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.

Amsterdam 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, Israel at War, day 403.

And there’s a new front to the war. Yossi, one that you wanted us to talk about. And I’m frustrated because I didn’t want to talk about it, but I knew that you’re right. And that’s Amsterdam. And the experience of Israelis being attacked, hounded by an Arab or a Muslim anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish mob. They use words like “Jew hunt” and “Jews are cancer.”

I want us to figure out and to think about what do we take away from what happened in Amsterdam? What’s our takeaway conceptually about Europe? Does it have any implications for North America? But also to spend some time on, what are the implications it has for Israelis. Because the coverage of this in Israel has been nothing short of remarkable.

Yossi: I thought you were going to say hysterical.

Donniel: I’m trying to, in the opening I tried to be very objective. I don’t want to use the word hysterical because I want to respect people’s, people were deeply shocked and hurt by this. I didn’t feel there was manipulation. It was just, so I don’t like, I don’t want to call people hysterical. It’s real. This is a real feeling.

Yossi: So what was your reluctance to speak about this?

Donniel: I hate talking about antisemitism. It’s like, it’s bad enough that it exists. I’ve spent so much of my life not thinking, I’ve spent so much of my life just not with the luxury of not having to talk about it and I can’t deny it now and it’s there and it’s okay, but I, it’s just, you know, okay. It’s bad enough that it’s there. But you know and like what are we gonna say?

I hate it, you know, Yossi, I also have this aversion that the Jews condemn when Jews condemn anti-semitism. It’s like, a greater exercise in futility, I cannot imagine.

Yossi: But I want to give you your due on this. No, no, no, and I’ll tell you. No, no, I’ll tell you specifically. Because the reason that I understand why you hate antisemitism is because it diverts so much Jewish energy that should be going into figuring out how to live a creative Jewish life. And the Jewish obsession with antisemitism really undermines the Jewish future, the spiritual Jewish future. That’s my reading of your attitude.

Donniel: You know, no, fair enough. That’s your reading of me through the lens of my father’s Torah and his very, very famous article on Auschwitz or Sinai, which is something that besides his book, Living Covenant, maybe he’s most known for.

Yossi: Yes, which I deeply disagree with. That is, for me, that is his most problematic essay and it’s one of his most beloved essays.

Donniel: Right. But for me also, it’s not just that it diverts. I see all the time what happens to Israelis. I’m talking now as an Israeli. What’s happening to us in light of Amsterdam?What does it do to us? It doesn’t divert merely our creative forces, because I could accept now, like, if I channel, and I learn from Yossi and from also reality, it’s just, what does it do to us regarding our sense of self and our sense of the future? And I’ll want to talk about that. You know, it just doesn’t do it. Talking about anti-Semitism doesn’t do anything for me.

But you’re right. Right now I’m at a place that I even want to make. I’m not even making an ideology out of anymore. It’s more a psychological propensity. And it doesn’t deserve an ideology. And that’s why also, even though I do want to, I had to agree with you that we have to talk about this. We really do. And it forced me to think about it.

So, you know, maybe I’m more averse to talking about anti-Semitism in North America than I am in Europe, but we should talk about that too eventually. Because the one difference in Europe is that it’s on a different level.

But in any event, since this is the subject that you think much more than I about, let’s start with you. What’s your initial take? What are the takes we have? What is the initial take that you have or takeaway that you have watching the videos, hearing the story, listening to the coverage, hearing about the police, all of the above. Yossi, take it away.

Yossi: So my initial visceral response was typically Israeli, typically Jewish, and then my second takeaway actually surprised me. The first was the reaction to the Jew hunt, you know, that terrible word that appeared in one of the Muslim chat rooms Seeing Jews being hunted on the streets of Europe, on the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht, to just complete the picture was just unbearable.

