w/ Itay Ben Horin

**Lio • 01:29** Welcome, everyone, to The Jew Function. I'm Lio. **Seth • 01:32** Hey, I'm Seth. Hi, everyone. Good to see you again. **Lio • 01:36** We have a very special episode today, and as usual, it has to do with—you guessed it—the Jews. Jew hatred. We're still trying to explore that. And we have a very special guest today who's going to help shed some light from within Israel. We take you back to the months before October 7th, when Israel was already in a kind of internal civil war: the judicial reform, the protests, the refusals to serve, competing visions for the country—all that stuff was happening. **Seth • 02:09** One of the central movements there was Achim LaNeshek, which is represented by today's guest. **Lio • 02:17** Yeah. So our guest represented that movement. He's a PR and communications person. And then October 7th happened, and suddenly the same people who had been fighting each other had to figure out how to tell Israel's story to the entire world. We had to work together, basically. **Seth • 02:34** One of the campaigns that broke through globally was the hostage children's campaign, built around a message nobody could argue with: that children shouldn't be part of war. **Lio • 02:45** And that campaign was a result of our guest's work. So today we want to ask a deeper question: can PR actually fix a fractured society, or does the world ultimately respond to the level of unity or disunity inside the Jewish people themselves? Is that the more important point? We'll find out today when we invite our guest, Itay Ben Horin. Itay? **Itay • 03:13** Hello. **Lio • 03:14** Hello, hello. **Itay • 03:16** Hi. **Lio • 03:19** Itay is one of—well, you're here, so I guess you're one of Israel's leading crisis and communication strategists, right? You're founder of the Ben Horin Trunrovich PR firm. I think it's one of the top three in Israel, if I'm not mistaken. And one of the key people behind the international campaign for the child hostages after October 7th—a campaign that actually helped break through to the world when Israel's broader narrative just couldn't. So, Itay, welcome to The Jew Function. **Itay • 03:53** Hi, welcome. I just want to make a short correction. I was volunteering with Achim LaNeshek, but I left them after the war—we can talk about that too. **Lio • 04:08** Okay. **Itay • 04:08** I haven't represented them in more than two years. All the other things you said, I'll accept. **Lio • 04:16** Excellent. So that's even better—you'll have an even more objective view of the situation in Israel. **Itay • 04:26** And I'd be happy to say that we're meeting now because I wrote a book about crisis management that has just been published in English. It was a very big success in Israel, and now it will also be published in the States—on Amazon, everywhere. So we can talk about it too. **Lio • 04:46** And we're going to put a link to the book. It's called *Crisis Management: Insider Views of How Business and Political Giants Won or Lost Big and How You Can Apply the Lessons.* Nice, short, catchy title. So, we've had a lot of guests here on the show who were in Israel. We speak to Jews in Israel and in the U.S. It's interesting—the show started long before October 7th. We started this podcast in early 2020, even before COVID. We started dealing with Jew hatred and how to solve it way earlier—2010, '11, '13. **Seth • 05:31** And everybody told us there was no such thing as antisemitism anymore. **Lio • 05:35** Right. That was a time when everybody was like, "What are you talking about? Don't say anything. Don't give people ideas." But we decided to push on. There's no question, though, that there's a difference between our show before the 7th and after the 7th, because a lot of the things we'd been talking about—things that might happen—actually happened. So on the one hand, we felt a little vindicated: "Oh, look, our theories work." And they're not just our theories. But on the other hand, it was terrifying to see where this can take us. **Itay • 06:04** And are you focusing on antisemitism, or on anti-Israeli sentiment? **Lio • 06:08** No, we're focusing on Jew hatred—people who don't like Jews. And not all of them make the distinction between Israel and non-Israel. That's interesting too, and it comes up in the conversations. What we did see is that before October 7th, Israel was already tearing itself apart internally—and I'm sure you saw that as well. And suddenly, after October 7th, we had to put up some sort of unified front and talk to the world. The question I want to start with—I'd like to jump right into it, without too much background—is this: do you think the world was reacting just to the war, to Hamas, to all of that? Or do you think they were reacting to something that was broken inside Israeli society itself? **Itay • 07:01** You know, antisemitism—I think you're more familiar with it than me, because you talk about it a lot—is something from thousands of years ago. I've been independent for 25 years, and when I worked with one of my colleagues, he told me in one conversation: "You know what is news? Bad news. It's news—not happy news. Almost all news is bad news. And bad news comes with Jews. So because of that, Jews are news." I remembered that. From the very beginning of history, I think the Jews are news—since Jesus, even. I think part of what happened on the 7th of October, and the day after, is demographic—you know, a lot of Muslims, and it's growing. And part of it comes from my profession: there was a lot of news about Israel. People who weren't interested