The following is a transcript of Episode 126 of the For Heaven’s Sake Podcast. 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 227.

For so much of the last seven months, Yossi, you and I have been talking together about whether Israel could win the war in Gaza. And part of it is what even winning means. And we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that and also complaining about strategies and giving voice to some of the frustrations of Israelis. And also, I think of our friends around the world. 

But a confluence of discussion, articles, actions, are raising an even more substantive issue. And that is not whether Israel could win the war, but whether Zionism could win after the war in Gaza. 

And it is for me personally, and I know for you, it is such a shocking question to ask. But we don’t get to pick the, technically we pick the subjects, but we don’t pick our subjects. 

Yossi: More often they pick us.

They pick us. And I’m not even talking about some of the issues going on in campuses, and I know you gave expression to, in a prior podcast, on your trip, how Israel itself has become such a negative word in so many of the campuses or places that you visited. 

But if just a cursory look at international newspapers, New York Times. Again, I don’t want to reduce the whole world to New York Times, but New York Times in particular this last week has now three articles, when, maybe I missed one, there might be four or five, which are speaking about a systemic change in Israeli society. This is not the Israeli society that we know. That’s the argument. 14,300 and something words. Maybe the only good part about it is that nobody is going to read that article. But I’m not discounting it. Articles which speak about how Israeli society is not the same and how we’re now being controlled by a far right, by ultra-nationalists, by settlers. Our soldiers are acting differently. 

Now, these aren’t discussions that are emanating out of the war per se, but there’s this overall conversation now about whether Israel, and consequently Zionism, is the Israel that we’ve known and that we have respected and accepted and embraced. 

And today, the prosecutor of the International Court recommends issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant. And comparing Netanyahu to Sinwar, and death, it’s like both, the war crimes. It’s just, I feel that there is an onslaught against Zionism and against Israel’s core, not political legitimacy. It’s not the political legitimacy. It’s much deeper than that. It’s a question of something fundamentally wrong. This whole movement. You know, and it’s more extreme. 

You know, the colonial stuff, you know, we have to deal with it, but that’s intellectually so, I find that so silly. We have to respond to it, but I don’t feel morally compelled in any way or intellectually moved by that. But we’re now in another place, Yossi. This war has picked up on a conversation that existed beforehand, the apartheid conversation, but it’s brought it to another place. And it’s not just in the press. Any one of us who are teachers in the Jewish community know how much angst there is amongst friends of Israel, amongst parents and grandparents about their children and grandchildren, the growth of anti-Zionist discourse within the Jewish community. 

So can Zionism survive? And our question is, it’s a double-sided question, and I know we’re gonna mix it up, but it’s both can Zionism survive as an analysis? And of course we believe it has to, but also how? So I never wanted to talk about this, you know? I never wanted to be in a position that I would have to talk about, can Zionism survive in the hearts of Jews? Could Zionism survive as something respected in the enlightened Western world? 

Yossi, sorry to dump this on you, but you agree to the topic. So.

Yossi: See, I, you have really not, over the years, not only not wanted to talk about anti-Zionism, but made a compelling case for why we shouldn’t be obsessed with anti-Semitism, that we, we focus all of our energies on the negative, and then there’s very little room left for developing a rich internal Jewish life and ideas.

And that was a very compelling argument until October 7th, and we’re in a new world now. And we can talk about two aspects of why Zionism is losing. And by the way, it’s just very interesting, and I’m using interesting in an absurdly neutral way, how quickly the critique of the legitimacy of the war segued to a critique of the legitimacy of the state of Israel, and segued immediately to a critique of the legitimacy of Zionism, the founding ideology of Israel. 

And so there are two ways, Donniel, that we could really unpack this. And I think we need to address both. There’s the external assault on the legitimacy of Zionism, which is gaining extraordinary momentum. And there are the internal processes within Israel and more broadly within certain parts of the Jewish diaspora as well, the right-wing part of the diaspora that are weakening us, I would say almost making it impossible for us to effectively meet this onslaught.

So, I’d like to talk just a little bit about the external, the external assault. I was at Stanford. I spoke there recently. And my wife was a graduate of Stanford. She said, why don’t you visit, go visit the house that I lived in as a student. So I went and I was told that there had been a giant banner that just was recently removed, that said Zionism is genocide. 

