The Deal That Ended the Gaza War — with Dan Senor

Scott speaks with Dan Senor, co-author of The Genius of Israel and host of the Call Me Back podcast, about what may be the most consequential Middle East deal in decades. They discuss how Trump’s negotiators pushed Hamas to release hostages, Israel’s defiance of international pressure, and the regional realignment now underway across Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. They also explore what’s next for Gaza’s governance, Netanyahu’s political future, and whether this moment marks the true end of the war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

  Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying, excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It To Me, How To Mind Your Manners. New episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:59Scott Galloway?

  Today marks arguably the most significant moment since the war in Gaza began two years ago. Hamas freed 20 remaining hostages and Israel released some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as the first step in Trump's proposed peace deal. Israel and Hamas haven't agreed on the broader terms yet, but Trump's already declared, quote, "The war is over." We wanted to speak to somebody who could give us the most inside color nuance around this situation. And there was like one name that immediately came to mind, and that's Dan Senor. Dan is a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East. He's the co-author of The Genius of Israel and Startup Nation. He's also the host of the Call Me Back podcast, which has been really just a kind of a lighthouse

• 1:43Scott Galloway?

  in a sea of misinformation and propaganda, and has become kind of the go-to source for information on this, on this topic. Anyways, Dan, very much appreciate you taking time on what must be just an incredibly busy day for you.

• 1:57Dan Senor?

  Thank you, Scott. It is a crazy, insane day of mixed emotions. You have been a thought partner. With me on this over the last couple of years and some of my most meaningful conversations, I mean this, we're not on my podcast, we're on your podcast. So I, and I also having you on mine. So I was happy to do this.

• 2:19Scott Galloway?

  So let's, let's start with, it feels that Mark Twain saying, how do you go bankrupt? Slowly, then suddenly, it feels like this deal came about slowly, then suddenly. Can you give us any nuance into over the last 30 or 15 days? How did this culminate in a deal? Who were the parties? What were the pieces on the chessboard? And what were the critical events and or parties in bringing this deal to fruition?

• 2:45Dan Senor?

  I've been thinking about that a lot because I think there's a tendency, Scott, you know, what you do and I do and what a lot of other folks do in trying to make sense of moments in, in news cycles. And there's a tendency to, to just have these snap reactions to events and snap analysis. And we live in this moment where the moment there's, you know, one conversation that is reported out between two leaders and then there's suddenly notifications out, then there's whole, you know, cycles of articles written about a tense conversation or a good conversation and trying to make sense of every minute as opposed to taking a step back and sort of letting events play out and then try to like stitch them together. And so when I

• 3:26Dan Senor?

  think about some of the moments that occurred over the last really four weeks, four or five weeks, that there was this instant analysis and consensus on what they meant. And we now know it was all kind of wrong. So I'm just want to rattle off some of them because it gets to the question you're asking. So one was Israel's decision to go into Gaza City. So, so keep in mind, as you know, and as I think many of your listeners know, Gaza City was the last stronghold, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza, sort of like Hamas's Berlin or Hamas's Moscow. And, and Israel had avoided going into Gaza City for most of the war. And, and

• 4:08Dan Senor?

  now it made clear that it was going in and everybody seemed to be against it. Obviously, in the international community, leaders, the UN, Europe, everyone was going crazy that Israel cannot do this. Hamas, obviously, was going crazy, saying Israel cannot do this. And there was even division within Israeli society. Israelis were against it. The Israeli military was against it. And it was certain that it was just going to prolong the war, result in many more IDF casualties, result in many more Palestinian casualties, and risk the hostages. And everyone just thought this was the craziest thing in the world. What we now know is that Israel's decision to defy all that pressure and that

• 4:50Dan Senor?

  backlash, and say, no, we're going in no matter what. And when the world expected, well, at least the US will reign in Israel, not let Israel do this. President Trump said, no, Israel can do this and should do this, and there's no daylight, and we have Israel's back. And that, at the time, everyone thought that was crazy. And what we now know, and even critics of that decision, who I just recorded a podcast with today, concede, in retrospect, that more than anything flipped out Hamas, because they realized that there was no one reigning in Israel, that this notion that Hamas could always use the hostages

• 5:31Dan Senor?

  and the threat to the hostages as leverage against Israel would always reign in Israel. That the fact that that leverage or that currency was suddenly being devalued led Hamas to realize, we are on our own. We may want to get back to negotiating table. That's the first thing. The second thing is, I think history will look back at the Israeli operation in Doha, the attempted strike against Hamas, which was a failure, and was deemed a failure at the time. I think that had a catalytic effect. Even though it was a failure, it sent a message to the region that you in Doha, or Abu Dhabi, or Riyadh, or wherever, may think that this war, as controversial as it is in the region, will stay contained

• 6:15Dan Senor?

  to the Israel-Gaza border. And the fire is moving around the region, and the fire could come anywhere. And so I think that put a lot of pressure on some of these Arab capitals to tell Hamas, enough, you know, we need to get to a deal. And then, the third and fourth... Thing which are items which I think are connected and I, and I, this is going to be controversial, I think, for, for many people listening to this podcast, but I have to say it. I think that President Trump's decision to do two things. One, to send in Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who we know are not career diplomats, but

• 6:57Dan Senor?

  everyone in the region knows these are two individuals that are extremely close to him. And in the Middle East, that matters a lot. That, that the sense of family, the sense of personal connection, when, when the leaders in the region knew that Jared and Witkoff had been empowered by the president to go close the deal. It, it, it elevated the stakes for many in the region, including for Hamas. I mean, these guys were in the room with Hamas, like in the last couple of days, in the last few days, directly. I think that sent a statement. And then lastly, Trump's decision to, and this was, and I, I still don't know if this was, you know, how analyzed this was, or this was just an instinct.

• 7:41Dan Senor?

  Hamas said, in this last round of negotiations, yes, but, right? We will agree, yes, but, and they, they would have some changes. Now, what was the yes part? The yes part was, for the entirety of these two years, Hamas would never agree to a deal that would release all the hostages at once, ever. There was always, since it has to be in phases, Israel has to withdraw, if there has to be a pause in fighting, then we'll release a few more, spread over a period of time. And this was, by the way, I, even I was guilty of assuming that was the only way it could work. It always has to work in phases. Hamas will never give up all at once. And at some point, Trump said, no, all of them at once. We're not doing phases. You're not trickling them out.

• 8:24Dan Senor?

  We want them all out at once at the front end of the deal. And every expert was saying, there's no way. He's naive. He's foolish. And then Hamas said, yes, but. Now, in a negotiation. When someone says yes, but you can choose to focus on the yes or the but. And that many of the negotiations over the last two years have fallen apart because various parties tended to focus on the but. And what Trump seemed to do is he took the yes. Wait a minute, they just said, yes, they will release all the hostages at once at the front end. Yes, they're going to quibble with some of the other details, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna bank the yes and deal with the but later. And I do think generally negotiations, whether it's in business or geopolitics, there's

• 9:08Dan Senor?

  a sense that opportunity can beget opportunity. And I think what the US did here was say, there's opportunity here. Trump, Hamas just said yes to something they've never said yes to before. We're going to grab that. We'll deal with the details later, deal with their buts, and we're going to figure out how to create momentum around the yes. And that's what happened. And once, by the way, everyone in the region, obviously not just the Israelis, but all these capitals, I spoke to government officials, diplomats in other countries in the region, and Arab capitals, and they were like, wow, the moment everyone seized on the yes, we could start envisioning and enter this war. And so that created like, wait a minute, this is in reach. And here we are.