in the issue had to react, because it was in the news all the time. And it's the longest war in the history of Israel—we've been at war almost three years now. So that's three years of a cycle of news about war, Gaza, Arab, Israeli, Jewish. I think the 7th of October was an amplifier of things that were already there—but a big amplifier of a lot of things. And, as I said, I'm an expert in crisis, and a crisis is a place where things can go very bad or very good—but it's the money time. I think the relationship between Israel and the world right now is in a money time. **Lio • 09:06** It's interesting, because—you're right—people don't know this about the word *mashber*, crisis in Hebrew. It's also the seat where the woman helps the baby be born. So it's a place of birth, as you said. It can go both ways; there's no question. The question I'm asking, though, is about the story—the narrative—everything happening outside of Israel, outside of what's happening between us. There's a feeling that we're trying very hard to fix something with a PR story, to be blunt about it: "Look, this is it. This is what it is. You should listen to this story and not to that story." It's clearly a narrative war, and that started long before the 7th. And Israel was kind of late to join that war—we were a little too busy with ourselves. **Itay • 10:05** Yes, but in the last 20 years, Israel tried. I also worked for the tourist organization of Israel, the Ministry of Tourism. For many years, Israel tried to talk about culture, high tech, gays—a lot of things Israel is strong in—and not only about the war, because for about 40 years it was just talk of war, since '67. What happened in the last few years is that nobody can hear about anything else. And people aren't coming to Israel anymore. When people come to Israel, they can see that Israel is many things: the sea, great people, culture, anything. But when you only see your two minutes on CNN or another broadcast—or on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok—and you see it through the eyes of the reporter or the creator who's putting that stuff out, you only see the war. You can't see almost anything else. **Lio • 11:16** That's true. I used to work in advertising, and we had a saying: good creative will only help people realize quickly whether you have a good product or a bad product. The good creative itself can't fix your product. My feeling is that some of the creative coming out of Israel is limited. And at the end of the day, as you said, people are looking in—because of the war, and because of all the money that Jewish organizations in Israel and outside of Israel, the government and others, are pouring into the media around Israel. The feeling I have, and the theory Seth and I hold, is that no amount of good storytelling will be able to cover what's happening under the surface. In other words, whatever messaging we put out will only amplify—as you said—whatever state Israeli society is in: unity or disunity. **Itay • 12:22** So it's a very complex question. **Lio • 12:26** Yeah, yeah. **Itay • 12:27** And in English it's harder for me, but I'll try. First of all, as we both said, antisemitism—Jews are news—it's hundreds, thousands of years old. Second, demographically, the changing of Europe—there are very big issues you can't do anything about. That's the big stuff. But after I say that, I think the place of Israel internally, the government that's now in power, the figures who are there, and the unprofessional way Israel is dealing with all these issues are amplifiers for the antisemitism and for the demographic issues of the world. If our government were a different government, and if we had different ways of talking to the public around the world, I think we could be in a better place. **Lio • 13:34** So what I'm hearing, if I'm reading you correctly, is that yes—you think you can still use good PR to change the narrative, shape it, put the right people and the right messaging in place, and change the way people think about Israel. **Itay • 13:51** Not 100%—you know, in everything, you can't talk to 100% of people. There are people you can't change: the ones who love Israel and the ones who hate Israel. But most of the world doesn't have an opinion about Israel or about Jews. **Seth • 14:09** I think that if there were a different prime minister or a different government, there wouldn't have been 500 people marching outside a synagogue in Brooklyn yesterday—500 people in keffiyehs with Hezbollah flags outside a synagogue, because of the prime minister of Israel? You think these things are connected? **Itay • 14:34** As I said, there are things we can't do anything about—the demography. And this prime minister—you know, in two weeks from now he'll have been prime minister of Israel for 30 years. He came into office on the 29th of May, 1996, and he's still prime minister. He was the youngest prime minister ever in Israel, and now he's the oldest prime minister ever in Israel. So I wouldn't say it's because of the prime minister. I'd say it's because of the government—we have a very extreme government. We never had such an extreme government in Israel. Figures like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are in big positions of power. The Likud party, for years, was the broad public party; now it represents a small part of the Israeli nation. So I do think these people, and the things they say and do, are not good for Israel's image. I'm not saying everything would change, but I think they're not good for Israel's image. **Lio • 16:02** No, that's clear, and