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Hilltop Youth and Israel’s Moral Crisis Transcript
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Yossi: There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who perceives himself as a victim but has power. It’s that convergence of powerlessness, of vengeance, rage, of perception of powerlessness with actual power. You have the power to act on your frustrations of perceived powerlessness. And that’s what we’re seeing playing out with the most extreme group of settlers.
Donniel: Hilltop Youth is opening up a new chapter, not just within religious Zionism, but as the Chief of Staff said, within our country. And we have to ask ourselves, as the Chief of Staff asked, “Is this the army we want? And is this the country we want?”
Hi friends, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, in collaboration with our media. Today is May 5th, 2026. And our theme for today, we entitled “Hilltop Youth and Israel’s Moral Crisis.”
For a long time now, Yossi, you and I have been talking about the phenomena of Hilltop Youth. And we’ve been seeing this phenomena getting worse and worse with pogroms, attacks, murder, almost nobody getting arrested, and a basic silence by and large from most of Israel’s political leadership.
And it’s been a source of tremendous frustration, outrage, frustration, confusion, both for you and myself, and for much of our audience. I know both you and I are now traveling around the United States and there’s not a single group that I talk to, which doesn’t ask me about what’s going on.
Yossi: Now that’s very much my experience as well.
Donniel: It’s incredulous, like it’s almost like this is not us. You know that war is complicated, that there’s going to be failures in war we understand, but this is almost understandable. You know it constitutes also a tipping point in the judgment against Israel and in a question. And that’s why we’re calling it Israel’s moral crisis. It’s not a moral challenge, it’s clearly a moral crisis.
But for today’s conversation, I actually want to offer a larger framing of today. Because even in the title we’re not just talking about the Hilltop Youth, we’re talking about Israel’s moral crisis in general and the relationship between Hilltop Youth to the army and to our society as a whole.
Last week there was a remarkable moment which since October 7th has been principally absent from Israeli leadership conversation. The Israeli Chief of Staff, Zamir, gathers all the senior officers of the army, from the rank of lieutenant colonel and above and basically asks them, “Is this the type of army that you want to have?” He says, “What’s happening to us?” He mentions three phenomena as examples.
The speech came after an Israeli soldier smashed a statue of Jesus in Lebanon to international and here, by the way, including Israeli condemnation. Israel was embarrassed and it was also like, “What’s happening to our soldiers? Why would a soldier even do that?” So this is one part of his speech. He says, “Is this what an Israeli soldier does?”
The second thing he points to is a breakdown in discipline in officers not insisting that soldiers live up to military dress code. Since the war in Gaza started, a few months into the war, soldiers started to add to their uniforms various patches which reflect their ideological, religious, and political positions and beliefs. Instead of all soldiers being part of the same army, we’re fighting in our own little ideological agenda, something that’s heresy for every military. Some people have patches which say, “Messiah, we’re part of God’s army.” Other people have a patch, I’ll translate it roughly. “Enough with the hatred.” “This is the time for violence.” So like, “Don’t be emotional now. We’re acting.”
You know, it’s, terrible things and officers are allowing it and the chief of staff says, “What are you allowing this for? You see it. Military dress code is clear. Why aren’t you enforcing discipline?” And there’s a very interesting and critical interplay in the army between moral code and discipline. In the army, morality is discipline.
There’s certain things you do. There’s a code of behavior. There’s how you use your arms. The breakdown in discipline leads to a breakdown in moral code. And finally he says there’s numerous reports now. Haaretz reported and the show notes we’re going to send you to a Times of Israel and Haaretz article on this where there are reports now of widespread looting in the villages in southern Lebanon.
And you hear the chief of staff talking and he wasn’t shouting. He was turning to the upper echelon to his people and said, “Is this our army? Is this what we want?”
And since October 7, whether inside the military or from our government, there has been no public reprimand, no public conversation about something happening to us. In many ways the government was celebrating it. They let it. But there was no conversation.
And last week this chief of staff appointed by Netanyahu, supported by Sarah Netanyahu, to be our chief of staff. The man who President Trump looks at in the Knesset and says he’s coming straight out of central casting, this man who grew up in the army was the prime minister’s military attache, is setting something in front of the country. And that’s the context. It’s a larger context. Who are we becoming?