• 9:48Scott Galloway?

  So I want to respond to each of those three and get, and try and inspire more color from you. In reverse order, I encourage people, and something I have trouble with is to be a critical thinker, and that is go issue by issue. And I find, I have a negative bias towards almost anything the Trump administration does. I just immediately, reflexively, subconsciously find fault in everything this administration does. And I think if you are not giving this administration tremendous credit for what has just happened, you are not a critical thinker. Also, I think Jared Kushner, who was my student, I gotta think that some of the relationships in trust that he.

• 10:31Scott Galloway?

  Fomented and cemented during the Abraham Accords really paid off here. I gotta think he had a lot of these people on speed dial. Also, quite frankly, in typical Trump fashion, he seems more focused on the prize than the peace itself. So we tend to, again, want to have a conversation around whether or not, you know, who deserves credit. The Trump administration deserves a ton of credit for this, so kudos to them. The thing that you said that really shocked me and had changed my mind because I felt differently about it was the strike on Doha. I thought they were, they were kind of four for four. The pager operation, most strategic, effective, precision counter terrorist attack in history, right?

• 11:15Scott Galloway?

  Taking out Iran's air defenses. We are all safer. If, if I could pick a Nobel Prize, if I was the Nobel Prize committee, it would absolutely go to the IDF. I think they have created much more sustainable peace, a tremendous sacrifice to them strategically with incredible courage, technology, bravery, everything we would hope from, from our military. They were sort of four for four. And then I thought, oh, oh no, the Doha strike not only was probably a bridge too far, but it was a failure. That was, you know, that was just too far. But I don't think there's any ignoring the timing that it happens and all of a sudden there appears to be new pressure on Hamas. And there's, my sense is that two external parties, and tell me if you agree with this,

• 11:58Scott Galloway?

  that can put pressure on Hamas were Qatar and to a certain extent, the Trump administration putting pressure on Israel. You know, there's, there's just a small number of parties that could really put pressure on these groups. And it feels like Qatar is one of those parties. And to your point, when Qatar said, you know, honey badger don't give a shit, they will come in and start bombing our cities, shit just got very real for us and we would like to see this come to an end. So the Gaza City thing, I had not even, I had, that was not even on my radar screen, but a long winded way or an intro into a question of. We have a tendency in the US to look at the Gulf as one amorphous region with similar

• 12:43Scott Galloway?

  politics and a similar view of Israel. And the reality is Qatar is just much different than the Kingdom, which is much different than the UAE, which is much different than Bahrain. And I'd heard you talk about the role that Turkey played here, or will play moving forward. And I hadn't even, I hadn't even brought that into the calculus. Can you give us a sense for the different players in the region, who played a critical role and who plays a critical role moving forward?

• 13:09Dan Senor?

  Yeah, so I'll, I'll go, I'll tick through each of them quickly and then if you want to focus in on any one of them, just let me know. Obviously, the Saudis play the most important role in the region, their largest economy, the only ones that have a real serious military in the region. And a modernizing leader in Mohammed bin Salman, regardless of what some may think of him, he is, he is single-handedly transforming that country. And it's understood both in Riyadh and Jerusalem, that if there is normalization between these two countries, between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Arab-Israeli conflict is effectively over. And, and really, the region and big parts of the world will be transformed too as a

• 13:54Dan Senor?

  result of that. You know, the Saudi leadership was planning on normalization with Israel before October 7th. And I think, and I know they're still committed to it, obviously, the details got a little more complicated because of October 7th, but they're still committed to it. And this, this has been a huge carrot for Israel. Like, what do they need to do to get to Saudi normalization? So Riyadh is a major player. Qatar, for all the obvious reasons, is a major player here because they have direct channel to Hamas, whereas Saudi Arabia does not. And the Hamas leaders that are not in Gaza are based in Doha. And Qatar, the government of Qatar had been working for years with Hamas in Gaza, long

• 14:39Dan Senor?

  before October 7th, with, by the way, the knowledge of, and a sort of quiet support of the Israeli-US governments. And there's a sense that Qatar will play a big role in Gaza after, after the war. So, so when Qatar says, "It's now or you've lost us," that matters a lot in these conversations with, between the Arab countries and Hamas. And I'll also add that Qatar is in this unique situation where it's got extraordinary wealth. And yet it's a tiny, tiny country and a tiny, tiny population. And I've heard officials from Qatar describe their situation to Kuwait in 1990. Small country, extraordinary wealth, extraordinary natural resources.

• 15:20Dan Senor?

  But in one day, in August of 1990, Saddam Hussein's military rolls into Kuwait and declares Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq. And sure, Saddam's forces were kicked out of Kuwait, but Kuwait has never recovered. That its stature and its status in the region never recovered to this day. And I've heard officials in Doha basically say, we don't want to be that. We're scared of being that. And so Doha's MO has been to be friends with everybody. They're close to the US. They host a US base in Doha, not too far from where Israelis struck, tried to strike Hamas. They've opened ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. They've opened ties with the Iranians. They've opened ties with, you know, the bad actors in Afghanistan, the Taliban. They have a relationship with everybody, with Europe, with Russia, with Putin.

• 16:05Dan Senor?

  That's their MO. We're friends with everybody and hopefully that will give us some sense of security. And that model, that approach with the strike that Israel conducted in Doha, what that, can we be friends with everybody? And it's not going to cause problems with us because right now Israel striking in the heart of Doha doesn't feel very safe. So that's Doha. Egypt and Turkey to me are the most interesting stories here. Turkey, after the Israeli-US war against Iran, meant that Iran is no longer a real player in the region and it's lost its proxy system. Hezbollah, the Houthis are kind of on their last legs.

• 16:49Dan Senor?

  That satellite state in Syria and Damascus, the Assad regime, which had been in power for 53 years, gone, you know, and Iran is naked. No air defenses. Israel and the US having total air superiority over Iran. So Iran is no longer a player. So with Iran out of the region in terms of a power player, still in the region, but not a geopolitical power, the two countries now that matter the most are Israel and Turkey. Turkey is a major, to me, Israel and Turkey as the Future major players in the region are is the big story and therefore Erdogan has a lot of uh has a lot of capital, political capital, and he also has, and again, this will make some people uncomfortable, but it's the truth.

• 17:31Dan Senor?

  He also has a very good relationship with Trump, and I think Trump pressed on that. There are a lot of things that Turkey want. Turkey wants out of the US Turkish relationship, certainly on the military side. And Erdogan and Trump have a very direct relationship, so pressing on Turkey to help close Hamas was important. And the last country here is um is Egypt, which is, you know, we all focus on and the press just focuses on that there's only one border for Gaza, which is the Israel Gaza border. When in reality, there's two borders. There's the Israel Gaza border and there's the Gaza Egyptian border. And Egypt has Egypt was occupying Gaza before the nineteen sixty seven six day war.

