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cover of episode Jerusalem, Trump, & the Fight for Israel’s Survival | Inside Look with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum

Jerusalem, Trump, & the Fight for Israel’s Survival | Inside Look with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum

2025/1/23
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Israel: State of a Nation

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Eylon Levy
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Eylon Levy: 本集探讨了耶路撒冷在不断变化的地缘政治格局下的未来,包括唐纳德·特朗普重返总统职位的影响,以及这可能如何影响以色列的外交地位和国际战略。我们还讨论了阿布拉罕协议的经济和文化影响,以及如何应对虚假信息并加强以色列的全球形象。此外,我还分享了我与东耶路撒冷阿拉伯出租车司机的轶事,以及我对以色列如何才能在这个地区生存下去的看法。 Fleur Hassan-Nahoum: 我认为耶路撒冷的品牌价值高于以色列,但战争对耶路撒冷的经济造成了负面影响。我们需要认真对待宣传战,建立一个军事风格的总部来领导宣传工作。我们需要向世界展示以色列的创新和发明,而不是仅仅寻求同情。以色列应该充分利用外交手段来施压哈马斯的支持者,并采取措施来巩固耶路撒冷作为其首都的地位。我们需要关闭在耶路撒冷的外国领事馆,并收回联合国在耶路撒冷的总部。我们需要停止寻求国际社会的认可,转而赢得尊重和敬畏。 Fleur Hassan-Nahoum: 我认为耶路撒冷的品牌价值高于以色列,但战争对耶路撒冷的经济造成了负面影响。我们需要认真对待宣传战,建立一个军事风格的总部来领导宣传工作。我们需要向世界展示以色列的创新和发明,而不是仅仅寻求同情。以色列应该充分利用外交手段来施压哈马斯的支持者,并采取措施来巩固耶路撒冷作为其首都的地位。我们需要关闭在耶路撒冷的外国领事馆,并收回联合国在耶路撒冷的总部。我们需要停止寻求国际社会的认可,转而赢得尊重和敬畏。

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In Sinhwar's dream,

all of the Arabs in Israel and the Jerusalem Arabs were going to rise and be inspired and kill us all. That's what he wanted. That's what he thought would happen. They called on people to grab your guns, grab your knives. And everything is Al-Aqsa because they know Great branding. that Jerusalem, yes, they know that Al-Quds Jerusalem plays very well into the emotions of the Muslim world certainly in this country.

Hello and welcome to State of the Nation. I'm Elon Levy. I love Tel Aviv. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it on my laptop stickers. I love the beaches. I love the cafes. I love the buzz. And I could not imagine living anywhere else. But when it comes to cities in Israel, heck, cities in the world, not even sexy brand Tel Aviv comes close to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, a

A place of legend and myth, a real city with its own trash and traffic problems, and a symbol. A symbol for all sides in the conflict for dominance in the Holy Land. So I wanted to sit down with Fleur Hassan Nahoum, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and Israel's special envoy for trade and innovation.

During her time in Jerusalem City Hall, she was the Israeli capital city's de facto foreign minister. And she has used her platform to fight Israel's corner in the media battles surrounding this war. A war that I call the October 7th war, but that Hamas, the belligerent party, names after Jerusalem. The Al-Aqsa flood. A city it wants to flood.

with blood and we won't let it. So Flo joins me in the studio to talk about what this war means for the most iconic city in the world and how to strengthen its standing as Israel's united capital city when so many foreign powers want to take a bite out of it. In this conversation we discuss

Why Jerusalem's Arabs didn't answer Sinoise's calls to join the violence against Israelis on October 7th. I have some anecdotes with East Jerusalem taxi drivers as well. We talk about what this means for our capital's future as Israel bans the Hamas front on Ra. We talk about the destructive role of Qatari money and the potential for expanding the Abraham Accords with the Sunni states, bringing Israel closer to its Arab neighbors.

and we talk about why Fleur keeps going on Piers Morgan.

and taking part in the human circus clickbait. Because if she doesn't represent Israel on TV, who will? Let's dive between the lines and beyond the headlines.

Floor Hassan Nahum, welcome to State of a Nation. Thank you so much for having me, Elon. I want to drill in this episode into the really thorny, controversial questions. I want to look at the future of Jerusalem. I want to look at the trade boycotts against Israel, about Israel's future in this region, the fight against misinformation. But first, I have to start with the most explosive question.

Tel Aviv is better than Jerusalem, isn't it? Oh, come on, Elon. You're not serious. Come on, you know it. You're not serious. First of all, let's give you some facts, okay? Okay, let's start with facts. The largest city in the country is Jerusalem by foul, as the Israelis would say. So Tel Aviv is 450,000 people. Jerusalem is a million people. Okay. Okay, it doesn't mean the bigger is better, but, you know, let's start with that. Quality matters. Quality matters. Quantity matters. Also in size. We're way bigger than any city in the country. Okay.

We are also the most diverse city in the country. You think there's diversity in Tel Aviv? In fact, there's much less diversity. It's much more homogeneous here than it is in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, we have 40% Arabs.

29% ultra-Orthodox. I'm still not sweetening the deal for you, I know. And then from the rest of us, let's say, there's a huge diversity anywhere between completely secular to modern religious and more religious and actually...

Actually, also, the most immigrants, the most olim, start off in Jerusalem. I'm not sure they end in Jerusalem, but they start off in Jerusalem. Well, when they discover there's nowhere to buy a cup of coffee on a Saturday because the whole city shuts down. Apart from the Arab shulk in the old city. I have a solution for that. Oh, yeah. My solution for that. Buy an espresso machine. No, my solution for that is actually solving a lot of problems. My solution for that is, and the reason why there isn't,

things open on Shabbat is because then you wouldn't have a kosher license and the population of Jerusalem is a much more traditional population that need a kosher license. Let's say that's all true, which it is. But then we have East Jerusalem with an economy which is, we're in the same city, but an economy which is slightly more behind. So my solution for Shabbat, which wouldn't bother the Haredim at all, because they're the ones who would block anything happening on Shabbat, is why don't we make

East Jerusalem, the place for entertainment, for coffee, for tourism, for Shabbat. And just make it a regular thing to go to Sheikh Jarrah coffee on a Saturday. Yes. Okay, well, it's definitely a creative idea. It's a creative idea, but it will happen eventually. It would lift up the economy and, dare say, benefit the local population as well. They would love it.

Flo, to start us off, I've been meaning to sit down with you for a long time, but since the cameras are rolling, I want to understand exactly what terms we're speaking on. You are former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, current member of the Likud Central Council, and also Israel's special envoy for trade and innovation. So am I speaking now to Flo, our private citizen, Flo?

Fleur a mouthpiece for the government state policy? That's a good question, Elon. And I think I'm one of these people, maybe because I'm a woman and I know how to multitask. I wear a lot of hats and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. So I am the former deputy mayor. I will always be very proud of that. I was a city council member of Jerusalem for eight years. And a lot of the things that I've done in my career, I've done in the arena of Jerusalem as the beginning.