How did you, when you heard his speech and read his speech, what did you hear, Yossi?
Yossi: Well, first of all, Donniel, I think that there is good news, bad news here. The good news is exactly what you just said, which is that Zamir, who was supposed to be Netanyahu’s man, he was the guy who was going to make sure that there was no dissent from government policies, no implied unease with where the government is taking the country. He was supposed to be the loyal soldier, not of the state, but of the government.
And the good news here is that the army, at least at its top echelons, is still working. We can still depend on the IDF to set the basic moral tone for itself and for the country. And I’m speaking up about the very top. And we don’t know how long that’ll hold. But for now, it seems that those who grew up in the army that we grew up in, that we knew, have retained a basic moral code.
The bad news is that the army seems to be changing. And what I heard really are several things. First, a sense that something is changing in Israeli society generally. You know, we talk about the idea as a people’s army. And there are obviously many positive aspects to that. When you have the widespread participation in the army, the society is directly invested. There isn’t this sense of the army as an abstract institution, which is what you have in countries that have volunteer armies, for example.
The potential problem is that it’s a people’s army. Everybody’s there. Everyone has guns. Any commander can, in the heat of battle, make their own moral decisions. And what I heard in Zamir’s critique and his warning was something that you and I both know is percolating in parts of Israeli society. There’s an unease that something went wrong in Gaza. Call it a lack of discipline, which is Zamir’s own language. There was a sense that parts of the army, and again it depends on the unit, it depends on the local commander, but that parts of the army were acting independently of the ethical spirit that Zamir is trying to restore to all parts of the idea. So there was that.
I also heard in Zamir’s critique an implied warning of religious extremism seeping into the idea. The soldier who smashed the statue of the crucifix in Lebanon was obviously a religious soldier. The patches that are being worn were brought in first by right-wing religious soldiers. There is a sense that the army that we knew, the army that was proud of its struggle between morality and security, is now under threat from within by elements of religious extremism.
And the last part of this, Zamir, that I heard in his warning was what’s happening outside of the army, but very much in relationship to the army, and that’s the Hilltop Youth. The fact that we have moved from sporadic attacks against innocent Palestinians by extremist settlers to a systematic assault that sometimes is happening every night, with a very clear political goal to drive Palestinians out of their villages and ultimately to create the momentum of a mass Palestinian flight to Jordan.
And Zamir has spoken about the crisis, or he spoke about it a few weeks ago. I was very frustrated actually with that speech, because you’re the commander of the IDF. Why are you complaining? Who are you complaining to? You have an army. You’re there. Do something. Control these people. And so I think that he is laying the ground here for what I hope will be a serious change in policy in direct intervention by the IDF into stopping these atrocities, this desecration of the name of Israel and the Jewish people.
Donniel: So let me ask you, Yossi, I don’t want to start now a libel against religious Zionism The problems in the army are not only problems amongst religious Zionists. It’s something affecting the larger army, even though there is a lot of whispering going on that both you and I are hearing, that when senior officers are emerging from within the religious Zionist community, there are times, not every one of them, that their ethical concerns are different than the old army, than the Zamir army.
But when you turn to Hilltop Youth, there’s nobody that I know who spent more time studying the settler phenomenon. Like Dreamers is your ode to both your love and your distancing from that community and analyzing it from its inception with such care and loving detail.
You know, this community gave birth to Yigal Amir who assassinated our prime minister. This community also gave birth to a commitment to serve our country, which is at the highest level in our society. In the book you outline both those expressions, but right now it’s not by accident—or is it by accident? Why is it that the religious Zionist community, and it’s not all the settlers, because most settlers are actually condemning the Hilltop Youth, but still, this is an outgrowth from within the religious Zionist community.
What is it about the religious Zionist community that is giving birth to this phenomenon? Or I would put it this way, why is murder being sanctioned from within aspects of the religious Zionist community in a way that it’s not being sanctioned by any other ideological group in Israeli society?
Yossi: Well there are different ideological sources from which settlers across the settlers spectrum are drawing from. The most mainstream is Rav Kook, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Look, who was the great theologian of mystical religious Zionism, the theologian of the land and the people, and who really was the spiritual father of the mainstream settler movement.