And that, you know, we’re used to trying to push back against Zionism as racism, Zionism as apartheid. Now, the ideology itself is genocide. Zionism, and this is the charge against it, that Zionism from its inception, had as its central goal, not just the creation of a Jewish state, but the destruction of the Palestinian people. This idea is now penetrating into certainly the progressive mainstream. 

And the truth is, and this is something, Donniel, we’ve spoken about a lot recently in our iEngage seminar at the Institute, that this is a process that has been intellectually prepared. The ground has been prepared for this for decades. And each part of the story of Zionism has been delegitimized. Beginning with the founding of Zionism in 19th century Europe, that means that Zionism is colonialism. It’s an extension of 19th-century colonialism. The founding of the state of Israel is simply the Nakba, the Palestinian refugee tragedy, as if there wasn’t a war of destruction aimed at the Jewish state. The 1967 war and the aftermath is the creation of an apartheid state. And the Gaza war is the culmination of the corruption of Israel and Zionism is now genocide. 

And so there’s been this downward trajectory in which each part of the Zionist story has been placed under a microscope. And the most negative elements of the story have not only been heightened, but conflated with the essence of the story. And now we ask ourselves, what do we do? How do we fight this? And then you look at where we are today, this wounded, traumatized society headed by a government that has no moral legitimacy and you just say, how can we fight this effect?

Donniel: So let’s, I want to stay with that for a moment before we shift. Could you give, I’m going to want to take a different tack, but I don’t want to get off of your point because I think we need to develop it some more. So I know it’s hard. How did you begin to combat, the story you just told is a devastating story, so one way of saying is you can’t combat it, it’s anti-Semitic, right? You know, it just is. The world hates us. They’ve always hated us. And they’ve just broken down their hatred to us in this false moral intellectual onslaught. 

But given the totality of the story that you’ve just told, what would be one or two measures? Like, I’m not asking you to solve it because anybody who claims they can solve anything right now, I think is an idiot, frankly. It’s just, the problems are too immense. I think at best what you could think about are what are some of the earliest, first steps that we need to focus on?

Yossi: Or what do we need to do to put out fires right now? Which we’re trying to do at the Institute. 

Donniel: Or a beachhead of some form? Is there some beachhead? Because I could just say, okay, the story’s over when I hear you. Do you have any, what’s an idea or two that you would say to the Jewish people, we’ve got to start doing this differently in light of this critique?

Yossi: So what I’ve been doing on campuses is trying to explain both Zionism and anti-Zionism. And I’ll just say very briefly the one point about Zionism and one point about anti-Zionism. And that is that the reason that Zionism is regarded as unique and that this is different from all other forms of nationalism is because, frankly, it is.

The Jewish story, the Zionist story is surreal. There’s nothing like this in history. The story of a people that loses its ancient homeland and refuses to relinquish its connection and centralizes the memory of its loss into its religious life and carries this for 2,000 years of exile. And not only that, but even more absurdly, imagines that one day this totally powerless people that’s dispersed all over the world is somehow going to be gathered up and returned to its ancient land.

Donniel: So Yossi, can I, let me just stop you for one second. So if I understand the method, what you’re arguing, is that there’s a story of Zionism that we haven’t told. 

Yossi: Yes, exactly.

Donniel: That if Zionists, that if we’re gonna win against this intellectual onslaught, we have to tell a different story. That the basic, 

Yossi: We need to own, yes, we need to own the strangeness of this story.

Donniel: So like that in many ways, the critique, if I’m reading between your words, the critique, has foundation. There’s something strange going on here and we have to own it and we have to start speaking a different language than the language that we’ve spoken up till now.

Yossi: Yes. Yes. So then that shifts me to anti-Zionism. And then what I say to the anti -Zionism, what I say about anti-Zionism, is, in a way, I understand the temptation to fit this strange story, this unique story, in pre-existing, recognizable categories. 