And it was also unbearable seeing how much of the media, at least initially, reported this, looking for the Israeli provocation. Ah, there were some Israelis who actually tore down a Palestinian flag. Imagine desecrating another people’s flag. This is after a year of thousands of Israeli flags around the world being burned, trampled on, desecrated with swastikas. And here you have one Palestinian flag and, yes, some Israelis chanted anti-Arab slogans as if we haven’t been provoked throughout this year with the most vile anti-Jewish slogans. And so this search for an Israeli provocation, yeah.

Donniel: A balanced, a balanced report.

Yossi: And it brought me back to October 7th in a farcical way. The pattern of October 7th repeating in a ludicrous way. And when much of the world said, what do you expect? Israel brought this on itself because of the occupation. And so there was this, there was a sense of Amsterdam as a kind of a template for October 7th.

But the deeper trauma that I realized I was experiencing and hadn’t named until then, also brought me back to October 7th. And that was a sense of shame. And I hadn’t connected October 7th with shame, shame at Israeli powerlessness. And I grew up in a home with books that had titles like, Jews Fight Too! Exclamation mark. And the exclamation point was the giveaway for that insecurity. And we had to prove that we hadn’t gone like sheep to slaughter. That was my generational experience. And October 7th brought me back into that sense of deep shame over Jewish passivity.

Now wasn’t, it’s not a fair response. It wasn’t a fair response to the Shoah and it wasn’t a fair response to October 7th. But emotionally, that was unbearable for me. The fact that Jews were helpless. And then to see hundreds of Israelis cowering in their hotel rooms in Amsterdam or other Israelis who were caught on the street facing the mob and and pleading in English, I’m not Jew, I’m not Jew, it brought back the shame of “Jews Fight Too!” And that’s something I think that we need to face this residual sense of the shame of Jewish powerlessness, which I thought the Israeli experience had really healed us from, but October 7th, I think reopened it.

Donniel: Interesting. Even though I don’t like talking about antisemitism, this, you know, anybody who follows Europe and this event was an extreme form, even for Europe, terms like Jew hunt that you mentioned and the unwillingness of the police to even assist, that there’s so many stereotypes, that there is a reality of Islamic antisemitism that is integral to our life.

And the history of Islamic antisemitism is interesting because it’s very different than Christian antisemitism. Classic antisemitism was predominantly Christian. Ideologically, Christianity has a supersessionist ideology. It’s either us or them, and we are the Christ killers. is an inherent in the story of Christianity requires, not merely a rejection but also in a certain sense a war against Judaism or at least that was until after the Holocaust.

Yossi: And a systematic humiliation of the Jews.

Donniel: Of Jews as part of that story. That wasn’t the Jewish story in Islam. It’s not that it was great. There are certain verses in the Koran and certain surahs that are terrible. And Muhammad had a very difficult, he was profoundly insulted by the rejection of the Jews of Medina. And that gave birth to anti-Semitic statements within the Koran. But overall,

Yossi: Although, Donniel, the picture, as you say, was complicated. And one of the things that I’ve learned from our friend Imam Abdullah Antepli was that Muhammad also had a respect for the Jewish people. It was a very ambivalent relationship. And that ambivalence is built into the Islamic relationship.

Donniel: No, no, was, no, it’s built in. So I’m saying no, but the vast majority of Islamic theology and doctrine has a deep respect and affinity with Judaism and there’s so much similarity. So antisemitism wasn’t natural, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t express itself.

Yossi: And there were violent eruptions throughout the history of Islam.

Donniel: But the primary growth of Islamic anti-semitism is in response to Jewish power. Jewish power and, in particular, Jewish sovereignty activated not just a political conflict between Israel and Arab states, that political conflict took the form of anti-Jewish ideology. It activated a language which is now, listen, it’s so dominant in Iranian culture and in, you know, even Abbas was originally a Holocaust denier.

Yossi: Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian authority.

Donniel: So it’s there. And when you see it, you have to see it, it’s there. And Europe with its very significant Muslim population, which hasn’t been integrated in a significant way into European culture, it’s now, it’s a bastion that we can’t ignore.

