Gadi Taub

That's Wednesday.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is insisting on leading a broad coalition that excludes the Arab parties, while Gadi Eisenkot is signaling that he will not serve with Netanyahu.

And Avigdor Lieberman, meanwhile, is staking out his own very interesting terms, which we will discuss.

Netanyahu says that a clear majority of the Jewish public chose Likud and they chose him to lead.

Avigdor Lieberman has endorsed Eisenkot for prime minister, but he has ruled out both a Netanyahu government and any minority government that relies on Arab parties.

At the same time, he has left the door open to cooperation with the ultra-Orthodox if they accept principles that include a draft law.

Meanwhile, Gadi, the Iran war looks like it is poised to resume.

Trump is sending, that's President Trump, he's sending a third carrier group and about 10,000 Marines to the region.

It's pretty amazing.

We've got a great clip that we've prepared from Gadi Taub's podcast just a couple of hours ago.

He talked about some of the inner workings of the political system there in Israel and the radical left or the opposition grouping opposed to Bibi Netanyahu and how that they were prepared to reach out to at least a small group of Arabs, because if they get 57, 58 seats and a couple more put them over the edge, that doesn't look so bad.

But now, and you just wonder if God's hand is at play here, because now they performed in such an underwhelming way that in order to beat Netanyahu or to keep him out of power, they've got to have Rahm and the Joint List.

I thought it was really easy.

Anyway, good morning, Gadi.

So good to see you.

I'm very happy this morning.

We only have preliminary results, but they already show us the contours of the election, I think, with no clear winner yet.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's right-wing bloc leads with roughly 54 seats.

That's short of the 61 needed for a majority, while the opposition bloc led by Gadi Isinkhat trails at around 47 to 49.

Pardon me, Gadi, I just want to make an editorial comment here.

How is this possible? What a tangled web it is.

Gadi Taub, as I said, he has this excellent summary of just all that we've seen happen these last three years in particular.

And he totally blows up this illusion that Eisencott is some kind of a war hawk.

No, he's just a radical leftist, like so many others.

And Iranian proxies around Israel in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, West Iraq, they've been cut down to size.

That's quite a three-year record of following through on his promise, his vow, And so why aren't Israelis just lining up saying, we know who we want in.

Why is Israel so bitterly divided? He says, this is Gadi Taub, the odds stacked against Netanyahu were enormous.

Pressure, and he talked a lot about this when we went over there last summer to interview him.

I'm Hugh Hewitt.

Coming up after the break, I'll be joined by Gadi Taub from Israel for a little pre-election coverage there.

Gaudi is, of course, preceded by Bethany Mandel, who is the proprietor of themomwars.substack.com.

I think she's a friend of Gaudi.

Am I right about that? We don't really know him that well.

What should we know about Gaudi before we talk to him?

He is one of the smartest, most lovely men.

He has such a handle on how the how the West is under attack.

Here's another guy.

F- uh, his name is, uh, Gadi Taub.

Uh, he says, "We the Jews of Israel have a great problem with progressive Jews abroad promoting immigration, and we should start calling them out before the antisemites do." Before?

[laughs]

So I think that it's-- this is a dramatic improvement.

I also thought, uh, Gadi Taub was really good, and he's somebody I just really learned about.

And, and that's remarkable too because I actually think of myself among Americans as a pretty regular follower of Israeli domestic politics and regular consumer of news about Israel, and yet I had very little familiarity with Gadi Taub, and I was very, very impressed with what I heard from him.

Well, he, he's-- he, he is a le- leading intellectual on the Israeli right.

Um, I-I've, I've known him for, for decades.

He's a character.

He wears earrings and, you know, he's got the, the style of somebody who, uh, who used to be [chuckles] very accepted, accepted on the left, but like I say, has become one of the favorites, one of the most popular public intellectuals, uh, on the Israeli right across the different factions.

And you're right, that it-- when people actually get to know the Israeli right, everybody's gonna have to know Gadi Taub.

Rated R. [upbeat music]

Israel Update with Gadi Taub and Mike Duran.

[upbeat music]

Hello, and welcome to, uh, Tablet's Israel Update.

I'm Gadi Taub in Tel Aviv, and with me surprisingly is, uh, Dr. Mike Duran at the headquarters of the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.

Hello, Gadi.

How are you?

I am good.

Haviv, that sounds familiar to Israelis, right? We have the same epistemic crisis in Israel.

If you ask a Bibi supporter, uh, you've, you've interviewed, uh, I, I really enjoyed your interview with, uh, with Gadi Taub.

You ask Gadi, Gadi, the Bibi camp, the Bibi, the Bibi camp.

You ask Gadi.

I, I'm not interested in party.

And from that position [laughs], okay, I look at these narratives, and one side I believe, and one side I don't believe.

I believe the anxiety of the left because I can't get answers to the question of checks and balances on the right, not from Gadi Taub, not from Moshe Koppel.

People I respect, people I read and listen to, and when I want to dig in and get the answer, "But what checks executive power?" I get more talk about the court.

I'll play you just a little snippet here.

We might go into it more tomorrow, but this is a Jewish guy, Gadi Taub, and this is what he has to say.

We, the Jews of Israel, have a great problem with progressive Jews abroad promoting immigration.

[audience applauding] And we should start, and we should start calling them out before the anti-Semites do because we have lost the left, not due to Netanyahu or any fault of our own.