About

Thoughtful debate elevates us all. In For Heaven’s Sake, 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 future of Zionism in Israel and on the global stage.

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.

Israel at War – Believe it or Not 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 our podcast, For Heaven’s Wake, Israel at War, day 543, 59 hostages alive and dead still in Gaza.

Normally, we land on the topic that we’re going to speak about within two minutes. And we ask ourselves, what’s the most important thing going on right now? And what do we need to talk about? But in our conversation yesterday, we didn’t know what to do. We had no idea which issue we should pick, because there’s a convergence of absurdity in our experience in Israel, and we were going from point to point, sometimes we were crying, sometimes we were laughing. We didn’t even know where we were until it dawned on us that that’s actually our theme.

Our theme is the absurdity. It’s the absurdity of our current reality. And so we decided to call today’s episode, believe it or not, we’re calling it “Believe It or Not.” That’s where I feel Israelis are. You meet Israelis today, they’re actually laughing all the time. The social media, the onslaught of humor, we’re literally plotzing. How do you say plotzing in English?

Yossi: Exploding. We’re exploding.

Donniel: We’re exploding. We’re looking and we’re saying, did you hear? Did you hear? So what we wanna do today is each one of us picked a number of believe-it-or-nots. And the criteria to make it into our list of the Donniel-Yossi-believe-it-or-not book for the day, and it actually changes per hour, is number one, it had to have an absurd, surreal dimension to it.

But the second one is that, our job is not to humor you, even though part of me feels that if I could actually make you feel good in a conversation about Israel, that’s dayenu. That’s like a real major achievement right now.

Yossi: Even if it means laughing at Israel’s absurdities.

Donniel: Exactly. Thank you. Exactly. But in order to make it onto our list, criteria one was absurdity. Criteria two is that this absurdity actually has significant ramifications that we need to talk about. And so on each one of them, we’re welcome to our Israel, ladies and gentlemen, in Israel that frankly, I never in my wildest nightmares, dreams. I never thought I would be living in an Israel like this. Part of me doesn’t understand it. Part of me is amazed by it. Part of me is mourning it. Part of me is incredulous. Welcome to our world of absurdity in which there’s no singular issue that is more important than the absurdity itself.

And so Yossi, you have a general feeling about this comedy of absurdities.

Yossi: I noted a number of Yiddishisms that crept into your introduction. And that’s actually very much a reflection of how Israelis deal with absurdity. When we’re confronted with absurdity, we tend to lapse into Yiddishisms. And it’s true not only for Israelis of Ashkenazi origin, also of Mizrahi origin.

And the metaphor that I was thinking about is also drawn from Yiddish culture. And that’s the mythical village of Chelm. In Yiddish culture there’s this, which actually Chelm is a real village in Poland, but in Yiddish culture Chelm was turned into this place where everyone is a fool, but they all think of themselves as wise. So the jokes are about the wise men of Chelm.

And from time to time Israel is compared, the state of Israel is compared to Chelm in our discourse. That has never been more true than this moment.

Donniel: So Yossi, in the spirit of Chelm, let me tell you my first absurdity. In the state of Israel, one of the most important jobs for our most basic survival is the person who runs the Shin Bet. These are people beyond reproach. These are people who we know we are alive because of the work they do. These are some of the most serious people in Israeli society. They’re our greatest heroes. They transcend politics. There’s something remarkable, scary about these people, but also remarkable about them.

And in Israel, there’s very little critique of the Shin Bet because we know that we walk every day because of the work and are able to walk around with some degree of safety because of the work that they do. In the history of Israel, the head of the Shin Bet has never been fired. Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet was fired and…

Yossi: Well, he’s still technically the head because the court has not allowed the Prime Minister to go through with it.

Donniel: Okay, so he’s not yet the former, he’s potentially the former, but today’s first absurdity is the last head of the Shin Bet, the justification for firing him is that the prime minister lost confidence in him. The new headline in Israel is the prime minister has lost confidence in the head of the Shin Bet again. So we have now two, again, he’s lost confidence.

Now this losing confidence, we spoke about this issue of Bar, why he was fired. He, you know, he actually deserved to be fired, but he deserved to be fired for his failure on October 7th. He actually said, I’m going to resign at the right moment.

Yossi: He deserved to be fired on October 8th.