we do hear that, obviously. A lot of people put a lot of stock in the people in power. There's no question that the way people carry themselves, the messaging that comes out, where the budgets go, how they're used—there's something to that. **Itay • 16:24** And not only about Israel. If you look at the States—when Obama was president, or Clinton, or Trump, or Biden—people around the world don't know a lot of people. Maybe an actor, a football player, and the prime minister. So it has power over the image. **Lio • 16:45** No, there's no question. But what we see is this: if this were something that started in the last 10, 15, 20, 30 years, I'd say, "Okay, let's talk." But Seth and I have been exploring— **Seth • 17:04** Golda Meir was president, and we had problems. **Lio • 17:07** Yeah. Not only that—it's even before there was a Jewish state. In other words, we Jews imported the problem of Jew hatred into Israel. It's not like Israel was the end of Jew hatred. So that's the— **Itay • 17:23** You're right, but I'm saying we're in a very extreme place. I have the biggest communication agency in Israel, working with almost 200 clients, and I've been doing that for years. I'm telling you that the position of business, of academia, and of culture in the last two years is a lot worse than it was before. As I said, Netanyahu is the prime minister and Israel is Israel, and there's been antisemitism for decades—but we've been in a very bad place in the last few years, and some of that is because of the government and the way the government is working. You know, if a reporter from CNN or the BBC now wants to talk to Israeli officials, there's no one to talk to. During the war, the people who went on all the national broadcasts were former prime ministers and former ministers. The ministers we have now—most of them, nobody wants to talk to. So we have a big problem on that front. It's not only the demography and people's hatred. There are things we can change. **Seth • 18:59** Let's say the prime minister was a real gentleman, and somehow they conducted the war even more humanely—if you can say a war is conducted humanely. And let's say you gave away some more land, you did whatever you could to try to appease everybody. Then, on the other side of what's happening right now, which we didn't touch on: how is it possible that across the entire United States there were Hamas encampments—people in keffiyehs in Washington, D.C., Boston, Wisconsin, New Orleans, New York City? That all of a sudden, in classrooms in all these universities, you can't really stick up for Israel, or you're called—you can't even talk about supporting Israel, and it's "a colonialist state," "an apartheid state." If we were to isolate that one variable—say, a government that isn't gentlemanly and that you can't talk to—and just take that variable out, there's still a gigantic wave of infiltration into U.S. media and into the U.S. university system that has nothing to do with who was prime minister of Israel. In fact, they've been infiltrating for decades. You used to have a school called the Goldstein Library or the Silverberg Gymnasium. Now the professors— **Itay • 20:53** I agree with you, but I took a course at Harvard, at HBS, in 2012, for a few weeks, and everything was great. I went to the same course about a year ago, and they told us not to go onto the campus. **Lio • 21:17** Exactly. **Itay • 21:18** So what I'm saying is, it happened in the last 10 years. What happened? What changed in those 10 years? The demography changed. The Qatar money in the universities changed—I know all of it. But also, what happened in Israel changed. I think so. As I said, there are things we can't change. And I don't think it's about left or right on the territory, like you said—that's not the issue. It's one of the issues. The second issue is how Israel—now, one part of our nation gains its political power by saying, "We don't need the world, and if the world is against us, we're good." There are some people in the Israeli political system who gain their power from that narrative, and I think that narrative is bad for Israel. I'm very much in the center, you know, in Israeli politics. I'm very much in the center. **Lio • 22:38** "Extreme radical center," as Dan Schueftan used to say. **Itay • 22:41** Yeah, something like that. And I'm a very big patriot of Israel. I have a lot of experience in the areas you're talking about, and I'm a board member of organizations—Israelis, young Israelis—who go all around the world doing person-to-person diplomacy to create a better place for Israel. So a lot of my time goes to that issue. And I'm telling you again, this is my view: there are things we can't change, but there are things we can. **Lio • 23:21** So let me ask you: if we were repeatedly failing the narrative—for a variety of reasons, as you said, some within our control and some not—I still hear that you're an optimist, in the sense that maybe we can change. **Seth • 23:41** Your eyes are even smiling. You're a crisis-management guy, and you're just glowing and smiling. I get this vibe. **Lio • 23:48** Yeah, he's got a good vibe. We have our guests on the show—we have irredeemable optimists and irredeemable pessimists. And it's interesting: you're definitely in the optimist category. **Itay • 24:00** Very practical, very practical. I'm not a religious guy. I don't think it's, like, destiny. I think if we do the right things, things will be better. When my client is in a big crisis, I tell him, "We can't win this war—but we can lose like in a soccer game: not 5–0. We