Gaza City Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Donniel: You know, at different points in these last 697 days, there were moments. This is the moment of Gaza City.

Yossi: In other words, what he’s saying, really, is that even if we win, we’re going to lose.

Donniel: Gaza City is almost this purposeless act with horrific consequences.

Donniel: Hi friends, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute, and this is our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake—Israel at War, a collaboration between the Shalom Hartman Institute and Ark Media. And today is day 697. And when many of you will hear this, it will already be day 700, almost an unimaginable number, when we think about the hostages, we think about the length of the war, we think about Gazans. None of us when we started this imagined that we would be at this moment.

But before we delve into our topic for today and talk about our world, my world changed a lot. This is the first podcast that my mother won’t be able to hear and listen to. She died three weeks ago and she loved this podcast. You know, for many people, as their parents get older, they become more frail, not just physically, but also intellectually. And you begin to infantilize your parents.

I didn’t have that relationship with my mother. My mother was intellectually vibrant until the last month, two months of her life. And talking to her about this podcast, being with her in the midst of this podcast, it would just drop and she would listen to it. And part of my experience of this podcast, Yossi, is not just talking with you these last years, but it’s also talking to my mother and with my mother and sharing and talking about the Jewish people and Israel in the future. And so I miss her and it colors a lot of how I’m feeling today. So, hi, Yossi.

Yossi: Well, you know, Donniel, your mother was really one of the most unique people that I knew. She was sharp, sometimes acerbic, very funny, and a loving person who was in love with life and a little bit larger than life, you know, she had such a strong presence. And she loved you very much. That I know, that I know from what she said to me. And just really sending you a hug, Donniel.

Donniel: Thank you. I was very fortunate, you know, in life this is the way it should be, but I experienced her love and returned that love and it was a big part of our relationship. It made our relationship very simple, really very simple. Anyway, I miss her, I loved her, I love her. And so now we’re going to continue.

Yossi: Well said. It’s much…

Donniel: It’s just me and you now, Yossi. And a few other listeners out there.

Yossi: Well, Donniel, hamakom yenachem, and you and your family should be comforted.

Donniel: Thank you. Thank you. Shall we start? We’ll begin our journey. We’re calling this episode Gaza City. And this last month when we didn’t tape, I was in shiva and we were watching. The whole month has been colored by the announcement of, towards the beginning of August, that we, our intent was to now capture Gaza City, not to proceed with a partial deal. And we’re going to move forward and capture Gaza City.

And the government has debated it. The chief of staff and the people in the army have tried to sway the government away from it. There’s numerous articles that have been written over and again about questioning its efficacy and the purpose of it. It’s going to impact Israeli society now as we move, you know, people speaking about the first week of September is when the reservists are going to be coming.

Gazans, a million people have to be moved out of Gaza, humanitarian aid, war, soldiers’ deaths. We also know that Gaza City is the place where hostages are being kept. And Hamas will probably move those who aren’t there to Gaza City. So it’s now, you know, at different points in these last 697 days, there were moments. This is the moment of Gaza City. What does it mean and feel to you, Yossi?

Yossi: Well, we’ve never been in a situation that I can think of where the commander of the IDF warns the Israeli cabinet that, in effect, that this proposed next stage of the war is going to be a disaster. And he tells the cabinet, which did not want to hear his warning, Netanyahu was not at all interested in having the discussion that the commander of the army, Zamir, requested. And finally, in exasperation, Zamir tells the cabinet, “If you’re looking for a yes-man, find someone else.” And then, of course, proceeds to leak that confrontation to the Israeli public.

So we know that the top echelon of the IDF opposes this next step, along with the Mossad and perhaps other branches of the security establishment. And the chief of staff has offered at least two reasons, two reasons that were leaked to the public for why he opposes the next move. And he said, first of all, it will endanger the lives of the hostages.

Now, for the government, that’s not necessarily a factor, because Netanyahu made clear that for him the priority is not saving the hostages, it’s defeating Hamas. And Zamir has made clear that for him and for the army, the top priority is saving the hostages. So we already have a major clash in values in how the government perceives the goal of the war and how the army perceives it. And then he also said that if we invade Gaza City, if we defeat Hamas, this will mean the long-term occupation of Gaza by the IDF. In other words, what he’s saying, really is that even if we win, we’re going to lose.

