Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. Today I want to dig into all things Middle East because I think many of us are learning all about this region of the world.

And I see a lot of people on social media making assessments of the situation.

But one thing I've noticed is that they're making those assessments from a very western perspective.

And while I know that we're going to talk today about Israel being a very westernized country, that is not the case for the entire Middle East.

I think it's crucial for us to understand the culture in the Middle East surrounding Israel and Israel.

So we decided that the best way to do that was to chat with a gentleman who can break down everything that's happening in the Middle East.

And why some of these hot takes in the US are way off-based.

We are bringing in David Wormser. He is a senior analyst for Middle East Affairs at the Center for Security Policy.

He previously served as a senior advisor to Ambassador John Bolton and Vice President Dick Cheney. David, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. And it's a pleasure and honor to be here with you.

Thank you so much. I know you're just getting back from Israel yourself and you were there throughout the whole entire conflict.

You got there about a day before this started. But you were telling me sharing with me that you're there with all of these families.

And it's just like being in the United States. This is a very westernized country within the Middle East within really the Arab world surrounded by a culture that is not very much like ours.

But tell us a little bit about Israel.

Well, sure. I mean, it's not a very large country. It's only about 10 million people of which about 8 million. Well, it's 9 million people about which 7 million are Jews. So about 80%.

But there's 20% which are Muslim Arabs. There's Christian Arabs, Christians who more and more do not consider themselves Arabs.

There are Jews which is an ancient Middle East sect. There are others as well. And there are all citizens and they all vote and they even have parties and parliament.

So it looks like a very functional western country and it is. It has all the services you'd expect.

It's a fairly wealthy country. It's per capita income is surpassed Japan and Britain's and is now creeping over the line with Germany's.

So it's a very well to do well functioning western country much like San Diego is but then it is the Middle East. It's at the edge of the Middle East and Israelis themselves often forget that.

And maybe that's part of what just happened is they they imagine themselves to be departed from the mentality of the Middle East and they project that onto their neighbors.

And it leads to breakdowns which is what we just may be seeing. So anyway, so Israel is like that. But now it's at war. So it's very much kind of a surreal environment at the moment.

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