can lose 4–2." And that's a big difference. So I don't think Israel and the Jewish people can change everything, but I do think we can be in a better place. **Lio • 24:47** Before we talk about how to get there, tell me: what, in your opinion, worked with the campaign you did for the child hostages? Because there was something that was done that broke through the clutter. There were a lot of additional components, as you know—it wasn't just that. There was the military pressure, the right place, the right time, all the rest of it. But something about the messaging of that campaign broke through. **Itay • 25:19** I tried to do it in a very short time. There's an episode about it in the book. All the episodes in the book are written in Hebrew, and the book was published in 2023. This is the only new episode I wrote after the war. So what happened? On the 8th of October, at 7 a.m., I got a text message from a woman I didn't know. She wrote: "Hi, my name is Renana. My two children were kidnapped to Gaza. People told me I need your help. Can you help me?" Of course, there were missiles all around the country—even in the center where I am, there were missiles. Of course, I took the time to talk to her, and also with a few of our friends. Her name was Renana Gomer-Yaakov, and two of her children were kidnapped to Gaza with her former husband, because that Friday they were with their father, who was murdered in captivity. So what we decided to do was to form a headquarters just for the children. It wasn't an easy decision, because there were very big headquarters for all the kidnapped, and we understood we needed a very short message that could speak to almost anyone around the world. Children are not a part of the war. Every captivity is awful—a nightmare. Hamas murders, and they did horrible things. But we said: right now, we don't want to talk about who's right, Israel or Hamas. Right now, we just want to say that children are not a part of the war. And we succeeded in getting more than 100 Nobel Prize laureates to sign on that message—and lawyers, and actors, and a lot of people around the world who said, "Free the children first." Besides that, a lot of people went to the media and spoke. And, as you said, and I agree, the military pressure and a lot of things came together. But we succeeded in getting all the children released—besides two of them who were murdered, the Bibas children, who were murdered in captivity—all the others were released in 50 days. Every day is a nightmare, but they were released in 50 days, and not in two years like others. I think what we succeeded in doing was making a decision—and this is my philosophy, my professional philosophy: be very focused on the one message you can win with. Not a lot of messages. Don't try to say that Israel is all white and Hamas are murderers, that everything is black and white. Right now, to get them out, we need the whole world to understand that children are not a part of the war. One message. **Lio • 29:09** Good. And this actually brings me to the second act of our talk. We know—I'm drawing a line here—that for any negotiation to be successful, you want to come from a place of power, with a unified, focused message, as you said. But how can you do that if we ourselves, as a people, are not unified? Right now, the one thing you can say about the state of Israel in the world is that, politics aside, militarily and image-wise, Israel is one of power. There's a sense of power. You can argue whether that's good or bad, but at least it puts you in a good position. What we argue, though, is that that in itself is not enough—you can't rely only on might as a strategy for thriving. It's a good starting point, a good base. But how can you arrive at a unified message—say the war is limited to a narrative—how can you even arrive at a unified message if we, as a people, aren't investing everything we have in closing our ranks, in coming together? **Itay • 30:43** I agree with you. And I don't think people will understand everything about Israeli politics—Netanyahu, the court, all of it. There are a lot of things in which Israel is in a very bad place, in the area you've talked about. Because most Israelis love other Israelis. Most of them. We're in the same army, the same universities, the same beach, the same soccer and basketball. I don't know when you'll air this podcast, but right now there's Eurovision—and 90% of Israelis are for Israel in Eurovision. But when it comes to politics, today's government draws its power from differentiation. **Lio • 31:43** By the way, I can say that about every politician. I don't see—I don't think— **Itay • 31:49** I don't see one— **Lio • 31:51** Show me one politician who doesn't just say "together." Like yesterday—last week—Bennett and Lapid, we're not here for the political show, but they formed a party together after, for years, one guy said, "I'll never be together with that guy." Who are you kidding? There's no substance. **Itay • 32:08** It's the same in the States and in Israel. Most of the time in this profession, politicians took their power from the center—center-right, center-left, almost every prime minister. This is the first time in Israeli politics that the government is saying, "I'm only for the base. If you're not in my base, I'm not interested in you." And because of that, the differentiation in Israel—which started with this government, with the court reforms only three days after the government was formed—started this internal war. So everyone has their own stake in the issue. But I think the responsibility, first of