The following is a transcript of Episode 99 of the For Heaven’s Sake Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Donniel: Hi, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is For Heaven’s Sake, our special edition, Israel at War — Day 58. Our theme for today is An Enemy Within. I don’t know how many of you are listeners, are familiar with the name Yuval Kestelman.

We want to talk today about Yuval Kestelman and the circumstances surrounding his death and what it means to Israeli society. Now, many of you might not have heard of the name Yuval Kestelman, so I’ll remind you. Yuval was an Israeli citizen who, like many of us, carries a gun, especially in times of danger, in order to protect Israelis from terrorist activities.

And Yuval, last week when two terrorists were shooting at a bus station in the outskirts of Jerusalem, ran out of his car, put his life in danger, engaged with the terrorists and helped to kill them. But two soldiers who were also participating in neutralizing the terrorists, mistook Yuval as a third terrorist and started to fire in his direction.

At that moment, Yuval realized their mistake, went down on his knees, raised his hand, took out, dropped his gun, took out his Israeli ID card, started to shout, I’m an Israeli, but to no avail. And he was shot and he was murdered. When I first heard of his death, I said, oh, it was a mistaken, you know, friendly fire, the fog of combat. 

And any of us who walk around with a gun, we’re both committed to engage terrorists, but were also very frightened of being killed by other civilians who might not have the discipline or might not have the control necessary. In this case, Yuval was killed by soldiers. But he was killed not by accident, as was first reported.

He was on his knees with his hands above his head. According to the Israeli code of ethic, this is clearly an instance in which deadly force is not permitted and is against the law. It is reminiscent for all of us of the Elor Azaria case of many years ago, when Elor Azaria summarily executed a terrorist who was wounded. But in this case, the same act, but it wasn’t directed against a terrorist, it was directed against a fellow Israeli.

When we go to war, all of our attention is now on achieving our goals, on hopefully destroying Hamas, on keeping our soldiers safe, on fighting the war within the guidelines of international law and morality of war. 

But it is precisely at this moment that very often the war serves as a smokescreen to profound challenges that exist within our society. Challenges that we don’t have the luxury to say, oh, let’s deal with this tomorrow. The blood of Yuval Kestelman is shouting and we have to talk about it. Yossi, how do you frame and understand what happened?

Yossi: Donniel, this is a really tough one, because this goes to the heart of a moral corruption that has taken root here. And I largely blame the government for the erasure of our norms. And you mentioned the incident of Elor Azaria. I think that that’s the right framing for understanding this moment. 

Elor Azaria was a soldier stationed in Hebron. His unit was attacked by a terrorist wielding a knife. The terrorist was wounded, neutralized, was on his knees, bound. And Elor Azaria executed him. And the country divided between those who regarded him as a hero, and he was adopted by the leaders of the right as a hero, Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman at the time was defense minister. And those like the IDF chief of staff at the time, Gadi Eisenkot, who declared Elor Azaria a criminal and put him on trial. 

And as soon as you erase those norms, you’re opening the way for a certain wildness to enter into Israeli society that will then have consequences that are beyond our control. Now emotionally I understand those Israelis who say terrorists should not be allowed to leave the scene of the crime alive, because sooner or later the odds are that they’ll be exchanged in some future deal.

But what we saw happening on Thursday is the consequence of the erasure of those norms. And so this is one of those seminal moments when we need to face the consequences of what it means to begin loosening basic ethical principles that always defined our rules of conduct.

And in the past there were always deviations, but they were regarded as deviations. What’s happened now is that the deviations are being adopted by a large part of the right as the new norm. And this is the great danger that’s facing us.

Donniel: You know, I wonder, Yossi, if it wasn’t Yuval Kestelman, but it was Mustafa or Abdullah or Muhammad. I wonder if it actually even was a terrorist. In what world, Yossi, are we allowed to execute people who are on their knees and raising their hands? In what world are we allowed to emotionally give in to whatever sentiment people have that they’re going to decide that we don’t want terrorists to leave a scene? What have we become? 

Now, the reason why it’s important for us to concentrate on the case of Yuval, because precisely now we might be open because it’s not Mustafa or Abdullah or Muhammad. Maybe people are willing to ask, what are we doing?

Otherwise, it wouldn’t have even been an issue. The soldiers would have been celebrated as heroes. Yossi, there is something going on that has been going on for a while since the case of Elor Azaria. And I fear that in the context of war, it’s getting even worse, because you’re right. This government has mainstreamed. I don’t think it’s just started now in the last year. This phenomena is not a Ben Gvir phenomena. The only difference is that Ben Gvir is not prosecuting these cases. 

But there is something happening that when the gates of war open up, when the gates of killing open up, what when you are engaged in battle, what are the standards you use, and in what universe, Yossi, can a man, terrorist or not, on his knees with his hands above his head be executed? In what world is that considered a morally legitimate act? Or in what Israeli universe? In what Jewish world?