I was appointed just before October 7th, actually, as the Special Envoy for Trade and Innovation by Ellie Cohen, who was the Foreign Minister at the time. I've kept that appointment and I work very closely with the MFA, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What does that mean that you're the Special Envoy for Trade and Innovation? So anytime there are groups, innovation conferences, when I travel, I try and...

and be the representative, the ambassador for the startup nation in everything that I do. Um, and, uh, I, what I love about it is that it's really wonderful working with the professionals in the ministry of foreign affairs. People don't even know how many incredible professionals there are there. So there's an economic department, for example, and then there's a public diplomacy department that you know well, but within that, there's also an innovation section of the public diplomacy department. So I work with everyone. Uh, I'll give you an example of my work. Uh,

A week ago, we opened the innovation...

a diplomatic branch of the Uruguayan embassy in Hebrew University in Jerusalem. So that's something that I helped move along for the last few years. Paraguay moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and I'm very involved with helping them advance their economic goals and aims of having this incredible relationship with Israel. So I do a lot of work with diplomats, with ambassadors, ambassadors,

Anything to do with innovation, Startup Nation. And of course, then my hat, which connects beautifully into this, is my Abraham Accords work, which happened in 2020. I'm the co-founder of the UAE Israel Business Council and the Gulf Israel Women's Forum. So I have a lot of deep connections in the Gulf, in the Arab world. And the reason why Ellie Cohen appointed me in September 2023, Special Envoy for Trade and Innovation Programme.

was because at that moment we thought we were going to be having peace with Saudi Arabia a few months after that. And it'll come. It'll come eventually. Oh, definitely. And there'll be so much work to do, I think, in rehabilitating Israel's image and reputation after this war. First of all, just from a PR perspective and the question of what brand Israel is.

is, but also because of an understanding, and this really does need to be the national priority, we're simply not going to survive in this region if we are not an economic powerhouse. Either we have the economic power that is necessary to sustain the

the sort of military and defense that we need to fend off the enemies that want to destroy us or we're really going to struggle to sustain ourselves in this region. And so the question of building those trade relationships, of building a strong economy where everyone's working, where the money keeps flowing is absolutely critical. Absolutely. But I'm going to flip it on you. They need us too.

Who's they? The Gulf. These countries, these Sunni moderate Arab countries. They need us because, look, you know this. Israel never had neighbors to trade with, right? So what has been our major export? Our major export is our intelligence, is our patents, is our inventions, is our innovation.

Now, we learned how to make the deserts bloom. Not now, not in the last 20 years, but right from the beginning of our existence. You know why? Because necessity is a mother of invention. We had no choice. We had to come up with water solutions. Making the desert bloom ever since Moses hit that rock in order to try to find water sources in the desert. Because he had a difficult constituency and I know all about that. But basically, we have achieved food sustainability.

way before any other regional country, and water sustainability, way before any regional country. We invented desalination. Now, you say we need them, but they need us. The UAE, for example, imports 92% of its food.

They don't want to be there because after COVID, everybody woke up and they're like, oh, damn, what happens if we can't get things to come into the country? And so that whole thing shook up the region. So, yes, we need them. We want Israel has always wanted to be a regional partner. We've always wanted to be peaceful with our neighbors, right?

But they need us because of our innovation and they need us because of our inventions. And they need us for them to model what we did here over there. Right, but I suppose what I'm saying is that's not going to happen automatically. There's nothing inevitable about Israel being an economic powerhouse and part of sustaining ourselves in this region. Well, we already are, but there are many people who are working hard to make sure that we're not. They're not going to succeed. And there is a threat of a brain drain.

With the numbers we're seeing of people leaving the country, it's happening in particular with doctors. And look, the strategy that the Iranian regime has been trying through its war of attrition, through four Houthi ballistic missiles a night, is to wind us down and to make life here difficult and unbearable. And I've heard conversations between people saying,

What do I need to be here for? I can just go back to being a minority in Europe or America or take that relocation in San Francisco because at least I don't have to grab my kids and run to the bomb shelter. And part of the challenge of what is sustaining Israel's existence here is the ability to go to other countries and say, you should support us, not because you should...

pity us like the Palestinians are asking you to pity them but because we are indispensable because you need us join us that's what I'm saying they need us and I'm saying that needs to be a priority for the government how we sustain that economic independence well that's why I feel a sense of mission for my role because I'm you know I'm the one going to people around the world and saying

This is how we can help you. Name me your challenge and we'll sell you a solution. I want to talk to you also because you wear the hat of what we call here a citizen spokesperson for Israel. Someone speaking, okay, you have a semi-official title. Yes, but I am a sort of citizen. Nobody's giving me the messaging every day. Exactly. You're not acting as an agent of the government. Whether you think that that message is effective when trying to make the case for Israel that it's not about arguing for pity points. It's about saying...

You should be jolly impressed by what we have been able to do despite the adversity and you need us because we're going to improve your lives. Is that the most convincing argument that Israel has for rallying global support? That's a good question and I've struggled with that for many years. You know, it's like the cherry tomato argument. We invented the cherry tomato. You should love us. Tomato for our American listeners. Tomato, darling. I'm just providing translation.

Tomato, tomato, tomato, potato, potato. All right. Well, I don't think that's the only argument. And I don't think you can combat an image of a of a Garzen child and say we invented the cherry tomato, tomato.

We can't do that. But I think you and I know very well that what's missing here, it's not beautiful narratives. It's not the best narrative in the world of decolonization that we have. It's strategy and structure.

We were both invited to a meeting in the Foreign Affairs Ministry to give ideas. And you gave some very specific ideas. In fact, this episode was postponed because we were meant to be recording it the day that we were invited by the foreign minister for that consultation. Exactly. And you were very specific. And I was impressed by the things you were saying. And I was much more general. And I said, this is all very well. We have brain trust in this country. You have the people in this room, half the people in this room, who can really tell you

What should be done or how we can do it? What we lack is leadership, structure,

And strategy. Israel's not good at strategy. We're very good tactically. We put out fires like nobody else does. We're not good at thinking ahead. So what is your proposal? The foreign minister invited a large number of people who are active in the advocacy space to Jerusalem for a consultation to work out how he's going to spend his 500 million shekel budget. If it comes. If it comes. I'll believe it when I see it. What is your suggestion for how Israel should...

shift gears and start fighting back against the propaganda war, which concerns...

me and I think all of the listeners of this show as well because we understand that Israel's enemies want to destroy Israel and they are leading a very slick campaign to convince the world that Israel deserves to be destroyed. Well, you know, I think what the understanding is that they can't beat us militarily. I mean, they've tried. So let's beat them in other spaces and let's delegitimize even their existence.

And I think there's a big problem. And the problem is this, that Israel has never taken the communications war as a need to have, only a nice to have. You know, there's an arrogance in Israel. Why do you think that is?

I'll tell you why. There's an arrogance here. There's like either it's not important enough. As long as we can fight a military war, that's all we need. We have to be strong. I think Naftali Bennett just said that if we beat them, then you don't need Asbara. I don't agree with him at all. But that's what he's saying. He reflects a large amount of Israeli opinion.

Right, this goes back to David Ben-Gurion saying it doesn't matter what the goyim say, only what the Jews do. Yes, and there is some element to that because I think...

that being strong creates respect, but that's not where it ends. And the second point is that there's a conception here that, well, they hate us anyway, so why bother? Why bother? And you and I know there's so much being done, so many dollars being poured into this, so many people that for 20... I realized we had a big problem when I moved to Israel in 2001, Second Intifada.

And my husband and I, a young couple, our children were born here, we moved from London. He's from London, I'm from Gibraltar and I moved to London. And I would switch on the TV and I would see the people talking for Israel and I'd go, Lord, no, no. And since that day, we never really took it seriously. Since the tide changed for us 20 years ago, 25 years ago, 30 years ago, we've never taken it seriously. So what is the solution?

That I propose to get on, sir? I don't have the answers. But set up. I was just building up to hear your answer. No, no, no. My answer is, let's take it serious enough to build a military style headquarters with a chief of staff, with generals.

with strategies, with the different departments. Like if it was a regular military war, let's do this for the communications war. In other words, we had a lot of wonderful... You mean instead of running it out of the IDF spokesperson's unit, they should be on a civilian level deciding the strategy of national comms? And the IDF spokes...

people would be part of that. Now, there is something, I think you worked for them for a bit, or was something, called the Directorate, right? The National Public Diplomacy Directorate. Really catchy name. It sounds like something the Chinese Communist Party invented. Yes, exactly, exactly. And so that is not a body that created the messaging, it's a body that was supposed to be coordinating messaging, from what I understand. Emphasis on the word supposed there is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Supposed, right? Yeah.