• 18:10Dan Senor?

  And Egypt could have let any number of Gazan Palestinians, war refugees into into Egypt over these last two years and did not. They basically barricaded the place. And Egypt has a big stake in what happens in Gaza next, and they have direct channels with Hamas. And they are also the second largest recipient of US foreign aid. To this day, Egypt is a massive, massive recipient of US foreign aid. And so for all those reasons, concern about the war spreading throughout the region, close ties to Hamas and a big recipient of US foreign aid, I think, gave the US a lot of leverage over Cairo.

• 18:49Scott Galloway?

  What is the state of Hamas right now? There's a general viewpoint that militarily it's been totally neutered. As a political body, as a military force, where is Hamas right now?

• 19:03Dan Senor?

  I think militarily, it is virtually nonexistent, meaning it it it basically had a free run from two thousand seven, call it, to October seventh, twenty twenty three, to build up a very sophisticated military. It was, think of it as, we tend to think of it as like a militia or it is a terror group, but it but the way it was organized, it was organized and trained and developed like a a light infantry army.

• 19:32Dan Senor?

  Of a sovereign state. It had battalions and it had a command and control structure and it had the troops, if you will, the terrorist commandos were very well trained. They had sophisticated weapons. They built this tunnel system that was bigger than the London, you know, the tube. It was this massive, massive infrastructure. So that was a couple of decades in the making. And so what does Hamas have now? Most of their fighters that have been training over the last number of years have been wiped out or captured by Israel. Its leaders have been largely wiped out. It's the sophisticated of its arms. They haven't gotten armed supplies over the last two years. So it's all but nonexistent.

• 20:16Dan Senor?

  However, and here's the however. One, what it has done over the last year is it's been losing a number of its fighters. It's been recruiting new and new fighters. Now, they're not well trained. They're like kids. You can see it. When I speak to IDF soldiers who are in Gaza, they say like at the beginning of the war, they're fighting very sophisticated, well-trained Hamas fighters. Now they're fighting like 15-year-old, 14-year-old boys who are just recruited like cannon fodder for Hamas. So it doesn't have the level of sophistication. They haven't received new arms, but there are some arms still there. And how we handle or how the US and all those involved, we're meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh today, deals with, deal with the disarmament of Hamas, what's left of their arms is going to be a very complicated issue, not easy to, not easy to discern how that's going to be implemented.

• 21:01Dan Senor?

  Israel is very focused now on blowing up the tunnel system in Gaza. That will take a lot of time and won't be easy. So what exists of Hamas now is basically a political organization in Gaza that has a sort of ragtag militia, which is different from what it had before October 7th, which was a political organization in Gaza and a very sophisticated military. Now that political organization will still try.

• 21:28Dan Senor?

  To stay in power and still try to terrorize. And in fact, there are other Palestinians. There are stories coming out of Gaza today about Hamas kind of coming up from the rubble, what's left of Hamas, and imposing retribution on Palestinians that defied them over the last few months, or that they argue worked with the Israelis, or worked with the Food Aid Distribution Services, or whatever. There's these, I mean, you can see them online. There's these executions going on of any kind of clans, or families, or individuals that in some way they believe were not loyal to Hamas during this war. That's playing out now. Now, the international press is going to have no interest in covering that. It's brutal, by the way, and ghoulish to see, but it is, but it is going on. The press won't have interest in it because it doesn't involve Israel.

• 22:13Dan Senor?

  But what's playing out right now is a fight for the future of Gaza. And, and whether or not there's, there are Palestinians that are willing to stick their necks out and say, we want a different future than what we've had since Israel pulled out of Gaza, you know, two decades ago. And, and Hamas is going to try to, to play in that, in that competition.

• 22:39Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 22:47Scott Galloway?

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• 23:32Scott Galloway?

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• 23:49Scott Galloway?

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• 24:34Scott Galloway?

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• 25:18Scott Galloway?

  The regentech trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof? Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off.

• 26:07Scott Galloway?

  What does governance likely look like moving forward in Gaza? Because even deep into the war with all of the devastation, I had read that 70% of residents, and I don't know if they're under pressure to say it in a poll, still supported Hamas. Whereas the Islamic regime in Iran, it was flipped, only 30% of the populace supports the reigning government there. Does Hamas still have deep, deep support among the people of Gaza, which likely means they are going to be very involved in governance? What does governance look like and what is the current view on Hamas amongst the residents of Gaza?

• 26:45Dan Senor?

  So it's not clear what governance looks like, will look like. Right now, we don't know what exactly it'll look like because there's going to be this international stabilization force that's set up. There's these Arab countries that are going to step in, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, maybe others, they're going to come in and try to help run the place. There's this body, this board that's being created. Tony Player is going to have a big role in trying to create some transitional technocratic governing body to kind of just run the place. So basically get a bunch of technocrats, not ideologues, who can come in and just, you know, get the trains running on time. Start thinking about the rebuilding, start thinking about getting humanitarian assistance

• 27:27Dan Senor?

  to Palestinians, start dealing with just delivering essential services to Gazan Palestinians before they really think through who's going to govern this place, who the future of the Gazan state or whatever you want to call it will be. So I think we don't know. Your point about 70% of Gazan Palestinians supporting Hamas, when you drill down into that data, what you find is it's not so much that they support Hamas, and this is both... This is going to sound odd to say this was an encouraging sign in a counterintuitive sense, but also depressing sign. They don't necessarily support Hamas. They support October 7th. That's what the polling says. So they say they're frustrated with Hamas and they're

• 28:08Dan Senor?

  frustrated with Hamas running Gaza, but they support the war against Israel. And that to me is we're now going to see whether or not that's what they felt the pressure to say, whether or not they can, you know, whether or not Palestinians in Gaza can start speaking freely. Do they say, look, invading Israel and war after war after war against Israelis was a mistake. We set back our own cause and we need to start a new day of coexistence. Whether or not that there's, there's, there is that sentiment out there and there just needs to be oxygen in the space where Palestinians can feel safe articulating it. We don't know. The flip side is it could be that Hamas, at least in its hatred and its ideological hostility

• 28:52Dan Senor?

  to Israel is so entrenched as in Gaza and among Palestinians that no matter who emerges in Gaza, that sentiment, that hold on people's minds cannot be broken. We don't know. I mean, what I'm looking forward to is testing it. I mean, we have to test this now. Is there a world in which there can be some leadership in Gaza that can be willing to coexist with Israel? And I will say it's not easy because to do so, if anyone is willing to stick out their neck and, and present that kind of vision, they are risking their lives. They are risking their lives.

• 29:32Scott Galloway?

  To what degree are you concerned that the prisoner swap, so 20 hostages and, and whatever remains they can locate, turn back over to Israeli families in exchange, Israel has released some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

• 29:48Scott Galloway?

