong or bad. I think what was wrong or bad about it was that they don't treat every president that way. Actually, the issue wasn't that, you know, they were too hard on Donald Trump. It's that they were too soft on Barack Obama or they're too soft on Joe Biden and our posture towards presidents.

[00:38:45] Isaac Saul: The leaders of the free world, the most powerful people in the world should be adversarial. That's our job. We're a check on them. Do they say things that are true or false? Are they producing policies that are working or not? That's our job. Call balls and strikes. Do it honestly. So I want to bring that [00:39:00] same kind of critical mindset to Trump.

[00:39:01] Isaac Saul: And I know a lot of my readers and supporters are going to watch us do that and think that we're being unfair to him. And that's going to be a really big challenge from a work perspective. So, yeah, a lot of it makes me nervous, but, uh, I think on the whole. My one thing I'll say is, you know, we can handle it as a country.

[00:39:20] Isaac Saul: I think we are more together. Our institutions are more stable and we're more ready to navigate, you know, another four years of maybe a divisive presidency than a lot of people give us credit for.

[00:39:33] Jonah Platt: So Trump and his MAGA colleagues have actually done pretty poorly as a political movement in a lot of elections.

[00:39:39] Jonah Platt: They've lost a lot more than they've won. What do you think has changed so much that now they're going to win the Senate and they're going to win the White House?

[00:39:45] Isaac Saul: The best case against Trump winning this election is pretty much what you just said. I mean, they lost in 2018. They got wiped out in midterms.

[00:39:54] Isaac Saul: 2019 special elections. They basically lost all the competitive ones. 2020 Joe Biden [00:40:00] wins. He wins the popular vote by a pretty healthy margin. And you know, they lose the house, the Senate 2022, they're supposed to have this big red wave. It doesn't actually materialize. Democrats do much better in that election than people think.

[00:40:12] Isaac Saul: Basically. In order to say, okay, all of a sudden this losing streak is going to be undone, you have to have something that sort of balances out things like, you know, Roe v. Wade falling, which I think has motivated a lot of Democratic voters. To me, it's the inflation story. I mean, I think it's the economy.

[00:40:31] Isaac Saul: Stupid is a famous political quote for a reason. I think you look at how people feel, not just about the economy today, but what they think about the future of the economy. And they're really nervous and they feel really pessimistic. And that's a really bad thing for the sitting president. We also have a dynamic that we've been observing, especially in the last 20 or 30 years of U.

[00:40:51] Isaac Saul: S. politics where the electorate is, uh, what we call thermostatic. So we change based on who's in the White House, what the [00:41:00] temperature is. So, you know, that's why midterms are typically bad for the people who hold the White House because the electorate is thermostatic. They want change. It's like a very American thing.

[00:41:09] Isaac Saul: The moderates in the middle, they see what's happening, they're upset, and so they decide to punch a vote for somebody else. So, That has been the dynamic that we've been living in for some time now. And I think Harris and Biden have not had a successful enough presidency to sort of overcome the fact that the voters who are really going to matter, the kind of moderate swing voters are thermostatic and they're going to vote against what we currently have also just for what it's worth.

[00:41:36] Isaac Saul: You know, a lot of what Biden has done and a lot of what Harris has done, especially on foreign policy, has, I think, self evidently failed. Russia is in Ukraine right now. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. There's an incredible amount of instability in Eastern Europe. The war in Gaza has been going on for a year, no ceasefire deal.

[00:41:55] Isaac Saul: The things that Biden has been pushing for the relationship with Israel is totally [00:42:00] frayed. This stuff does not give an aura of stability and competence. And I think that's going to hurt them for a lot of people who vote on those kinds of issues.

[00:42:11] Jonah Platt: All right. So you mentioned the war in Gaza. So I'm going to get into the Israel stuff of it all.

[00:42:16] Jonah Platt: You are an avowed Zionist with, as you say, a deep love for Israel, but you also hesitate to call yourself pro Israel. I believe that distinction you're making is that you believe the Jewish state should exist, but under its current government, some of its policies, you feel like you have to refrain from saying you're fully pro Israel.