And I would add that what an invasion of Gaza City is likely to do, especially given the fact that the Israeli public now knows what Zamir believes will be the consequence of the invasion, this is going to tear this country apart. It’s going to tear the army apart. And needless to say, it’s going to further deepen the hole that Israel is in internationally and really confirm our position as a pariah state. And so what Zamir is warning us is that whatever victory, whatever technical military victory we can achieve in Gaza City will be more than counterbalanced by the disasters that will resolve.

Donniel: You know, I was reading this article where Zamir, in the cabinet, actually presented four reasons why not to invade Gaza City. And he made a chart and he put in front of the army two options. One option was to invade Gaza City and one was to stay outside of Gaza and to attack. These pinpoint attacks, attack Hamas, move the civilians, but go in and out and in and out, something that in the past he objected to. He adopted this notion, or there is this theory that you’re supposed to capture and hold. He said, in Gaza City, I don’t think we should capture and hold.

And he made a chart, imagine the chart where each one of these is put in front of you. Attack and retreat, or capture Gaza City. And he put four categories. The first category was military, which you didn’t mention. The second was hostages. The third was humanitarian aid, humanitarian crisis. And the fourth was the international opinion.

And in each one of these, humanitarian crisis, moving them, is going to be humongous, and how we’re going to have to deal with it. And that’s where the issue of military occupation and having to take responsibility, total responsibility for these additional million people with all of its consequences, internationally you mentioned, hostages you mentioned, but he also said militarily. He said, we could capture Gaza City and this is something that we’ve known. So we’ll capture it. But then after Gaza City, we’re going to have to move south to the refugee camp south of Gaza City because Hamas, the nature of Hamas’s guerrilla warfare is not going to enable us the total victory that they hope that this Gaza City will achieve. So even militarily, he said, this is not the effective way to go.

And this is part, for me, Yossi, this is what it’s eating at my soul. And we’ve mentioned this since the beginning of the war, almost two years. The war is a just war, but there has to be a military validation or purpose to continue. This is no longer a war of self-defense. And when you speak about tearing Israeli society apart, Gaza City is almost this purposeless act with horrific consequences.

Yossi: See, I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel that it’s purposeless. And in that sense, I think that it’s easier for you to reach an unequivocal judgment than it is for me. I’ve come to the place you’re at, but to a lot of struggle. Because for me, I believe that ensuring that Hamas cannot govern is actually a moral imperative of this war. And it’s a moral imperative, and I’ve said this in the past in our conversation, that I believe that we have two moral responsibilities in this war.

The first, obviously, is to ensure the minimal number of innocents who are killed, and one could debate how well we’ve done in that area. But the second, no less, moral imperative of this war for me is to ensure that Hamas does not have immunity. In other words, that terrorists can hide behind civilian casualties, rouse the world conscience, and use the world conscience as its ace. And that’s what’s worried me all along about world pressure on Israel and about stopping the war.

What I’ve come to agree with you about is that the consequences of invading Gaza City, and the four categories that you mentioned, I think, are very useful framings for this. I would add a fifth category, which is the unity or the disunity of the Israeli public. And I think when you look at all of those categories, the conclusion for me is overwhelmingly, this is going to be a disaster. So I agree with the second part of your statement. I agree that this is going to be a disaster.

Donniel: And it’s interesting how we all see things, or what we notice. So much depends on the positions that we are taking as we’re listening. In your accounting of the Chief of Staff’s discussion, debate, and argument with the cabinet, and there was this remarkable moment where he even asked them, he said, “Vote!” Because he knew the majority were against it, and Netanyahu refused to even let them. He said, “Bring it up for a vote!” They said, “We don’t want to bring it up for a vote, I’m deciding.”

But he added the military consequence of this, which you didn’t speak about. And for me, that is one of the most critical ones. For me, it’s always been one of the most critical ones. Because the minute there isn’t a military benefit, this ceases to be a just war or a war of self-defense.

And I was speaking to a senior figure in the army who asked to remain anonymous. And he was saying to me, he was looking at the whole military strategy. And he said, “When in the history of Israel’s warfare have we ever set as a military goal the complete disarming of our enemy in order to achieve security and safety for our citizens?”