So for example, there are some evangelicals who tell a story of Zionism that explains their story of the Second Coming. The Jews are returning home, Jesus is about to return to earth. And of course, many evangelicals tell a different story to explain why they support Israel, and it comes from the book of Genesis, God saying, I will bless those who bless you. And I think that that story is often not sufficiently heard by Jews. But there certainly are evangelicals who tell the story of the Second Coming of the Jews back to the land of Israel is the prelude to the second coming of Jesus. 

And what I say on campus is I have nothing against that story, but it’s not my story. And so what those evangelicals are doing is saying that the only way in which my Jewish Zionist story has validity is if it fits into and confirms their story. And so you’re taking away my story from me. 

And then I say on the other end of the spectrum, the progressive anti-Zionists do the same thing. They look at Zionism and they say, I recognize this story. Zionism was founded in 19th-century Europe. Therefore, this is a 19th-century European colonialist story. The problem with that is that it’s not my story. The Jews did not come home to fulfill a European colonialist story. And it also removes the story of more than half of the Israeli Jews who come from the Middle East.

Donniel: So what you’re basically saying is that there is an unprecedented intellectual challenge, both to tell a different story of Zionism and to combat the anti-Zionist narrative. But that doesn’t leave me highly comforted on whether we could win the war. 

In other words, I, Yossi, you got me. I’m convinced. Maybe the aspect of the onslaught of can Zionism win this war, what you’re speaking about, if I would translate it into Hartman Institute categories, is that there’s a group of troubled committed who are still part of the Zionist story, who maybe because of October 7th are even more connected or open to that conversation. We have to get to work really quickly to keep the troubled committed inside. And you believe that these types of conversations have to be an integral part of our curriculum. Because if we don’t give this curriculum to the troubled committed, the arguments of our enemies are going to win. And then even our foundation within the Jewish community we’re going to lose.

Yossi: But this is the beginning, for me this is simply the beginning, step number one, of owning the strangeness and uniqueness of the Jewish return.

Donniel: And I appreciate what you said beforehand, is, you’re removing completely all the anti-Semitic over,

Yossi: I’m not, I’m actually not. I’m sorry.

Donniel: Yossi, please. I was enjoying it. Because what you were doing, Yossi, because it’s so interesting, if you look at the foreign ministry’s response. I don’t even know if we should call our foreign ministry a foreign ministry. Maybe it is a foreign, it’s foreign.

Yossi: Well, it’s foreign to the Israeli experience at this point.

Donniel: It’s just a straight—we should call it the incompetent, bizarre ministry because their response is always, they’re anti-Semitic, it’s a travesty. I don’t even know. You’re at least saying, okay, let’s recognize that, okay, Donniel, don’t worry, don’t get too excited. There is an anti-Semitic dimension, but there is—

Yossi: Yes, it’s so much more complicated and you can’t separate…but look, Donniel, Donniel, you can’t separate…

Donniel: Yossi, leave it, leave it, leave it.

Yossi: One line, one line. 

Donniel: Okay, I’ll give you.

Yossi: You cannot separate the centrality of anti-Semitism in Western thinking for 2,000 years and in the Muslim world and then come to a point where Israel, the Jewish state, is the world’s ultra-criminal, and say, no, no, this has nothing to do with 2,000 years of embedded ideas and emotions in the West.

Donniel: Yossi, I appreciate that you don’t want to give that up, and I’m not arguing about that. But you have to, 

Yossi: But I’m not starting there. That’s where I agree with you. It’s not the starting point.

Donniel: It’s not only you’re not starting there, you’re developing a strategy that’s ignoring it, because if that was the dominant dimension, your strategy would be an absolute failure. Your strategy. 

Yossi: Yes, I know. I agree with you on that.

Donniel: So okay, so let, so there we have that. And I’m not saying it’s not there, but like as we always say with the anti-Semites, we have to defend ourselves. But those, whether they’re the troubled committed Jews or the troubled committed friends of Israel, we have to change the way we talk about Zionism and anti-Zionism if we have any hope to succeed. That’s one part. I think that’s that move.

Yossi: Okay, I’m with you on that.