But there were other influences, other theological influences that were there almost from the beginning that drew on a different stream of mysticism, and I would call it a kind of a racist mysticism. You know when our enemies accuse Zionism of being Jewish supremacism, it’s the slander that is so ahistorical, because Zionism in its essence was actually a humanistic movement. But there is a small segment of religious Zionism that is frankly committed to Jewish supremacism.
I’ll mention one, Rabbi Meir Kahane, of course, is known to diaspora Jews, the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who really had a tremendous influence on the younger generation of extremists who were breaking away from this mainstream cookie in ideology.
But there’s actually something else going on. There is the theological struggle within religious Zionism between the humane vision of Rav Kook and the racist mystical vision of Meir Kahana or Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh and others who had an influence on the Hilltop Youth.
But I think there’s also something psychological at play here, which is the Hilltop Youth are that part of the settlement movement that wanted to fulfill the promise of the settlers for expansiveness, for freedom in the land of Israel. And when I speak to Hilltop Youth, what I hear over and over again is our parents barricaded themselves in these little settlements behind barbed wire. We’re free. We are the only free Jews in Judea and Samaria. We go anywhere and everywhere. We’re not afraid of the Palestinians.
And there’s something I think about the mainstream settler movement that sees these kids on their isolated hilltops without the barbed wire and admires an end result. And there’s a deep ambivalence, I think, in the settlement movement towards these kids. On the one hand, yes, they are complicating the position of the settlement movement certainly in the world, but even within Israeli society. They’re undermining some of the basic positions of legitimacy of the settlement movement.
And I think some of the settler leaders understand this, even though I wish they would be more vocal and more consistent in their opposition. I think there’s a great failure there. But I think that one of the reasons there’s this reluctance to more vigorously challenge the Hilltop Youth is because there’s a kind of a ideological envy at play here.
Donniel: Yossi, as I’m hearing you, I have to stop you, Yossi. I have to stop you because I’m getting so frustrated.
Yossi: Why?
Donniel: There’s almost a romantic story you’re telling. I’m asking you a much harder question and I want to give you another chance. They’re killing!
Yossi: Alright.
Yossi: I know they’re free. We’re free and we’re marching wherever we want to march and I’m going to kill you. They’re killing people. They’re torturing people. This is, what, so you’re right. I’m with you on this. But could you go further, Yossi? This is not a romantic expression of free at last, free at last, oh my god, I’m free at last in my land. I’m free to kill people. What in the settler movement is allowing for this, Yossi? Do you have an explanation for this? This is not just freedom. This is murder. This is fundamental moral corruption, Yossi.
Yossi: You’re absolutely right. What I just laid out is how many settlers regard the Hilltop Youth and why there is such deep ambivalence within the settlement movement. I think it’s really important for us to understand the romantic story here because that plays very deeply within the settlement movement.
And I agree with you, it is a fundamental distortion beyond that it leads to complicity in crime. And that’s what we’re seeing playing out.
But look, you know, without making historic examples, we know that radical nationalism, which is capable of the worst atrocities, is rooted in romanticism. And the phenomenon of the Hilltop Youth cannot be understood without this romantic context.
Donniel: Interesting.
Yossi: Now let’s take it to the next inevitable step, which is really what you just raised. When you believe that everyone else is corrupt, including the settlement movement that you emerged from, the leaders long ago sold out in their copycat villas with the slanted roofs and the little gardens. Everyone has sold out. You are the last repository of ideological purity. You are the last guardians of the land.
There’s something thrilling, and here, Donniel, I can speak from personal experience from my teenage years of being in a radical movement, being in Meir Kahane’s movement. There is something exhilarating about being part of the elite who are the only ones who are the repositories of the purity, in this case of Zionism, of the settlement movement.
And that sense of being part of an elite grants you license. It frees you from ordinary moral constraints. You’re better than everyone else. Everyone else is bound by these small rules. You’re not. Whatever you feel needs to be done, in this case, to protect the land of Israel. You are empowered by history. Of course, you’re empowered by God. But most of all, you’re empowered by yourself. You are the final arbiter of morality.
And the irony, of course, here is these are religious kids. These are kids coming out of a tradition of thousands of years and has no impact on them. Not only are they free of the barbed wire fences of the settlements, they’re free of the fences of the law, the moral fences of the law that they practice. They adhere to the law, but they are liberated from its moral constraints.
