Gahy humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. It is October 7th, two years

since the Hamas attack on Israel, and many podcasts will be appearing in your feed, revisiting the horrors of

that day, talking about the details of the Gaza war, where do we go from here?

I wanted instead to ask a dangerous question.

Is it possible that the past two years of war in Gaza, horrendous as they have been,

will ultimately lead to peace in the Middle East.

The best person to ask that of is a man who's just written a book about Israel's failures

on October 7th and knows the country and its relationship to the rest of the world better

than almost anyone.

He's the former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post.

Before that, he was a military reporter for the Jerusalem Post for more than 10

years. In between, he also served as a senior policy advisor to Naftali Bennett, right-wing Israeli

politician. The Jerusalem Post is a center-right publication, just to give you some context of where

Yarkov is coming from. His book is called While Israel Slept, How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful

Military in the Middle East. And while we begin by talking about the military failures on

that dreadful day, what we end with is hopefully, I think, a somewhat optimistic vision

of a way in which the lives of Israelis and Palestinians of Jews and Arabs right

across the Middle East, and indeed the diaspora, could be ultimately enhanced by the horrors

of the current conflict. Our sympathies go out to all Israelis on this day. Our sympathies go out

to all Garzans on this day. Please enjoy the one and only, Yarkov cats.

Prior to October 7th, I would have just thought that if there were as a breach of the southern border into Israel,

that there would be machine guns mounted on turrets that were operated from

...