Donniel: On October 8th. But the dangers were so great, and since then his successes have been nothing short of remarkable on the work that he’s done. And all of a sudden Netanyahu loses confidence in him after Qatar-Gate as we spoke about last week. But then this new head of the Shin Bet, who hasn’t had a chance, this is a hero of Israel, a former head of the Navy. People said it was a strange hire, but it doesn’t matter. And then all of a sudden, he’s fired again. Two Shin Bet directors are fired because our prime minister has lost confidence in one for the work he’s done and the other one, he has lost confidence in him for the work that he has not yet done.

So Yossi…?

Yossi: Well the reason for why Netanyahu has lost confidence in him is because Netanyahu’s far-right allies essentially vetoed the appointment because it came out almost immediately after Netanyahu announced his appointment, that Sharvit, the former head of the Navy, had dared to demonstrate against the judicial policies of the government.

There was a wonderful cartoon in one of the Israeli papers that showed Netanyahu yelling at Sharvit saying, how dare you demonstrate wrapped in the Israeli flag?

Donniel: There was a picture of him at a demonstration with a flag.

Yossi: Yeah, yeah, so one of the comments that I saw on social media, you mentioned how Israeli social media is running with these absurdities, was from someone who tweeted, “Good morning friends, who is the head of the Shin Bet today?”

Now, bear in mind that the announcement of Sharvit’s appointment happened at 7 a.m. and by 11 a.m. he was already fired.

Donniel: Not formally, but the announcement was that he was going to be.

Yossi: So he was going to be appointed and then by 11 a.m. the announcement the appointment was rescinded. And so that’s the absurdity that we’re living in at this moment.

Donniel: And this is a Shin Bet direct, like even a statement, who’s the head of the Shin Bet today? Like that’s fine if Lichtenstein, I don’t know, or Monaco. You know, who’s the head of your security? Yes.

Yossi: Oh, Lichtenstein, you mean the country. I thought you were talking about some Israeli guy named Lichtenstein.

Donniel: It’s like, but in Israel, who’s the head of the Shin Bet today, that we even speak in those terms…

Yossi: Right. It is a dismantling of our most essential institutions.

Donnie: Sacred institutions. And for what? Like what’s the grounds? Like let’s talk. Should the fact that he demonstrated against judicial reform disqualify him from being head of the Shin Bet?

Yossi: It depends what you consider a measure of betrayal to this country. Obviously from where you and I are sitting, that is a measure of his patriotism, of his deep concern for the country. Is Netanyahu now telling us that only those who support the policies of the government can be heads of the Shin Bet?

Now, it doesn’t matter which government. He’s establishing a new norm in the state of Israel. We have never inquired into the political tendencies of the heads of the Shin Bet, of the Mossad, of the IDF.

Those positions have been beyond politics. Now of course any Israeli will have political orientation. This is a highly politicized society. You can’t avoid having strong political positions because there’s no distance between the life of a citizen and the impact of the political decisions, which is not necessarily true in other countries. In other countries, you’re able to maintain a certain distance. Here, the impact is immediate, so everyone has strong political opinions. So, Netanyahu is introducing a new norm.

Donniel: That’s what’s very scary, Yossi.

Yossi: Beneath the absurdity, this is actually a higher absurdity.

Donniel: This is not even absurd. Here we move from absurdity to tragedy. And a number of Netanyahu’s attack dogs said it explicitly. One of them said, What? There are no qualified people who are loyalists to us?”

Really? We’re now governments are going to pick chief of staffs, head of the Shin Bet, head of the Mossad, on the basis of loyalties? Or the head of the police—loyalty? This is going to be our issue. This is what we’ve descended to here from this absurdity. I actually became profoundly frightened. Profoundly, profoundly frightened.

Yossi: The other day I was at one of the demonstrations at the Knesset, I don’t even remember what the issue we were demonstrating about was. Was it protecting the Supreme Court, protecting the integrity of the Shin Bet? Whatever it was, we were there, hostages. So we were demonstrating and somebody held a sign. It was so touching, which is, and the slogan was, “Loyalty to the kingdom and not to the king.” It sounds better in Hebrew, “Le-mamlacha ve-lo la-melech.”

And that has deep Biblical resonance. It’s drawing on the experience of the prophets who were confronting the corrupt ancient kings of Israel. And the prophets were saying, no, no, we have loyalty to the kingdom, the kingdom of God, the totality of Israel. We don’t have loyalty to the king. And what a radical idea that was 3,000 years ago in the ancient world to stand up and say, I don’t have loyalty to the king, only the kingdom.

Donniel: Well, you know, Mark Twain has a quote someone had said to me in the midst of this. “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and supporting the government only when it deserves it.” That was your line.

