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How Israel Fights: Inside the Mossad with Zohar Palti | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution

March 23, 2026·51 min·4 clips

One Iranian ballistic missile could cause up to 1.2 billion shekels in damage if it hits a populated area like Tel Aviv.

How Israel fights, and why. Peter Robinson starts with Zohar Palti's long route through Israeli national security, from the Intelligence Corps to the Mossad and the Ministry of Defense. Then the interview moves into the conflict. Palti left Israel only a day or two before it began, so Robinson asks what life at home feels like. Palti keeps the answer close to family and friends under threat, and the strategy talk never fully leaves that ground. Robinson keeps pressing. Palti says the campaign against Iran's ballistic missiles and launchers cannot be judged as zero or one hundred. The numbers are still moving. He gives something like seventy or seventy-five percent, which he treats as good news but not enough. Israel needs more time. The military and security infrastructure, he says, has been hit in ways that could make replenishment and rebuilding difficult. The launchers are still the hard part. Robinson turns to the press and notes how fast the coverage has turned negative. In his framing, the question becomes arithmetic. If every incoming ballistic missile takes two or three defensive interceptors, endurance and resupply start to matter. Palti does not wave that away, but he brings the focus back to offense. He separates targets already struck from the harder search for missiles and launchers that still put Israeli families at risk. The ending comes home again. Asked why women would still want children in those conditions, Palti answers with mess, Shabbat dinners, Tel Aviv beaches, and the loud disorder of family life.

As heard by us

A grave, inside-the-room account of Israel's war and the strain of daily life under threat.

Peter Robinson speaks with Zohar Palti, a veteran Israeli national security official whose career runs through the Intelligence Corps of the Israeli Defense Forces, the Mossad, and the Ministry of Defense.

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You want the Israeli security view without the talk-radio heat.

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