Yossi: It’s interesting though, Donniel, one last point about Islamic antisemitism, which is that the political conflict with Israel has drastically intensified this antisemitism, but it’s drawing on sometimes latent trends that were really always there in the Muslim world.

Donniel: Right? And again, I was very clear. I didn’t say that Israel is the cause for, it activated it.

Yossi: And you understand my sensitivity to that point.

Donniel: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I appreciate that because I, to help make sure that I’m not making this into a political, it is anti-Semitic. It truly is, you know, and even in the Middle East with the term itbach al-yahud, “slaughter the Jew,” it’s not the Israeli. And so the the intersection between anti-Semitism and the political conflict is something that’s powerful and we experience it.

And so when I see it in Europe, I understand it, and it says, this is part of a deep battle we have against certain forces of evil that that one has harmed. So I don’t feel that that talking about anti-Semitism in Europe is over exaggerated and I see it. It’s very serious and this was a serious mo- you know, this is, you know, there’s countries where it’s dominant on an ongoing basis. France is dominant. It’s very challenging. Israel is now doing a whole survey of countries which are terrible for the Jews. It’s in the Israeli press now. You know, so you have Finland, and you have this thing, you know, it’s like, here, so where else? It’s not just, it’s not just there, like, where else are-

Yossi: Did you see, this was around Rosh Hashanah, I think it was Yediot Aharonot, the daily newspaper, published a list of countries where it’s safe for Israelis to go. And Micronesia was one of the, you know, the dream destination of all of us.

Donniel: Actually, it’s very popular. I want to, so on the one hand, I just, it’s important this, to not poo poo this. This is a serious issue. And it’s a serious issue that Jews have to deal with. It’s a serious issue that Europe has to deal with. And it’s not sitting on a very internal reflective experience of Christianity post the Holocaust, which rejects this anti-Semitic discourse.

The correctives aren’t there yet within Islam. And even though they could have been, because of the political conflict, there’s no desire to activate them. And in many ways, until Islam doesn’t reject, you want to fight with Israel, you want to argue with certain things that Israel has done. But when you move to this anti-Semitic agenda, you’re moving yourself into a barbaric existence, which ultimately is going to do profound harm not only on Jews, but on Islam and on Muslims’ place in the Western world, or at least so we hope. That was a big part of yours and Imam Abdullah Antepli’s work in our program, the Muslim Leadership Initiative.

But I want to, relate to the second point that you made regarding the shame. I didn’t feel shame. I appreciate where you’re coming from, but that wasn’t my experience. was watching the way Israelis were responding to this in shock. Israelis were shocked. And I was partially shocked by their shock. What were they shocked, what was the shock of Israelis?

And there’s a deep paradox which I want to develop with you in Israeli society. Which, on the one hand, this is a society which is hysterical about anti-Semitism. Here, I said it. It idealizes anti-Semitism, makes, there’s something about anti-Semitism as the core, one of the core justifications for the need of the state of Israel.

But one of the interesting phenomena of Israeli life, which many people don’t understand, is how much Israelis, on the one hand, see themselves as isolated from the world, and at the same time, travel with obsession throughout the world. We are obsessive travelers. Sometimes it’s like we and the Chinese, like you know, we’re competing about it. The Israeli traveling phenomenon, and it’s unique to Israelis amongst the Jewish people, the amount that we travel.

Here it is, Jews, like just think, where were we traveling? We were traveling to Amsterdam for a soccer game. We travel to concerts, we’re constantly traveling. The fact that planes aren’t leaving, that so many of the airplane carriers aren’t coming to Israel, because in the midst of the war, Israelis want to travel all the time. So there is a sense that the world is open to us. Part of Israel, there is an Israeli image that the normalcy or the safety that we created in Israel accompanies us in the world.