Yossi: In the Israeli universe, in the Israeli universe that is now in power in Israel. And you know when you said earlier that this isn’t related to Ben Gvir, I think it is. It’s not only a Ben Gvir phenomenon, but the fact is that the soldier who executed Yuval Kestelman has his deep roots in what we call the Hilltop Youth. 

The Hilltop Youth is the farthest fringe of the settlement movement, the most violent fringe, and Ben Gvir and Smotrich are their representatives in government. What happened over the last year was that by legitimizing the Hilltop Youth, bringing them into the center of power, Netanyahu opened the door for what happened here on Thursday to be not just a deviation, but the new norm.

Donniel: You know, I could imagine some of our listeners saying to us, okay, here’s Donniel and Yossi, when they killed a Jew, now you have some moral outrage, now you know what’s going on, now you notice. People are going to say to us, where have you been these last 58 days? Or where have you been this last few years? How many injustices have you tolerated? How many murders have you allowed? Now that Yuval Kestelman is killed, now you’re waking up to the fact that you have a problem. 

And I agree with them. I specifically want to talk about Yuval because it is through Yuval that something can be put forth into a public discourse in Israel that if it wasn’t a Yuval, it would not be able to be put forth. And that’s the problem, Yossi. 

And there is something about a society which is in a state of war on a continuous basis, but it’s even deeper now that we’re in Gaza. You know and I know that before the ceasefire, we were not engaged in Israeli society in any conversation about the limits of the use of military power. Our primary goal was to win. Our primary goal was to try to win quickly. Our primary goal is to preserve our soldiers.

And under that framework, and it is, it’s a just war because it’s a war of self-defense. And in a war of self-defense, we know that civilians are killed. That was it. We had that conversation. We had the, we knew that there was a question and there was an answer. The answer is, in a just war in which people use civilians as shields, civilians are going to die and we have to pursue our war, period.

But now that we’re entering into the second stage, and I don’t want to deal now, and I appreciate it, I’m not getting into an extensive conversation about the war in Gaza. But there is a sense of, you know, Ecclesiastes speaks about a time to live, a time to die, there’s a time for everything. During war, it is a time in which killing is permitted, but it’s only permitted in self-defense.

It’s only permitted to the extent and in proportion to the danger that you face. You’re not allowed to enter into a domain of killing in which that becomes your norm. And when we see Israeli soldiers shooting someone who they thought is a terrorist on his knees with his hands up, it’s a symptom of something, Yossi, that exists within our society. I’m not saying it permeates our society. Unfortunately, this should not be a right-wing left-wing issue at all. It has nothing to do with a right-wing or a left-wing issue.

Yossi: Donniel, I’m not ready yet to take this conversation into the ethics of what’s happening or not happening in Gaza for several reasons. One is I think it requires a more serious conversation. We need to devote an episode, two episodes to that question. 

And also because I think that this is telling us something essential about our society. And I really appreciated when you said earlier, that if the innocent victim had not been a terrorist, but had been named Muhammad, had been a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who was a passerby, would this be a major issue of discussion in Israel today? And I think we both know the answer to that. 

So something has eroded in our much-celebrated defense of life, of the fact that we’re a society that values life. And you know, what I’ve always felt about Israeli society is that we’re not a model of democracy. We can’t be. A society that’s under permanent siege, permanent assault, can’t be a model of democratic norms. 

But what we have been a model of all these years is the struggle for democratic norms under near-impossible circumstances, conditions that would have defeated other nations in our place long ago. And what is being eroded, what we’re losing in this period, and it predates the Gaza war, is that commitment to struggling for democratic norms in the midst of unbearable assault. And what we saw happening there, that execution of a terrorist, is a kind of a template for what’s going wrong, what we’re losing in Israeli society. 

And there’s something here that the far right doesn’t understand about power. They don’t understand, you know, they celebrate power. Ben Gvir calls his party Jewish power. They don’t understand that the power of an embattled nation comes in large part from its moral credibility. Not among our enemies. Forget our enemies. Among our friends. And when this kind of thing happens, that’s what we stand to lose, and we end up eroding our power rather than augmenting it.

Donniel: I couldn’t agree, Yossi, with you more. And I think your articulation of the notion of struggling is also critical. Even in the midst of war, it’s never about clear-cut answers. I wish it was. And it’s not about someone sitting in an armchair figuring out what you should do. The morality of a society is judged by the struggles it has, the questions it has. And I also agree with you, and I didn’t mean to do that, I’m not raising Gaza right now. And I agree with you, we have to.

But I was talking about more the discussion in Israel, the struggle. 

Yossi: Right, right. Right.

Donniel: Could be the army’s doing fine. I’m not getting into that. There is this sort of a smoke screen. There is no struggle. There is no conversation. There’s something happening. And this is not a right-wing, left-wing divide, but it is the particular feature of this right-wing government. And it’s not even Netanyahu, even though it is partially him too. And the way he responded to this event was simply

Yossi: It was a scandal, a scandal.