And then you have people running it who don't know anything about communications or the communications war and is completely under-resourced and wonderful people, never got paid. And so everybody else in the government gets paid, but the people who are actually doing the heavy lifting, I know, I know I'm touching an open wound there. No, but we're all doing this for the goodness of our hearts. This is army loom, right? Why? Why?

Why? You know, I had a realization the other week. Yeah. I've heard this argument. Israel doesn't take the PR war seriously because of this arrogance and this belief that it doesn't matter what they say. It matters what we do. They hate us anyway. Yeah. But the penny really dropped when I had this realization. Israelis think that words don't matter. They think that it doesn't matter what we say because they will hate us anyway. But they also think it doesn't matter what they say.

Yes. Okay, let the students hold their silly symposia and seminars on campus and let people write op-eds and reports decrying Israel and spreading lies. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter because it's just words and sticks and stones can't break your bones. And we're learning now that actually it makes a huge difference because when...

When you lose legitimacy in the eyes of a foreign public, that foreign government stops selling you guns. Well, exactly. This is exact. I think this war is the first war that we can say for sure that losing the communications war affected our ability to manage the military war. Rafa, three months we waited. Why?

Because the population of America was seeing these terrible scenes on TV. And of course, there was an election in America, it didn't help. And they didn't want us to go in because of how it would look.

But how it would look is because we're not managing it. Let me give you an example. But how do you manage it? Because look, the images coming out of Gaza, they are horrible. They're horrible. There's a huge amount of suffering. I don't want to deny it. I just think that the people who are responsible for that suffering, the jihadi psychopaths who launched this war, decided to wage it from inside and under civilian areas and refuse every option to surrender, lay down their arms, free the hostages and walk out peacefully. I can give you two examples. Okay. When the hostages were taken...

Why did the messaging? This is what happens when there's no messaging coming from a pie. Why does it bring them home? Why doesn't it let them go? Wow, I am so happy that you are making this point.

Why isn't it letting go? I'm so happy you are making this point. It's putting the responsibility on us rather than the people who took these people. First of all, there is responsibility on us as Israel. And I think it's an admirable part of the Israeli mindset. Yes. That people say, we Israelis make the impossible happen. The responsibility always lies with us. We take our fate in our hands. There is something so empowering. Yes. But at the same time, and I've had some of the hostage families coming off to me on social media about this let them go message. Yeah.

I went on Israeli TV the other day. I said, no one has even tried the strategy of mapping out what leverage Hamas's patrons have on this terrorist organization and using diplomatic capital to force them

to let the hostages go. No one has even tried to do it because the same week that Mandy Damari, Emily Damari's mother, was in London, the king was hosting the Emir of Qatar. And her appeals saying, you need to get aid to the hostages. And if Qatar doesn't help, it needs to face consequences. Fell on deaf ears because Britain says, well, we're not spending any of our diplomatic capital on that. And it means that we have been left alone in the fight for the hostages because there's this belief that

Look, what I said on Israeli TV... But we have to bring them home. They don't have to let them go. But here's the point. If you want an agreement, it requires the other side's agreement, necessarily. So how do you force this barbaric terrorist regime to agree to let the hostages go? On what terms? I'll give you another one, Elon. You know what America did in the last six months with Qatar? Renewed their military base in Qatar. Why? Why not say, we will only renew if you do A, B and C?

ABC being extradite Hamas's leaders if they don't free the hostages. Or just not renew America's. America says we don't want to have a military base here in Qatar because you are all supporting terrorists. We're going to move our operations to Bahrain where we already have a huge fleet or the UAE. Well, why don't they? Because you have connections in the Gulf. Why don't they?

Strategically, geographically, it's a better place for them to be, but who cares? The Americans care. Yes. America first. And Qatar would not let them leave. But nobody used that leverage. Why? What do you mean Qatar wouldn't let them leave? Qatar would do anything to keep the American base there. So why has no one tried pressuring Hamas' patrons? Because there's no strategy, Elon. Because there's nobody waking up in the morning, apart from you and me and many other good people...

from the governmental level, from the top down, saying, okay, this is our messaging. We're going to use this diplomatic arm to do this. We're going to contact our friends and we're going to ask them to do A, B, and C. No, but Flora, it's not just a question of messaging. It's a question of strategy. Look, I remember at the beginning of the war. Strategy, that's what I'm saying. But diplomatic strategy. Yes. I remember at the beginning of the war,

The Prime Minister Netanyahu got up and said, any country that has diplomatic relations with Hamas, Hamas is ISIS. Yeah. Any country that has diplomatic relations with Hamas should be treated like a country that has diplomatic relations with ISIS. They should be sanctioned. And that message disappeared within a couple of days when they thought that Qatar was the key

to getting the hostages back. And I know that there are arguments within, between the hostages' families, between those who are saying, you stay at that hostage table in Doha and don't move until you get a deal. And other people saying, why are we playing along with this farce of negotiating under the auspices of Hamas' patron? Yes. And meanwhile, Qatar owns half of London. You know this. They own more, the Qataris own more property in London than the Crown.

40 billion pounds. London, more than the crown. OK, you have an American military base in Qatar. You have Al Jazeera running free all over the world, except in the Sunni moderate Arab countries. And now even in the Palestinian Authority, they've been kicked out of. So what are we doing? We're not pulling the right levers because we don't have support.

strategy because everything here is putting out a fire. Are you saying then the problem with Israel's comms and PR is actually not a problem of comms? It's a problem of policy. It's both. You know, when you speak to Gadiezra, he'll say he won't call it communication strategy. He'll call it policy. So it's the same thing. Right. Really. The point is nobody's thinking about it. I'll give you an example. I spoke to a guy who runs comms reputation for the UAE.

You don't want to know what he gets paid. I'm sure he gets paid very well because the UAE has a great reputation. You and I are in the wrong business. You don't understand what he gets paid. But OK, and his strategy or their strategy is not the same as ours because it's a different country. There's no freedom of speech there. It's a different country, right? So he tells me what his strategy is.

They flood the net with positive articles that they get ex-retired bankers and generals and they basically place articles everywhere. They do great SEO. And so when you Google, only positive things come out. I'm not saying that should be our strategy because there's too much negativity coming our way, but I'm saying it's a strategy.

We have never sat down. It helps when you have petrodollars to pour into this stuff. True, but you know what? The Israeli taxpayer's back is breaking already. Yes, but remember when there was a ministry of Asbara at the beginning of the war that lasted four days? It shut down because of the war. It shut down because Galitistal, to her credit, understood that she, whatever she did, made absolutely no difference...

Because everybody else was acting in complete independence. To her credit or a total lack of vision or thought about how to use that budget at a moment that it was actually needed? Yes, because she was never the right minister for that job. That wasn't what she should be doing. Now, give that job, let's say, to Michael Oren or to you and me.

God forbid. I'm not saying God forbid you. I'm saying God forbid me. No, but I'm saying somebody who understands communications, who is in the communications battle. What I'm saying is, and that's another frustration of mine, that jobs are given for political favors, for political, I owe you this or she needs that or he needs that, rather than who's actually capable of doing the job, which is a whole other different kettle of fish. But going back to the communications war, the problem is that we are fighting a war

without a central command and a structure. So we're all shooting in different directions. Well, tell me a little bit about your work then as someone who's been working without a central command or structure. You're one of these citizen spokespeople who've been doing amazing work just setting up your own laptop. I don't know whether it's a webcam or what setup you have and doing interviews. I mean, by your count since October 7th, how many media appearances have you done? Hundreds. I've lost count, but I'll tell you how it happened.

It happened because on October 7th, when I realized that what was going on,

The BBC calls me at 10 a.m. Now, why is the BBC calling me? The deputy mayor of Jerusalem, I'm still deputy mayor at the time. Why is it calling me at 10 a.m. on October 7th? And at that point I realized, because nobody else was answering, and they know me because I essentially was doing communications for the city of Jerusalem. And as you know, there was plenty of communications to do for Jerusalem. How did a former anti-government protester get swept into via spokesman for the prime minister's office? Because no one was doing it and we needed all hands on deck.