Donniel: I worry very much about what we are doing to Zionism, what we are doing to our own case, and whether we’re creating a reality in which Zionism could win. A year ago, I had no doubt. During the judicial reform debates, there was a government that I rejected. There were policies that I rejected. Netanyahu was there. Smotrich was there. Ben Gvir was there. The figures were all there. But there was a counter-Zionist narrative emerging in the street, a counter-Zionist narrative which I feel could win, despite the fact that that there is an occupation and despite the fact that the two-state solution and the conflict wasn’t resolved and Gaza was still there, there was the beginning of an added value dimension to Zionism that had been absent for so long.

Since the Second Intifada, Zionism just, we went into hibernation. Our imagination went into hibernation. Last year, there was a moral imaginative spirit reclaiming the vitality of Zionism. And if you would have asked me this question, could Zionism win? Last year I was certain that we can. Democratiya, human rights, values. Even if we’re not perfect, Israel doesn’t have to be perfect for Zionism to win. That standard is, you know, the anti-Semites want us to be perfect, but our friends know we don’t have to be perfect.

Right now, however, seven months into the war, seven months into a conversation, which is both not happening, and an alternate conversation which is. It scares me to say this. But if all things stay the same, I don’t believe that Zionism could win after this.

For many years, there’s been a profound moral challenge to Israel’s conduct. We haven’t progressed at all towards resolving the conflict and the human rights implications of continuing what I believe is an occupation of another people. We haven’t confronted, in a serious way, the rights of Israeli Arabs. 

These two issues have created a noise, have created this background, deep critique about the moral fiber of Israeli society, the moral vision of Zionism. Now we answered and said, you have to understand, we offered and they said no. It gave us a little room, but there was a huge question mark. 

And amongst our friends and amongst many of our kids, there was a growing alienation. Israel stopped aspiring for peace. Maybe we stopped because we didn’t think it was possible, but we weren’t communicating it either.

But here, the war in Gaza is a profound game changer. And what the game changer is, is not the way our army is fighting. On a surface, it seems to be that that’s the catalyst. I don’t believe that’s the catalyst. As I’ve said many times, I think this is a just war. And I think by and large, we’ve been fighting this just war justly. Have we made mistakes? Absolutely, everybody makes mistakes. This is not the greatest war. It’s also not the worst war that the Jewish people have ever fought. Or in public perception, the war itself should not have been a catalyst for a demonization of Zionism.

It is because it is sitting on a context of an Israeli government and Israeli public discourse, which by and large is not discussing and speaking about the aims, the moral righteousness, and our concern for the moral rights of civilians in Gaza. We’ve left it aside. Humanitarian aid, I’ve said this so many times and I know it’s just, humanitarian aid is an American agenda. There’s things that we’re doing now that we’re not even taking credit for. Close to a million Gazans have already left Rafiach. Israel should be talking about, yes, we’ve created humanitarian options. Our war is not with the Gazans. It’s not with civilians. There’s so many things that we should be saying we’re not saying anymore.

Now when you do not talk in the midst of a moral conflict, and there is a moral conflict going on right now. There is a moral critique going on right now. And you don’t speak, then you’re in many ways relinquishing the moral high ground, the moral position. You’re retreating from it. And then the whole plethora of critiques against Israel as having shifted, having become a country that’s used to occupying an other people, have become a country in which the radical dimensions of our society are now in control.

When we take that position, or when we don’t take a position, the moral criticisms against Israel now are given validation not by the way our army is fighting, but by the way our society is talking about this war, about the way our society is presenting what our vision is. 

What is our vision for tomorrow in Gaza? With the exception of Galant and Gantz who spoke about the fact that we don’t want to control Gaza, the dominant conversation from our government refuses to say what you want to do in Gaza tomorrow. So why should somebody look at you and say, you’re fighting a just war justly? Oh yes, I remember what happened on October 7th. They connected to a larger pattern.

It’s almost as if this lack of moral conversation, which we could have so easily added to our conversation, is validating everything that has been said to us before, about us before the war. And now they’re resurfacing. And the criticism is not about the war. The criticism is about what society we have created. And when that happens, I don’t know how our friends, how people who care about Israel could maintain a commitment to Zionism. Zionism is in danger today if all things remain the same.

Yossi: I worry deeply about that, but I want to extend it to a concern about what’s happening in the diaspora as well, particularly North American Jewry. And that is that on the Israeli side, we’re seeing the rise of an anti-democratic ultra-Zionism. And on the American Jewish side, we’re seeing the rise of an anti-Zionism, a Jewish anti-Zionism. 