all, is the government's. **Lio • 33:16** Really? **Itay • 33:18** Yes. **Lio • 33:20** I'd like to flip that. Okay—but Seth, go ahead and ask your question. **Seth • 33:22** Let's say there's somebody who just can't stand Donald Trump—very much against him, okay? **Lio • 33:29** A rare occasion. **Seth • 33:31** Okay. **Itay • 33:32** In Israel it's a rare occasion—Israel is his most popular figure. **Seth • 33:36** It's true. If there had been no Barack Obama as president, you would not have Donald Trump as president. You can say whatever you want about Trump—if people hadn't voted for Obama, Trump wouldn't have become president. So Lio and I are always zooming out; we can't just look at the right without looking at the left. And before Obama, if you hadn't had George W. Bush, you probably wouldn't have had Obama. So it's not our approach to zoom in on one frame of the movie. **Itay • 34:21** But the thing is, Israel is very unique—this is what I'm saying. I'm 48. I was drafted into the army at 18, into a combat unit. You know who was prime minister? That was after Rabin—Netanyahu. He'd just been elected. And now, 30 years later, Netanyahu is the prime minister. So what I'm saying is, we didn't have a Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump. We just had Netanyahu, with short periods of other prime ministers in between. **Lio • 35:07** But let me ask you something. **Itay • 35:08** So you're right that it's one part of the episode. It's an episode in a series. But the series spans so many years that everything reflects back onto it. **Seth • 35:22** The United States is 250 years old, and the people of Israel are more than 3,000 years old. So if they swing, it takes longer. **Itay • 35:30** Yeah, but the state of Israel is 76 years old. And in this century, Netanyahu has been almost the only prime minister. So what I'm saying is—in the Israeli left, there are people who hate Netanyahu. They hate him. Of course. I don't hate him. I respect him for a lot of things he's done. But you can't talk about Israel now without understanding the Netanyahu phenomenon, because he's been in power so long. And as I said, most of the years he was in power, there were other parties in the government too—parties like the Labour Party. In this government, it's the first time it's only an all-right government. **Lio • 36:27** Look, you're right. And if only it were that simple—that you could replace the prime minister and everything would work out. What we're saying is actually much worse. Israel is not two sides. We're actually 12 tribes. If you think about it, we're not even meant to be able to understand everybody's needs and points of view. We're really very, very different people. When the people of Israel left Egypt and went through the desert, at the front of the column was the tribe of Judah—the national pride, the lion. And who was at the back? The tribe of Dan, whose symbol is the snake—the most individualistic animal there is. But both of them existed together. When we looked at our history, at the patterns in Jewish history, at the words of the Jewish sages who've influenced all of Western thinking and tradition—and even at network science, just in the last few years, big data and all that—you see that something needs to happen with all this friction. You can't flatten everybody and say, "Oh, let's just replace the head, everything will work out." That's what I'm saying. Forget the government. The question I'm putting to you is: can we, as a society, be able— **Itay • 37:56** So here's what I'm saying. You said I'm very optimistic. I am optimistic, because I live in Israel. I'd say it directly: I'm one of the people with the broadest view of Israel, because I work with, as I said, 200 clients—every part of Israel. Business, high tech, cities, academia, social, everything. I have a client in each. And I see Israel very, very well. I'm telling you that Israel has great power, great people. We can work together—we work together in the army, in high tech, in the hospitals. Because of that, I'm optimistic. I'm not saying that if we change the government, everything will be heaven. But I think if we make a change, we'll also breathe a little and stop the inner fight we're in now. **Seth • 39:10** What are the qualities? Let's say there's some ideal new person. What qualities does he bring? He comes into power, and on the first day he gets on YouTube, or the internet, or Instagram, and he talks to the nation. What's his vision for everybody? **Itay • 39:28** First of all, as you said, he needs to be a prime minister for all Israelis—the ones who chose him and the ones who didn't. This government— **Seth** What's the goal? Where are we headed? **Itay** I think Israel, in the last few years, hasn't made a lot of the changes we need to make, because we're stuck. We've had the same party ruling here for years, and there's a lot of corruption, and not the best people are coming into politics. So the prime minister, like you said, needs to put together again the quality of the people running this country, and he needs a unifying— **Seth • 40:29** What's the vision? Here's the thing. In a family, I don't care if one cousin is a thief and another lied about something. When we come together for the Pesach Seder, everyone tries to be together. So I understand all the details, but I'm saying: what's the vision that ties the whole thing together? What can everybody get behind? Because if I know that you love me like a brother, I don't have to worry that you're going to hurt me. **Itay • 40:59** So, what's the vision we can all