There's never a vacuum at the end of the day. And so they call me because I was the person they called every time something happened on Temple Mount. That was always me doing the BBC interviews. Or there was something going on in Sheikh Jarrah. Remember those days of that? Future cafe scene. Future cafe scene.

They knew me. They had my number. That's it. That's all it took. And at that point, I thought to myself, I'm sure I had Shabbat. At that point, I thought to myself, wow. No one was on that day. Nobody. We were at war. I thought, well, you know, God has put me here for this reason. This is 10 a.m.,

My country needs me. And I did BBC, I did Sky, I did Channel 4. Channel 4 on October 7th. And it just started a wave. And then what people don't see or people who watch your show might not see or maybe they will see now through AI is I've got a whole other parallel life going on in Spanish. And in Spanish, in English, there's good people. There's you, me and many other people. In Spanish, there's no one. There's me and two or three more people.

And I do so much in Spain and Spain has been so hostile that in fact, I can't walk in the street in Spain. Really? I'm famous or infamous there. As bad as that. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is an opportunity to plug the fact that all of the episodes of this podcast go out on YouTube through an astonishing AI dubbing that does it in your voice.

into Spanish thanks to a partnership with an AI firm called Linguana, an Israeli firm. Wow. It's called Estado de una Nación. Wow, very nice. I do the Spanish. Very nice. I don't know if it will mimic your Al-Andalusian accent. Now ask these people if they can do my Andalusian accent. Andalusian accent. Ask them. It's important. Anyway, you started putting yourself forward for media interviews. And I've got to ask about some of the choices. Sure. Piers Morgan.

Why don't you win on Piers Morgan? I did an interview with Piers Morgan when I was in an official capacity. Yeah. Since then, I've pushed off several invitations, partly because genuinely for logistical reasons when they reached out, it didn't work, but also because I really don't like

the human freak show approach. I agree with you. Where he takes a left-wing anti-Semite, a right-wing anti-Semite, sticks a Jew in the middle, have them fight at each other. And I just think, what on earth have I done to deserve being stuck on a panel with Cenk Uyghur and Norman Finkelstein? I mean, what did the Jewish people do to deserve this? Why do you play along with it? I struggle with it. I do. Look, I could be on it every week if I wanted to. They're always calling me up. And I've done four. Four in a year and a half. So...

And every time I do one, I want to have a shower afterwards. So I resist and I do it for two reasons. One is because I think if I'm not there, then who's there and who's going to be defending our side? Yeah.

Mainly for that reason. Mainly for that reason. And I know they get a lot of views. And I mainly do it, believe it or not, to strengthen our people. Because a lot of our people are watching it. And I think that what Israelis don't understand about Asbar is, yeah, we need to do it because the country needs reputation management, because the country needs a communications system.

But we also need to strengthen our own troops. And a lot of Jewish people around the world and allies of Israel, they feel so alone. They're watching this and they're like, God help us. Where is our defender? Ilan, that's why you became popular, because you became that defender for the people who were watching in frustration. Let's not forget about them. They're a very important part of the story. Yeah, people often say,

Part of the work we do at the Citizen Spokesperson's Office, you're preaching to the choir. And my go-to response is, you have to preach to the choir or it won't sing. Exactly. You have supporters who want to speak out for Israel. They lack the information. Yeah. They lack the soundbites. Yeah. And they lack...

the courage as well because of the gas lighting because of the Gaza lighting and you've got to strengthen them and empower them to speak up but that's part of our job to strengthen our own people and our people are still watching Piers Morgan but believe me I struggle with that what you tell me

And the people who book me, I say to them, who's on there? I'm not going to be on there with a bottom feeder. I'm not going to be on there with a bottom feeder. And I said, and I say, if you bring me a Palestinian ambassador, whatever. Okay, I can, you know, the one who told me to shut up. Well, it's not an ambassador because it's not a state. But whatever representative from the Palestinian Authority, that's my counterpart, let's say. Let's say. The Cenk Uygur, I say no. I say no, I reject.

Finkelstein, I just, it was awful. It was just horrible. I didn't sleep that night because to me there's nothing worse than a self-hating Jew.

Nothing was. But what's worse is Peers, because Peers gives these people a platform, these people who were nobodies, who were fringe, who were nothing. Peers, and I said this to Norman Finkelstein in the debate, I said, you're having your moment in the sun right now, because it's trendy to be anti-Semitic, but, you know, give it another year and you'll be back in the fringe. But people love that. Our people love that. Yeah, Fleur, you really gave him a punch.

So I do it for that. But like I said, I limit it. And every time I'm on there, I'm like, I'm never going back. You don't want to feed the entertainmentization. It's Jerry Springer. Do you remember Jerry Springer? You're too young for that. Yeah, I remember Jerry Springer. It's the Jerry Springer of political debate.

Which doesn't help us. Flo, I want to pivot away from the question of PR and communications. I'm glad we had this discussion and talk to you about Jerusalem. Yeah. And by the way, at the beginning, if anyone was offended, I'm not really dunking on Jerusalem. I lived in Jerusalem when I was working for the president. Where did you live? On Balfour Street, two doors down from the prime minister. Very, very handy. It was close enough to the president's office that I could go home not only to eat, but also to cook.

And you hang out a little bit. And sometimes even take a nap. Don't tell me. And you hang out a little bit on Al-Zaiz Street. The cool bars, the trendy bars. Of course, of course, of course. Sushi. So I love Jerusalem. So staying there on the weekend was a problem because I don't keep Shabbat. I get it. Everything is closed. I get it, I get it, I get it. But anyway, let's talk about the effects of this war on Jerusalem because my position is October 7th. The October 7th war has changed everything. Definitely for Jerusalem. And Jerusalem has played a central role in this war despite the fact it's actually had relatively few sirens. Yeah. Okay, but...

Hamas named its attack on October 7th the Al-Aqsa flood. They always do. Every war is Al-Aqsa war. Every time a Hezbollah terrorist was killed in action, the euphemism was martyred on the road to Jerusalem. And recently we saw the International Court of Justice in The Hague coming out with one of its periodical outrageous statements.

Yeah.

and hand over the Western Wall to the Palestinian Authority, right? Which is surreal. So, I mean, when the guns are silenced and this war ends, please, God, it will end soon already, and we'll have all the hostages home, and we can move on. But how does Jerusalem emerge from this? Does it emerge stronger, weaker, more divided, more fracturous?

I think there's a lot of things that people don't really understand about Jerusalem. First of all, believe it or not, the brand Jerusalem is stronger in the world than Israel. The brand. It's not surprising. Brand Israel is a very low bar at the moment. Yeah, but for good or bad, I mean, the name recognition of Jerusalem is just way, way higher than Israel. It's Jerusalem. It's Jerusalem. It means something to different people. Jerusalem, exactly. Yeah.

So on a practical level, on an economic level, we're suffering because 80% of our tourism is international tourism.

And it's basically all been choked off. All of it. It's just mission tourism now, right? And so a big part of our industry and a big part of it's a big employer in the city. Ironically, it's a big employer for Arabs in the city is the hotel industry. And that's really bad. It's like 20%. I used to be in charge of tourism for the city. So it's like it's Corona levels. It's like a little bit better than Corona, but not much.

So the only thing that kept a lot of hotels going is the fact that we became a city of refuge, ironically. And we had a lot of the evacuees from the north and the south of the country in Jerusalem. And that gave the hotels a little bit of room to breathe, a little bit of oxygen, because they had an income to keep them going. OK, but let me ask from a different perspective. Yeah.

