About

Thoughtful debate elevates us all. Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi revive the Jewish art of constructive discussion on topics related to political and social trends in Israel, Israel-Diaspora relations, and the collective consciousness of being Jewish. 

The podcast draws its name from the concept of machloket l’shem shemayim, “disagreeing for the sake of heaven” and is part of the Institute’s iEngage Project.

A Big Deal Transcript

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

Donniel: Hi friends, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute, and this is For Heaven’s Sake, our podcast from the Institute. Israel at War, Day 417.

And today, the issue on the table is the deal. The deal that’s, by the time this podcast will be on air, will be signed, or almost signed. And our question is, is the deal a big deal? Is it a big deal? Already Netanyahu is declaring that he’s not going to bring the deal to the cabinet because it’s not a peace agreement. It’s just a ceasefire, which he says is going to be judged day by day and therefore it only has to be brought up to the limited war cabinet.

So he’s already trying to frame it. Today is day 417 of hostages, of war, of soldiers in danger, of destruction in Gaza. And Lebanon, and we’ve been in a profoundly bloody, intense, there’s no word, but warful mode. It’s encompassed, you know, even our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, has been defined by Israel at war. This fighting mode has engulfed our whole being. And part of what we want to talk about is, does this deal change anything? What are its opportunities? How do we understand it on the most basic level before we even begin a deeper analysis?

You know, our tradition has the notion of Dayenu, that it’s enough, that we go stage by stage in accepting blessings and positive outcomes. And one of the most immediate positive outcomes, that, before we even start any analysis, the fact, less soldiers will die, less of our children will die. Families, while the war in Gaza is continuing, this is the second front. We’re cutting in half, at least, the casualties, the families that are torn apart, the families who are worrying.

I was at a wedding yesterday and, you know, you’re sitting there with people who’s choked. They’re just, they’re just worrying all the time. And soldiers are dying on a regular basis. So just for that alone, there’s a big deal when more of our soldiers, more of our people are safe. So that’s a big day, you know.

But is this a game changer in any way in this warful mode that we have been engulfed by? By my nature, I have a more positive outlook on things, and I’m very grateful for the opportunities that this deal will present to us, but Yossi, how do you, when you see it, are you hopeful?

Yossi: Well, first of all, I’m still trying to grapple with the word warful. And I’m thinking, what’s the alternative, what, there’s a term there that I can’t think of, so we’ll have to stay with warful.

Donniel: When you make Aliyah at the age of 13, like, you’re upset when I make up words. I think it’s my,

Yossi: No I’m intrigued. It’s, it’s a good, this is how a language grows.

Donniel: It’s a good word because it’s really, that’s, we’ve been in a warful, I don’t want to say we’re in a killing mode, because we didn’t embrace killing. This was not a time where we’re saying, oh, even though there was a lot of revenge, but it’s not a revengeful. There’s revenge is part of the story. Killing, suffering, but it’s warful sort of…

Yossi: So I’ve just consulted with the English language academy. And the answer is, war is enough. We’ve been in a war mode. But that’s, yeah. But I hear you’re trying to create a nuance here. There’s a psychological. I like it.

Donniel: There’s a psychological being that’s, that’s, that’s taken, and you know, one of the features of this warful mode, by the way, in Israeli society, there’s zero has been for most of my life, after the Yom Kippur war, a very low tolerance for soldier casualties. And in this warful mode, while families and everybody mourns and were pained, it’s like we understand that death is a part of the story.

Yossi: This is the first time since the Yom Kippur War where Israeli society has taken a deep breath and saying, we have no choice. We have no choice. So it’s warful. So I’m still in a warful mode. This deal does not evoke any hope in me.

Donniel: Really? Could I just, could I just, that equivocal?

Yossi: That unequivocal.

Donniel: I can’t make up those words. That unequivocal?

Yossi: Yeah. I’m very worried about this deal. And where this hits me is in two responses. The first is the question of why is he doing it? He being the Prime Minister of the State of Israel. And I wish I could say that, well, he’s doing it for perhaps the reason that you, you opened with. He’s pained by the casualties.

I don’t think that the welfare of the State of Israel comes into it for him. I’m looking at, where he’s at now, what are the factors that are impinging on him? The noose around him, the legal noose, is tightening from multiple directions. He’s about to testify in his own corruption trial. He’s persona non grata now in half the world. There’s a personal situation that for me, there’s no question has factored into this deal, and I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what the angle is.

