Inside Israel’s War Room | Interview: Elliot Kaufman and Yonah Jeremy Bob

This October will mark three years since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, igniting a complicated web of wars and regional conflicts across the Middle East. Jonah Goldberg is joined today by the authors of a new book that takes readers inside the minds of Israel’s decision-makers during these struggles, unveiling the complicated dynamics behind some of Israel’s biggest successes and failures. Join Jonah, Elliot Kaufman, and Yonah Jeremy Bob and they discuss Bibi Netanyahu, Iran, October 7, the beeper operation, the Biden White House, international opinion of Israel, Operation Midnight Hammer, Rafa, Hamas, Hezbollah, the 2015 nuclear deal, Students for Justice in Palestine, and why people get so deranged about Israel. Show Notes: The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things. The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings. Music 0:00 [drum music] [groaning] Music 0:14 Ladies and gentlemen. Music 0:16 Could I please have your attention? Can you dig it? [crowd cheering] Jonah Goldberg 0:27 Ladies there, listeners, this is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant Podcast, brought to you by the Dispatch and Dispatch Media. Very excited about today's episode. We're breaking format a little bit by having two guests on, but it's for completely understandable reasons. Elliot Kaufman is a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, and Yonah, not Jonah, Yonah, Yonah Jeremy Bob is the Jerusalem Post's senior military correspondent and intelligence analyst. And the two of them have just written or just released In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis. Very excited to have you guys on here. I'm a little pissed off about the book because I'm working on my own book, and if it's not about sort of nineteenth-century political theory, I don't have time for it, but I just gotta kinda got [chuckling] sucked in a little bit. [chuckling] Haven't read it cover to cover, but I think it's really great and interesting, and I can tell that there are a lot of people who listen to this who will benefit from reading it. So with that, why don't we get started? And I guess I'll go to you, Yonah, first. What's your book about? Yonah Jeremy Bob 1:32 First of all, there were a lot of books about October seventh itself. This is the first comprehensive book about the entire war all the way up to the ceasefire with Hamas in October 2025, a little bit 2026. But we've got Gaza, we've got Hezbollah in Lebanon, we've got Iran multiple rounds, we've got the Israeli war cabinet, all the key members, the Israeli military, the Mossad, the Biden administration, the Trump administration, all of the infighting, outfighting, three-dimensional fighting. So all of that is there. And also we address these questions that people are, like, pulling their hair out. Wait, how did Israel lose on October seventh to Hamas, which took over dozens of cities in Israel for days, right? Not for, like, a couple of minutes. Some of them for hours, some of them for days. And then it cleaned the clock of Hezbollah in Lebanon with the amazing beeper explosions operation, killing Hassan Nasrallah, who headed the organization of Hezbollah for thirty years. And basically, this organization, Hezbollah, had one hundred and fifty thousand rockets. Hamas had fifteen thousand rockets, right? Fifteen thousand rockets, one hundred and fifty thousand rockets. And they clobber Hezbollah in a week and a half, and it takes them two years versus Hamas, and they don't even really completely wrap it up, even though Hamas is way, way weaker today than it was before. And they pretty much, from the Israeli perspective, clean the clocks of Iran in terms of the nuclear program being set back at least two years, the ballistic missile program being set back two years, the military as a whole being much weaker. That doesn't help Americans with their gas prices, all right? There's a different Israeli view and American view, but in short, that is the book. It is the first book to talk about all of these wars and to explain the mystery of how all of these things could happen to the same country, the same Israeli military, all at the same time. Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio. Join Now More We Think You’d Like