By the way, the most interesting, fascinating conversations I have are not on this podcast. They're when I get in a taxi with an Arab taxi driver from East Jerusalem. Amazing. Wow. I wish I could have a podcast episode just with the discussions I have. They would never do it publicly. Wow. Listen. Can I tell you a few Arab taxi driver stories from East Jerusalem? I had one where I got in a taxi from the Channel 12 studios in Neve Lan. Wow.

And normally when I get in a taxi and someone says, how are you? I say, Baruch Hashem. But I noticed it was an Arab taxi driver. So I just said, I'm okay. How are you? He replies, Baruch Hashem. Okay. Immediately. This is a Jerusalem Arab. Immediately I'm suspicious. He asks, how are you? I said, terrible because this bloody war is still going on. He says, you're telling me I rescued two girls from the Nova Festival. I said, what? He said, I was there to pick them up from the Nova Festival. And?

And my hands were shaking as I saw the paragliders coming in. And he said, I'm getting chills just...

remembering what he said. He said, if Allah takes me tomorrow, I will die knowing that I saved two girls from the Nova Festival. He said, Hamas is worse than ISIS. I stopped the car, turn around, I'm taking you to Harvard. I want you to speak to the students there. Shock. Spoke to another taxi driver. We're talking about whether Israel was going to accept a ceasefire or not. And he goes, what are you talking about? Israel will accept a ceasefire? It's not up to us. We're under attack on seven fronts. Wow, you are on message. Another taxi driver.

He says, what music do you want? I said, switch on the radio. He says, no, no, no, no, no. I refuse to listen to the radio. I don't want to hear the news. It's too depressing. So I've deleted my social media. I've deleted my Twitter. And I'm just listening to music. I said, do you know what's happening in the world? Have you heard about the Houthi ballistic missile attacks? He said, yeah, yesterday I was driving my taxi and there was a siren.

I said, what did you do? He said, well, the passengers got out and went for shelter. And I sat in the car. I said, well, why didn't you run for shelter? He says, if Allah wants to take me, Allah will take me. I said, but then what about the poor passengers? Who's going to drive them back? He said, they get. But these conversations with the Arab, I've gone on a tangent here. But the conversations you have with the real people, and this was one of the things that maybe surprised Israelis on October 7th. They thought, like Hamas thought,

that the Arab masses would rise up, grab their guns and attack. And they didn't. And it wasn't a repeat of 2021 and the riots that we had then. So when we get out of this war, do you think that the effect on the Arab population of Jerusalem will have been to say, wow, look how the glorious Hamas resistance stood up to these evil Zionist occupiers? Or will the lesson be, dear God,

Look what's happening in Gaza. Look what's happening around the region. We don't want to import that chaos here. Actually being under Israeli sovereignty

is good for us, so let's not rock the boat because look how the wheels can go off the place when you do that. So this is why I'm telling you Jerusalem is better. Let's unpack that for a second. We have a beach. We have a beach. I'm with you. I grew up by the beach and I miss it and I'm with you. I'm with you on that. But I completely agree with you on the fact that in Sinhwar's dream,

All of the Arabs in Israel and the Jerusalem Arabs, and there's a slight status difference, and we'll explain that in a second to your listeners, were going to rise and be inspired and kill us all. That's what he wanted.

That's what he thought would happen. They called on people to grab your guns, grab your knives. And everything is Al-Aqsa because they know that Jerusalem, yes, they know that Al-Quds, Jerusalem, plays very well into the emotions of the Muslim world, certainly in this country. And that's why every year, it's not new, every single war that Israel has had with Gaza, and I think this is now the fifth or the sixth, has always been called Al-Aqsa.

All of it is al-Aqsa because that plays well on the street. And if you remember in past years, and this is I used to have on Ramadan, every Ramadan Friday, there were problems in Temple Mount. Why? Because Hamas would send 200 operatives, hooligans, terrorists, whatever you want to call them, the night before, Thursday night. This would be the playbook every single year, okay, until this war.

They'd send them on Thursday night. They wouldn't leave the compound. They would desecrate their own mosque. They would play football, sorry, soccer, in their own mosque, right? And then in the morning, they'd start throwing stones over to the Kotel.

And then... My bar mitzvah was meant to be at the cartel. And we... This was back in 2004, second edict father. And we had to... I'm a baby. And we had to move it because of the threat of rioters throwing rocks off the top of the Temple Mount onto people on the Western Wall. So this is the playbook. Every year was the same. It's curated every year the same. Thursday night, stay there, start throwing rocks, desecrate their own mosque, desecrate their own mosque. Then...

Because it's Ramadan Friday. We know there's 75,000 Muslims coming to pray, mostly peacefully. What happens? The Israeli police go up to try and clear it out in order for the 75,000 people who are coming to go and pray. And then what happens?

They are storming Temple Mount. The Israeli police are storming Temple Mount. This is a narrative. They say storming Temple Mount when you have just tourists walking around the plaza. Storming Temple Mount. The police know, but they have the images now. This is all curated. It's all set up. They have the images of the Israeli soldiers trying to take these terrorists, these hooligans, whatever you want to call them, these rioters, trying to take them out so that 75,000 peaceful Muslims can still come and pray. It's the playbook. And every year the BBC would call me

And it was normally Erev Pesach, right? Because Ramadan, Pesach and Easter more or less fall around the same time. Well, Ramadan changes every year. Yes. But in the last five years, it's always somehow...

Remember, it's four weeks, four Fridays. Somehow it's still... Okay, because it moves a little bit. Yes, it moves a month every year or whatever, but somehow it still touched one of the Pesach days or whatever. And I was always home cooking for Pesach, for Shabbat, whatever it was. And the BBC would call me like, Deputy Mayor, we'd like to talk to you about Israel's brutal whatever on Temple Mount. And every year I would give the same explanation of the tactic. And one year I got so fed up, I said...

You know what? Why don't you dig up my interview from last year? Because I'm telling you exactly the same because it's the same playbook that you all fall for every single year. Anyway, so that al-Aqsa is always their thing. But if you speak to the average East Jerusalemite, they will say, and you say to them,

There's a Palestinian state tomorrow. The wall goes up. Which side of the wall do you want to be? 98% will tell you we're staying here. Why? They have freedoms. They have opportunity. Women have freedoms. And they can vote in the local election. They can vote if they want to. They don't? They don't. Most of them don't. Did you get Arab votes because they thought with your name that you were an Arab? I could become mayor if I actually could convince them. Yeah.

They don't vote. They get intimidated not to. Hamas bullies go around in very, very threatening looking cars on election day to stop them from voting. Oh, really? Active voter intimidation? Yes, active voter intimidation. I'd never heard about that. Yes, active voter intimidation. Maybe that's something we should have the international media covering during the next... I tell them all the time they never cover it. I'd never heard of voter intimidation. Remember, a lot of the international media are in Jerusalem. And that's why also I would be somebody nearby that would come and do interviews. Yeah.

They don't care. Let me get your take on one of the most fascinating insights I think we've had on this podcast in a previous episode with Rawan Osman. Yeah, she's a good friend of mine. Lebanese-Syrian. She's great. Lebanese-Syrian peace activist. And she made this brilliant insight that the Iranian regime is pushing for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Because it knows that it would become an Iranian puppet state, just like Gaza became an Iranian puppet state. And that would give the Iranian regime, an independent Palestinian state, being an Iranian puppet state, would give the Iranian regime control of Jerusalem. And that control of Jerusalem would allow Iran to compete with Saudi Arabia completely.

for leadership of the Islamic world. And Turkey. Turkey's already in East Jerusalem. Turkey's definitely been playing a very subversive role. They want to redo the Ottoman Empire. It's crazy. They've been threatening to invade Jerusalem. And this is a NATO member state. I think this threat has not been taken seriously. But what do you make of this argument? That actually part of the reason the Islamic Republic of Iran is pushing so strongly and championing the Palestinian cause...