In the Yom Kippur War, when Syria and Egypt surprised us, did we say, we’re not going to stop the war until there is no more Syrian army or there is no Egyptian army, because if they still have an army, and we don’t limit the size of their army, they’re going to be able to attack us again? No, what you do is you fight up to a certain point in which, as our colleague Tal says, the purpose of military action is to inhibit the ability of the enemy to dictate your reality, and then you go to politics.

So this notion of not allowing or enabling Hamas to govern, who said that the way to do that is by destroying or taking away every weapon? There are other things at your disposal. We don’t fight that way, Yossi. But the war will never end.

Yossi: But Donniel, there’s an argument to be made that there is a strategic difference between a ceasefire with a state actor, Egypt, even Syria, and a terrorist entity. What we learned on October 7, at least I think what we felt on October 8 that might have changed for many Israelis, but immediately after the massacre, the consensus here was we can’t live with a terrorist entity on our border anymore.

Donniel: No, I think that’s insane. Not that you’re insane. I don’t want to be disrespectful. But the notion that we’re going to determine who’s on our border, all of us know that if there were 60 tanks on the border and five Apache helicopters in the air, and that we listened to the warnings of the women who were watching the radar, October 7th wouldn’t have happened.

Yossi: Fair enough. Fair enough.

Donniel: It’s actually much—Egypt and Syria. Almost cut Israel in half in the Yom Kippur War in ’73, and we didn’t listen to those warnings. So what did we do? We learned from it and tried to be more careful and buttressed our defenses and upped our intelligence. Same thing here. A terrorist organization. It’s one thing we got rid of their missiles. You know what? Hold on to the Philadelphi corridor. Make sure that they can’t arm themselves to the same degree.

But if you want to demilitarize, there’s other options. I’m not saying that the political options are perfect or simple, but I’m saying this notion—and you’re right, you just gave the Netanyahu doctrine, which he has been selling, and Israelis felt it on October 8th, but he’s been selling it now for 697 days. We can’t live with Hamas. Really? We can’t? Hamas is in Judea and Samaria.

Yossi: In other words, he’s been selling this past its expiration date, is what you’re saying.

Donniel: In my mind, it expired in May of 2024, maybe October 2024. It’s expired. This notion that we have to wipe every single one out in order for us to be able to go to sleep? No, we will be able to go to sleep if we are much more powerful than Hamas. And we are to defend them? It’s not even that complicated anymore.

Yossi: Donniel, you mentioned that your understanding of this war changed in May 2024. What was it exactly that led to your new thinking?

Donniel: By May-ish, there were already no more missile threats. And Hamas, as a highly functioning military terrorist organization, had really been defeated. It doesn’t mean we killed every Hamas operative or terrorist, whatever, you know, we call them terrorists, the world calls them operatives. I always find that strange.

And out of the 60,000 people or so who are reported killed, probably 20,000 Hamas terrorists were killed. So we don’t know the exact number, but they’d been replenished. But they weren’t constituting a danger. We were going in and out of Gaza at will. And as a terrorist organization fighting a, if they dissipated into their tunnels, we achieved our goals. And more or less since May, okay, we killed Sinwar in October. Maybe, was that good or not good?

Yossi: Always positive.

Donniel: That’s a positive, but, you know, we could have done that otherwise. Maybe by now it’s true that we did go into Khan Yunis, we did go into Rafah. But how much did we achieve there? We could have controlled from the beginning the Egyptian border. Soldiers are talking about the fact that we’re just sort of treading water. And there’s articles that, let’s be honest about what it is, we’re continuing a war for some mythic attempt to find some picture of a total victory that will validate Netanyahu and excuse him and exonerate him for the failures of October 7th. So it brings us to what you really said, and that is the profound divisiveness that this is going to bring to Israeli society, the deaths, the Gazans, the humanitarian aid—all the issues that the chief of staff raised. And it’s a very difficult moment, Yossi.

Yossi: When we think about difficult moments in Israel’s history, there were two military catastrophes before October 7th. The first was, of course, Yom Kippur, 1973, the surprise attack. And the second disaster was Lebanon, 1982. That was the first time that the country was divided during war. The army was tearing itself apart. And as a consequence, we lost that war. It was the first war that Israel lost. And my deep fear is that Netanyahu, who has already brought us a much worse version of Yom Kippur, 1973, on October 7th, is about to bring us a much worse version of Lebanon, 1982.