And what these two forces are doing together is pulling apart the entwinement of Israeli identity as Jewish and democratic. And that’s the end. That’s the end of a coherent Jewish people. That’s the end. If these two forces really begin to rise in both communities, then the other work that we’re all committed to at Hartman, which is strengthening the diaspora-Israel relationship, that’s finished. There’s no shared language between ultra-Zionism and anti-Zionism.

Donniel: I know. You framed what I said in other terms, but we are feeding the anti-Zionist movement within the Jewish community right now. 

And, you know, I asked, what could we do? What’s possible? We need to create, and I know it’s hard for people in the midst of a war, if we do not engage in a constant moral conversation about Zionism, about Israel as it should be, not just in the war, we have to bring everything on the table, the West Bank, what settlers are doing, all the facts, all the narratives that the anti-Zionist community is using to completely delegitimize Zionism. We cannot anymore put that, claiming that, making truly a world Jewish battle against that Zionism. If we don’t do that, we’re dead. 

Yossi: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Donniel: So if we don’t like, if we go to the New York Times and I read, you know, a couple of thousand words of the article until I couldn’t handle it anymore. But.

Yossi: And it was scandalous. It was scandalous by the Israel that it left out. All it did was paint a picture of the most detestable qualities of Israel.

Donniel: I know, I know, but I know, but Yossi, you and I both know that when Huwara happened the first time there was demonstrations, there was condemnation. Under this government, Huwara’s are happening on an ongoing basis and the police aren’t even pursuing the perpetrators. 

You read in the newspaper, and again, I know I’m aggravating people, but I got to talk because I’m aggravated. I want to tell you.

Yossi: Donniel, you’re right, you’re right. 

Donniel: Let me just even, because I feel so right, I have to say another word. Just give me one more second. Do you know that there are groups of right-wing kids running around highways in Israel and stopping trucks, and stopping them and demanding licenses, and to know where they’re going, because if you’re bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza, they threaten your life and they burn and they’ll attack the trucks. And the police haven’t arrested a single kid. 

Yossi, Zionism is going to lose. We can’t, our kids, when our kids look at this, you know, and anti-Zionism is taking root in the Jewish community for a reason, for a reason. 

And we have to, time is up. It’s now seven months into the war. We have to have a conversation about what Israel has to be as an expression of our love and commitment to Israel. Not as a critique of Israel, but as an essential aspect of the Zionist conversation. And unless we do that, frankly, what do we, whose Zionism can we defend, Yossi? How do we look at our kids? When our kids get up, now, you are offering the intellectual argument about how anti-Zionism is wrong and the complexity of the Zionist story, the core legitimacy of it. 

But right now, if we don’t claim what Zionism must be, we lose any credibility of our children, of anybody who has a moral Jewish conscience. And it just, Yossi has to stop now because if it continues,

Yossi: Okay, it’s not either-or, Donniel. 

Donniel: It’s not an either-or. I never said that. 

Yossi: We need to fight simultaneously. We need to fight the anti-Zionists from without and the Jewish anti-Zionists, and we need to fight the ultra -Zionists.

Donniel: I’m with you.

We have to do it differently, Yossi. I’m telling you, like, there’s something. The war has created passivity. We’re all loyalty and we’re concerned for our kids. We are in such a bad place. And of course we have to do both. Each one needs to be done. And I’m right with you.

Yossi: Alright, look, the problem in Israeli society today is that we’re basically divided into two on this. One part of the society, and it’s a substantial part, either doesn’t care enough about what’s happening, what Ben Gvir, for example, is doing to the police, turning it into his private militia, his vision is a Kahanist police, and, either doesn’t care or many agree. 

The other part of Israeli society, and it is substantial, the part that sustained the most extraordinary protest movement in Israel’s history, and that part is stunned, is speechless. Now that’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation. 

And sooner or later, people are going to start thawing out. The prolonged after-effect of October 7th is going to start wearing off. And this struggle is going to resume, I believe, with full intensity, much more powerfully than before October 7th.