[00:42:32] Jonah Platt: Is that accurate?

[00:42:33] Isaac Saul: Yes, I fundamentally believe in Israel's right to exist. Yes, I think so. that there's a future for Israel that I could and would be really proud of and really supportive of. I think the current incarnation of the government and the, the conflict that I'm watching unfold, I'm deeply uncomfortable with and I struggle with on a, on a personal note.

[00:42:54] Isaac Saul: And it's really hard to feel that way because I do love Israel. And I do think, you know, the Jewish people [00:43:00] have a legitimate claim to, The land at least in the sense that we came from there and we belong there in a lot of ways and Um, I wish we could all do a better job sharing it not just the jews But the arabs and the christians and the muslims everybody's there Uh, but you know, we're living in a really really difficult state of conflict and there are a lot of really hard decisions I'm glad I don't have to make But I'll certainly sit here and criticize some of them from afar.

[00:43:26] Jonah Platt: So on october 10th of last year you wrote You cannot keep 2 million people living in the conditions people in gaza are living in and expect peace Violent rebellion is guaranteed. So what I draw from this are two implications one that you believe the attack of october 7th was motivated by something israel's doing other than the ideology to kill all Israelis and take the land, and two, that Israel bears the brunt of responsibility for conditions in Gaza, uh, rather than blaming Egypt or the Palestinian leadership who've received billions of dollars and not spent it on [00:44:00] the territory of the people.

[00:44:01] Jonah Platt: Are those assertions accurate?

[00:44:03] Isaac Saul: I love that you picked that because it's, was by far the most controversial two sentences that I wrote in that like 5, 000 word piece, and it was the one I got the most feedback. Two. And so I think the one I've had kind of the most practice defending, I would say this, I think you can hold that Israel has some responsibility for the conditions in Gaza.

[00:44:27] Isaac Saul: You can hold that. A group like Hamas gets support in Gaza because of the conditions the people who aren't Hamas live in. And you can also hold that Hamas is responsible for the actions that they took knowing that they were inviting the war, the kind of war that they got. I mean, one of my big objections to what Netanyahu and the War Cabinet have done in the last year is that, in my view, Hamas is getting exactly what they want.

[00:44:58] Isaac Saul: Maybe not so much recently. Yeah. Yeah. [00:45:00] Sinwar dead, you know, a lot of leaders have been killed. We're a year out though Right, I would say the first few months of the conflict hamas got exactly what they wanted Right, which I think is a damning indictment of hamas and also a little bit of an indictment of israel in the sense that It does not strike me as particularly complicated that Hamas was inviting this response that they knew this response would come And that they thought they could turn the tide of the kind of global opinion on the conflict in the way they did which by The way, they've done quite successfully, which worries me a great deal uh, so Man, like Gaza is not, if I could take back something I wrote then, and you actually didn't quote it, I think it came in the next sentence, you know, I use some of the kind of activist language saying Gaza is a, you know, open air prison, which I regret writing that because What it's done, I think, or that language sort of distracts from the fact [00:46:00] that there actually was quite a good deal in Gaza of, you know, restaurants, schools, hospitals, these things that were valuable that the society had built despite the Hamas, despite embargoes, despite, you know, how difficult it is to bring things in and out of the strip.

[00:46:17] Isaac Saul: They had prevailed in some ways, the people who wanted to build a better future for Gaza had done that. And in the war, a lot of that stuff has been destroyed. I mean, 60 percent of the infrastructure in Gaza is gone, basically. And. By in a weird way, by framing the difficulties that they face in such extreme terms, it almost undermines and takes away from the value of what a lot of them have lost.

[00:46:46] Isaac Saul: And I think I regret that because. It both speaks to what was possible there, and it also was sort of exaggerating in some ways the actions of Israel and, you know, demonizing Israel in [00:47:00] a way that wasn't necessary and made it difficult for a lot of my kind of pro Israeli readers to hear me. And so. My job every day is holding these really difficult contradictory views that have to co exist and I think it's really, really possible that you can view, as I do, leaders of Hamas, people like Yahya Sinwar, as, you know, evil, really, in fundamental ways and, you know, have your mind blown when you see You know, I had the experience the ISMR gets killed.

