In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman is joined by political analyst/commentator Daniel Levy, President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP), for a far-ranging conversation about Europe’s equities, concerns, and options with respect to current events in the Middle East (the US/Israel war on Iran, Israel’s wars on Lebanon and Gaza, and Israel’s escalation in the West Bank) including with respect to US-Europe relations. Follow Daniel’s work on Substack.

Articles by Daniel Levy that relate to this conversation:

• The Guardian 4/13/26: What Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right really mean when they invoke ‘Greater Israel’
• Al Jazeera 3/30/26: Did Israel miscalculate in launching the war on Iran?
• Zeteo 3/6/26: Why Netanyahu Duped Trump Into the Illegal War With Iran
• Zeteo 10/6/25: How Netanyahu Saved Himself by Destroying Gaza
• Zeteo 6/17/25: America First or Israel First? Will Trump Join Netanyahu’s War on Iran?

Daniel Levy is a political commentator and President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP), which emphasizes the Palestine-Israel issue alongside regional conflicts, trends and geopolitics. From 2012 to 2016, Levy was Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that he was a senior Fellow and Director of the New America Foundation’s Middle East Taskforce in Washington D.C. and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation in New York. Levy was a Senior Advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and to Justice Minister Yossi Beilin during the Government of Ehud Barak (1999-2001). He was a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Israel/Palestine peace talks at Taba under Barak and at Oslo B under Yitzhak Rabin (1994-95).  Levy is a founder and Advisory Board member of the newly formed Diaspora Alliance (combatting antisemitism and its conflation), a Council Member of the ECFR, and serves on the board of the European Middle East Project. He is a former Trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York and of the New Israel Fund, a co-founder of J Street, and a founding Editor of the Middle East Channel at foreignpolicy.com. He frequently writes for, is interviewed by and quoted in multiple media outlets and has been published in the New York Times, FT, and Foreign Affairs, amongst others.  Levy was born and educated in the UK where he has returned to residing and where he graduated with an MA and BA from King’s College, Cambridge with awards. His most recent testimony to the UN Security Council from February 2025 can be viewed here.

Lara Friedman is FMEP’s president. With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, She is a leading authority on the Middle East, with particular expertise on U.S. foreign policy in the region, on Israel/Palestine, and on the way Middle East and Israel/Palestine-related issues play out in Congress and in U.S. domestic politics, policies, and legislation. Lara is also a preeminent subject-matter expert in the area of anti-Palestinian legislation and “lawfare,” including the weaponization and instrumentalization of the definition of and concerns about antisemitism. Lara’s research on lawfare and antisemitism-related topics – which she makes available to the public – is widely cited and widely recognized as the authoritative data in the field. Prior to joining FMEP, Lara was the Director of Policy and Government Relations at Americans for Peace Now, and before that she was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, serving in Jerusalem, Washington, Tunis and Beirut.