Donniel: I appreciate that. I want to add a dimension to it that I’ve learned from my daughter, Michal, who’s writing her PhD on the religious Zionist movement, not when you wrote your book, but since, post the withdrawal from Gaza. Really, your book ends early.
YossiL That’s where it ended. Right.
Donniel: Right. Her PhD is where that starts. And we’re talking about, not historical figures, we’re talking about current religious authorities for whom Zionism will only succeed. Zionism will only succeed in creating the revolution, the messianic revolution, when we not only hold on to the land, but when we exert power over the land. That Zionism is about reconstituting the Jewish person. Here it’s very similar to the old secular Zionist notion that Zionism is about a revolution in the Jewish psyche.
In our return to power, it wasn’t just a return. In secular Zionism, it was a return to power in order to achieve freedom and sovereignty for the Jews. In religious Zionism, it’s a return to power so that God could redeem us, for God will only re-enter the Jewish story when we exert control and dominance.
And part of what we see these Hilltop Youth doing is expressing this Torah of dominance and control, which the bourgeoisie settlers at the end didn’t do. They built their settlements, but the average settler is law-abiding, doesn’t attack Palestinians. I’m not saying they’re the great humanists and liberals of the world, but they are claiming their right to the land. I think that’s good.
But this new Torah is a Torah of dominance and part of our challenge in Israel. And it’s the challenge of any ideology, which, you know, whether it’s Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 3,000-year-old Torahs have to engage in a discourse with modernity. And part of the challenge of religious Zionism is that on certain areas, there’s a profound discourse with modernity. But in other areas, this discourse about messianism and about integrating the Zionist movement into the core of religious life is about going back to Joshua.
So these kids are acting like Joshua. Joshua wasn’t just free. He wasn’t just romantic. Joshua was about power, raw power, and it was about killing. And I think part of our challenge, when we talk about Hilltop Youth, and this is going to move us to the next section that I want us to talk about, it’s not just the Hilltop Youth. This is about Zionism having to take into account its own aspirations. And how do you build a national aspiration without becoming deaf to other national aspirations? And here it’s even worse. How do you not become deaf for the fundamental right to life?
You know, settlers weren’t murderers. They didn’t go around murdering people. This tolerance of murder, and now this moves me to my next where it gets even more difficult.
Yossi: Wait, wait, wait. Before we go there, Donniel, I want to stay on this point. Please. Because it’s very important. And I think we need to be honest here in exploring the connections between the earlier settlement movement, which did not advocate violence and—
Donniel: Ever, ever, ever, ever.
Yossi: Well, it’s more complicated than that.
Donniel: Okay, so I’ll take back my ever, ever, but let’s leave that alone. But yes, go.
Yossi: But let’s unpack it a little bit. The founding ethos of Gush Emmunim, the religious settlement movement that emerged after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, was that they were empowered by God to take the law into their own hands. The Israeli government was forbidding settlement. They were answerable to a higher law.
And Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, the son of Rav Kook, who I mentioned earlier, said this explicitly, that no authority—and he meant the democratic government of Israel—has the right to return land under any circumstances. That was a halachic ruling from the most important figure in religious Zionism of the last generations. Now, that opens the way to lawlessness.
Now, Gush Emmunim restricted its lawlessness to illegal settlement, which then the government gradually worked on compromises with them. But there’s a missing link here between the contained lawlessness of Gush Emmunim and the unrestrained lawlessness of the Hilltop Youth, and that’s the Jewish underground of the early 1980s. This is a chapter of religious Zionist history and of the settlement movement that has been too quickly forgotten.
Donniel: Yeah, I forgot it. Now I’m remembering, but I forgot it. Thank you. Thank you.
Yossi: Please. So just to recap, in the early 1980s, a group of leading settler activists—these were not Hilltop Youth. They came out of the heart of Gush Emmunim, created—they called it the Jewish underground. It was a terrorist group. It was the Hilltop Youth of that time, and they were entirely mainstream figures. Now, they plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock. They planted bombs on Arab buses, which would have led to hundreds of casualties, five or six buses.
Donniel: They injured mayors.
Yossi: They injured mayors. They shot up a school in Hebron, an Islamic university.
Donniel: That’s right.