It's because they want to be just like the Saudis are the guardians of custodians. They want to be the custodians. And that puts them on leadership. Yeah. I mean, they're all dreaming, of course, because it's never going to happen. But yes. Yes. And that's why, unfortunately, you know, I I used to believe in a two state solution. I really did. And then I realized that it's it's just not possible. What was the switch for you?

I think the Second Intifada started the switch for me. I was there. What about the Second Intifada? I moved to Jerusalem in 2001 with my husband from London. Up until that point, I thought, hey, Oslo, great. Finally, they're going to get their state. Leave us alone.

Because the belief was that they just want the same thing as us, right? Exactly. Which is actually... To be left alone and raise their families. Yes. And maybe many Arabs or Palestinians do. Do. They do. But not the leadership has never wanted that. And I actually did a debate in the Council of Foreign Relations in the summer in New York against Dennis Ross, who still believes in the two-state solution. And I said to him, and I think this is...

I said to him that the problem with your argument or the problem with your ideology is that you're imposing, we have imposed our own aspirations and set of values on another people. That's never been their aspiration, because if it would have been, they would have had a state by now.

We're imposing our construct. They're telling you from the river to the sea. And then Western diplomats say, no, what they mean, it's just a tactic. They mean to nine miles away from the sea. They don't mean it. Which is patronization and real racism. Wow. The bigotry of low expectations that is directed at the Palestinians. 100%. I think. 100%. And this is a point that Einat Wilf, who is like the spiritual godmother of the citizen spokesperson's office, makes.

We owe them the basic respect of believing them, of taking their words at face value and not trying to do these somersaults. So you imagine the disaster if they would have taken half of Jerusalem, including, by the way, they were offered two quarters of the old city. They said no to this. It's insane that we proposed that. It's insane that we proposed that. Could you imagine?

It's insane that we propose that. There are some people who argue that we propose that because we knew that in the end they wouldn't take it. But still, it doesn't matter. We propose it and they could have taken it. If Arafat would have been smart, he would have taken it. And they've just keep... You know what it is, Elan. They've just kept playing double or nothing and getting nothing. And doubling down on the nothing. It's just insane. But the Arabs in Jerusalem...

do not want where they live to become any part of any type of autonomy, Palestinian autonomy, because they see what happens on the other side. They see what's happening in Ramallah. It's all corrupt. You know, I've got a friend who went to Ramallah recently.

to meet with some Palestinian leaders. And he says to me, somebody that you and I know who does a lot of good work. So he writes to me, I said, how's Ramallah? And he goes, insane. I said, how many Mercedes have you spotted? Because you don't find a lot of luxury cars in Jerusalem. And he says, Mercedes? Maseratis. It's a corrupt dictatorship. Speaking of corruption, UNRWA, Israel passing legislation to ban

ban the operations of this Hamas front. It is unprecedented. Unprecedented, we will be told by the United Nations. For a UN member state to ban cooperation with a UN agency, to which we reply, well, it's unprecedented for a UN agency to take part in a raping and killing spree, to abduct hostages, to employ terrorists, to raise arms,

all of the monsters who perpetrated the October 7th massacre, and we are not going to collaborate with an organization that is sworn to our destruction, not only because its staff took part in October 7th, but because the whole raison d'etre of UNRWA, the whole reason it exists, is to tell the Palestinians that until they achieve their dream of wiping out Israel from the river to the sea, or they forego that dream, they have the right to live off Western paid taxes.

which is outrageous. I mean, I think Anat's book made that argument really convincingly and 100%. They're there to reverse the 48th Declaration of Independence. They're there to undo Israel. But anyway, what does the decision to ban UNRWA mean for Jerusalem specifically? Tell me what UNRWA's presence in Jerusalem was like and what this means. And it goes back to why they didn't succeed also with Jerusalem because for the past 10 years... So...

So let me just give a little bit of Jerusalem kind of history with the Arabs in our city. For many years... In 247 BCE...

Let's talk about the last 10, 15 years. For many years, Israel said, we united the city, but under-resourced a whole part of the city. Why? Because left-wing government said, oh, in a minute, it's going to become a Palestinian state. So why bother integrating? So why bother? And why bother resourcing? Something's going to be a problem soon.

And the right wing would be, well, sorry, we don't have enough money. Why are we going to spend it on the Arabs? So it's also a basic question of electoral politics, which is if you don't vote, there's no one at city call fighting your corner. And the whole point of democracy is that you fight your constituents corner. Exactly, which the Haredim know how to do. And they could write a book about fighting the corner for the constituents. They could write the book, especially in Jerusalem. Exactly. And so nobody did anything. And Zev Elkin, who is now...

you know, back in the government, who was the Likud minister for Jerusalem affairs, came and changed, flipped the switch and said, hey, you can't say on the one hand it's one city and on the other hand treat the city like it's two cities because in the end it's going to explode in our faces. And he was right. And that was the... That's why I ran with him when he ran. He didn't win, but I ran. I was his number two when he ran for mayor of Jerusalem back in 2018. Oh, yes, I remember this. So...

So he said, listen, we've got to close social gaps between East and West because you can't have a city. By the way, this is a uniquely Israeli phrase to close social gaps. And I realize it translates into English as to reduce inequality. That's what close social gaps means. It's just such an Israeli idiom. You're right. I'm sorry. I've been in Hebrew. I've been here too long. You've gone native. What's happened? I came to this country. I was thinking in Spanish and I'm thinking Hebrew. Yeah.

So basically, yes, reduce inequalities. Because you can't have a pavement, sidewalk for Americans, you can't have a pavement that looks different in East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. That's not good running of the city. Now, of course, it happens everywhere in the world. Go to Chicago, go to New York. You have neighborhoods that are better resourced or less resourced. It's just the way that it works. But we in Israel, we're very unique. And we're like, no, we have to reduce inequalities. Where are the three main inequalities that we see?

One is educational. One is infrastructural. And the other one is in employment. Zev Elkin, he mapped that out and he said, OK, I'm going to get money from the government and I'm going to create a plan, a five year plan. I think it may have started with Barkat, but he really was the one who pushed serious money. We're going to start this five year plan and we're going to reduce inequality in these three fields, which is the main fields.

I was part of that train and I became the portfolio holder for economic development. So what did we do? First of all, the mayor, this current mayor, Leon, who I worked with for five years, he's amazing. He started cleaning up. By the way, the chazan at my grandparents' shul in Givatayim. He remembers my bar mitzvah, the one I said had to be moved from Jerusalem. He's a great singer. Well, he was definitely the right chazan to have at your bar mitzvah. It was a good omen for you.

He spends his time dealing with infrastructural improvements. We are opening a high-tech park in East Jerusalem. You know what it's called? I don't know, but I don't like it. Silicon Valley. Oh, nice. But I don't like it. Why not? From an urbanist perspective, I'm going to go on a little rant. I really don't like the idea of building...

like industrial parks that you can only reach by having access by a car. But is it integrated into the city like a real high street? Oh, that's something different. It's right next to Sheikh Jawahar. What makes it a park then? It's just a business quarter. It's a business quarter, but we want more high-tech jobs because for each high-tech job, there's seven tertiary jobs. Okay. So it's just good economic injection development to the city. It's good.

Oh, that's different. If it's not... I mean, look, the government compound is a disaster because it was built on the assumption that no one actually wants to live in Jerusalem and therefore it needs to be accessible on the fringes of the city by car. Yes, I agree with you. And so you can't walk around it in the same way you can walk down Whitehall in London. No, but you can get a train and in 35 minutes you're in Jerusalem now and you can, you know... There's...

There's a lot of different urban choices. Some of them I know more about. Some of them I know less about. But economic development is always good when you put a place that people go to work. And when you have these mixed-use neighborhoods, it's a very good thing. 100%. Mixed-use neighborhoods are very good things, urban-wise. You mean integrating businesses and cafes and shops with residential instead of having separate areas. And then you don't need to be in traffic at all.

