from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday,

July 30th. Back with us now, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker and host of the New Yorker

Radio Hour, heard Saturday and Sunday on WNNIC and public radio stations around the country.

He is recently backed from an intense reporting trip to Israel, which he's been covering for many years.

His article is called Israel Zones of Denial amid national euphoria over the bombing of Iran and largely ignored

devastation in Gaza, a question lurks, what is the country becoming? David, thanks, as always,

for coming on. I don't think it's ever been to talk about the Middle East before, despite your

long history covering it. It's usually more about domestic U.S. politics,

which is usually more of Arlene here, not international.

So can you give our listeners a bit of your background on covering this?

I'd be happy to.

I covered Moscow.

I was lived in Moscow for four years in the late 80s and early 90s.

And when I got to the New Yorker,

I started making trips to Israel and Palestine with some frequency. And so over the last, God,

at least 25 years, I've been writing reporting pieces from there. I've never been posted there,

but I've been there many, many times, and it's a subject that's very close to me and very painful

at the moment. I see your first profile, Benjamin Netanyahu, in 1998.

That's right.

In fact, you know, Netanyahu obviously won't talk to me anymore after that profile.

It was, that profile was kind of big news in Israel because I spoke at length with him and with Netanyahu's father

and got a very deep sense of that family and their politics. And I'm afraid that a lot of it

...