The Houthis now control Bab al-Mandeb, which means they control whether Saudi oil leaves the Red Sea. Yossi Alpher has stood on that coastline. In 1981 he traveled through Somalia, visited Hargeisa and the port of Berbera, and interviewed President Siad Barre in the courtyard of the presidential villa in Mogadishu, where Siad Barre, freshly abandoned by the Soviet Union, asked him what a country with no friends should do next.

In this episode, we talk about why the strait matters more than the headlines suggest, what it costs Egypt, why Israel has taken an interest in Somaliland, and the music Yossi bought on cassette in Mogadishu.

Then the other story of the week: the call from Abu Dhabi that warned Netanyahu ten days before October 7, the denial, and why a commission of inquiry depends on the October 27 Israeli election.

The Somali music clip is "Sharero 75" by Sharero Band, composed by Ahmed Naji Sa’ad (Axmed Naaji Sacad), from Light & Sound of Mogadishu (Afro7 Records). Used with permission.

To book the Sweet Sound podcast studio in Tel Aviv, email Ittai Shaked ittaisha@gmail.com.

A listener in New York asked how Yossi became a Zionist, and what he makes of the word now. The answer starts in Washington D.C. in the mid-1950s, with a Jewish education in which the Holocaust took up two sentences and Israel meant nothing at all. It was the Eichmann trial in 1961 that changed everything. Daniella and Yossi Alpher trace one man's Zionism from a kibbutz to the Mossad, and ask what is left of it after 1967, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and October 7.

August is quiet, and Yossi doesn't trust it. He and Daniella map the fronts: Syria's new president signaling accommodation over the Golan Heights, settler violence turning the West Bank into the region's real flashpoint, encouraged by a government that needs those votes before elections, and why Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis each have reason to break the calm while Trump keeps Netanyahu on a leash until the American midterms. Underneath it all, the strange history binding Israel to the Houthis' ancestors, and a new shelter in the garden that Yossi expects will not stay a white elephant.