  To what extent are you concerned and is there any way to safeguard that we're, I say we, that the Israelis are this deal, isn't just repopulating the leadership ranks of Hamas? Because if I remember correctly, Sinwar was once a prisoner of Israel and was handed back. To what extent are the Israelis, you know, against their will, they would not rather have this way, are they going to just replenish the leadership of Hamas?

• 30:15Dan Senor?

  It is one of the things I'm most worried about with regard to this deal and the previous deals. You're absolutely right. In 2011, Israel did a, released, they did an exchange, they released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons to get back one hostage, Gilad Shalit. And one of those prisoners that was released, as you said, was Yechiel Sinwar. And the question is, are we, is Israel releasing today a lot of Yechiel Sinwars? I think there are two problems with this approach of the prisoner releases, and I don't think Israel had a choice, but there are two problems with it. One is, not only are you replenishing Gaza and the West Bank, because some of them are going to return to the West

• 31:00Dan Senor?

  Bank, with these monsters who know how to be monsters and are quite skilled at being monsters, even if they've been in prison for 10 or 20 plus years. So you're replenishing, as you said. And two, you're sending a message that this works. When you take Israelis hostage, you get your heroes, if you will, the biggest monsters from Hamas, out of prison and back home. So it has two effects. A, it creates a risk that the people who know how to conduct this kind of violence and wage this kind of mass violence are now free. And two, you set, you create an incentive structure because you're saying, this is how we get, this is how we get our people out of prison, is we take Israeli, we kidnap, we steal Israelis.

• 31:42Dan Senor?

  So I'm deeply, this is what I'm, among the things I'm most worried about, this is, this is right up there. And yet, I don't think Israel had a choice. I, you know, it's, the way Israel deals with hostages is perplexing to so many people around the world, because, you know, if you look at the standard practice when someone is taken hostage. The standard practice, the kind of the practices that are encouraged by experts in hostage negotiations is to downplay the significance of the hostages, to not make them household names, to not turn them into these symbols of a priority for society.

• 32:26Dan Senor?

  Even if it is a priority for society to get them back, you shouldn't turn them into these rallying cries because that only increases their value. Their stock only goes up in the eyes of Hamas. Wow, look how badly Israel wants these people back. All the more reason to hang on to them, all the more reason to kidnap more of them. So, and yet, Israel, time and time and time and time again, does this. They, whenever Israelis are taken hostage, you get a version, this was an extreme version, but you get a version of what we've just seen over the last two years, where there's a sense from Israel's enemies that Israel wants nothing more than getting these hostages back, on the one hand. However, if you listen to Hamas's rhetoric, one of the things they have said, including Sinwar himself,

• 33:10Dan Senor?

  was that Israel's greatest weakness is they love life. Israel's greatest weakness is Israelis love life, whereas we love death. This is, these are not my words, this is Hamas's words, Sinwar's words. And they thought that the kidnapping, the taking of hostages, is what would break Israel because they're so weak, that they so desperately want these people back. And I could argue this so many ways, Scott, and I think about this a lot. On the one hand, of course, it's a weakness for all the reasons you and I were just saying. On the other hand, when you watch the images from today,

• 33:51Dan Senor?

  and you just see this, the vibrancy of Israel and the health of Israeli society.

• 33:59Dan Senor?

  And regardless of what you think of its politicians, regardless of what anyone thinks about certain decisions they made here or there, you just watch the that is Israel was was willing to risk everything to get back what these musicians and these kids who entered went to the Nova Fest music festival and and parents and innocent, you know, people who lived on the wrong kibbutzim and, you know, at the and were there at the wrong time and just these regular people, they're willing to risk everything. And what is Hamas trying to get back? Hamas is trying to get back monsters. I mean, literally agents of barbarism, not just agents of chaos, agents of barbarism. That's who they value.

• 34:39Dan Senor?

  And Israel values the people we're seeing return today. And so I, on the one hand, think it's a weakness for Israel, and I live in fear that Israel's going to get into this aversion of this jam again. On the other hand, I think one of the reasons Israel endures, and Israeli society endures, and is is a standout and a shining light in an otherwise often very dark region, is in part because they have this love for life.

• 35:06Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think you're right. Tactically, it's a weakness, but strategically, if, you know, I use the term loosely, the brand of Israel, there is something about life and an appreciation and kind of no man or woman left behind. It reminds me of the film Superman, where General Zod is watching the devastation there reeking, and he all of a sudden pauses and says, I found Superman's weakness. He cares. You know, if you're looking for moral clarity in geopolitics, you're just, you're just not going to find it. Of this 20-point plan, what do you, what are you most worried about? It feels, I love what you said earlier, and I think it's a great, actually a great business lesson, that if you can, you know, if you're trying to take over a company or a merger the company, if you can get the

• 35:49Scott Galloway?

  price agreed to, you can probably work out the rest, right? And what you're saying is the release, the hostage and prisoner exchange was kind of the, was the price, and that we should be able to figure out, both sides should be able to get to some sort of resolution. Of the remaining points to be ironed out, what do you see as the most fraught with risk of an enduring peace here?

• 36:14Dan Senor?

  One, the issue of disarmament, which I referenced earlier. So among the 20-point plan, Israel, I mean, Hamas must be disarmed.

• 36:25Dan Senor?

  How's that gonna happen? Who's going door to door and tearing Kalashnikovs and RPG launchers from the hands of Hamas? Who's doing that? Really, who's doing that? Is Egyptian and Emirati forces doing that? Maybe. Are American forces doing that? No. Are Israeli forces doing that? Israel has basically conceded that it won't be by agreeing to this deal. So there's talk about Hamas disarmament, but I don't see Hamas saying they're gonna disarm. And I don't know who's at... Because to go door to door and get those Kalashnikovs means every time you quote unquote knock on a door, you're risking your life. Who... Which country is signing up to have their lives of their soldiers being risked in order to get Kalashnikovs

• 37:08Dan Senor?

  out of the hands of Hamas 15-year-old boys? So the disarmament piece worries me.

• 37:17Dan Senor?

  The role of Hamas in the governing structures, you and I were talking about, not clear. I think that if Hamas emerges as a player in a future governing authority in Gaza, it will be a huge win for Hamas that'll be able to say that Israel took out Iran, Israel took out Hezbollah, Israel took out, you know, had a role in taking out the Assad regime. But we Hamas, we launched the biggest massacre on the Israeli people, on the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust, and we're still standing. And not only we still standing, but we actually have a role in the governing authority in Gaza. So the message that sends to the region worries me. I can go on and on with some of my other concerns,

• 38:00Dan Senor?

  but I think the biggest caveat to everything I'm saying, which is what is so extraordinary to me about this deal, not only getting all the hostages back at once at the beginning, was that Israel is... The IDF is still in Gaza. The IDF is still in 53% of Gaza, according to this deal. Now, it's not in Gaza fighting, and it's not in war, in war fighting mode, but it is there. It is present. It can obviously turn on warfighting mode when it wants to. So Israel has real leverage now, as the details are being sorted out, to basically say, "We're still here, and if we're uncomfortable with the way things are going, you know, we have a lot of tools as well." So I have a lot of concerns. I...