So we tell stories about anti-Semitism. We talk about it. We even emphasize it. We emphasize how dangerous it is for Jews in the world to be wherever they are. Why don’t they move to Israel? But that same world is the world that we travel in. And we travel proudly as Israelis and as supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv. And now there’s a great crisis because there’s a game in Italy and another one in France and maybe we can’t go. Okay, there was one in Istanbul, which, thank God, because who would go to Istanbul now, anyway. It was moved to Hungary. But like I can’t travel. The world is closed. So that actually also reminded me of October 7th in a different way. October 7th said, you’re not safe here in Israel. Amsterdam told Israelis, you’re not safe, period. You’re not safe.

Yossi: It’s a great insight into the Israeli psyche. And there is something paradoxical that really reflects Zionism itself. Because Zionism, on the one hand, said, we have to get out of the diaspora because no place is safe. The only place that will be safe is the Jewish state.

But on the other hand, Zionism was really about two forms of return. Return the Jewish people home and also return us to the international community. That was the promise of Zionism. So Israelis are really reflecting this very complicated Zionist relationship with the world.

And listening to you now, Donniel, clarifies a deep and unspoken fear that I’ve been carrying since October 7th, which is that one of the long-term consequences is that the world is closing up to us, or that we are closing up to the world, or there’s a reciprocal relationship there. And that is a fundamental challenge to Zionism.

But I also want to just go back to where I began about this reawakening that I felt, of shame toward Jewish or in this case Israeli powerlessness. And that is that objectively speaking, it’s a ridiculous response, both to October 7th and to Amsterdam.

Because what happened in Amsterdam? We sent planes, with the cooperation of the Dutch government, and simply brought our people home. And so if anything, Amsterdam was a repudiation of Jewish powerlessness. And this is something you and I have talked about extensively the last weeks, the ways in which we are winning this war, especially in the North, really undermines, or should undermine any sense of lingering powerlessness that we experienced as a result of October 7th.

We are back at the top of our game. We are restoring our deterrence. And so I’m just looking at my emotional response and very curious about it. And so it’s not something that I want to embrace or hold up as a post-October 7 ethos. Quite the opposite, really.

Donniel: Interesting. Yeah, it’s like, it’s time to let it go. But Amsterdam, the idea of Jewish vulnerability, I think that’s a central issue that I think we have to expand on and talk about.

Yossi: The difference between powerlessness and vulnerability.

Donniel: That is the issue. And, you know, on the one hand, as I go, I’m worried that as Israelis disconnect from the world, they’re also going to stop feeling that the world is a conversant, is someone who they have to talk to. And I’m frightened of the shutting down of that conversation, of what happens when the world is all, there’s nowhere for me to go. And therefore, anytime anybody in the world talks to me, they’re, you know, Amsterdam is the model. What do you want? Look at Amsterdam. You know, this is them, when it wasn’t Christian and it wasn’t left and it wasn’t progressive, this was Islamic fundamentalism. That’s really the focus.

Yossi: Right, but, yes, but let’s look at Europe for a moment because this is a really complicated moment, mostly about Europe itself. This isn’t so much about us in the end. We pulled our people out, we’re back home. Europe has to live with this situation. And look at what’s happened here. Europe has created an atmosphere that is in large part a response or an attempt to atone for its sins in the Holocaust and colonialism. And it now has this very substantial Muslim population, which has not embraced the European post-Holocaust ethos of atonement to the Jews, quite the opposite. And so post-Holocaust atonement Europe has now become the home of active anti-Semitism coming from the Muslim world.

Now, what can Europe do with that? It’s dealing with so many internal contradictions. We have to get it right with the Jews. That’s, of course, that’s a given. We also have to get it right with the Muslims. But what happens if you can’t? You can’t square that circle. And that’s where Europe is right now. And this is again, primarily, this is not a Jewish dilemma. It’s not our problem anymore. This is a European problem.

Donniel: So I hear you. It’s a little beyond my pay grade, but, and I hear you. I hear you. It is a serious dilemma. And if you look at the way the stories are being reported, the desire to paint this more as a response to an Israeli provocation and to belittle some of the anti-Semitic features are a way of pushing this problem further down the road. And that never is a helpful and healthy way of dealing with an issue.