Amazing. We're doing that now in Tal Piyot as well. But anyway, put that aside. I did a lot of work with economic development. So ensuring that Arabs are integrated into the prosperity of the startup nation in Jerusalem, making sure that what we realized was that the educational system in Jerusalem for Arabs, much of it under UNRWA,

Apart from that horrible UNRWA school book that we all know about, that has been written about. It's the Palestinian Authority curriculum. Exactly. Apart from all of that, they don't teach Hebrew. So what happened? How many UNRWA schools are operating in Jerusalem? It's five to ten. Why? Exactly. And it's our sovereign capital city. Why are we allowing a UN agency? And even worse, we... No, why? Why? We were funding the infrastructure. Why?

Why? Why was any of this, pardon me, bullshit happening? Historical. Historical. 67, the city was reunited. The Israeli Ministry of Education should take over the schools and say, chaps, you're not refugees. You never were.

We're going to provide your education. So, yes. And so going back to Elkin and the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs, they said, let's start transitioning between the Palestinian curriculum to the Israeli Arab curriculum. What is the Israeli Arab curriculum for the whole country?

Arabic first language, Hebrew second language, English third language. You do a bagrut, but you do it in Arabic. Matriculation. Matriculation. You do it in Arabic, right? Sounds good. We're not teaching Zionism to anybody here. We're just giving them the same opportunities and we're taking out the poison. We've started doing that transition. We've gone in the city of Jerusalem from 92% of kids studying the Palestinian Authority curriculum. Some of it are not. Even outside the onerous system. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, all of it. They're studying the Palestinian Authority curriculum? Yeah. And how many schools have now switched over to these? Wait, wait, we've moved it to 82% now. There's still a long way to go, but at least... No, but Ilan, in government, this is huge. You have to understand. Okay, but what... UNRWA, there are still parts of Jerusalem that are defined by the United Nations... As refugees? As refugee camps, like Shuaifat... It's not a refugee camp. But they're defined by the United Nations. It's a ridiculous thing. They're behind a wall. So what does the decision to ban UNRWA mean...

for the city taking over municipal services. Okay, you said that you've gone down from 92 to 82 Palestinian curriculum to Israeli curriculum. But if UNRWA is not allowed to operate in Israel now, and that includes Jerusalem, what is going to happen to those schools? What's going to happen to Shuafat? Israeli Ministry of Education in the city of Jerusalem. Is that happening or that's what you're saying should happen? It's going to happen. It's going to happen. But it's already in place, you see. Because of the transition that we did, that we managed for the last 10 years...

Now, when you look at there are certain schools that have parallel tracks of Palestinian Authority curriculum, Israeli Arab curriculum. And what do you think the parents are choosing?

Is it the Israeli-Arab curriculum? It is. Why? Because parents want their kids to have opportunity. And they know that not speaking Hebrew is not good for their opportunity. But just to understand, when the UN comes and says, there's no replacement for UNRWA, there's no replacement. But Israel is saying there is, and it's the same system that administers Arab schools and the rest of Israel's.

There is. There is an alternative. I'm talking about Jerusalem now. I don't know what's going to happen in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza. I don't know what's going to happen there. But in Jerusalem, which is what I was working on, there's an alternative already. It's already been taking over. Do you know that every year in September, the Palestinian Authority in Hamas sent out a communique to parents saying...

oy vevoy, you should dare to do the Israeli Arab curriculum. You will be helping the occupation forces. Every year, they have to try and convince and bully parents not to get the kids to switch over to an Israeli curriculum because it was happening. And it's the same for intimidation.

Flo, talk to me about the international status of Jerusalem. We have a weird capital city and most countries don't recognize it, not only as our capital, but even as being Israeli territory for weird historical reasons that we can talk about. Anyway, first Trump presidency, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the relocation of the American embassy. And I'm wondering what you think that the second Trump

will mean for Jerusalem's international status. And you, as the self-proclaimed, well, now former foreign minister for Jerusalem, as the person who held the foreign portfolio in the Jerusalem municipality, what should Israel be doing

to entrench Jerusalem's status and recognition of Jerusalem as its capital and tell people, guys, the weird anachronistic historical reasons that because the United Nations said back in 1947 in the resolution the Arabs rejected anyway that Jerusalem should be a corpus separatum, a separate international entity, that's the reason you're not going to recognize Israeli sovereignty in even West Jerusalem? How do we start to fight back against this?

nonsense? Well, look, the American move was certainly momentous and it started the domino effect. We've had other small embassies move. So Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, now then Papua New Guinea, we just had Paraguay. But what I'm working very hard on is first of all to bring diplomats to Jerusalem. They never come to Jerusalem. They never come to Jerusalem. They don't know Jerusalem. For them it's an alien thing. They shouldn't

They shouldn't talk about we need to educate diplomats. When you say that it's the diplomats who are stationed in Israel who are less familiar with Jerusalem, although functionally they say we don't recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. They go to the Knesset. They go to the president's office. They go to the prime minister's office. Of course they do. For all intents and purposes they're treated as part of Israel. So how do we...

get more embassies to move to Jerusalem, if it's as great as you're saying it is. Well, you know, it's all a function of what's going on in that government. So now we have Argentina. Javier Mille, a huge friend of Israel, who is now saying, I'm moving the embassy. It's a big thing. But you have Lula, who hates us and tried to arrest one of our soldiers in Brazil, who

who hates us but bolserano the guy before him in brazil also wanted to move the capital what's the strategic plan israel like strategy okay there we go foreign minister of jerusalem give it to me what's the strategy the strategy has to be to do kirif as we say in hebrew to bring the diplomats to understand the beauty of jerusalem which i've done for the last eight years so for example i'll give you an example in the middle of the war jerusalem was a city of refuge we had a huge

headquarters for helping all the evacuees. I did on International Women's Day a tour of Jerusalem's dealing with the evacuees for all the female ambassadors in the country. They loved it. They didn't know what they were seeing. They were so impressed. One example,

Other examples that I'm involved with. Trying to get them to open up diplomatic arms, if not the whole arms. I'm a pragmatic person. Like a cultural office. Cultural office. So we've got a cultural office for Slovakia. I just helped open an Uruguayan innovation office. It's a baby severed. It's a foot in the door. It's a foot in the door. I have an idea. I'm pragmatic. I have an idea. Go on. I think that the reason that most...

that the embassies are not moving to Jerusalem is because the staff want to live in Tel Aviv. Yes, as part of it. Yeah, they prefer. And so none of the, since the staff prefer living in Tel Aviv because, you know, nightlife, cafe scene, weekends, things are open, the beach. Yeah.

There's not going to be any pressure from the diplomats on the ground saying let's move to Jerusalem. They're going to resist any move to Jerusalem because they personally want to stay in Tel Aviv. So here's the thing. Israel passes a law. It says you don't have to move your embassies to Jerusalem. They just can't be in Tel Aviv.

So are they going to move to Holon? That's the choice. And faced with the choice, Holon or Jerusalem, they'd go to Jerusalem. No, Elon, they would move to Hatzalia, which is where they all live. No, ban them from Gush Dan. Expel all the... Anywhere on the coast. Okay, no, but this is something I really do want to get your take on as having held the foreign portfolio in Jerusalem. There are ways in which foreign countries...

and international institutions have been systematically subverting Israel's sovereignty in Jerusalem. I wrote an investigation years ago about the

the foreign consulates general that are based in Jerusalem which are for all intents and purposes no I want to get you started but I want to explain to the listeners what I'm talking about you and I are British yeah you know what I've been through with the British consulate well hang on first I want to explain to the listeners who are not familiar with what I'm talking about these are for all intents and purposes I think there are nine of them for all intents and purposes embassies to the Palestinian Authority

Four of them, that includes what was until recently the U.S. Consulate General, are in West Jerusalem. The U.S. was maintaining its diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority from a gorgeous building a stone's throw away from the Prime Minister's house. And more than that, you have the U.N. occupying Jerusalem.

for its military headquarters, one of the most stunning archaeological gems in Jerusalem, the old governor's palace, Amon HaNatziv. By the way, you know what Amon HaNatziv, that hill is called in biblical times? The hill of evil counsel. Oh my God. What a great place to put the United Nations headquarters. The president's office. The president's office should be the old governor's palace, this gorgeous British mandate era art deco building. Instead, it's being used as a UN military base. And I want to know,

Why does Israel allow foreign countries and international organizations to trample over our sovereignty in Jerusalem by taking over one of the most gorgeous buildings as a UN headquarters, by allowing them to run their diplomatic representation to the Palestinian Authority from Jerusalem, from West Jerusalem? Why do we do it? Why don't we bang on the table and say, this is ridiculous?