And the only reason I think it hasn’t happened is the only reasons are because, first of all, the shock, and secondly, because there still is fighting going on in Gaza. And I think we’re going to need to come to the point and say, okay, there’s going to be fighting going on for a long time to come. We can’t keep deferring the necessary self-confrontation in Israeli society. So I’m with you. 

Donniel: I just want to,

Yossi: There’s just one point that I want to…

Donniel: I’m gonna give that to you and then I’m gonna take the last word.

Yossi: Alright, I want to disagree with one point you said, because this was really, this for me is fundamental. And I will not accept any reason, and you’re not, I know you’re not justifying Jewish anti-Zionism, but I won’t, I don’t even want to legitimize it by understanding.

Because what the Jewish anti-Zionists are doing is depriving the Jewish people of their moral voice. We the mainstream in Israel, in the diaspora, can’t and won’t listen to the critiques of Jewish anti-Zionists. And so we need them. We need them inside the tent as critics, as furious critics. But we need them as part of us.

The moment you take yourself out of the story, the moment you join together with the cesspool, and that’s what the broader anti-Zionist movement is, a big cesspool, and you align yourself, you swim in that cesspool, you have removed yourself from the Jewish conversation. So I’m not saying this only to damn them. I’m saying this also to appeal to them. We need you inside the tent.

Donniel: Yossi, you argue that we need the anti -Zionists in the camp because without them in the camp we are missing a core moral voice. But Yossi, we have to own that voice. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get the anti-Zionists back. There’s a group of people who have left for very serious reasons. They look at our country and they’re saying there’s something flawed. 

And you know this, you know how over the last six, seven months, years since this government, things have shifted even more. We know that when it was a little over a year, I don’t know, it was a year, year and a half ago, the settlers attacked the Arab town of Huwara and burnt cars and attacked people. There were demonstrations, there was condemnation. Our government said, this is not us.

Well, events like this are happening all the time. And Ben Gvir with his ministry is instructing the police not even to arrest anybody. We have youth now roaming the highway and setting up roadblocks to try to catch trucks which might be bringing humanitarian into Gaza. Chaos! They’re setting up their own roadblocks and people are calling the police and the police aren’t even showing up.

You’re worried about whether we need the anti-Zionists back. Yossi, what has to change is we have to be that voice. We can’t continue the way we’ve been continuing up till now. The deepest moral discussion has to be at the heart of the Zionist community. I don’t need the anti-Zionists. I need the troubled committed. I need all of us to get up and to recognize that conversation about Israel’s moral character has nothing to do with being pro-Israel or not being pro-Israel. This is actually the essence of how you create a Zionism that could win.

We have to fight differently, Yossi. We can’t just wait for some moral voice. There has to be an intensity of a moral conversation. My whole life, and your life, is about making sure that Zionism could win. The whole purpose of Shalom Hartman Institute is to make sure that the Jewish people embrace each other and are committed to each other, and Zionism is an integral part of what it means to be a Jew.

So much of what we do is about empowering Jews to see Zionism as an exercise of imagination. Well, we need a new moral imagination right now. Zionism, the liberal Zionist community has to begin to talk differently. And I know I’m thinking, I can’t sleep. I’m driving myself crazy because I see with such clarity how we could present a different face of Zionism and we’re failing to do so. 

And I know I’m aggravating people. I’m aggravating myself too. We have to do better. Because at the end of the day, Zionism has to win. But it’s not going to win by either an anti-Semitic argument, it’s not going to win by somehow co-opting the anti -Zionists back into our community. It’s when the lovers of Israel are going to stand up and say, this is not what it means to be a Zionist. Ben Gvir, Smotrich, extreme settlers, not all of them, extreme settlers, lawlessness, ultranationalism. This is not our way. 

We fight a just war and we’re committed to fighting a just war justly and we’re going to talk about the day after and we’re going to talk about a vision. We need to win. And Zionism could only win if a clear moral voice towards Palestinians, Palestinian rights, even a two-state solution. 

So you don’t know how it’s implementable? I don’t care. What are your aspirations? Talk about what you want. We have to go to war, Yossi, a cultural war. And the Zionists have to begin to talk.

This is day 227, and this is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at war.