September 17, 2020
Podcast: Haviv Rettig Gur Talks Israel’s Deep State
By Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic, Haviv Rettig GurThe Israeli journalist joins us to talk about the group of people in his country who are responsible, and the group of people who because of them don’t have to be responsible.
This Week’s Guest: Haviv Rettig Gur
In Mosaic’s September 2020 essay, the lauded Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur takes us inside the deepest workings of Israel’s famously fractious political culture. He makes a surprising and thought-provoking case, one that might seem counterintuitive to many Americans: he argues that while the Israeli bureaucracy is unelected, arrogant, and largely unaccountable, it is also an indispensable source of fiscal prudence and market discipline in a political system rife with profoundly distorted incentives.
In this podcast, Gur speaks with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver about his essay. Together the two explore how Israel’s socialist roots still influence contemporary economic debates, the legacy of Israel’s 1980s economic turmoil, and how the budgetary bureaucracy counter-weighs dysfunction elsewhere in Israel’s political system.