[00:47:34] Isaac Saul: I go online. I see leftists like celebrating the iconic last moments of his life with one arm. And then you go read the New York Times or you read some Arabic news where people are reporting on it where they're interviewing Gazans who are celebrating the fact he's dead. Right. And I'm like, They're a leftist in america idolizing this guy while actual palestinians in gaza are happy He's dead because they understand what he's done.

[00:47:58] Isaac Saul: Yeah, they know what he's [00:48:00] done And so I I believe all that I see all that it looks very clear to me Uh, and at the same time, you know Benjamin Netanyahu bet on Hamas,

[00:48:10] Jonah Platt: right?

[00:48:10] Isaac Saul: He funded them. He allowed that he, he thought that they were going to be this reformist group and he holds responsibility for that.

[00:48:16] Isaac Saul: And so, um, you know, it's a really hard thing to hold at the same time, but I try and do it because I think, you know, it's sort of, uh, it diminishes the conflict. It makes it too black and white to do anything else, in my opinion.

[00:48:30] Jonah Platt: Something else he wrote, They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings.

[00:48:38] Jonah Platt: We should never accept this. Without addressing the fact that Gaza gets very little of its water and electricity from Israel to begin with, and should probably nothing, Is is that not just a description of war?

[00:48:50] Isaac Saul: I think what I saw in the very early days was The reality that in order to conduct the war there was going to be two million people who [00:49:00] were going to experience incredible suffering All of a sudden any notion of peace any opportunity to sort of reconcile Is just pushback generations and I What we got was worse than that thing that I feared, I think, which has been a year of war and tens of thousands of civilians dead, the hostages still not home, you know, I mean, good God, in a different, in a different world.

[00:49:26] Isaac Saul: Where Hamas experienced the first week of the Israeli bombardment and decided they wanted nothing to do with this and let the hostages go. I mean, how different is our world? Look, if that happened, you know, like, you know, it makes me so hopeless about the future. I mean, I talked about the hope I had after living in East Jerusalem and like, So much of that has been sapped because I understand why people on different sides of the conflict are so far apart now today.

[00:49:55] Isaac Saul: And I really struggled to imagine a world where they take steps back toward each other in the near [00:50:00] future, which sucks. Yeah. Um,

[00:50:02] Jonah Platt: it's a grim picture.

[00:50:03] Isaac Saul: One, one of my readers said to me one time, he said, Your pacifism and your Zionism always fight. And in the end, you always seem to pick your pacifism and he might be right.

[00:50:12] Isaac Saul: I mean, it's not just for what Palestinians experienced in Gaza, but, you know, Israelis are being fired on by Iran and the Houthi rebels came into it. And Hezbollah came into it. And, you know, on October 8th, all that stuff was unknown at the time. And a lot of the worst case stuff has now happened.

[00:50:30] Jonah Platt: You throughout this conflict have.

[00:50:33] Jonah Platt: called A Lot for a Ceasefire, and you even had an article, The Zionist Case for a Ceasefire. How do you feel they should achieve a ceasefire in a way that doesn't just kick the can down the road to start this thing all over again in another year?

[00:50:46] Isaac Saul: I could frame, I think, what's happening now as sort of history repeating itself, right?

[00:50:52] Isaac Saul: Israel has fought ground wars in Lebanon. They've gone into Lebanon before in response to attacks or threats. Uh, [00:51:00] they've gone into Gaza. They've been in Gaza and withdrawn and gone back and withdrawn. We've experienced a lot of the things that we're experiencing right now. I mean, the, the sort of exceptional stuff is, you know, Iran firing directly on Israel.

[00:51:13] Isaac Saul: That's never happened before in history. Um, but a lot of this stuff is sort of the cyclical. Yeah. Things that we've seen before. And so what I argue a lot in the in, you know, my quote unquote Zionist case for a ceasefire is that I don't think Israel is much safer today than it was on October 8th. I think it's self evident by the fact that, you know, Um, Israelis are sheltering in Tel Aviv as rockets rain down from the skies.