Yossi: Beautiful, beautiful. And yeah, and that comes from the prophets, that sensibility.

Donniel: Yeah, so Yossi, so like here we started with absurdity and we went to tragedy. What’s what’s next on your absurd list?

Yossi: Well, you mentioned Qatar-Gate, which is in some ways the ultimate Netanyahu scandal. Qatar-Gate, just to briefly review, several of Netanyahu’s closest advisors are now under arrest for allegedly receiving payment from Qatar, which is the same country that has funded Hamas, that supported the October 7th massacre, that funds Al Jazeera, which is the greatest purveyor of hostility to Israel of any medium in the world, worldwide.

And Qatar, as we know, operates by buying influence in important places. You know, initially I used the word allegedly, that several of his key advisors were allegedly receiving money from Qatar. We actually know it wasn’t alleged. We know that at least two of his closest advisors were working for Qatar’s PR campaign a few years ago. This is something that we’ve never experienced before.

And I think I mentioned last week that former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that if he had discovered that one of his closest aides was being paid by Belgium, which is not a hostile country, the first thing he would have done would be, throw this person out. The second thing would have been to invite the Shin Bet to investigate his entire staff.

Now not only has Netanyahu not done that, but he has rushed to embrace them, to denounce the Shin Bet, which opened the investigation, now has passed the investigation into the police as part of a deep state effort to unseat the government. Now this has so many levels of absurdity that I think we need to unpack this.

First of all, the police. To accuse the police, which is under the control of the far-right minister Ben Gvir, of being part of a deep state attempt to unseat the government, is an accusation that is so bizarre. And yet at the same time, one has to say that the fact that there still are honest police, courageous police, who will investigate this despite Ben Gvir’s near total control over the police force means that there still is some remnant of integrity left in our institutions. So that gives me a bit of courage.

The other level of absurdity here is invoking the language of the deep state. Netanyahu is obviously borrowing a language that has worked for Trump. It’s worked for Trump’s ability to energize his base to deeply divide America. I don’t believe that the accusation of deep state has resonance here. And for several reasons. One is because I think Israelis understand that any functioning society has a deep state. What is a deep state? A deep state is a civil service that is independent and that maintains the stability of a society during times of political change and especially during times of political turmoil.

So the only question about a deep state is whether it is loyal not to the king but to the kingdom. And we know our so-called deep state. We know that we have civil servants who could be making enormous salaries in the private sector, in the high-tech sector, and have made tremendous sacrifices to serve the country. And we know these people. So invoking the deep state in a Trumpian sense, which is to say, questioning their patriotism, it doesn’t resonate here.

So one of the absurdities that I see here is that Netanyahu, who always had a fine instinct for what works, what resonates with ordinary Israelis, is losing it. And when I listen to him these days, I feel he’s increasingly a man not only out of touch with Israeli society, but in some sense, out of touch with his own better self.

Donniel: You know, Yossi, as you’re talking and we move from the absurdity to the tragedy, what happens if he’s succeeding in changing Israeli society? That if your assessment of his conversation as being out of touch, what happens if he’s actually educating and he’s setting the grounds? Listen, Trump did the same thing. If you talk about it enough, there is a core base of people for whom the only political question is not the kingdom, it’s the king, because the king is critical for the kingdom. And that king is Netanyahu. That’s the just-Netanyahu camp.

Here it is, you’re creating a world in which any negative press that he has is never his fault. He went from his trial for corruption to testify in the police. That was his day. Somebody wrote also a tweet. This is the Prime Minister’s day. A day in the life of the Prime Minister of Israel. He goes and testifies for his closest aide, who he’s petrified for some reason is going to become a state’s witness. And that they’re somehow going to coerce him into being a state’s witness. What does he have to say? What is he frightened about?

Immediately after leaving his testimony, after finishing his testimony, he goes on social media and says there was nothing, this is all a fabrication. He’s basically, he’s lining up his base to be at war not with Hamas, not with Iran. His base is at war with the institutions of the country or anybody who is not, Bibi the king is most essential for the kingdom. That’s where this irony or absurdity is becoming a tragedy. I’m like, what is it going to mean for our country and how do we heal and what do we do with all of this? It’s a very critical issue.

Yossi: See, the tragedy is that he’s managed to really corrupt his base. We could say to debase, debase the base. And we now see in every poll 30% of Israelis support Netanyahu no matter what. And it reminds me of Trump’s famous or infamous saying from his first presidential campaign, that he could go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot people and his base will continue to support him.