share? I agree with you. I think Israel can be the best country in the world. We can get there. And if, as you said, we work together, if we're more professional, if we try to fix the things that aren't good in our country, we can get there. We need a leadership that will take us there. **Seth • 41:29** What's the goal? What's the one thing we're going to put on the sign above the door in every home—"Love your friend as yourself"? What's the one thing we can all do? **Itay • 41:39** I don't know what the one thing is. I do know that, as you said, Israelis can be together and form the best country in the world. **Seth • 41:54** When there's a war—hold on, let me get this out, because it's not coming out yet—when there's a war, you have unity for a minute, because we know there's the enemy. There he is, right there. So let's go get him. When there's one identified goal, everybody can move toward it. So that's what I'm asking: what, from your position, can bring people together? What can bring Israelis—from the social world, from politics, from government, from high tech—together? **Itay • 42:30** I think you're trying to get me to say something you already think. **Seth • 42:36** I know, I know. I'm trying to pull something out. I know what I think. I'm trying to pull out of you what you think it could be. **Lio • 42:46** Let me help the conversation. Itay, let's imagine a situation—some people's worst nightmare, but let's imagine it. Let's imagine you cannot change the prime minister. Okay? Just imagine for a second. Like in your family—your mom and dad, that's who you were born with, you're stuck with them, for better and for worse, and you learn how to live with that. So I'm giving you a hypothetical. It's an exercise. Let's imagine we can't change the prime minister. What can we do? How can we come together? Because you said you're an expert in crisis management. **Itay • 43:26** So, as I said: if the government decided it was working for all Israelis and not just for the ones who elected it, I think we'd be in a better situation. **Lio • 43:37** Okay. **Itay • 43:40** And it's in a lot of areas—education, the draft to the army. **Lio • 43:46** Let me ask—okay, I'm with you, I'm going to play this game. I'm not a political person by nature. I think politicians are usually the most egoistic people, not the most altruistic—because that's how politics works, that's how it works right now. So I don't expect much from my politicians when I see them; I understand they're politicians. But you said you have 200 clients—the government has all the clients in Israel, as you said—and you have 120 members in the Knesset. I would expect these people to work toward some common goal. What I've seen, ever since I moved back to Israel, is that one group tries to do something and the other just tries to shoot it down. That's all I see. So you can say "the government"—but which government? You'll change this government, and they'll try to shoot the new one down. I don't see how this works, because the animosity at that level is so strong. I'm asking: how can we create it among the people first? Forget the government—how can we do it here? I'm originally from Tel Aviv. You go outside Tel Aviv and people are a little more chill; there's a bit more acceptance. In Tel Aviv, in the big cities, there's a lot of, "No, don't do this. Oh, you want to pray here? No, don't pray. What's going on?" How can we get people to create that sense of acceptance? Because when I look at the history of the Jewish people—3,000 years of recorded history—whenever there was a catastrophe, it always came after disunity. Just like October 6th: we were on the verge of civil war, and then it happened. And our position right now is not much better than October 6th, three years ago. We're very close to another big blow that will force us back into a crisis, that will force us to ask questions and make decisions. So I'm asking you: did we learn something from October 6th? Or are we still waiting for the government to solve our problems? Help me out here. **Itay • 46:05** No, I agree with you—but you don't like the solution I'm offering. **Lio • 46:11** Because I don't see it happening, that's all. **Itay • 46:13** But I'm talking about my view. My view is that if you have a different government that puts all Israelis in the same place—the same education system, the same draft to the army, the same economy—things will be better. Because in the streets, as you said, most Israelis—90% of Israelis—are okay. When it comes to politics, we see a different place. So we need the change to happen in politics. **Lio • 46:50** What about the role of the media? You're not a politician—you're a media person. Talk to me about the media in Israel. I look at this stuff and I think, "What the hell is that?" Half of it just depresses me, and the rest isn't doing what you—you're a realist, as you said. You know all the changes you listed take years to implement. Even if tomorrow a new person comes in, there are so many obstacles, right? **Itay • 47:17** It's not magic—things won't just be fixed. Exactly. **Lio • 47:20** It's not magic. So talk to me about the supporting mechanism. That's what I'm saying—we're not politicians. We're not going to change the government, not you, not me, not Seth. I'm concerned about Jews in America hating Jews in Israel. And that's not just the government, *habibi.