• 38:42Dan Senor?

  Those are mollified by, from my perspective, from Israel's perspective, by the IDF being allowed to stay in Gaza until some of these details are sorted out.

• 38:54Scott Galloway?

  I want to turn to the politics and our governance in Israel right now. Something that I found incredibly distressing, but not surprising, was the deafening silence from that kind of pro-Palestinian advocates here in the US. Because my understanding is that this deal is absolutely not what certain factions of the far right and the Knesset wanted. They wanted occupations, they wanted settlements, they wanted continued military presence.

• 39:20Dan Senor?

  They wanted permanent displacement of the Gazan Palestinians out of Gaza. They want, yeah, you're exactly right. Everything the hard right wanted, really, I mean this, and I'm a, obviously, I'm an advocate and I defend Israel, but I'm a critic of the hard right in Israel. I know what they wanted. Okay, I know what they wanted, and they didn't get it.

• 39:40Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, and yet, this feels like a deal, this feels like, to me, the best, or arguably, a pretty good deal for Hamas. And yet, it felt like factions in the US were, to me, out of them as being more concerned with having a vessel for anti-Israel or anti-Semitic hate, as opposed to real concern for a deal that brings a lasting peace. It just, I saw none of these flags flying, or none of these celebrities urging Hamas and Israel to get this deal done. It's almost, the analogy, I would use what you talked about with Egypt, or some of the other nations, that they saw the conflict in Gaza, quite frankly, is politically advantageous

• 40:22Scott Galloway?

  for them, from a brand and a PR standpoint, but weren't that interested in actually helping the people of Palestine. And so, I'm using that, one, that's a comment, leading up to a question, which I think you agree with, but what, give us the state of play of the governance, how Israel, my sense is Israel, the far-right faction, which a lot of people would argue had way too much influence over Netanyahu, destabilizing the region, there was a fear that there was a kind of wag the dog situation here, where Netanyahu wanted to be on a war footing, regardless of what the right thing or the humane thing was to do, and that the far-right in Israel did not get what it wanted, far from it here. Talk about the governance in Israel, how this deal came about, what kind of pressure

• 41:07Scott Galloway?

  was applied, and what do you think this means for governance, and specifically Netanyahu, moving forward in Israel?

• 41:14Dan Senor?

  So, few things. First, I completely agree with you. We have been Lectured and hectored at for the last number of months that there is a genocide taking place in Gaza. And this was everything from these rallies and protests in places like London and Paris and New York City to, as you said, the Hollywood elite, the, you know, the, I don't, anyways, I don't want to start singling out names, you know who these people are. They were all talking about a genocide, stop the genocide. And obviously, I strongly dispute whether it was a genocide, it wasn't a genocide. And we can talk about, I mean, Israel has lost over 900 soldiers in this war, the majority

• 41:56Dan Senor?

  of which, the overwhelming majority of which, was after October 7th, meaning it chose to send its youngest, its best into Gaza to fight. Why? If it was a genocide, or an attempted genocide, Israel would have just obliterated the place from the air. And, and it didn't, it sent soldiers in to fight. I mean, it's just so, it's so absurd on so many levels, this idea that, that this was a genocide. That said, if you really believed it was a genocide, then when the genocide was quote unquote stopped, where there was actually a peace agreement that stops the genocide, IDF soldiers are not fighting in Gaza today.

• 42:36Dan Senor?

  Shouldn't your first moral obligation be to embrace the, the peace agreement that made that happen? And when all these players did not do that, they revealed themselves as not interested, actually, in the Palestinian people. They were interested in a political weapon against Israel. That's what this was about. And the, and the, and the cause of quote unquote stopping the genocide became that weapon once the genocide quote unquote stopped. They weren't interested, first off. Second off, on a very practical level, you know, ask yourself, how many Palestinians were actually dying every day?

• 43:11Dan Senor?

  Like a lot, we should, we need to say that. A lot of Palestinians were dying every single day. Now, we can debate the numbers and there's a, you know, I have serious issues with the, with the authorities in Gaza who provide these numbers, but it's, it's, it's indisputable that you pick your 50, 70, 90, 10, 15, whatever your number, Palestinians were dying in this war every single day. If you care about the Palestinians, today, there are no Palestinians, at least from Israeli forces, dying, being killed in Gaza. Shouldn't you celebrate that day and the next day and the next day? Every day, those are lives saved. And, and the fact that that's not the focus, I think, tells you everything you need to know. As it relates to the Israeli government, I think two things are going on.

• 43:55Dan Senor?

  I don't think Netanyahu is as beholden to the hard right in his government as the press often characterize. I think, obviously, coalition politics always has its own dynamics, but, but I don't, I don't think they, they had the gun to his head that, that everybody thought, certainly as we can tell, see over, over events of the last couple of weeks. His government could fall over this deal and yet he still pushed it through.

• 44:19Dan Senor?

  Israel now is going to have to go to elections at some point between now and October of 26. According to Israeli election law, the next election has to happen by October of 26. And so now the big question is, does Netanyahu go to elections soon? Does he go to elections very soon? Does he quote unquote, "take the win and say, I'm now, you know, only I could have gotten this deal done, only I could have gotten the hostages back, and, and only I now can take this energy and this talent that you saw as I maneuvered the geopolitics of Israel and the region and the world and got the Iran threat eliminated, I got the Hezbollah threat eliminated, and now I'm the guy to make Saudi normalization happen.

• 45:02Dan Senor?

  And that's why I need to continue serving in government and I'm staking my election on Israel's full normalization into the region. That's what this is about. That's one way he could run. The other way he could run is actually just delay the election and not and push off calling elections well into next year and try to start making the normalization happen and then run on that. I think the latter is a riskier course for him because I think on the one hand, there's a lot of promise in terms of normalization. I think we're going to see movement from Saudi Arabia with Israel. I think we're going to see movement from Syria and I think we're going to see movement from Indonesia. So there could be a lot that happens on the normalization front, but as we know, diplomacy and international politics can take weird twists and turns.

• 45:45Dan Senor?

  And I think Netanyahu would probably want to run as the guy who can deliver it rather than the guy who's in the muck of trying to deliver it. But either way, he's going to have to go to elections and of course, I'm not talking with the elephant in the room. He was the prime minister under whose watch the biggest catastrophe for the Jewish people, as I said earlier, in a single day since the Holocaust occurred. And that notion, that reality has never been tested in Israeli politics. People say, well, Golda Meir in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, she got reelected right away. It's true, but the Yom Kippur War was catastrophic for Israel. It was 19 days. It was in retrospect compared to what Israel's just gone through in terms of the shattering

• 46:28Dan Senor?

  of Israel, the trauma for Israel. Nothing else comes close to it. And Netanyahu was prime minister when it happened and I don't know if that's surmountable. It's just, you know, we have these periods, Scott, where you say, what's the first election going to be like in the US? What's the first election, presidential election going to be like after COVID? Or what's the first presidential election going to be like after the 2008 global financial crisis? Or what's the first election going to be like after 9/11? You know, we go through these periods and the truth is, it's very hard to know ever what happens, what's going to happen in these elections because on the one hand, after 9/11, Bush got reelected and not only did he get reelected, he won the midterms in 2002, right after 9/11.