There’s also Trump’s imminent return. So is Netanyahu trying to present Trump with a gift? I’m wiping the slate clean. You come in, you’re not going to have to deal with Lebanon. That’s a possibility. So that’s one area. It leaves me uneasy. And, and it’s a terrible place to be in, Donniel, when, when your first response to a positive move that your Prime Minister makes is, why? Why is he doing this?

Donniel: Yeah, it is a terrible mode where your feelings about him, there’s no room for any complexity.

Yossi: No. No, no, not anymore.

Donniel: I still have it.

Yossi: Yeah, I know you do. I know you do. It’s like,

Donniel: it’s just, you can’t, no matter what, it’s just, but at least, but you did say I have a question. You didn’t, you said it’s at least me, it’s a question.

Yossi: Yes, it’s a question.

Donniel: Okay, that, for Yossi, that’s, that’s a moderate moment.

Yossi: Yes. And the second more substantive problem that I have with the deal is that I feel that it’s the wrong deal in the wrong place. What we should be doing is ending the war, the fighting in Gaza, retrieving the hostages that are still alive and focusing on continuing to hit Hezbollah while they’re on their knees. And by extension, Iran, Hezbollah is Iran, unlike Hamas. Hamas is an ally of Iran. It’s not a proxy. Hezbollah is effectively under Iran’s direct control. And to stop now, to give Hezbollah a chance to regroup, to rearm, for me, is appalling.

And I listened to the mayors of the towns along the border, whose people have been uprooted for the last year, and they’re outraged at this deal. Now, I don’t believe that the mayor should have a veto, but they represent the constituency that’s paying the direct price for the war in the North. And if they’re saying we need to continue, we need to keep pushing and not deal with half measures, I want to see Hezbollah on its knees and Hamas, of course, I want to see it on its knees, but it’s more important for me at this point to retrieve the hostages.

And there’s one last point here, Donniel, which really worries me, which is what’s going on in the government? What is the political strategic thinking? For elements in this government, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, the far right, the goal is reclaiming Gaza. Lebanon is not part of the land of Israel in their map, but Gaza is.

And the big question that we’re going to be facing, and it’s going to come up if this deal turns into a big deal in Lebanon, if we really go into some kind of a quasi permanent ceasefire, and that’s all it’s going to be, that will free the lunatics to start rebuilding settlements in Gaza. That’s been the agenda from the beginning.

Donniel: I want to come to that, but why does this deal facilitate that?

Yossi: I think it’s, it’s a question of what the far right feels the Israeli public can tolerate. To rebuild settlements while we’re fighting a two front war, I think even they understand that it would undermine morale to such an extent it would tear apart Israeli society that you can’t fight a war under those conditions. I think even Smotrich, Ben Gvir maybe not, Smotrich understands that. But the settlements in Gaza are coming from Smotrich’s camp. It’s not Ben Gvir.

Donniel: Ben Gvir, like you, came out against the deal.

Yossi: Yeah. So he, Ben Gvir has a, has a different agenda. I mean, of course he wants to see the settlements, but did you see the investigative report on the groups that are forming? There are six settlement groups that are ready to move in. They’ve already invested millions of dollars in infrastructure. They have the trailers, they’re ready to move. And this is what worries me.

And we talked about this briefly last week. We touched on this sense that so many of us have that what the far right is really going for is rebuilding the settlement block in Gaza, even if it means dooming the hostages. And so I look at this deal that’s emerging in what, for me again, is the wrong place, I have such a deep unease about where this government is taking us next.

Donniel: You know, I don’t know if it’s politics, if it’s personalities, if it’s outlooks on the world. I don’t know about purity of motives. I’ll just take outcomes. Even though I don’t always deny from Netanyahu the possibility of having some purity of motive. I still believe, I don’t, there’s non-pure motives, but even he…

Yossi: You’re, you’re a better man than I am today.

Donniel: But that’s not, I, for me, the issue is not motive. Even though I understand how motive would come into the consideration, when you’re worried that the motive for this is to enable a different move to happen in Gaza, which we should come back to. But I want to offer a different, a very different perspective on this deal.

So first of all, it’s not a perfect deal. Everybody knows it’s not a perfect deal. The people on the North are outraged because they know that at any given time Hezbollah could create a war of attrition. And by the way, the people of the North, now, is Haifa to the north. It’s a million and a half people. It’s not just a hundred, 200,000 people just. And they know that this ceasefire, whatever you want to call it, permanent deal, ceasefire, peace treaty, give it whatever name you want to give it, the reality is, is that Hezbollah still poses a threat. They do.