And Netanyahu actually is doing the equivalent to Israeli institutions of shooting people. He is targeting one institution after another. He’s targeting the most basic ethos of this country. And now he’s sullying the most basic integrity of the prime minister’s office.

Donniel: Yossi, if I could go now to another absurdity, but one in which I can’t separate between the absurdity and the tragedy. There’s no smiles and there’s no Yiddishisms here. But it’s something… It was a story that I read in the Times of Israel that wasn’t detailed in many outlets. And that’s the story of Jinba village Friday night. In Jinba village in Samaria. 20 members of what we come to call now Hilltop Youth went in and attacked, beat, severely beat numerous people in Jinba village. There was nobody there to protect them.

But actually there was. Because it turns out the army was there. But the army, who’s responsible for law and order in Judea and Samaria allowed these attacks to happen. And when the attackers left, then the army came in and what did they do? They arrested something like 20 members of the Jinba village. They didn’t arrest the Hilltop, or 10 or 15, including teenagers.

And then what’s the absurdity? Turns out, who is the army? Who shows up? These are a rapid response force and the army constituted by settlers themselves. So now I’m thinking about this. I’m thinking about when we had similar events in the past. I’m thinking about the outrage in Israeli society. I’m thinking about the former head of the military unit in charge today in Samaria, who, when he resigned, spoke about the fact that there is a significant danger of settler violence and the job of the army was to be the holders of the integrity.

Yossi: General Fuchs.

Donniel: General Fuchs. Our job is to protect people. He’s come, and here, there was always a problem that our Israelis don’t care about what’s happening to Palestinians, Judea and Samaria. That’s a long story that we’ve spoken about. But here it is. I just read this, and you know, when I speak to Rana, or I speak to other Israeli Palestinians, they’re saying, what are you so surprised about? This is happening all the time, but still, this story of the army allowing this, they were on site. Other times we say why did it take you so long? They’re on site, they allow it to happen and then they arrest the people who were beaten.

This tragedy of what’s happening to us, I have nothing to smile about, but the absurdity of this situation of a, and we know the police force in charge of Judea and Samaria is now under the control of a police officer who’s under trial for implementing those policies that Ben Gvir would love him for allow him to advance.

We know that the chief of police of Judea and Samaria is under indictment for adopting policies which violate the law merely because he believes this is what the minister wants. We now have a military in which the person who dared to disagree was fired, so now we have a political hack as the Minister of Defense. At least to his credit, the current chief of staff came and suspended and is putting on trial some of these military figures who were standing aside. But still. We’re breaking every single standard here, Yossi.

Yossi: Yeah, yeah, that’s really the cumulative impact of all the absurdities we’ve noted. The tragedy that’s playing out in Judea and Samaria is that in the past, we could blame the inaction on Ben Gvir’s influence on the police, but now it’s spreading into the army. And there’s a contagion that’s very difficult to contain. This is something really you kind of touched on earlier, that, what if Netanyahu is succeeding? What if he really is succeeding in undermining our institutions? The army has always been the last refuge of Israeli consensus. That’s the people’s army, and it’s a cross-section of Israeli society. What happens if that too is being undermined?

You know, I think back to a seminal moment in Israeli history, 1994, when Dr. Baruch Goldstein of the settlement of Kiryat Arba went into the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the Machpelah, and opened fire on a group of Muslim worshippers. 29 people were killed. There were wall-to-wall denunciations, including in the settlement movement. I remember an editorial of the settlement magazine, Nikudah, that said, quoting the Torah, “Our camp must be pure.” And repudiating this. This is not us. This is a netazar. You remember that phrase? This is a foreign body. Well, that foreign body now is sitting in control of the police and it’s beginning to infiltrate the army.

Donniel: Yeah, right, it’s a foreign body. So this level of absurdity, you know, we picked three. We have another 20. But I feel that not only are we gonna depress our audience, I feel like I can’t handle anymore. But it’s just, we’re trying to get through on these crazy days. But if I could maybe end with, I’m trying to figure out for myself, like, so, Donniel, what does this mean to you? With all of this, like what’s happening? How do you make sense of it?

Yossi: So Donniel, Donniel, what does this all mean to you? How do you make sense of it? What’s happening? Aren’t you glad I asked?

Donniel: I decided that I was going to interview myself. Yes, Yossi, I figured I’ll interview myself. But it’s, I guess I’m thinking about it because this list and we could go on and on and on and. I actually, you know, in all of this comedy, it’s not a comedy of errors. It’s this comedy of absurdity and corruption.

