Middle East Shitshow - MESS

Why would towns on the front lines of three years of war vote for the government that led it? Daniella and Yossi Alpher look at what Israel’s October 27 election says about the country, from the loyalty of Netanyahu’s base to what Yossi calls a right-wing, increasingly religious Israel to a record turnout of Arab citizens. Yossi explains why nobody has the votes to govern, why every deal on the table is fragile, and why his bottom line is another election within a year.

Over Yossi Alpher's desk hangs a parchment the Mossad gave him, quoting Ezekiel: if the watchman sees the sword coming and doesn't blow the trumpet, he answers for the blood.Why do surprise attacks succeed when the warnings are already there? Daniella and Yossi Alpher trace the pattern from Pearl Harbor and 9/11 to October 7 and the flydubai co-pilot who attacked his captain on the way to Tel Aviv, one of the many foreign pilots Israel wasn't vetting. Golda Meir acknowledged King Hussein's warning before the 1973 Yom Kippur War; Netanyahu says he was never warned about October 7. Yossi, who worked on early warning in the Mossad, explains why 99 percent of what reaches an analyst is noise and how the belief that Qatari money had bought off Hamas drowned out the signal.

Yossi Alpher is a Mossad veteran, and he doesn't spare Israel. He says the mistake of 1967 was not the conquest but staying, that Jerusalem was never really reunited, and that Netanyahu's government has backed settlers who push Palestinians off their land. He is just as blunt about the Arab rejection of partition in 1947, about Hamas, and about what "from the river to the sea" means when either side says it. Answering a listener who asked for the basics, Daniella and Yossi Alpher also cover why the land is called Palestine, Areas A, B and C, Gaza, and end on Yossi's bottom line: the land has to be divided, and neither side is ready.

The Houthis now control Bab al-Mandeb, which means they control whether Saudi oil leaves the Red Sea. Yossi Alpher has stood on that coastline. In 1981 he traveled through Somalia, visited Hargeisa and the port of Berbera, and interviewed President Siad Barre in the courtyard of the presidential villa in Mogadishu, where Siad Barre, freshly abandoned by the Soviet Union, asked him what a country with no friends should do next. In this episode, we talk about why the strait matters more than the headlines suggest, what it costs Egypt, why Israel has taken an interest in Somaliland, and the music Yossi bought on cassette in Mogadishu.Then the other story of the week: the call from Abu Dhabi that warned Netanyahu ten days before October 7, the denial, and why a commission of inquiry depends on the October 27 Israeli election.The Somali music clip is "Sharero 75" by Sharero Band, composed by Ahmed Naji Sa’ad (Axmed Naaji Sacad), from Light & Sound of Mogadishu (Afro7 Records). Used with permission.To book the Sweet Sound podcast studio in Tel Aviv, email Ittai Shaked [email protected].

A listener in New York asked how Yossi became a Zionist, and what he makes of the word now. The answer starts in Washington D.C. in the mid-1950s, with a Jewish education in which the Holocaust took up two sentences and Israel meant nothing at all. It was the Eichmann trial in 1961 that changed everything. Daniella and Yossi Alpher trace one man's Zionism from a kibbutz to the Mossad, and ask what is left of it after 1967, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and October 7.

August is quiet, and Yossi doesn't trust it. He and Daniella map the fronts: Syria's new president signaling accommodation over the Golan Heights, settler violence turning the West Bank into the region's real flashpoint, encouraged by a government that needs those votes before elections, and why Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis each have reason to break the calm while Trump keeps Netanyahu on a leash until the American midterms. Underneath it all, the strange history binding Israel to the Houthis' ancestors, and a new shelter in the garden that Yossi expects will not stay a white elephant.

Gaza is quiet. Lebanon is quiet. Even Iran, from Israel's standpoint, is quiet. So why does the West Bank look like it's being set alight on purpose? Daniella and Yossi examine the fear that Netanyahu wants conflict brewing before the end-of-October elections, violent enough to feed messianic-nationalist fervor, quiet enough to stay off international screens. Plus, the framework agreement with Lebanon and Iran's long arm over it, the funeral that got Bibi into the White House by a side entrance, the technocrat plan for Gaza, and why, since the assassination of Khamenei, nobody has a picture of who runs Iran.

Reports that the Mossad explored working with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of an effort to change Iran’s leadership sound almost too extraordinary to be true. Daniella and Yossi examine the reported plan and ask whether Israel confused its ability to penetrate Iran with an ability to understand and reshape it. Yossi also recalls being asked in 1979 whether the Mossad should kill Ayatollah Khomeini before his return to Tehran.

From Switzerland to southern Lebanon, this episode follows the chain linking the Iran deal, Hezbollah, Trump, Netanyahu, and Israel’s strategic isolation. Daniella and Yossi revisit the history of US-Israel ties, debate whether Iran’s nuclear ambitions remain the central threat, and consider how Israel should think about survival in a less predictable Middle East.

What happens when everyone talks about a conflict, but not with the people at the center of it? Daniella and Yossi Alpher discuss Israel’s exclusion from negotiations over a war it fought, think tanks that debate Israel without Israelis, and an Israeli political system that keeps avoiding both Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel. The conversation ends with a more practical question: when Netanyahu and Trump lie on TV, do you mute them, or keep listening because they still matter?