Yossi: The settlement movement at the time was traumatized, and most of the movement repudiated the underground. But you had a strong minority that referred to them as “tuvei baneinu,” the best of our youth, and that’s how they were referred to. Others referred to them as good boys who went wrong, good boys who, or worse, good boys who made a mistake. So this is the missing link. Between the illegal impulse that was sanctified by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Look and where we are today. There’s a continuity.
Donniel: Thank you for reminding, for really putting that link back, because I chose to forget that period. And I think part of what that period was about, especially blowing up the Temple Mount, it was about forcing the hand, not of the government. It was almost forcing the hand of God. If we could create a war between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and the Arab world, this is the beginning of the Messianic era, but for some reason God’s taking God’s time. We want to push it. And I think that notion of controlling God and wanting to force God, that arrogance, that certainty is integral to it, and thank you for that.
But I want to now, if I can, move us as we move to the last stage of this podcast to what we said at the beginning, because we called it the “Hilltop Youth and Israel’s Moral Crisis.” I have a general theory. I don’t know if it’s correct, but I’m holding it on to it. I like theories. In which radical individuals who grow up within a community feel comfortable stepping out of the community when they feel that there is tacit support for them.
There are cases where radicals break with the community, but then more often than not, they break and form their own communities. When you see yourself as a leader, that you’re doing what the rest of the community doesn’t have the courage to do, it’s because you’re sensing some tacit support, that people maybe don’t have the courage, but they’re agreeing with you. And part of the challenge that we’re facing with the “Hilltop Youth” is not just the “Hilltop Youth,” and it’s not just that Netanyahu says it’s 60 people, which is a scandalous statement. It’s just a few disenfranchised, learning challenged youth. It’s just scandalous as if it’s a marginal phenomenon. Part of the phenomenon is, a) that more often than not, there are army units present who stand by, who after the events happen, don’t arrest, don’t use their force, as you yourself said, “Yigal Zamir, you have an army, do something about this.” Where are you?
Part of the struggle with “Hilltop Youth” is the feeling that Israel is allowing this to happen. Now, I think part of that’s true and part of it’s not true, but for everything, the part that’s true is the part that’s most morally troubling right now. Why is Israel not just religious Zionists, why is general Israel, why is unit after unit more often than not protecting them, not protecting the Palestinians in their homes, after a pogrom happens, arresting Palestinians? Over and again, we hear about army not fulfilling its responsibility. What is happening in Israel?
I have a take, but before I give my take, which is going to move me very deeply, what’s your take, Yossi? I’ve been thinking a lot because I’m fighting for my country, Yossi. We’re fighting for the future of Zionism. As lovers of Israel, we’re not like those who are saying, “Okay, this phenomenon stains all of Zionism.” That’s nothing, but it’s a path that we are embarking on that we have to uproot now. And the question is, what’s the source? What’s happening in Israel that is serving as a backdrop for this. Or is there—Maybe you disagree with the question?
Yossi: No, no, I don’t disagree with the question, but I think that the scandal of the Hilltop Youth is so much deeper than the Hilltop Youth themselves. The first line of defense against what’s happening in the territories are the police. The police have gone AWOL for a very simple reason. The minister, the government minister in charge of the police, is himself a former Hilltop Youth. Itamar Ben-Gvir comes out of those circles. That’s his world.
And it’s even worse than that, because now the head of the Shabak, the Shin Bet, which is supposed to be spying on Itamar Ben-Gvir to make sure that the Jewish extremists don’t get out of control, the Shabak has a Jewish department, which is supposed to be infiltrating the Hilltop Youth. The new head of the Shabak, Zini, doesn’t see a real problem with the Hilltop Youth. And according to reports, one of his sons is identified to one extent or another with the Hilltop Youth.
And so there’s this sense first of all that those who are entrusted with maintaining the basic decency of Israeli society are themselves either actively complicit or turning away. So when we talk about the outrage that’s happening on the hilltops, for me the deepest outrage is happening inside the government.
Donniel: So that’s the background. Is it just there? I don’t want you to stop Yossi, because you sort of like, okay, it’s the government and I’m with you. It is the government. But it’s also beyond the government, Yossi.