Yossi: And even Dutch officials initially denied the identity of the rioters. “We don’t yet know.” Really? You don’t.

Donniel: You see that dance, like we, when we see that dance, we know where it comes from.

But let’s move back to this, the distinction between or this notion of Jewish vulnerability as distinct from, what did we call it? Jewish victimhood?

Yossi: Powerlessness.

Donniel: Powerless, powerlessness. Because I want to move to our North American friends and maybe it also applies to our British friends, and Australian, where, you know, and in many ways paradoxically, even to to Jews who live in Amsterdam itself, who don’t experience, they don’t experience the levels of fear that certain Jews in France feel or, et cetera. These attacks were never, almost, are rarely directed towards them. But principally, let’s talk.

Yossi: I think the atmosphere there is changing since these attacks.

Donniel: That could be. That could be. Too soon to know. But let’s leave that as such.

But in North America, I, you know, I think that Amsterdam is both, like when you look at Amsterdam, I think it could help us understand part of what’s happening in North America. Because in North America, there is no Amsterdam. There are no mobs running through the streets, hunting for Jews to this degree. There are, in campuses, and even that is now being reigned in very significantly as a result of a lack of Jewish powerlessness.

Jews have responded. Jews are responding. And whether it is a Republican or a Democratic administration, there is a complete rejection, both our influence and a rejection of this form of practice. This doesn’t happen in the streets.

But Amsterdam is the fear. When you hear Jews talking about the changes that are taking place in America today, it’s the fear that this might become a norm. And I think the greatest fear that we face right now, even though I might think it’s unfounded, is that we Jews in North America, and I said we because I have this complex dual identity and a dual citizenship, but Jews in North America since the 70s have lived in a remarkable time where we were the only American minority exempt from discrimination in a certain form, sense.

You know it was there, but one of the strange things about America is that it is a country of immigrants in so many different, it’s a nation of nations, so many different ethnic identities, and every group to some degree is persecuted. And for four decades, five decades, the Jews were outside of that story. And as a result, Jews were just not used to it. Like we lost a core Jewish defense mechanism. Like we don’t even know how to fight back. It’s just, we don’t need to do that anymore.

Yossi: Donniel, you know, it’s unbelievable that there’s such a deep psychological paradox here in that the generations that followed the Holocaust, half the Jewish people lives in North America. These generations, they forgot the most basic Jewish skills of survival, the most basic Jewish responses to threat after the Holocaust. That’s an extraordinary paradox.

Donniel: I don’t know if they forgot, but they raised children who, they succeeded, in North America, in many ways, what Israel wanted a guarantee for Jews, North America guaranteed. It brought Jews security. There was discrimination in the 30s and the 40s, the 50s, the 60s. There were quotas, there were places we couldn’t go. But it reached a point where America, as home for Jews, was more home than for other minorities because discriminating against us was just unacceptable. It reminded you of the echo of, there was nothing worse than anti-Semitism.

And I think part of the challenge that North American Jews are facing is things have changed, but it is not the enormity of the danger that we now face, but the fact that we’re confronting a destabilization or a vulnerability that we’re not used to. We’re vulnerable now. Now, it doesn’t mean that we’re in danger and it doesn’t mean that pogroms are about to happen, but there is an experience of vulnerability and when, just like in Israeli—when do we feel vulnerable? When our kids are at war? When does an American Jew feel vulnerable? When your kids are in campus. Like they’re vulnerable. The world out there is not as safe and we don’t know, we don’t have the language yet to deal with the difference between vulnerability and a profound lack of safety. They’re not the same, but they get conflated and Amsterdam becomes the model for this.

Yossi: I think you’re right that it’s hard to imagine an Amsterdam-like event happening on that scale in North America. But what is happening is a much smaller scale of the Jew hunt, and it’s playing out these days in Brooklyn. And it’s been going on the last few years aimed at Charedim and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. And every week, there’s another incident of, and sometimes it’s seemingly petty. I just saw a clip the other day of someone on a motorcycle driving by and knocking off the kippah from someone’s head. Sometimes it’s a physical assault that lands the victim in the hospital. But it’s all happening on a scale that’s still psychologically, quote, “manageable.” It isn’t yet, and again, the fact that it’s Europe just magnifies the enormity of the event.