[00:51:40] Isaac Saul: I think it's, it's self evident from the fact that more Israeli soldiers have died in the last year than, you know, in the last 20 years, whatever. I mean, there's all these different stuff that you could point to and say, look, Israelis are in danger. And the way that we've reacted to this horrific nine 11, like tragedy has not actually made Israel much [00:52:00] safer.

[00:52:00] Isaac Saul: The kind of opposite case and one that I understand is Compelling, but also scares me is. Well, that's exactly right. We are doing right now what we've done every time before. And so we actually have to finish the job this time. Right. And that's the Israeli perspective. I mean, you know, we, as like Western Americans, I think we like love to talk about this conflict and view it from afar.

[00:52:24] Isaac Saul: But the reality is you go to Israel and you ask people probably 80, 90 percent of them. That's the view, right? It's not. We're worried about these half measures. It's like, yeah, the half measures, the thing we've done over and over again. And if we want to do something new, it's like, take this war to its end.

[00:52:41] Isaac Saul: What scares me is when I ask people what they mean by that or what that actually looks like. There's a huge wide degree of responses, some of which, you know, include just like Turning Gaza no parking lot or going to direct war with Iran and just fighting that war now when it feels like maybe Israel has an [00:53:00] advantage, which I think for a million different reasons terrifies me because I don't know who would invite Russia, China, whatever.

[00:53:08] Isaac Saul: I don't know that Israel could definitely win the war. I think they probably would, especially with us backing, but you know, it only takes one big bomb in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv for the contours of what's the success to really change.

[00:53:20] Jonah Platt: I hear the pacifist and the Zionists meeting in conflict right now.

[00:53:24] Jonah Platt: Yeah.

[00:53:24] Isaac Saul: And, and look, I, I don't, Two things I'll say that maybe I should have said at the very top. A, uh, I'm not a quote unquote expert. I consult a lot of experts. I have opinions and views about this stuff. And my pledge to readers and listeners is I'll share them honestly. And I have very, you know, specific views about it.

[00:53:42] Isaac Saul: But the view that I have that's to me seems very obvious is like the more violence has never stopped the cycle of violence. It's also squishy to say, Oh, it's an ideology and we have to kill the ideology. It's not that simple either. There has to be a show of force and you have [00:54:00] to deter people and you have to respond and defend your civilians and all this stuff.

[00:54:03] Isaac Saul: And I get it. But, um, I just don't think repeating some of the things that we've seen done ground war in Lebanon, you know, uh, operating in Gaza for an extended, indefinite period of time and trying to install the leaders that we want there. Yeah. Is going to actually meaningfully change the future from what we just lived through in the last five or ten years

[00:54:23] Jonah Platt: What would you like to see happen?

[00:54:26] Jonah Platt: I would like to think would change the trajectory.

[00:54:28] Isaac Saul: I would like to see israel basically Propagandize the arabic world into understanding that the propaganda they're getting right now is not actually real I mean, you look at how much money a country like Israel spends on, um, you know, media, news, PR, whatever you want to look, sort of bucket it in English compared to what it spends in Arabic.

[00:54:56] Jonah Platt: Interesting.

[00:54:57] Isaac Saul: And it's, It's tenfold more. [00:55:00] Why is that? We don't have to convince Republican senators in Oklahoma to send more money to Israel for arms. We, the U. S. has wavered. What we have to do is convince a 12 year old who lives in Gaza, not to go join Hamas. That's what we have to do. And right now they're not getting contacted by Israel.

[00:55:21] Isaac Saul: They're not hearing the Israel story. They're not hearing the Hebrew story. They're not hearing. They're not hearing about a future of a two state solution or a one state solution where Palestinian citizens are living side by side with Israelis and whatever we want to call this great big land of Israel, depending on where you come from, they're not hearing that story.

[00:55:40] Isaac Saul: They're not hearing that vision. What they're getting is they see their cousins killed in a bombing. And then there's somebody there who has a gun and says, you, you want to stand up and fight an Avenger cousin or not? That's not a simple or not, not a complicated question to answer. If I was 13 years old, living in Bucks County [00:56:00] and somebody bombs, you know, my neighbor's house that I'd grown up with.

