Now that the hostages are home, what is next?
The Michele Tafoya Podcast
Salem Podcast Network
2.4 • 590 Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jonathan Schanzer is the Executive Director at the Foundation for the Defense of Freedom. He has been studying the Middle East for over thirty years, and he has written multiple books about the region, including Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War. Schanzer tells Michele how history was made today, what needs to happen next, whether the world will recognize a Palestinian State, and why President Donald Trump was the indispensable man for the moment.
Michele Tafoya is a four-time Emmy award-winning sportscaster turned political and cultural commentator.
Record-setting, four-time Sports Emmy Award winner Michele Tafoya worked her final NBC Sunday Night Football game at Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022, her fifth Super Bowl. She retired from sportscasting the following day. In total, she covered 327 games — the most national primetime TV games (regular + postseason) for an NFL sideline reporter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | They're calling it basically a summit to create peace. |
| 0:03.2 | And so Trump has pulled everybody together in the name of bringing calm to the region, |
| 0:09.6 | in the name of bringing peace to the region. |
| 0:11.8 | And I think that is important in and of itself. |
| 0:14.7 | In other words, it's not just the Europeans who wanted this war to end. |
| 0:17.8 | It wasn't just the Egyptians who were hosting this. |
| 0:20.0 | They wanted the war to end or the |
| 0:21.3 | Jordanians. But you're getting, I mean, you're seeing people from Indonesia. You're seeing leaders |
| 0:25.7 | really from all over coming to this summit and acknowledging that it's time to build a different |
| 0:32.1 | future. And that really, to me, feels like the most important thing that we've had two years. |
| 0:38.3 | I think it really, it sparked fear in the hearts of a lot of these leaders. |
| 0:42.9 | They did not want to see the region descend into the hellscape that it became. |
| 0:48.7 | And right now they're starting to think, again, about the idea of, well, is it really worth drawing Israel into battle? Is it really |
| 0:56.8 | worth testing whether the United States is going to come to Israel's assistance? We saw what |
| 1:02.0 | happened. Iran paid an enormous price back in June. So maybe this is a sign that the Middle |
| 1:08.6 | East, after having been a basket case for decades now, maybe centuries, maybe they're going to start to think twice about all of it. |
| 1:24.6 | Welcome to a brand new episode of the Michelle Tofoya podcast. |
| 1:29.3 | Jonathan Shanzer is our guest. |
| 1:32.4 | He is the perfect person for today. |
| 1:33.7 | Welcome, welcome. |
| 1:35.3 | I'm so glad that you're here. |
| 1:39.7 | You said to me, just before we started rolling, it's an historic day. |
... |
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