And when you have so much of the society mobilized for the hostages, when you have 70% of the country that wants to prioritize bringing the hostages home, as opposed to defeating Hamas, and when you have as a major incentive of reservists effectively volunteering for service, because today we know you could get out of reserve duty, it’s not a problem. But if you show up, you’re motivated. And we know that a major motivation for many of the reservists, maybe most of them at this point, is to try to save the hostages. And then the IDF commander in chief says that this operation is going to endanger the hostages. What does that do to the motivation of the army?

And so my trauma, and I know we share this today, we’ve talked about this in the past, Lebanon, 1982, for each of us, was a trauma. That was your first war, and you were nearly killed in that war. And you felt this deep sense of betrayal that you couldn’t trust the government, you couldn’t necessarily trust the commanders of the IDF. They weren’t honest about their goals.

For me, as someone who moved to Israel in the summer of 1982, and I became an Israeli and entered into a dysfunctional society, that was my trauma. And ever since, my greatest fear is that we’re going to lose the most basic commonality that allows us to function as a people. And that is really the reason why Israel has been a success story.

And that’s why I was so outraged at what Netanyahu was doing with the judicial policy, where he was tearing the country apart, and then of course culminating in October 7. And now Gaza City in a way is my ultimate nightmare.

You know, Netanyahu is an extraordinary figure in so many ways, a biblical figure. There’s no leader that I can think of that has a more proven ability to sabotage his own extraordinary achievements than Netanyahu. Now think about it. A few months ago, the country was celebrating its victory over Hezbollah, its extraordinary victory over Iran. The whole world was astonished. And Netanyahu as commander in chief deserved credit for that. And we have seen how systematically he has dismantled every one of those achievements. And now Gaza City for me is going to be, and this is my fear, is going to be the crowning failure of his 18 years in power.

Donniel: You know, I said this briefly a few times over the last year or so. And I know it’s going to aggravate some people, but I believe that it could have been coherent for the government to declare that we cannot get these 20 hostages back and ensure Israel’s safety in the future if they would have made a statement like that. In theory, that statement is coherent. It’s a coherent statement. It’s a statement which says we got most hostages back; we can’t get them all back. We are in an existential war with Hamas that we have to continue to pursue. And I can’t. And get in front of them. Say what Smotrich said to the people. Prime Minister, get up and say, I have to make a choice.

But the problem with Gaza City is that this is not an existential dimension of the war. So you’re killing the hostages, not in order to achieve an existential victory, you already have your deterrence. What are you killing them for? And so there is, as you said, you’re going to war where the vast majority of the country, again, 60, 70 percent believe that we’re going to war, not in order to free the hostages, but in order to achieve political gain.

And in this context, when you’re endangering the lives of the hostages, what are we doing here? And then when we add to it, again, I don’t want to, it’s very important because we now know better. We didn’t always know better or we didn’t talk about it as openly. We also know not are you only endangering the lives of hostages, but you are also endangering, very significantly, thousands and thousands of innocent Gazans who you can’t protect.

So it’s one thing when you have a category of collateral killing or you have a legitimate target and then people die as a consequence of that. That happens in war and we say how terrible it is, but we know it’s a consequence of war. But when you’re fighting a war which is not going to achieve any dramatic military change, at best it’s just going to push maybe Hamas to, I don’t even know what, but it’ll give maybe Netanyahu a sort of a victory picture. And you think about the humanitarian crisis and civilian deaths that we know are going to ensue—it’s a very difficult moment for Israel. It’s a difficult moment for Gazans and it’s a very morally challenging moment.

You know, I’m in a mourning mood. So it’s a very mournful podcast and it fits my soul right now. But not all of our listeners are mourning to the same degree. Is there any nachama? Is there any solace as we’re about to embark? Other than maybe we won’t? Maybe Donald Trump, because one day he tells Netanyahu, “I want you to wipe them out quickly as if that’s achievable.” And now he’s saying it has to end. Other than Donald Trump telling us, the President of the United States, telling us not to fight and saving us from this, is there any nachama, anything that you could hold on to?