* It's not. **Itay • 47:35** So I think people need to know more people. I'm in the Maoz organization—maybe you've heard of it. **Lio** Which one? **Itay** Maoz. It's a leadership organization, and it's the only place in Israel where ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, secular, and religious people are all in the same organization. The only place. You know what the second place is where everyone's together? The Knesset. Because in the army there are no ultra-Orthodox and no Arabs, and at university there are no ultra-Orthodox. In this organization, you see people from different tribes, and you see the person and not the image, and you build great relationships—some of the time. **Seth** What's the vision? How does it work? **Itay** It works like this: for 12 weeks—one week every month—you're together for a year, people from all around Israel, talking about the things you're talking about now: how we can make things better. But you do it personally, because I see you, I see your family, I see your views. I understand you better because we have time. That's it. That's the model. That's the start. Right now it's a model for leaders—about 100 people every year. We need it at scale. A lot of Israelis don't know people from the other sides—and with the social networks, it's not one big square. You don't see people all the time; you only see your own ecosystem. If we could do a Maoz at scale, things could be better. And it's very hard to do. So I hope that, by the end of our conversation, I've now said something Seth will like—because I think— **Seth • 49:56** It's not like we're just having a conversation about a baseball game. We don't look at what happened in Germany in the '40s and think, "Oh, it just happened because the Germans were Nazis, and now it's finished." We see where the world is going. We see what's happening in England now. I see what's happening in New York City now. This is our future. If we don't fix it, or come up with some solution—and if we look at the last 3,000 years, it happens every single time—we already understand the future is written, if we don't take hold of it. So my intensity with you is just because we want to pull out answers. We need to— **Itay • 50:44** I agree with you. **Lio • 50:46** I agree with you. **Itay • 50:46** We must make a change, and we must be more unified. I agree with you. But I want to— **Lio • 50:54** Okay, go ahead. **Seth • 50:57** I was just going to say, on Maoz—here it says: "We collaborate and promote trust and social-change initiatives in order to strengthen socioeconomic resilience." A trust-based network. **Itay • 51:08** Yeah, that's what I said. Because you know people from the other side, you can trust them—you can see the person and not the image. Most people form their image of people they don't know, because they didn't meet them, they don't have them in their family, among their friends, and they don't have them on their Twitter or Facebook. **Lio • 51:30** Right. And this is absolutely a crucial first step. We wish these ideas would penetrate the education system, the school system. Why wait for people to form their opinions? Start when they're young, when they're forming their opinions. Here's the funny thing— **Itay • 51:53** But—but in Israel, as you know, there are four education systems. **Lio • 52:02** I understand. I know. **Itay • 52:04** This is one of the problems. **Lio • 52:06** Absolutely. By the way, I can't imagine any government coming in tomorrow, from any side, being able to make substantial changes like that—are you kidding me? What I'm trying to push for, what I'm hoping for, is for people to actually look at our shared history—because that's something we do have in common—and ask: what are the forces working here? When you look at a campaign, you try to see what the forces are, what will resist it, and how to mitigate it, how to go around it—or maybe how not to resist it and just go with it. What Seth and I did was look at the history of the Jewish people and find some very powerful hints about what actually motivates people—humans, not just Jews. We Jews were just a representation of the whole of humanity, if you think about it. The Jews were made up of representatives of all the people who lived in Babylon 3,000 years ago, and they bonded together. They weren't part of the same family, like most nations that are biologically, ethnically cohesive. We actually came from a lot of very different places—kind of like the United States—and ran on an ideology. That's what was at the heart of the Jewish people: 12 tribes, different people coming together under an ideology of love, of care. And we kind of forgot about it. We kind of left it behind. In fact, some people speak very much against all that history—as if you can throw the baby out with the bathwater—"No, we don't care about that." What are you talking about? Three thousand years of influencing Western civilization—thought, morals, ethics, philosophy, technology—it's everywhere. And you say, "No, there's nothing we can learn from it, we just want to be, whatever, humans"? What does that even mean? What we're saying is that we're dealing with the forces at the very heart of humanity: egoism, the desire for control, for power, money, sex—all those things. That's what motivates people. If we don't stop for a second to learn about this and decide how we can work together on top of it, then we're just a hamster in a wheel. That's what we're trying to get to. That's why we're making your life so difficult. **Itay • 54:41** I agree with you on that point. But when you ask me what we can do, I told you what I think we can do—and I do think it, because of my beliefs—that if you want to change a lot of people, you need to change a small portion of people. It's very