Israel has done remarkable things. Destroyed huge capacities of Hezbollah, beyond anything we could have imagined. Removed some of the most horrific dangers of imminent penetration to the North, which would have made October 7th pale in comparison. That has been removed. But at the end of the day, even after we’ve destroyed 80 percent of Hezbollah’s weaponry, 20 percent will enable them to fight a war of attrition against all of northern Israel for years, for years. And the North says, you know, you want me…

Yossi: And they will start to rearm.

Donniel: Even if they don’t rearm, even if as the treaty has it, that it’s going to get more and more difficult for them to rearm.

Yossi: Well, let’s not call it a treaty.

Donniel: Okay, uh, what do you want to call it? Ceasefire? Deal.

Yossi: An agreement.

Donniel: Let’s call it a deal.

Yossi: The deal.

Donniel: The deal. The deal. That’s also a Trumpian. The deal. The art of the deal. But there are great achievements, but they still have years of weaponry to, and the people in the North are saying, what am I coming home for? Right. What am I going to rebuild? What does it mean? What is the level of uncertainty that I still have?

And while I want to speak positively about the deal, I don’t want to be disrespectful to the uncertainty that they’re going to have to adjust to, they’re going to have to adjust to. And it is. It’s real. And we have to call it as such. And for that, by the way, it’s a very dangerous move for Netanyahu. Because his base. These, many of these mayors are part of his base and compromise, you know, Smotrich is not just messianic, but there’s the correlation and the deep connection between ultra-nationalism and power and war, all his expressions of some macho nationalistic aspirations, you know. Every war should be fought one more day.

You know, that was, we once spoke about it, that if you haven’t yet defeated your enemy, if they’re still strong, you have to keep on fighting. And if they’re now weaker, you have to keep on fighting. There’s always a reason to keep on fighting. And that’s a Smotrich idea.

Yossi: Yeah, but what you just mentioned, I think, is really important, which is the diminishment of the North, that many people may well refuse to go back, and I don’t want to speak in apocalyptic terms, but we could lose a significant part of the North.

Donniel: In fact, there is, what Israeli society has to do in order to embrace, in order to take care of, in order to compensate, what does it mean for the North? What does it mean that we have to put down tens of thousands of soldiers, at the minimum? If during the war, we needed the ultra-Orthodox, with this deal, we need more people in the army because you can stop the missiles, but you need, there has to be some sense that I have some security. So I don’t want to belittle…

Yossi: But wait, just stay on that for a moment. Stay on that for a moment.

Donniel: Because that was just the introduction.

Yossi: No, but it’s significant here because the next moves, in plural may be changing the status quo in Gaza. And look, the army is already building a permanent infrastructure in Gaza. So there’s that with the settlement groups emerging. And what you’ve just said about the Haredim, the ultra Orthodox, the next move in government is going to be to push through the wholesale exemption of the Haredim for military service. So It’s like we’re getting the worst of both worlds here, we’re getting ultra nationalism and anti nationalism.

Donniel: Yeah, I hear you, I don’t, I’m concerned about that but I don’t connect it to the deal. The deal is an incomplete deal, it’s not the perfect deal, it’s not the great deal, it’s certainly not the complete victory that Netanyahu is bantering about, he never used it in the North, but like that language of, of this complete deal, of this war, of rebirth of the Jewish people.

Yossi: His bombast is just unbearable.

Donniel: And the incompleteness of this deal, the fact that there’s going to be levels of danger that anybody who chooses to live in the North is going to have to take into account and accept. And the question is, how does the country see them and recognize it and respect the sacrifice that they’re going to make? Not pretending as if this is this great big deal. It’s a deal, but for them it’s not a big deal. It’s a hard deal. It’s an incomplete deal.

So, I just want to, that has to be put on the table, but there’s a whole other dimension that I want to talk to you about. Because I am unbelievably hopeful as a result of this deal. Because I think this deal is going to have a very deep, profound psychological impact on Israeli society. You were talking about the potential political impact, the repercussions of one less front and what’s going to be now. What is it, what are they now going to be allowed to do in Gaza? What are they going to think that they could do in Gaza?

But they is the government, but they is also the people. If we talk about the mood of Israeli society, these 417, 18, 19, 20 days, this warful mood, we don’t know how to get out of it. I’ve been teaching. I’ve been lecturing. I’ve been speaking to people. We can’t get out of the trauma of October 7th. We can’t get out of it, and we’ve embraced, tragically, not by choice, this warful mode of being. It’s a different mode than where we’ve been for many, many years.

