2026.09.10 – Anthony Reich – Israel Report

0:00This Israel report is brought to you by the Blue Agency. Your Israel property isn't good hands. Owning properties in Israel can be a great investment but challenging to manage if you're based abroad. The Blue Agency will manage every aspect of your property finding and vetting tenants, maintaining your property and getting it rental ready, negotiating contracts and collecting rentals, reporting back to you regularly. The Blue Agency has built a reputation for trust and confidentiality over 20 years. The Blue Agency, your Israel property is in good hands. Contact us at www.thabluetianse.com The Israel report for the latest news and insights with Anthony Reich. Anthony Reich, Booker Top, good morning. Hope you are well. Booker Top, yes, very exciting just before Rosh Hashanah. But I do want to share with listeners the story about John Melkovich,

1:00the famous actor who was scheduled to perform early next year until a viv. And there was a quotation issued by the PR company in Israel who spoke about in John's name, saying that he was thrilled to return to Israel. He really looked forward to meeting the warm Israeli audience again. And John Melkovich has come out saying he didn't say any of these things. This was not authorized by him. This is not something that he said or that he would say. And as a result of that, he's cancelled his performance completely in Tel Aviv next year. Now, John Melkovich has been in Israel before. I think the last time was about 13 years ago, he was here in 2008. He came back in 2013. So he has been in Israel before. But clearly, he also made a statement interestingly,

2:02saying that he does perform in places where he doesn't necessarily agree with policies that are being pursued by the local government. But he feels okay with that because his performance is not something which should be interpreted to mean that he agrees with the country's policies or the actions or its elected leaders. So he's made that statement loud and clear. And we all hear the words that are not being stated, which means that he was sort of okay to come to Israel even though he didn't agree with anything that's happening here in the interests of art and in the interests of culture. But he's been given an opportunity now to cancel his performance and he's grabbed it with both hands and saying that that quotation by the PR company wasn't him and as a result of that, he's decided to withdraw completely from the performance. It's only in March of next year, but nonetheless, this is the decision that he's made.

3:06And it sort of links quite closely for me with the decision by the British government that we spoke about yesterday to boycott goods and services that come from certain parts of Israel. And we just feel that there is this increasing criticism and certain unspoken words which nonetheless come out as to the criticism like the actions by John Mulcovitz who clearly wasn't comfortable in the first place coming here. May the statement that he goes to places where he doesn't agree with what's happening, given half a chance, has grabbed it and was drawn from the performance. These statements are loud and clear. And I just worry that there are just so many people who don't get it. They don't understand the actions that we are taking. Not all of them are to be respected. Not everything that we have done is squeaky clean.

4:09But the overall principle of the war that we've been battling over the last three years, I would have thought would have been relatively clear. But maybe not. But maybe not. And the anti-Semitism, the anti-Israel sentiment, the irony is that there are so many people in countries around the world who are anti-Semitic speaking out against Jews, would probably wish to see Jews leaving that country. And then are also anti-Zionist, which means if the Jews would be leaving those countries, where would you wish them to go to if you're anti-Zionist? You don't give the Jews a chance to have a country, not a rational hatred. It's not a rational hatred, this one. It is. Exactly. So, it's just so many things to think about as we move into the weekend of Russia now. I certainly have a lot of this going on in my mind. It's difficult for me to understand how people can reach conclusions without knowing so much of the important information

5:15without really giving it the proper thought and consideration before jumping to their conclusions. So many people are influenced by the pressure that they feel from society to hold a certain view. All of this has just been so troubling to me over the last few years. And now that we kind of see things a little bit more clearly with the benefit of some hindsight, it seems to get worse rather than better. And that's the super irony. So, I'm certainly going into Russia, Shana, thinking about these things, wondering what's motivating people, what's driving people, where this hatred comes from, and how we respond to that. Because I think we do need to respond. I mean, we are forced to respond because we are part of this. The hatred is being directed at us. How do we respond as Jews in the world? How do we respond as Israelis, as Israel, as a country? We're going into an election, pretty soon. We will have a new government, whether it's a new old government or a new new government,

6:17but there will be new faces in the government and new representatives. What do we do, you know, as we go into the new year, and we think about what happens next? I think this is a really critical moment for us to stop and to say, what do we do in the new year to somehow change this, or to cope with it, or to deal with it, or to accept it and move on, you know, where do we go from here? It's a real dilemma, it's a real decision. And certainly one of the things that I'll be thinking about every next few days. Absolutely. See, the President Trump has been warned that the war with Iran could last beyond his presidency. So what does that mean? Well, President Trump interestingly has come out saying that he feels that Iran is trying to influence the midterm election, which will take place in the U.S. in November. And we know that the President has himself been trying somehow to orchestrate events in order to assist his Republican party to come out of that midterm election with good results.