Yossi: It is beyond the government. What’s happened? I’ll tell you, I’m reluctant to say what I’m about to say, because it will sound like I’m trying to whitewash or justify ourselves. And so the caveat is this is an explanation and not a justification. And that is that Israeli society is traumatized, enraged, PTSD, distracted. We’re moving from war to war. We’re now out of the shelters. We’re going back into the shelters any moment.
And I’m with you, Donniel. For me, this is one of the most important issues facing Israeli society. And yet how much of my attention is spent on this? And how easily am I distracted from being focused on the almost daily outrage that’s playing out? And we all know what the consequences are.
Donniel: They could get away with it. So they could get away with it, because like, this is not a normal time. I appreciate that.
Yossi: Yes. Well, wait, now, the question that I’m asking myself is, would it be different if we weren’t in a time of emergency? And I don’t know the answer to that.
Donniel: Fair enough. Fair enough. And you know, like part of what in our conversations, I hear you, these aren’t things that I would say, but as you say them, I hear you and I say, yes, Yossi, you’re right. That’s part of the story. And it’s true. It’s very hard to embark on a moral campaign within emotionally exhausted people. It’s true.
But I think Yossi, it goes deeper than that. And I just want to put it down here. And I think October 7th—
Yossi: I was, I was afraid you were going here.
Donniel: But okay, I’m going here. And I think we have to go here because—it’s not a laughing matter.
Yossi: Go for it.
Donniel: And I want to tell you, it’s not a laughing matter. It’s not a laughing matter.
Yossi: You’re right. It’s not.
Donniel: And I think part of the story, Yossi, of Israel and part of our challenge to reclaim the Israel that we love, October 7th posed different challenges to us. It posed a profound physical danger that we thought we were free from. We thought that as Jews of power, we weren’t facing this type of existential exposure. And so the need to refocus on what you called our deterrence, our ability to live here, et cetera, that’s one challenge.
But I think October 7th has changed us. And I think our challenge is to make sure that we begin a process to look at what October 7th has done to us. And I think that’s why General Zamir, Chief of Staff Zamir’s speech was so remarkable, because he’s saying, we’re not who we’re supposed to be anymore. There’s two things about October 7th that I want to put on the table very briefly. And stop me, Yossi, because I can go on and on about this. So I’m going to try to do it really quickly. The first, October 7th activated an impulse of revenge, which hasn’t been satiated yet. And Israeli society is going to have to account for it. What would make sense for a year, six months, three months, if we are on the modality of revenge, you know which then gets translated in the Israeli dictum, “there are no innocents in Gaza,” then when the Hilltop Youth are doing things to Palestinians in the West Bank who supported October 7th, a plague on all their houses.
If I want revenge, I want—that’s also why I loot, like the soldier, that stupid idiot who’s breaking the crucifix. He’s just revenge. He’s just, he’s smashing. As they said, it’s a time, what did we call it? This is a time for violence right now.
Revenge has entered into Israeli society in a way that’s unchecked. And I think we need to account for it. And here, our political leadership are not only not taking responsibility for it, they’re fueling it to create partisan nationalist identities. Revenge is one story. And I don’t think you can understand Hilltop Youth themselves and the rest of Israeli complicitness to it without factoring that the impulse to revenge is not yet done. And we’re going to have to move.
But there’s a second feature, Yossi, which I want to add, and then I’ll turn to you for final words. And that is that October 7th didn’t just create a sense of us being violated, for which we just want to kill the evil that dared to descend into our communities. October 7th created a sense of vulnerability that Zionism and Israeliness had no accounting for. Israel was supposed to be the antidote to this diasporic feeling of vulnerability.
And Israelis feel exposed. We haven’t healed. It’s not the trauma of the war alone. It’s not just the PTSD of the war and what our kids have had to see and experience and the fear. This vulnerability has entered into Israeli life and it wasn’t supposed to be here. And as a result, Israel is embracing power, war, in an unchecked manner. We’re trying to reclaim something that we feel we lost. And we don’t know how we’re going to reclaim it. You don’t reclaim it by being moral. You don’t reclaim it through your values. You reclaim it through power. And I think those two features are serving as a backdrop to the Hilltop Youth.
And Yossi, I can’t stop thinking about it because as I’m going in and out of the shelters and whatever it is that we’re experiencing with all the other challenges, Yossi, for me, we are now in the battle for the soul and the future of our country, both within Israel, amongst Jews around the world, and amongst our friends around the world.