hard to change everyone. So you go to the decision-makers, you go to the powerful people. That's the way I work, my professional view. That's one part of Maoz, the leadership part, as I said. And I also think the change of government will take us to a better place. **Lio • 55:24** We got the government part. Why did you start Maoz? What prompted that? You said you guys started this— **Itay • 55:32** I'm one of—I didn't form the organization. I was in the first class of leaders in the organization. The founders are very smart people who had the vision, as you understand now, to bring Israel to a better place. And I went there also because—you know, one of my best friends there is from the other side of politics; he's the head of Moetzet Yesha. **Lio • 56:12** Okay—the Yesha Council, the Council of Judea and Samaria. **Itay • 56:15** Yeah. And we're very good friends. We don't agree about a lot of things, but we're very good friends, because I think he's a great, great guy. And I wouldn't have had any chance to know this guy if I hadn't gone to that program. **Lio • 56:33** Okay, I want to dig into that. You just told me you have a friend from the other side—the other side of the political map, who thinks differently and disagrees on things—and yet you were able to form a relationship that's above it, right? **Itay • 56:54** We had the time to get to know each other, to know his thoughts and his problems, to see how he acts and influences. And I said, "Okay, he's a great guy." Even if I think his political views aren't my views, I can see not just the political views—I can see the guy. And as I said, I understand— **Lio** There are differences between you. **Itay** But most things, we're together on. **Lio • 57:38** We don't care about most things. What Seth and I care about, and what the world cares about—when we looked at all the words the Jewish sages left over thousands of years, and the history, and all those things—nobody said you should *like* each other. That's not part of the directive. The directive is to form a caring connection, a bond—what we call love. It's not "I love you, you make me horny" love. **Itay • 58:07** This is the trust we're talking about. **Lio • 58:12** Exactly. And the world—we talk to a lot of people, also non-Jews, and even anti-Jews, antisemites we've had on the show—the world is looking to Israel to be an example on that point. Not about being the startup nation, not about beaches, not about anything else. It's this. Somehow, for whatever reason, the world is looking at us. Jordan Peterson was in Israel two years ago, and he said, "For whatever reason, everybody's looking at you to somehow make it work." If you can show that people from 12 different tribes can come together—as you said, very differently, from this side and that side—and actually love each other, to the point of being willing to die for one another, then, wow, this is what we need to learn how to do. Because we don't know how to do it. The world doesn't know how to do it. It comes naturally to us during certain times, but we don't know how to do it when there's no war. What Seth and I are trying to do is prevent the next crisis—to learn the lessons from the last crisis, and the one before it, and the one before that, and get there. **Itay • 59:24** And I hope we succeed together. **Lio • 59:29** I hope so too. What can you tell us about the book? Why should people read it—besides the story about the child hostages, what else can they learn? **Itay • 59:42** The book has 16 case studies of real crises from around the world. Most of them I studied. It's about politics and politicians—Clinton, Obama, Merkel from Germany—and also about businesses like McDonald's, Starbucks, and BP, and figures like Lance Armstrong and Al Gore, and how they acted in crisis. And also a few cases I was involved in, in Israel, that I wrote about. But most of the cases are about things I studied—big ones—and it's in the way I learned at Harvard: the case study. You go into the situation, you see the choices the person could make, and how their decision turned out, good or bad, go or no-go. So you can learn from these case studies. There are also four chapters that are more professional: how you prevent a crisis, how you learn from crises, how to act when a crisis starts—everything is in those four chapters. And there's also a chapter from the Bible, about Moses and how he acted in the desert. So I think the book is very good for people who love politics and communication, and who understand that they'll face a crisis in their life—because everyone, in their personal and professional life, faces a crisis. **Lio • 01:01:34** Before you leave, do us a favor—we ask our guests to read a quote from the Jewish sources. I put it in the chat, if you'd do us the honor. **Itay • 01:01:46** In English? **Lio • 01:01:47** Yeah, in English. **Itay • 01:01:48** It's short. "Specifically, unity and unfounded love among us can lead us to congruence with nature's system, and only then will the nations of the world recognize Israel's merit." Nice? **Lio • 01:02:06** Nice indeed. Itay Ben Horin, thank you very much. **Seth • 01:02:09** Thank you, Itay. **Lio • 01:02:10** Very good to meet you. **Itay • 01:02:11** Thank you. **Lio • 01:02:12** You can find the book in the link under the talk, and we hope you got something out of this—at least a bit of Itay's optimism, because it could rub off on us. Thanks, Itay. Good luck. **Itay • 01:02:27** Thank you for this very interesting conversation. Thank you. **Lio • 01:02:31** It's our pleasure. We'll see you all next week.