Symbols matter. Words matter. I'm with you 100%. Rant over. Over to you. I'm with you 100%. And I think part of it is that we have this disease, Jewish people and country. That sounds a bit anti-Semitic. Yes. The disease is we want everybody to love us. And I think we need to stop with that. Stop with this constant need, thirst for validation. Enough.

We need, you know, and this is a very, okay, I'm going to go now deep. It's a little bit of an Ashkenazi's farty thing, okay? I think the people who understand this region understand that it's more important to be feared and respected than to be loved. And I think there's a real difference that people with a more European mindset want the world to love us and people with a more Middle Eastern mindset want the world to fear us or respect us.

And I'm on the respect-fearing side now. I was on the other side because I'm a woman and women always, you know, want to be, we like to be where people pleases. And I think we all suffer from a little bit of this people-pleasing thing. Oh, let's not make them too angry because we should thank them for being here at all. I'm with you. So what happened? You said, don't even get me started about what happened with the British. Oh my God, Elon. I'm getting you started. Oh my God, Elon. So I, when I became deputy mayor...

Back in... Back in 2018, beginning of... Late 2018, I thought to myself...

I'm British. I'm Israeli. I can be the bridge. We always had problems with the British consulate in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem. It's in Jerusalem. I don't like to... It's embassy to the Palestinian Authority for all intents and purposes. Totally. To the point that if you needed a renewal of a passport and you are Jewish, Jewish, you had to schlep to Tel Aviv to get a renewal of passport when two kilometers from your house you have the British consulate.

But they would only deal with Palestinians. It was the most bizarre thing in the world. I think I broke that because I started just going and getting them to do my consular stuff. So I get a call. Deputy Mayor, the Consul General would like to speak to you about certain Jerusalem issues.

He wants a meeting with the mayor. I was like, wait, I will be in that meeting with the mayor and I can be the bridge. So he has a meeting with the mayor and he comes with the most ridiculous things you've ever heard. Like, why do Israeli police have to wear a little flag on their shirt, a little Israeli flag on their shirt in East Jerusalem? What do you think, they're going to change uniforms?

When they go a kilometer down the road, are you nuts? Stupid things like that. He spoke about more practical things that we helped with. Rubbish collection. Garbage for the Americans. Garbage. Garbage. Trash. When my kids say garbage, I go crazy. Rubbish, garbage collection.

which they were right about and the mayor has been amazing. When you walk down the streets of East Jerusalem today, it's a different place than it was seven years ago. Why? Because he privatized our garbage collection because people weren't taking it seriously. Arab workers weren't taking East Jerusalem garbage collection seriously and so he privatized it and now there's an incentive.

He left and he realized that with the mayor, he wasn't going to get anywhere. So then he thought, oh, Fleur's British. Maybe we can get somewhere with her. Six months later, I get a call. Deputy Mayor, they want to meet with you about certain issues in Jerusalem. And I was, I'm the person who wants to be that bridge, right? I said, sure. Comes to City Hall.

And for two hours, basically tells me how horrible we all are. How terrible we all are. And I said, do you want to hear about what we're doing? Because my whole thing, as you just heard, is all about economic development, opportunity. I do it a lot with women in East Jerusalem, small business creation in East Jerusalem, tech in East Jerusalem, trying to create tourist places, high-tech villages. That's been my thing, my shtick. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to know what we were doing

to build bridges between the Arabs and the Jews in Jerusalem. All he wanted to do was write back to the foreign office and say, I gave a right dressing down to the deputy mayor of Jerusalem and I told her exactly what we think. And I realized that was the game.

Six months later, they call me again and they, we ended up talking about Tel Aviv and Haifa and sovereignty. It's crazy. Six months later, they call me again. The team, the East Jerusalem team for economic development, I said, oh, maybe they understand that I'm trying to help. I'm trying to do, to close inequality, how do you say it? Reduce inequality. When they realized I'm their ally in this situation,

They send me the team to City Hall. This time they come to City Hall again with a whole team of people. Again, villainization, demonization. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? They don't want to hear...

My response is all they want to do is go back and write a nice report for the foreign office to say we gave her another dressing down. Because their position is that we shouldn't be in this area at all. There's nothing right that we can do. But I do want to ask you. And they were all Corbynites, by the way. They're all foreign office, career diplomats who are all Arabists. They all have this Lawrence of Arabia, you know, enchantment. And that's what they do. We want to meet with you, Deputy Mayor. I said, sorry, I'm too busy.

I never went back. I never did it again. Flo, do you support shutting down the Foreign Consulates General in Jerusalem?

Should Spain have its diplomatic... Spain that now recognizes an independent Palestinian state have its diplomatic representation to the Palestinians in Jerusalem? Let them move to Ramallah. No. Should we force them to shut down? We should say that they no longer can be there. Why don't they want to move to Ramallah? By the way, the Spanish diplomat said we don't want to move to Ramallah. You're saying they don't want to move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv? But you think we should force the foreign missions of the Palestinians in Jerusalem to shut down? Yes. What about the UN headquarters? Should we retake it?

UN is different because we're a member state. It's different. Okay, but it's not extra, like, extraterritorial sovereign enclave of the United Nations. If they want offices here, then it... They should rent. Yeah, I mean, who gave, for historical reasons, who gave the United Nations permission to use that compound in the first place? I would start with the foreign consulates. Look, I'm a pragmatic person and I'm a diplomatic person. So I say, let's not pick the battles where we don't have to have them.

But I think that the chutzpah, the biggest cheek of all, is the foreign consulates who are working against us, who are demonizing us in our own territory. And we're giving them tax rebates for property taxes. I did a whole investigation back when I was at I24 News about the...

diplomats who are presenting letters of credentials to the Palestinian Authority as ambassadors to the state of Palestine. But of course, they don't want to live in Ramallah. They want to live in Tel Aviv. So they get tax benefits from the Israeli taxpayer while subverting our sovereignty. It's outrageous. It's crazy. And Flo, we could go on and on and on. But we've been talking for so long that my producer is telling me that we have to wrap up. Flo, how can people continue to follow you and your work?

Well, I'm on social media. I'm not as dedicated or popular as many other people, but Fleur Hassan N everywhere. I have my own podcast show called The Quad on JNS.

And I'm a pretty accessible person. So anybody who has any questions or want to contact me, you know, feel free. And they can just walk up and find you taking coffee in Sheikh Jarrah on a Saturday. Not Sheikh Jarrah. But Derek Bedlechem, yes. But Derek Bedlechem. But not on a Saturday. Friday. Friday morning. That's my Sheikh Shukr day. Floor Hassan Nahum. Thank you for coming on State of a Nation. Thank you. And that's it for today's episode of State of a Nation with former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Floor Hassan Nahum.

As always, if you enjoy these episodes, then please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a like and subscribe on social media, Instagram, Twitter, everywhere. We're everywhere. We're trying to get the message out everywhere. And please do share this episode and share the links to subscribe with friends who you think will benefit from our conversations between the lines and beyond the headlines of what's really happening here in Israel. I'm Elon Levy, and thanks for joining us.