7:19How does that affect him? Of course, it doesn't affect his position in the White House, but it does potentially affect his ability to drive through any laws, any changes that he wishes to drive through the Congress or the House of Representatives. Because if the Republicans don't have the majority, and there is a very, very slim majority in both of the houses, if the Republicans don't come out of the midterms with the majority that he would like, obviously the extent to which he can operate is much more limited. So I don't know whether the Iranians really, you know, feel that strongly about trying to influence him and his party. I think they would like to see the Republicans fail at the midterm elections because they would somewhat feel, you know, they feel somewhat vindicated that they've come out of this whole story a little bit better than Trump himself within his own country. I don't know that it makes that much of a difference really to the Iranians,

8:22whether the Republicans do well in the midterms or not. But clearly there is still another two years to run on this Trump presidency, and two years is quite a long time for this war to continue to roll. Does President Trump care if it rolls into the next presidency? I'm not sure. Really, I don't know whether that's a big factor for him. We care, though. We do care because for us, all the time that this war continues, we are in the state of alert, of emergency, of anything could happen at any time. It's interesting that we've been having discussions here amongst ourselves about do we still need our bomb shelters in our emergency rooms to be ready with all the emergency provisions? Or can we go back to storing things there like we used to do? Things that we don't need immediately, and it's a good storage facility. Can we go back to doing that? And I think the answer right now is states as quote, we're not going back to where we were before we're still on the alert.

9:23We're still considering the possibility that anything could happen. If one of those missiles that were directed towards Jordan inadvertently crossed over Israel's border and somehow caused damage or injury within Israel, the distance is very, very small. That could potentially blow things up considerably. So while those missiles are flying, anything could happen. And I think that from an Israeli perspective, that's a very significant statement, a very significant matter for Trump's advisors to raise with him to say, this could go on for some time. I think these Israelis really are taking note of that and saying, wow, if that's the case, and if that war is still going to, if the emergency situation is going to continue, that could potentially drag us into it at any moment. Interestingly as well, that President Trump made reference to Pickaxe Mountain again

10:23and that the Iranians are inadvertent commas trying to get cute with him by undertaking certain activity at Pickaxe Mountain, which we know is what the Iranians are using to really conceal in nuclear program and Trump thinking that we might have to hit Pickaxe Mountain. So that's definitely something that's on his lips right now and any thoughts. This war clearly is still far from over and it's still going to be very interesting to see where it all goes at the end of the day. But for now at least, we seem to be still in the middle of the middle somewhere. I don't know if we're in the end. It feels like we're in the middle of the middle somewhere. The Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that he's going to suharrit over reports at the President of the United Arab Emirates warned him of the imminent Hamas attack three days before it happened. How serious is this allegation? I think it's a pretty serious allegation and there's so many things that come together here.

11:24First of all, this allegation has been denied roundly by all of the people who might have been involved and it's considered so important and so significant that everybody seems to have come out. Anthony Blinken, for example, the former US Secretary of State has come out saying that he didn't warn Netanyahu before this attack on October 7th took place. The United Arab Emirates Ministry, the foreign ministry, also responded to this report that they don't comment about reports of speculation. So even though they didn't deny or acknowledge that this conversation between the President of the United Arab Emirates, Muhammad bin Zayed and Netanyahu took place where bin Zayed warned Netanyahu. The UAE has come out saying we're not going to respond to this. We're not going to draw anybody into this.

12:25But clearly, the Prime Minister feels very sensitive about this. And I suppose it links quite closely with the fact that the government has decided not to implement a national commission of inquiry into all that happened around October 7th. And so when one reads a report in Haraj, which says he was warned by the leader of the United Arab Emirates that he knew for sure that Hamas was playing this attack. And when we see the government being not willing to put together a national commission of inquiry to allow all of the relevant information to be aired in public and to be recorded, then of course there is a certain level of suspicion. And so the Prime Minister is forced to respond to that somehow. And his response has been clear. He's going to sue Haraj for liable for stating things that are clearly not correct. I just wonder whether he is going to do that because that might well then invoke much information that would potentially have gone to a national commission of inquiry in the news.

13:31I was thinking exactly that. It's almost a way for it to become that very thing that he doesn't seem to want, which is problematic in the first place. He should have allowed it. I mean, I don't know how smart it would be for him to go to a court of law and sue Haraj. I don't know whether this information would then be kept secret somehow, even if a court case would take place. And certainly he's threats are there. So he's trying to demonstrate at least in this period leading up to the election. None of that is accurate or true. But when there is a certain question out there, which a lot of people are asking themselves in spite of these denials, there is definitely a question to be answered. I suspect we're going to have a national commission of inquiry in the end. And especially if the government changes in the next election, I suspect that one of the first things that the new government would wish to do is to implement a national commission of inquiry. I think the general public are calling for it.

14:32I think it's in the national interest. We do want to know exactly what happened. Not that we necessarily want to point fingers at those people who are responsible and blame them, or that clearly that will happen. But I think it's more about learning lessons and saying, what did we do wrong? And what are we going to do in the future to make sure that this doesn't happen again because we do need to learn some lessons from everything that happened? So I guess that's what we're going to need. Yeah. Wow, wow, wow. And just to wish everybody a sonatova, I hope that the weekend, the Hanksha Bat will be a good moment for us just to take a break and to re-energize ourselves together, eat all the great food that you like to eat. And think about what we need to do in the new year. Thanks to everybody for being really loyal and supportive and for being there and listening out and being involved. And I look forward to being back on Monday in the new year. Sonatova, to everybody. Anthony Raach, sonatova, to you. Gamar Khatima, to you, to the family.

15:32And thank you for all that you do every single day for us all here in South Africa because I listen around the world as sonatova. That Israel report was brought to you by the Blue Agency. Your Israel property isn't good hands.