Yossi: It’s comedy of malign intent.

Donniel: Of malign intent, I actually realized, you know, as you said, you know, when you were speaking about the demonstration, you were out demonstrating, you didn’t even know what you were demonstrating for, just didn’t matter. It’s like, because you could demonstrate for any, just sign me up, I’m going. So like, we’re going to demonstrate. We could demonstrate and we know it’s not going to help. The government is strong. They have their 68 seats. They’re going to pass whatever legislation they’re going to pass. And they’re going to create new cultural norms in our country.

But you know what gives me hope, Yossi, at this crazy moment? Is that worst case scenario, we’re now a year and a half away from elections.

Yossi: That’s a very bad scenario.

Donniel: No, but a lot of these things, there’s a lot of evil and harm that could happen. But in our country, that passes quickly. And a lot of the changes that are taking place are slow. They’re not going to corrupt all the police. As you said, there’s still people there. There’s still decent civil servants. The new chief of staff, who they so-called try to pick, is actually a man of courage and principle. He’s not taking, he’s refusing to politicize the army, he’s not playing the game. If you look at him, he’s also scary looking, he’s not playing the game. Like Herzi Halevi was like, let’s go back to Yiddish. He was like a nebuch, he looked nebuch. He wasn’t, he was a hero, but this guy comes from the tank corps, he looks like, you don’t start up with this guy. He’s a strong figure and he’s making it, there’s people here.

They’re going to pass legislations. They’ll fire maybe the next… Netanyahu will lose confidence in the next head of the Shabbat and the next head until he finds some yes person. I don’t know what. And they might fire the Attorney General and they could pass this law or that law, but at the end of the day, elections are coming. And the critical question our country is going to face is who do we vote for?

Every poll says that the country is going to reject Netanyahu. But I’m not sure. You never know. But as these absurdities rise and social media, when you’re laughing at the government, you’re not critiquing them anymore. It’s comedic criticism. That’s the most deadly. It’s like they’re becoming caricatures.

Yossi: Right, it’s a great insight.

Donniel: I don’t see any chance of Netanyahu. And that’s what Bennett is not a caricature, or whoever it is, they’re becoming caricatures. And in that environment, I think our country is going to face a choice. And if we choose for this absurdity to continue, then we have a serious issue that we have to struggle with. I think part of what we have to do is to stop, you know, our claiming that every single decision is an existential danger.

I’m horrified and aghast. Palestinian life right now in Judea and Samaria is in danger and is not being protected. There’s real consequences to what we’re talking about here. And there’s real consequences to the conversation and the schisms within Israeli society. I’m not belittling them.

But in a year and a half, and there’s even been a lot of conversations saying that because of the Haredi vote or the Haredi exemption bill from military service that the elections might even be at the beginning of 2020. Either way, the sovereign of this country is going to have their vote again.

And instead of mourning every single decision that the government is making as the end of democracy, dictatorship, the end of Israel, no, there’s absurdity with profound, profound consequences that we have to demonstrate and fight against and try to limit.

But at the end of the day, an election day is going to come. That’s going to be the choice. Do you want to continue this absurdity or do you want to go back to a new or go back to telling a different story about our people. Do we want Chelm or do we want Chelm to remain a city in Poland, a mythic city in Poland? Yossi, last words?

Yossi: The most hopeful takeaway that I have from our conversation is that would-be autocrats can’t survive ridicule. And this has become a government of Chelm. And Israelis don’t want to be governed by buffoons, not at a time of existential threat. And never, really. We don’t like to think that we’re being led by fools.

Donniel: Right, Netanyahu was always, his greatest support is he’s the serious guy. He’s the guy who you want on your side when push comes to shove.

Yossi: Yes, that’s right, that’s right. And what he’s lost is his gravitas. And you can’t survive that. So what gives me hope, Donniel, is not that elections are in a year and a half, but that this government is collapsing under the weight of its own absurdity. And I don’t know what the trigger will be, but I believe that there will be some event, some absurdity that’s one step too far, which this government, even for us, which this government loses its legitimacy, maybe even for some part of its diehard base of its supporters.

Donniel: Yossi. Okay, from an Israel of absurdity to some levels of hope, we don’t know. But in the midst of this absurdity, this is the government which also has to bring 59 of our family members home. They have to bring them home. And hopefully there’s some conversation that’s progressing.

In any event, my friends, from our humorous, depressing conversation, this is, for heaven’s sake, Israel at War, day 543. 59 family members not yet home.