Now, for years, I would juxtapose this warful mode with the status quo mode. Israelis know or felt very deeply that the status quo after October 7th was an existential danger. That the myths of being able to contain a conflict forever is something that was profoundly dangerous. So we went into warful mode.

But warful mode has its limitations. Israelis are getting more tired. You know, you sit with people, the fear, the fear for your kids, the amount of mourning, even though we’re willing to sacrifice, but it’s just heavy.

But I think where Israeli society is right now, I think we’re stuck. And I think we almost need a shock therapy to get us back to a certain complexity of life. And I think that this deal is the beginning of that shock. And I think it’s actually going to undermine the possibility of a perpetual war in Gaza. Because I think it’s right, this is where politics, compromise, imperfection, incompleteness enter into the conversation again, where killing stops, being killed stops. We accept these imperfect realities, including for the North.

And I think Israelis don’t know how to stop this war mode. The killing mode, the, all of it, it’s just, I’m looking at our, it’s like, you can’t talk, you know, and I talk a lot about what are the values that we have as a Jewish people and what do we care about and what type of people we want to be. And so many of us, of my people, as we, it’s, they’re just, they can’t even hear it.

So I’m wondering if the beginning of this is the return to a certain form of reality. That’s right, it’s not perfect, but it’s much better than it was before. Beforehand, we have much more security now than we ever had before. So you want us to, they’re on their knees, take it even further. I think there’s nothing further that we can do. So you can, while they’re on their knees, you can hit them again and again, but there’s not more than on their knees. They’re not going to get on their faces. You’re not, those fantasies don’t exist, I believe, or I, but so, but I’m wondering whether it’s time for us as a people to begin to stop fighting and to start looking for other solutions.

So on the one hand, you’re saying that it opens up a possibility in Gaza for more warfulness there. I’m wondering whether it’s not going to be opening up the possibility for people saying, okay, now it’s time for politics also in Gaza, and you could even hear, even today, as the government was talking about this, they’re saying there’s possibilities that this will open up greater chances for a hostage deal because now that Hamas is alone… I feel, Yossi, it’s time for us to go on. And maybe this is doing it.

Yossi: So I appreciate what you’re saying to me. But I want to take issue with a few points. First of all, in terms of continuing the war against Hezbollah, neither you nor me believed at the beginning of this war that we would be able to neutralize the Hezbollah threat to such an extent. And so, the fact that we’ve pressed on, Tom Friedman has an op ed today, where he writes that Israel’s victory over Hezbollah is comparable to the Six Day War.

Now, it’s not, because it’s incomplete, and I also recall that Friedman was certainly among those telling us there is no victory, and now he’s saying it was the Six Day War. So if it’s almost the Six Day War, and in the north and against Iran, it must be the Six Day War. So, yeah. Now, it’s not going to be six days, it’ll be six months, it’ll be two years, whatever it is.

But at the risk of repeating myself through these many months, this war, from my perspective, cannot end with Iran on the nuclear threshold. And so that’s it.

Donniel: Okay but that’s… But let’s leave that.

Yossi: No, no. I can’t. I can’t leave that. Because this deal, this deal…

Donniel: But this deal doesn’t threaten that.

Yossi: This deal does threaten that.

Donniel: Oh, I don’t know. Yossi, here I have to tell you, I don’t even, I don’t, it’s not that I don’t agree with you. I don’t understand even the argument. So maybe I’ll give you a chance to articulate, like here, we’re talking about a ceasefire now with Hezbollah. What we want to do with Iran is going to be a separate issue. Keeping on fighting Hezbollah more and more and more, that opens, I’m just asking, do you really think that that’s, that we need to keep on fighting them in order to make possible an attack on Iran or something to do with the nukes? I don’t know. I’m what, I think it’s all shmushed together, shmushed…

Yossi: We’re beginning to mentally withdraw from the northern front, which is what you were saying earlier.

Donniel: Okay. So, you know, let’s leave that. And so that’s, that’s, okay. Well, let’s leave that aside. All right.

Yossi: The second thing is, your point about shifting Israel away from war mode, which might be a better way to put it.

Donniel: I’ve fallen in love with warfulness.

Yossi: And to, I don’t believe it because if, God forbid, the hostages die, because this government is not prepared to do a deal in Gaza. Where is that going to leave us, Donniel? Where is it going to leave us psychologically? Are we really going to be able to start healing from October 7th? I don’t think so. I don’t. I think this is going to be a permanent wound that’s going to distort a whole generation.

