Checks and Balance: Best friends forever?
Checks and Balance from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2023
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Israel is marking its 75th anniversary. America has always been its closest foreign ally, but that relationship has seldom been easy. That’s true now: progressive Democrats are questioning the party’s innate pro-Israel stance, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reforms have met with open disapproval from the White House. What might relations look like in another 75 years?
The Economist’s Josie Delap assesses the impact of Netanyahu’s judicial plans. We go back to a eulogy given by an American leader for his Israeli counterpart. And The Economist’s Anshel Pfeffer considers what influence American Jews have over Israeli politics.
John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and James Bennet.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Torah in the photo on the front page of the New York Times looked familiar to Ezra |
| 0:08.4 | Finkelstein. |
| 0:10.0 | It was being held by President Harry Truman, who was in conversation with the man who |
| 0:14.3 | had just given it to him, Dr. Haim Faismann. |
| 0:18.0 | Faismann was the President of the newly formed State of Israel and had given Truman the |
| 0:22.8 | Torah as a thank you for being the first world leader to officially recognise the new country. |
| 0:29.0 | The gift had been a last minute idea, with nothing on hand, why it's been asked the |
| 0:33.4 | head of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Louis Finkelstein, if he had |
| 0:37.7 | anything suitable. |
| 0:39.4 | Finkelstein, unwilling to give away any of the seminary's artefacts, instead looked |
| 0:44.0 | to his family's possessions, and offered up the Torah, hit gifted to his son Ezra for |
| 0:48.9 | his permits for. |
| 0:50.9 | Ezra only found out when he read the paper the next day. |
| 0:54.6 | 75 years on, the ties between the United States and Israel that started with Truman are |
| 0:59.7 | being tested. |
| 1:02.7 | I'm John Prado, and this is Chex and Balance from the Economist. |
| 1:09.1 | Each week we take one big theme, shaping American politics, and explore it in depth. |
| 1:16.8 | Today, how secure is the US-Israel relationship? |
| 1:36.4 | This week Israel marks its 75th anniversary. |
| 1:40.0 | Since President Truman recognised Israel in 1948, America has been its closest for an |
| 1:44.7 | hour, but that relationship has seldom been easy. |
| 1:49.1 | That's true now. |
... |
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