• 47:11Dan Senor?

  Of course, there was no way the Republicans would have won the White House in 2008 after the global financial crisis. So you could, these things can go in all these different directions. It's very, when you have these seismic events in the life of a nation. Trying to predict what the politics would be, I think is, it's totally unprecedented. You don't have no historical precedent in Israel's case to point to in terms of how the electorate will react. I do think you will see one phenomenon this time in Israeli politics is the emergence of what they call the miloemniks. The miloem is a Hebrew word for the reservists. There were all these various, so Israel's standing army is pretty small. It depends on this incredible reserve force, which are people in their twenties

• 47:54Dan Senor?

  and thirties, basically, who have day jobs and kids and, you know, cool jobs in tech and whatever. And, you know, over 300,000 to 400,000 of them fought the reservists and the standing armory in the last two years. That's a higher percentage of Israeli society than the percentage of American, the American population that fought in World War II. So this, this war touched everybody, every family, and all these, it's a small country, as a friend of mine just said, but it's a big family, Israel, and these reservists, who are very talented, impressive people, you know many of them, for the first time I'm hearing from them, you know what? Maybe I should run for office. You know, I never

• 48:39Dan Senor?

  thought about a career in politics. I was working in tech in Tel Aviv. I did, I worked in an elite unit. I served in an elite unit in the IDF, but I was basically disconnected from politics. For the first time, I'm hearing those people say, we, this must be a new day for Israel. This must be a rebirth. And it's, it's, it's our generation now that has to play a role. So I do think in Israeli politics, everyone's focused on Bibi or not Bibi. It's like the way in American politics, everything's Trump or, you know, Trump, everything, the arc of history bends one way or the other towards how you think about Trump. It's the same with Netanyahu, such an outsized force in Israeli politics. I think we focused on Netanyahu, as we should in our analysis, at the expense of, I think, a new generation

• 49:20Dan Senor?

  that will be rising in Israeli politics. And the role they play could be certainly unprecedented and very interesting.

• 49:30Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 49:38Speaker 00

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• 51:16Scott Galloway?

  We're back with more from Dan Senor.

• 51:20Scott Galloway?

  It's so interesting. You know, I immediately go to, and I don't mean to diminish the gravity of these situations, but I immediately go to branding because marketing is my background. And brands, you know, Heineken's a fairly pedestrian beer in Holland, and it's a luxury beer in the US. And Budweiser's a luxury beer in the US. And I find that some of these historical figures, whether it's Tony Blair or Golda Meir, are much more popular outside of their own nation. And I was struck by how many people were applauding at every mention of Trump in these celebrations in Israel yesterday and today, and booing when they heard the term Netanyahu.

• 51:56Scott Galloway?

  And then I've also heard other people say that Netanyahu is literally running to stay out of jail.

• 52:02Dan Senor?

  Yeah, I don't buy that. I mean, I'm open to the whole range of criticisms against Netanyahu, but I think this idea that, you know, there's a tendency, I think, for those of us who follow these events so closely, to always find like the secret motive behind a politician's actions. So then this narrative emerged that Netanyahu has these corruption cases and that he just wants to extend the war in order to extend his government, stay in power, and the odds of him going to jail go down if he stays in government and therefore, unfortunately for Israelis and Palestinians, the war has to go on and on in service of Netanyahu's political career. I don't buy it for two reasons. One, these corruption cases are pretty weak if you look closely.

• 52:46Dan Senor?

  Even Netanyahu critics who are deep into the legal aspects here think they're pretty weak. A, B, even if he goes, even if he's found guilty, these legal cases have been going on forever, they will go on for a while. Even if he's found guilty, he will likely appeal them. The idea that anyone's sending Netanyahu, at that point, well into his 80s, to prison, it's just not believable. I think what's so complicated, and I think you talked about this at the beginning about like trying to compartmentalize how you think about Trump and being able to hold many views, one of disgust, which you articulated at the same time of that you're impressed by what was accomplished here.

• 53:25Dan Senor?

  I think it's important to understand, or just keep in mind, that politicians usually have many competing motives. I've worked with a lot of politicians. I always find this, there's a sense of commitment to public service, so genuine, good spirited, like I want to try and do things, publicly spirited people, who at the same time have their own issues about their reputations and how they'll be thought of in history and some degree of narcissism. It's all wrapped up in that, in the decisions to make. It's all wrapped up in it. And Netanyahu...

• 54:03Dan Senor?

  His political rise, if you go back to his political rise now decades ago, basically was on the back of the heroism and tragedy of his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, the Battle of Entebbe, the Operation Entebbe. He led the operation to Entebbe, got these Israeli hostages out, and he was the only one who was killed in the operation. And that is when the Netanyahu name became this like, like this mythical, like larger-than-life name in Israeli society. And then soon after Benjamin Netanyahu ran for office, or got involved in politics, ultimately ran for office. The idea that the bookends of his career could be the Yoni Netanyahu story at the beginning

• 54:43Dan Senor?

  of his career, rescuing Israeli hostages, to the other bookend being the largest number of Israeli hostages taken on his watch at the end of his career. And I'm convinced, I'm not in the man's head, I speak to him from time to time, but I'm not in his head, I'm convinced that that other bookend, he was not willing to allow that other bookend be the bookend, that he was going to get these hostages back. Now, when someone says I'm going to get these hostages back, is it because he's publicly spirited? I believe he is. I know that's going to be hard for people to, I believe he genuinely wanted these hostages back. Is he also considers himself a custodian of his own reputation and his own career? Of course. Point to me a politician that doesn't.

• 55:24Dan Senor?

  And so, it's, it's, it's like, we should be able to say that politicians are complicated enough just because of those two competing factors that they're constantly like twisting and twirling inside their heads. We don't have to come up with, and then there's this, and then there's this, and they sneakily try to do that. I, I, I think we're all usually wrong about those layers and layers and layers, and, and these two big factors are usually the factors. And tragically, they sometimes compete with one another. But when they're synchronized, they're all both moving the same direction, that's when I think the real magic can happen. And I think that's what has happened, actually both for Netanyahu and for Trump, in the, in the, in the closing of this deal.

• 56:09Scott Galloway?

  Let's assume that there's something resembling an enduring peace and that this conflict has come to an end. And let's take off the table that, let's assume that the residents or the citizens of Gaza and Israel are winners here. Who are the other winners, and probably more interesting, interestingly, the losers with this peace?

• 56:28Dan Senor?