Donniel: I, that is a very deep question. And I share the notion that there is no complete or total victory, that the complete victory is, and as we spoke about, is dependent on the hostages returning, not on resettling Gaza and not on killing another thousand Hamas terrorists. I share that, that’s not the point, for me at least.

The question is whether Israeli society could begin to shift and go into another place. It could go to, the question is they go to another place, not, there’s gonna, we’re gonna be scarred. But are there other ways to heal your scars besides killing more, besides being killed more? And that’s the question I want to raise. And, and the minute. One of these dimensions enter into our life, at least there’s a possibility.

Now you use the word none of us believed, it’s true, I’m less faithful than you. Okay, so you surprised me up till now, but I still am a rational person. We see, we see the deaths, we see the consequences we’ve known. This, what’s this, as if another month, two months, another year in Lebanon is, what’s it gonna change? On that front, not to speak of the international front, and I think Friedman, to his credit, he doesn’t, you know, Friedman doesn’t have to be consistent, neither do we. What I thought one day, I don’t, you know, at least to his credit, he doesn’t have to say, okay, this is what I said yesterday, doesn’t mean. His job is to write definitive articles, and he has to write a definitive article about what he knows that whenever he knows it.

Yossi: Fair enough.

Donniel: Fair enough. Now, but I think he’s also engaging in a psychological process that I’m embracing. He’s saying, let’s call it a victory. You know, let’s call it a Six Day War. It gives you a way to frame this compromise, because that’s what it is. This deal on the one hand is not a big deal because it doesn’t remove Hezbollah, doesn’t remove Iran. It’s not a big deal because the hostages aren’t home and our soldiers are still in danger in Gaza. Many of our citizens are, are in a precarious situation. Gazans are still suffering. All of the above. It’s a deal.

It’s a big deal in the fact that it could activate a spark to a different consciousness. I feel that my Israel is lost right now, Yossi. I feel that a large part of my Israel is lost. I think they don’t know what to do. I think they don’t know how to get out of the warfulness that they’re engulfed in. And I don’t think they want to be there. They want to go back to an Israel where every time a soldier dies, it’s a catastrophe. They don’t want to accept death. They want to go back to life. And it’s incomplete, but I don’t want the status quo back, Yossi, I want some of my Israel back.

And I’m personally grateful for Netanyahu for putting this deal and for Hochstein, who, you know, our, by the way, we should say a Hartman graduate, for sticking around and helping to negotiate it. And I’m hopeful that, you know, you know, I’ll take the possibility of change. I could always deal with negative outcomes, but when there’s a possibility of change, that’s something that I want to embrace and see where it takes me. Last words, Yossi?

Yossi: Well, this conversation has helped sharpen for me what a fundamental disagreement between us that’s been running through these episodes for the last year. And that is, what are we most afraid of? And I have two great fears, and this deal does nothing to calm me down. In fact, quite the opposite. It intensifies both of these fears.

The first is that we’re going to leave Iran on the nuclear threshold, and sooner or later Iran will cross that threshold. And the second is what this government intends to do to us internally. We spoke about rebuilding settlements in Gaza, which will tear this country apart. It will undermine the morale of so many Israelis to the point where we may not be able to fight the next war together, to say nothing of what it will do to whatever is left of our good name abroad.

But there’s also the return of the assault on Israel’s democratic institutions. There are signs that that’s intensifying, but what is happening here is that when you ease the tension on one front, it opens the way and not only for rebuilding Gaza, but, oh, okay, we’re not at war anymore. Now, now we can deal with our internal agenda. And so I wish I could join you. in feeling a measure of relief. But for me, these are the two great existential threats facing Israel, internal and external.

Donniel: I don’t have a measure of relief. I have a measure of hope. And a measure of hope as a teacher gives me a place to begin to work. And I don’t have fears as much as you. I have concerns. I have concerns that we are losing our souls and we’re losing our direction. And I always believe that, that the greatness of the Israel, the Israel that I love, my Zionism, it’s always built, first and foremost, on the greatness of our people. And part of us are our people. An aspect of this last year has been a remarkable sense of service, and a remarkable willingness to fight and to sacrifice, but I’m very aware of and cognizant of the price we’ve paid.

Yossi: So let’s end on that note.

Donniel: Let’s leave it and see, and who knows? And by next week. Like Tom Friedman, what we’ll know next week will be completely different and, Yossi, thank you. Thank you. This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, day 417. And maybe, maybe there might be greater hope, for our hostages. Be well, everyone.