Segal, Israel’s most popular and influential political commentator, offers an insider’s account of Israeli politics in A Call at 4 AM. Drawing on exceptional access and journalistic precision, he reconstructs how key political and security decisions are made: not through abstract strategy, but through hurried conversations, personal rivalries, emotional reactions, and improvised compromises, often under intense pressure.
Segal neither moralizes nor prescribes. Instead, his book tells the story of—and provides the background to—some of the most historically and symbolically charged decisions made by Israeli prime ministers. In the process, he systematically dismantles long-standing myths and entrenched public perceptions. Segal reveals untold, forgotten, or deliberately obscured facts surrounding these decisions, exposing the gap between official narratives and the real motivations behind outcomes later presented to the public as historic inevitabilities: political survival, coalition arithmetic, personal distrust, or sheer necessity.
The title operates on both a literal and symbolic level. Literally, it refers to urgent early morning phone calls that signal political collapse, security crises, or decisive turning points. Symbolically, the title captures the essence of governance in Israel—a country that operates in a permanent state of alert and where decisions are made under extreme time pressure, uncertainty, and emotional strain. It also reflects a system in which leaders rarely enjoy calm or long-term planning, instead reacting to events as they unfold—sometimes impulsively, sometimes courageously, and often imperfectly.
The book implicitly seeks to identify to identify the “rules” of the Israeli political system. Yet Segal’s narrative ultimately arrives at a more unsettling conclusion: no such rules exist. Anything is possible. Israeli politics lacks firm structures, sacred historical traditions, or binding constitutional constraints. As a young state without a formal constitution, governance rests largely on ad hoc agreements, fragile coalitions, and personal understandings that can unravel overnight.
It bears noting that Segal’s authority results from an unusual trajectory. He is Israel’s first political commentator to achieve such prominence without emerging from the country’s traditional media establishment. As a right-wing journalist from a religious Zionist settlement background and the son of an activist imprisoned for radical right-wing activity, he built his influence even as he openly challenged the establishment.
Alex Selsky