Yossi: You know, I look at the conduct of the IDF Commander in Chief, Zamir, who was brought in to replace the previous commander, Herzi Halevi, whom the government felt it couldn’t sufficiently control. And the assumption was, and I shared that assumption, that Zamir was going to be a yes-man. And I was very worried when he was brought in. And I thought this is the next step in politicizing the army. The army is one of the last institutions that this government hasn’t succeeded in corrupting or undermining. And I felt now here it comes.

And to see Zamir sitting in front of a hostile cabinet and speaking his truth and telling them, “If you want a yes-man, look for someone else.” That was a moment of realizing that there still is a strong backbone in this country, in crucial places of power.

Now, I think you and I have talked about this. It’s hard to remember what we talk about on mic and off mic. But the other day I was thinking about who I could vote for. Hopefully, God willing, there will be elections soon. And I went through the list of opposition leaders. And just about every one of them seemed to be worthy of my vote. And I won’t mention the one man in that mix who I wouldn’t vote for. But it was extraordinary to realize, four or five parties in the opposition, and each of them is headed by a quality person. And so what gives me hope is that there is leadership with integrity in this country.

And you look at the United States, 350 million people, and it’s a political wasteland. And here we have an extraordinary group of devoted leaders, people who would sacrifice it with a proven record of sacrifice for this country. And so to be able to add the sitting IDF commander in chief to that pantheon is very reassuring. How about you, Donniel? What gives you hope?

Donniel: First of all, I share, I think Gaza City is moving us down into a swamp. Very dark place. It’s a dark place. And so we’re looking for a future. And you’re looking to that future of, you know, it’s not going to resolve Gaza City. The only thing that will stop Gaza City is Donald Trump. Looking to the future, I think, is where we have to go.

And I have a different twist on things. I’m a little strange in that I don’t mind confronting dark times, doesn’t make me depressed. I feel that the only possibility of growth is when we put the sunshine on the darkness that we’re in. Light it up. We’re not transforming it. We’re seeing it. And only if we see the darkness to which we’re descending could we have an honest discussion about who we want to be.

And I think a lot of the war up till now has been a war that is focused around the hostages. But this is the first stage, I think, where there is a very strong disagreement in Israeli society about going to that stage. And I think maybe it might lead to a reckoning, a stronger reckoning, that this war has to come to an end. And I want to tell you, the people who are against going into Gaza, it’s not just because of the hostages. The only anti-war movement up till now has been an anti-war movement as a result of the hostages.

But when the chief of staff gives you four reasons, now we’re starting to have an anti-war movement based on serious additional arguments of humanitarian aid, that that should be an issue that Israeli society should talk about, that the military goal should be talked about. That international opinion maybe, maybe we have to descend deeper or fail more significantly. Maybe Gaza is the stage of the war that we have to embark upon so that the war will maybe come to an end. The only tragedy is Gaza’s civilian deaths, soldiers, humanitarian crisis, and the deepening of Israel’s isolation. And finally, and in many ways for us most importantly, hostages.

So maybe this is a necessary step. This is not an a nechama, but maybe through Gaza City we’ll begin to see the end of this.

Yossi, a moment for final thoughts.

Yossi: Yeah, let me put a more positive spin on the scenario you laid out, which is that the Israeli public can stop this next phase. We may not be able to stop it initially, but if the outrage really grows, and I suspect that it will, we could stop this before it gets too far out of control. And I think that we are at the point after two years of war where for a combination of reasons a majority of the Israeli public is ready to tell the government enough. And that gives me hope.

Donniel: Okay, maybe let’s hold on to that. Let’s hold on to that.

My mother, towards the end, the war in Gaza and the swamp, she was… beginning to put her in dark moods. And politically she was much closer to you, Yossi, than she is to me.

Yossi: I know that.

Donniel: But Gaza, as a whole, she began to feel how it was sucking and undermining our future. So maybe it’s going to be a very troubling couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, with a lot of consequences for… difficult and deadly consequences for many. But maybe this could be the beginning of a new step, I hope. Yossi, it’s a pleasure to be with you.

Yossi: Great to be with you.

Donniel: And to our audience, be well. And we’re back with you as we’re going to walk and feel and share these next stages of Israel at War.