  Obviously, I think Israel is a winner. I actually think the Palestinians are winners here, the Palestinian people, for the reasons I was saying earlier, which is the war ends. And at the same time that the Arab world has made clear that they're committed to rebuilding Gaza. So, so, so the war ends and it's not like everyone's abandoning ship and bailing on the Palestinian people. So the Palestinians are winners here. I think the US is a winner here because it has demonstrated that, you know, there was this image, someone was describing to me today on television, a split screen of Israeli soldiers taking the hostages out of Gaza and returning them. So you see the image of these Israeli soldiers taking hostages out of Gaza, the split screen

• 57:11Dan Senor?

  on the news at the same time that Air Force One was landing at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. And it was that split screen which is the power of, of course, the guy in the uniform, the soldier from whatever country is fighting, there's power that comes from that. But that, where you get the real kind of exponential turbocharge power is when it's paired with that Air Force One, when it's paired with the power of the US and the President of the United States, regardless of who the president is. And so I think it's important for us as Americans to keep in mind, when we go, when we go shoulder to shoulder with allies and help them achieve their security aims, we are, we are sending a message about American power that I think has, has the value that goes on in the world

• 57:55Dan Senor?

  well beyond the individual, the moment we're focused on. That's, that's, so the US, I think, is a winner here. And I think the Arab world largely winners here because they get calm, they get some stability, they get, you know, the Gulf states like the Emiratis and the Bahrainis have been huge beneficiaries of the Abraham Accords. There's now a potential now for further normalization, which I think will do wonders for the, the growth, the modernization, the economic growth in the region. So they're winners. I think the losers, if I were to pick one other bucket of losers. Are most of Europe, not all of Europe, but most of Europe. I think the European leaders like Starmer in the UK, like Macron in France, and then outside of Europe, like Carney in Canada, I think made a huge mistake.

• 58:40Dan Senor?

  Just when pressure was mounting on Hamas, they came in with that recognition of a Palestinian state, the UN, which basically declared that they believed that with no conditions, that Hamas release hostages, with no conditions that Hamas leave Gaza, with no conditions that Hamas rearm. They sent a message that, as far as Europe was concerned, in Canada, that October 7th was Palestinian Independence Day. And that was a terrible move by them. And then even worse for them was then Trump completely ignores them and moves his own diplomacy to make something happen. And he does it, the US does it, the Gulf states do it, and Europe's completely cut out of it.

• 59:25Dan Senor?

  They're like not even involved. So they also looked impotent. Not only did they make the wrong bet, but then they looked impotent. So I would say Hamas in Europe, in Canada, to some degree, are the losers. I think the Palestinian people, Israel, most of the Arab world, Turkey, and the US are the winners.

• 59:43Scott Galloway?

  There are a few people I know in this nation that understand the chessboard better in the Middle East than you. You've served in government, you've obviously been studying these issues and almost become sort of a go-to media figure. If someone had told you, if someone had laid out on October the 8th, what just transpired, and then you had to guess what was going to happen over the next two odd years, what has surprised you most about what has happened militarily, politically, and also domestically in the US?

• 1:00:16Dan Senor?

  Look, I continue to be floored by...

• 1:00:20Dan Senor?

  I mean, I had Sam Harris on my podcast on the anniversary, the two year anniversary of October 7th. I asked him on the first year anniversary on the podcast, I asked him what surprised him the most. And he said, just the just explosion of antisemitism. And then he said, on year two, he's still surprised by it. For me, I was, you know, I was surprised by it in year one, by year two, I guess I was still surprised, but I, but I, I kind of had become numb to it a little bit. I, I do worry, Scott, that many friends of mine, Jewish friends of mine are like, okay, this period is over hostages, the light living hostages are back, the war is over, we're done. And I don't think we're done, because I think now we have to start really thinking about, there was almost

• 1:01:05Dan Senor?

  no time to kind of deal with how prevalent and ugly and pervasive this antisemitism was. And now we're going to have to start dealing with. I think you see a lot of people in the UK, in France, Canada, elsewhere, leaving those countries, Jews, in big numbers. I think that's gonna, I mean, I think we're all gonna start looking around saying, what does this mean for Jewish life in the US? If, if, why couldn't something like the Manchester synagogue attack happen at any number of Jewish institutions in the US? Who's gonna stand up for us? Who has our back? And so there's that, that's gonna be our new day, sadly. And, and then the other big surprise for me is, is taking out Iran. I can't, I

• 1:01:47Dan Senor?

  couldn't be more emphatic about what, if you would have told me, if you would have, forget about, am I surprised, if you'd have told Sinwar on October 6th, right, that, or give him your scenario on October 8th, hey, you just launched this attack, and in the next two years, let me tell you what's gonna look like. Hezbollah, your sister terror organization in, in Israel's northern border, gone. Their whole rocket arsenal, gone.

• 1:02:12Dan Senor?

  The Assad regime in power for over five decades, gone.

• 1:02:17Dan Senor?

  Iran's nuclear capability, which was emerging to pose an existential threat to Israel, gone. I mean, if you just go one after the other, you would have never believed it, right? I think Iran was the linchpin. Israel, if you think about Israel's decision to go after Hezbollah, which removed the biggest check on Israel going after Iran. That was, Israel was always, Israeli planners were always concerned about going after Iran because of the risk of Iran lighting up Hezbollah on its northern border. With Hezbollah gone, it created a path for Israel to go against Iran. And then Israel going against Iran and doing it, executing it masterfully then created space for the US to come in.

• 1:02:58Dan Senor?

  And then this policy issue that many of us have been perplexed by for decades, two decades, really, the possibility of Iran going nuclear. There are four major countries that are a major threat to the United States. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Three of the four have nuclear weapons. Iran was the only one that didn't. And you could not imagine, any of us could not, I could not imagine a path in which Iran was going to be stopped, short of military action. You just couldn't. All this diplomacy was not going to work. Iran suddenly being enlightened was not going to happen. Iran was marching towards a nuclear weapons capability. And if I would have, I couldn't imagine that after this terror attack by Hamas, the net

• 1:03:42Dan Senor?

  out would be that within two years, Iran would be the first country whose nuclear ambitions would have been reversed of the major powers arrayed against the US and the West and Israel as a result of all of this. By military force, by the US and Israel, I, I'm still kind of shocked by it. It has transformed the region.

• 1:04:08Scott Galloway?

  I want to pivot to a more optimistic tone or talk about what I see as some points of light here, and I think you'll agree. You wrote a book called Startup Nation about, essentially, zero to one, if you were loosely to say, countries that have really excelled fast in terms of GDP growth. It's usually been a function of technology, or finance, or both. And Israel is out in spades. And also, war. Nothing creates innovation like the existential threat of your society going out of existence, whether it's World War I and tanks and aircraft, or World War II, jet transportation radar, splitting the atom,

• 1:04:47Scott Galloway?

  Cold War gave rise to the Internet, DARPA, and GPS. We see in Ukraine, there's real hope that that economy someday might be rebuilt with the prosperity of drone technology. Ukraine, assuming we have a sovereign Ukraine, will likely be an incredible hub for asymmetric warfare and all sorts of consumer applications around drone technology. You study Israel, you know the economy well there. Pivoting to what type of innovation is going to come out of this war, I think, I hate to call it an innovation, but I never thought of tunnels as being a huge innovation in warfare, and it played a key role here. What innovation

• 1:05:29Scott Galloway?

  do you see, or what technologies do you think played a key role here in terms of the IDF and Israel that might give us a glimpse into future technologies?