[00:56:04] Isaac Saul: And then another neighbor came by and said, Hey, we're going to go get that guy. You 13 year old dumb teenage, like. Full of piss isaac to go do that. It wouldn't have been that hard. I don't want to patronize the hamas side or the Arabic side and pretend that they're just like simple minded children.

[00:56:21] Isaac Saul: That's not what it is There's so much depth and history and thought and intellectualism behind their worldviews that we have to address and deal with but like Israel is not working to win those people over right now, right? They aren't i'm sorry and like and until they do or until they attempt to None of that's going to change look i'm not saying it's easy I'm, not saying it's going to take two years.

[00:56:43] Isaac Saul: It won't it's going to take we are generations away. Yeah from peace It's a

[00:56:47] Jonah Platt: long

[00:56:47] Isaac Saul: road hate to break it to you But like this war is not going to be over anytime soon and we are generations away From resolving this conflict in a way that doesn't involve war but the pacifist side of [00:57:00] me is like We've tried this part We've tried the invasions.

[00:57:04] Isaac Saul: We've tried the bombings. We've tried beheading the extremist groups. We've done all that stuff And it might work as a temporary fix But it's not going to get us to like the long term vision that I think a lot of people want For the country and for the region as a whole.

[00:57:19] Jonah Platt: All right now to take a little turn a little more light hearted We're going to go to some uh questions from our social media audience All right, they've they've written in for you seanlev378 asks.

[00:57:28] Jonah Platt: Who's your favorite jewish comedian

[00:57:30] Isaac Saul: favorite jewish comedian? I mean, is it too, like, simple to say Adam Sandler? That's who I would

[00:57:36] Jonah Platt: have said. I'm

[00:57:37] Isaac Saul: like a, you know, I grew up when he was doing like Waterboy and stuff. And God, it's still, I go back, like, you can turn me into a 12 year old pretty quick by just throwing on like some really dumb Adam Sandler humor.

[00:57:49] Isaac Saul: He can still make me laugh. So

[00:57:51] Jonah Platt: Billy Madison's my all time favorite. Yeah. I

[00:57:53] Isaac Saul: mean, I, that's. That's the first thing that comes to mind, I would say, so I'll give him his due. He's [00:58:00] earned that. Oh yeah. Oh

[00:58:01] Jonah Platt: yeah. And last one. Rach. Fleisch says, it's been a tough year. What's your favorite Jewish comfort food and where do you get it in Philly?

[00:58:10] Isaac Saul: My favorite jewish comfort food is my grandmother's brisket, which I mentioned at the top She's my late grandmother now, but the recipe lives on in the family. It's very simple And uh, whenever I really need to go there I cook it Though I will give a shout out to my mom's best friend. Susan makes the best kugel i've ever had in my life What kind of kugel it's like, you know apple flavor.

[00:58:32] Isaac Saul: Okay, and it's It's so, I mean, like I look forward to the high holidays to go to her house and eat it. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. Um, and that's makes me, I eat that and I feel like I'm at home. It takes me back to my childhood. So that's one of them.

[00:58:46] Jonah Platt: Isaac, thank you so much. Really enlightening.

[00:58:49] Jonah Platt: Really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for being so candid and open about everything.

[00:58:53] Isaac Saul: I appreciate it, man. Great questions. Love you. Challenge me on stuff. That's the real spirit of what I'm doing. And, uh, thanks I'm glad to be here. I [00:59:00] love the podcast. Love what you're doing with the show.

[00:59:01] Jonah Platt: Thank you so much.

[00:59:04] Jonah Platt: Thanks again to my guest Isaac Saul. If you haven't already sought it out during the episode, I highly recommend you subscribe to Tangle, which you can do at ReadTangle. com. Thanks to everyone here in Philly for a fantastic visit. And of course, thanks to all of you for supporting the show. Please continue to share it with your friends.

[00:59:24] Jonah Platt: Make sure you are following us on Tik TOK and Instagram and YouTube. And, uh, whoever you're rooting for in this election, I hope your candidate wins, but not really. Bye.