Welcome to "A Mandatory Listen," a new weekly podcast in which The Times of Israel deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan asks the big questions facing Israel and the Jewish people.

For this third episode in the new series, we speak with The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens -- also the editor of the SAPIR Journal -- who was in the country for a lightning reporting trip ahead of the Israeli election on October 27.

Stephens, who both supports and criticizes Israel, is increasingly the minority voice at the Gray Lady, where the Jewish state has decidedly lost the battle for public opinion.

But he thinks Israel shouldn't really care what others think about it.

"Let me put it this way: Would you rather have won the battle for public opinion and lost the war -- or vice versa? If that's the choice, I would say that Israel was better off losing the battle for public opinion," Stephens says.

Find out why he believes Israel couldn't have won both wars.

We discuss why the United States, until now, has been judged on its wartime operations through a different lens.

But has the Iran war changed all that?

A Mandatory Listen podcast episodes are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.

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