But now, Yossi, I said my piece. I really want to give you last thoughts and words unless I feel compelled to respond.
Yossi: Now, I want to pick up on these two really important points about feelings of revenge for October 7th and the return of even more acutely than vulnerability of feeling a victimhood.
Donniel: Correct.
Yossi: You know, thinking about the soldier who destroyed the crucifix in Lebanon, what was he doing? What was in his mind? What did he think he was doing? Here he is, a soldier in Israel. He is the compensation for thousands of years of Jewish powerlessness, humiliation. Who humiliated us all those years? It’s the Christians. Now he has the power. Never mind that it’s not the same church, post-Vatican II, that it’s not the same theology. Never mind that the Lebanese Christians are actually our allies. You know, on so many levels, this has misplaced vengeance. But this impulse of being the avenger of Jewish history is partly what was playing out in that scene.
And then, you know, to think about the interplay between vengeance and victimhood, I think you’re absolutely right, that is what’s happening on the hilltops. And it also helps explain the widespread silence or perhaps even indifference in many circles to what’s happening there. And this is a way, I think, also of understanding the Hilltop Youth. There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who perceives himself as a victim but has power.
And I’m thinking of a photograph of Dr. Baruch Goldstein. Baruch Goldstein was the American-born immigrant who lived in Kiryat Arbeh, Hebron who in 1994 went into the cave of Machpelah, the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, and opened fire on a group of Palestinians in prayer and massacred 29 people.
After the massacre, a photograph appeared in the Israeli papers of Baruch Goldstein at a demonstration wearing a yellow star. It was a demonstration against the Oslo process, and the theme of the demonstration was that Oslo is making us powerless and vulnerable.
And I, I can’t forget that photograph, Donniel, because here’s a guy who had an army-issued gun in his closet at home, which he then used for the massacre. He was a doctor in the IDF. He was a settler. He was being protected by the Israeli army, and he puts on the symbol of the ultimate expression of Jewish powerlessness, the yellow star.
It’s that convergence of powerlessness, of vengeance, rage, of perception of powerlessness with actual power. You have the power to act on your frustrations of perceived powerlessness, and that’s what we’re seeing playing out with the most extreme group of settlers.
Donniel: And the larger envelope feels it. They’re not acting on it, but they’re not condemning it.
Yossi: Because they feel it as well.
Donniel: They feel it as well.
Yossi: No, and they, Donniel, they, themselves, the entire settlement movement is stuck in this dynamic between feelings of acute vulnerability and self-pity and power. But it’s not just the settlers.
Donniel: It’s the whole country, Yossi. It’s the whole country.
Yossi: You’re right.
Donniel: So Yossi, whenever I travel, such a big part of my life is to try to defend Israel. I want to defend Israel. I want to make sure that our people still see Israel as an integral part of what it means to be a Jew. How do we help people understand? It’s what your whole life is about too. And Hilltop Youth is opening up a new chapter, not just within religious Zionism, but as the chief of staff said, within our country. And we have to ask ourselves, as the chief of staff asked, “Is this the army we want? And is this the country we want?” And those of us who love Israel, we’re not going to help it by not talking about these issues. I’m sure there’s going to be people who are going to be angry.
You know, I gave a lecture last night and someone came up and said, “I don’t want to hear those things.” So I said, “You shouldn’t have come.” She was so shocked. She said, “I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear it. I just, don’t tell me anything.” I said, “Okay, so you shouldn’t have. What am I supposed to tell you?”
So like, there are people who are going to say, “you know, with all our enemies, you shouldn’t be talking. This is not our problem. Let’s talk about Iran.” And you know, right now, as we’re taping, we don’t know if tonight America is going to attack or tomorrow or what’s going to be. There’s so many issues. We know that. But there’s something that has emerged and it’s deep in our country. And we love our country and we love our people. And it’s time for us to begin to see it, talk about it, confront it, and begin to move to overcome this.
Do you have a last word, Yossi? Or did that feel like too much of a word?
Yossi: No, I’m no, that was my last word, what you just said.
Donniel: That’s great. Yossi, it’s a pleasure being with you. Great to be with you. Let’s hope for better days, let’s hope. Be well. I really appreciate being with you. Thank you.
Yossi: Me too.