Donniel: It was an embarrassment. It was an embarrassment. I don’t even know if he knew, and if he knew, it was just, this was not his issue. Okay, so somebody got killed. Okay, so we used our power unjustly, and you’re right. Power intoxicates. The use of power in Israel is a necessary feature of our ability to survive. Power is a moral tool for us Jews here. Without power, we’re dead.

So we embrace power, but you have to struggle with it. You have to try to calculate how you use it, how you don’t use it. You know now, maybe some of our listeners know, but in Israel, it’s, you know, I have a gun. And every time I, I’m now taping from outside, I’m in the midst of a two-week trip in North America. By law, whenever I leave the country, you have to store your gun in a safe in the gun store. Usually it takes 30 seconds. You walk in, they take your gun, they register on the computer, they give you a piece of paper and you leave. 

Today it’s between a half hour to an hour exercise because the store is packed with hundreds of people buying guns. The country now has lowered the standards and I understand. Who wants to be in their house in a Nachal Oz or in a town where people are attacking you and you’re helpless? 

The meaning of Israel is that we don’t do helplessness. So Israelis are now all buying guns, buying guns en masse. You can’t even get them. There’s this long waiting list. So now though, but now this issue of struggling Yossi is becoming even more critical. I understand. I’ve had a gun since 1977. I wear it whenever I feel the terrorist’s dangers increase. I don’t do, as I’ve said, I don’t do victimhood. I’m not interested in being a victim. I’m not interested in people feeling so sorry for me. I want to defend myself. And it’s a natural Israeli instinct and Israelis are doing so. 

But if we are now arming Israelis at unprecedented levels and we’re not frightened of use of guns in mistakes, use of guns in crime, but what about the use of guns as an exercise of Jewish nationalism devoid of the struggle, Yossi, that you’re talking about?

This is what Yuval Kestelmann is teaching us. Beware right now, people, because it is not the same. And under the fog of war, something is changing.

Yossi: The divide in Israeli society today is whether Yuval Kestelman’s murder was a mistake or a crime. And listen to the language of how this is being debated. Listen to how Netanyahu responded to a question at his press conference. Mistakes happen. That’s life. 

Now think about what it means to relate to the execution of someone with his hands in the air as a mistake. Why is it a mistake? Because the soldier innocently thought that he was killing a terrorist, a terrorist who was no longer armed and who was surrendering. If you can’t define this as a crime, no matter who was killed, then we’re on a slippery slope. And then what happened to Yuval Kestelman, God forbid, is becoming the new norm and it will happen again and again.

Donniel: It’s precisely at these moments that a moral conversation is necessary. Yossi, we’re talking about this not because, we’re not newscasters. We’re not trying to inform people of something that happened. We’re not trying to cast blame at this or that moment.

It’s also possible that at the moment where you’re fighting a terrorist, you’re petrified and all your instincts aren’t in play. There are so many things that have to be taken into account. I’m not here trying to point blame at one individual or not. I haven’t spoken to them. I haven’t investigated, but I do know that if we determine that the essence of our Jewish moral aspirations, is to, on the one hand, embrace power, and at the other hand, to have to struggle with how we use it justly in some of the most impossible times. 

I want to tell you October 7th cannot be used as a vehicle to somehow immunize us from this moral conversation. I’m very frightened of that. Victimhood is dangerous, Yossi. It’s very, very dangerous. And I know we’re speaking for many of our listeners about something that they didn’t even know happened. 

But we’re talking about it as lovers of Israel because this is the essence of what Zionism means. This is what it means. How do you go to war and still concern yourself with these moral issues? How do we not allow the Yuval Kestelmans and whatever else might be, the killing of innocents under the fog of war and under the mistakes to be allowed to continue? 

This is simply unacceptable. This is not who I want to be. This, you know, and maybe a good place to end is, I think it was Ben Caspit, the journalist who said, we have to ask ourselves, what’s the lesson of October 7th? Is the lesson of October 7th that we will no longer be victims? There is no doubt that that’s the lesson. Is lesson of October 7th that we have to be much more careful about our preconceived notions? That’s absolutely the lesson. 

But the deepest lesson and the real horror of October 7th is that we encountered evil and we have to commit ourselves not to mirror that evil because evil is contagious, Yossi, it is.

This is For Heaven’s Sake—Israel at War—Day 58. A lot of things are happening and a lot of issues we need to struggle with. 

Major funding for For Heaven’s Sake is provided by the Diane and Guildford Glazer Foundation of Los Angeles because of our shared commitment to strengthen the connection between Jews in North America and Israel. 

This special edition of the war edition is sponsored by Nancy Connors, who is proud to be a member of the Shalom Hartman Institute Giving Society, because she relies on the Shalom Hartman Institute for vision and inspiration, and for helping in understanding and withstanding these challenging times. We thank them for enabling us to share our ideas with the world.  

For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what’s unfolding right now, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes or visit shalomhartman.org/israelatwar.