• 1:05:38Dan Senor?

  Yeah, I think there are two laboratories, as you're alluding to, there are two laboratories today that are the future, where we can study the future of warfare, and that's Ukraine and Israel. While Ukraine has some of this, Israel has it at a whole other, almost like industrial scale. It has this incredible tech ecosystem that...

• 1:05:59Dan Senor?

  Has been called to fight. So I know plenty of Israeli tech entrepreneurs and people who work at big Israeli tech companies or big multinational tech companies with operations in Israel that have been called up to fight and they come back from fighting in Gaza and they say, I wanna, I wanna work on the defense of my country right now. And so the number of defense tech, the sector, the defense tech sector, so before October 7th, there were about 160 defense tech startups in Israel. Now that number is close to 400 in a matter of two years. It's a, it's a booming, no pun intended, sector and it all deals, as you said, with drone warfare, with counter drone warfare, with AI, you know, is obviously

• 1:06:41Dan Senor?

  embedded in all of this. And, and I think we are experiencing and observing a surge in defense spending globally, especially in the US and Europe and all these countries that talked about cutting off arms to Israel, arms sales to Israel, doing business with Israel, buying arms from Israel. I think all that's going to fall by the wayside. I think these governments have a lot of money to spend on defense. They're studying what Israel has learned in the, in its two-year war and they are going to be dazzled, as I know you have, I have, others have, by, by the, these Israeli innovators and the combination of this incredible technical expertise, combined with having gone through

• 1:07:23Dan Senor?

  crucible leadership experiences, serving in war, leading men into battle, the crucible leadership experience that these people have to, which gives them a huge advantage in building companies. And now this understanding of where warfare is going. There are many areas I can talk about in the Israeli tech sector that are, that are, you know, caused for, for optimism or bullishness. I think the defense sector is going to make the cyber sector, which was, Israel was outside of the US, Israel was the biggest cyber sector, cyber sector, cybersecurity startups in the world. I think it's going, what we're about to see in defense tech is going to eclipse cybersecurity. The future of warfighting with technology is, Israel is going to be the hub.

• 1:08:06Scott Galloway?

  You know the podcast, Two Jews and the News, I think it's called?

• 1:08:09Dan Senor?

  Yeah, yeah, unholy, yeah.

• 1:08:12Scott Galloway?

  I'm sorry, unholy, yeah, Two Jews and the News. They invited me, I'm not sure why, on the podcast before October the 7th and asked me a bunch of questions about life in America and antisemitism. And I said, well, antisemitism is a light sleeper. I don't really feel it in the US. I don't feel it in corporate America. If you ask me if it's there, I would say no, I don't notice it. I listen to that podcast now and I cringe at just how fucking stupid I was around how naive and ignorant I was. I mean, you know, that that adage that two thirds of an iceberg's mass is below the surface. This felt like 99.9% of antisemitism in the US was underneath the surface. At least I didn't see it. I have been absolutely

• 1:08:56Scott Galloway?

  flummoxed and this is my pivot to something optimistic. You and I know each other fairly well now. I know what a huge role faith plays in your life. It plays almost no role in my life, my Judaism. I don't feel any real connection to the religion. Since the seventh, I have become a proud Zionist. It is totally illuminated for selfish reasons. I tell my sons, who I have not brought up in any sort of religious indoctrination, that look, it's a dangerous world. At some point, you want to make sure you can go to a prosperous, safe place for Jews, and that's Israel. So you have a vested interest in the survival of Israel and Zionism. And then people come online in comments, as they will in this

• 1:09:38Scott Galloway?

  podcast, and they accuse me of being a Zionist as if it's a bad thing. I'm like, 100%, spot on, guilty as charged. And my moment of hope here is that I think there are a lot of people like me who are ignorant to the threats against the Jewish people in Israel and now feel activated. And just like my friend or someone I admire a great deal, Dan Harris, at the 10% Hapdr podcast, I feel like I'm 110% more, I'll say Jewish, 150% more Zionist. And I'd like to think that a lot of people feel that way now, that we don't take our background,

• 1:10:19Scott Galloway?

  we don't take the importance of speaking out, we don't take the, the, the, the demands that we devote resources, attention and speak out, that it has really activated a lot of people, including myself, who quite frankly, were indifferent and on the sidelines. Do you see hope in that? Have you seen evidence of that?

• 1:10:39Dan Senor?

  Totally. I've seen huge, huge, it's what we call October 8 Jews, you know, Jews who after October 7 weren't engaged in their Judaism, and then October 8, they're like lit up. What I don't want it to be Is all channeled towards fighting with Israel's and the Jewish people's enemies. Obviously, fighting with Israel's enemies and the Jewish people's enemies is important, but it can't be the way we. The enrichment in my life that I've gotten from leading a Jewish life is not from fighting antisemitism. Obviously, it's part. Fighting antisemitism is a condition of the Jewish people going back thousands of years, but every century, really. But it can't be our sole existence because the truth is, it's unpleasant. Like, you say you don't want to.

• 1:11:21Dan Senor?

  Like, my kids, if I just, if they just, if I just sit around every night telling them about the antisemite they've got to fight with, they're going to be like, geez, Dad, this is, I mean, I guess I should do it, but it's pretty, it's a pretty unattractive way to live my life. What they have benefited from, what I've benefited from, is the joy of Jewish holidays, the joys and enrichment and stimulation from Jewish learning and debates and Jewish literacy and understanding Jewish history and the sense of community one feels when they're, when they're part of a Jewish community. The rituals, you know, there's so many rituals we, we, we live with, you know, my family, every Friday night, we do a Shabbat dinner. My children love it. My wife and I love it. We, we have people from the community come for Shabbat dinners, or we go to other people's homes.

• 1:12:05Dan Senor?

  It's like a resetting every week on the Sabbath of family interconnectedness, not with devices, not with, you know, parties and social events, but with togetherness, human interaction, reflecting on the week, reflecting on time. I think those, I mean, I could go on and on about this. Those are the things that I hope those who are October 8 Jews don't suddenly become, you know, what date is it? October 13th? Don't send suddenly that, that October 8 Judaism doesn't end on October 13th, 2025. I hope that it's a launching pad for living Jewishly in ways that aren't just about fighting with our enemies. Because fighting with your enemies is no way to live a life.

• 1:12:46Scott Galloway?

  Dan Senor is a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East. He's the co-author of The Genius of Israel and Startup Nation. He's also the host of the Call Me Back podcast. Dan, a lot of young men listen to this podcast. I think you're a fantastic role model for young men because you have taken and tackled and really.

• 1:13:03Scott Galloway?

  Jumped into the deep end of the most polarizing, emotional and partisan issue, and you handle it with grace. I listen to all your podcasts. You don't interrupt people. You don't insult them. And you're a fantastic role model, not only for young men, but for the media in general, to just demonstrate the kind of grace and rigor that you demonstrate. You've really been a point of calm and a lighthouse in the storm. Very much appreciate you and your good work here. Thanks very much, Dan.

• 1:13:31Dan Senor?

  Let's just say I learn from the best. Thank you.