And it’s interesting how Jews around the world reacted to Amsterdam pretty much the same way. You know, you didn’t see a big distinction between the Israeli response and the diaspora response. And in that sense, it also brings us back to October 7th where there was really virtual unanimity in our emotional responses.

Donniel: You know, if there was any, if I had any inclination, and now I’m happy that I did as well, but if I had an initial inclination to want to talk about Amsterdam, it’s my desire to want to make distinctions between life in Israel, life in Amsterdam, France, United States, Canada, campuses, non-campuses, and we could add Borough Park into the story because you’re right, it’s when everything gets conflated and when the world becomes flat and identical that Amsterdam, and we use the words pogrom, right? So October 7th was a pogrom.

Then we use the word a pogrom for Amsterdam, when, at the end of the day, it was terrible, but five people were injured. I don’t want to, again, I could experience the terror of the people, but then we have languages of pogroms on campuses. Have you heard those words?

So when we have a poverty of words to deal with antisemitism, to deal with the fact that we’re vulnerable, we lose our ability to both live in the world and even understand reality, and even more complicated, to deal effectively with the challenges that we’re facing. Because when everything is a pogrom and everyone is on the same level, we overdo, we use, like when I was a tankist in the tank corps, we used to say if a problem can’t be solved with a five pound hammer, it should be solved with a 10 pound hammer. And if not, you know, it’s like that’s, it’s like, just go, and it’s all pogroms.

There’s differences. We need words. We need different words. We Jews and this, we are feeling vulnerable. Israelis, the world doesn’t feel as safe. And I think for Jews, it doesn’t feel as safe. But we’re not in 1935. Israel is not in the same place. All of Europe, even Amsterdam, Jews aren’t in the same place as Israelis were. And the same thing for North America, so instead of, some will say Amsterdam is what’s coming. And the other possibility is to look at Amsterdam and to make distinctions and give thanks for both the power we have and the communities that we’re living in and come up with more nuanced, sophisticated, and intelligent responses. Cause if we’re gonna defeat antisemitism or contain it, it’s not going to happen by conflating every event. It’s going to require some nuances.

But Yossi, last word on this issue, please.

Yossi: Yeah, I so much appreciated what you just said, Donniel. We need to take a step back and look at our emotional responses to Amsterdam. Because what Amsterdam did was, there’s a great Hebrew term, and I don’t know if there’s an English analogy, we were mutzaf, we were overwhelmed, flooded. Literally, mutzaf is flooded. We were overwhelmed by the Jew hunt in Europe on the eve of Kristallnacht. And that initial response was justified. It’s certainly understandable, but that can’t remain our permanent response. A more mature response is to say, okay, that’s where this event caught me initially. I understand that. And it was a justified initial response. I can’t stay in that response.

For my own sake, for my own equilibrium, for my own ability to navigate an increasingly complicated world for Jews and to be able to use my power judiciously in my self-defense. And you are right, Donniel. If everything is a pogrom, in the end, nothing is a pogrom. In the same way that if everything in the world is a Holocaust, then ultimately Gaza becomes a Holocaust. And then you lose the protection of…

Donniel: Right, then you just have panicking and we use our extensive power to, you know, just going, running in circles. And, Yossi, thank you.

Yossi: Thank you.

Donniel: And, you know, while we’re talking about Jewish vulnerability, today is still day 403. And we are vulnerable in the sense that we haven’t been able to bring our family home. And today, another four soldiers, I was looking at their pictures, beautiful, beautiful kids were killed in Jabalia. And there’s a real war going on there. So Jewish vulnerability is, maybe the myth that we’re not vulnerable is just that. It’s just a myth. But you should be well, and we should all be well. Thank you, Yossi.