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.

Looking Forward Transcript

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

Donniel: Hi friends, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is For Heaven’s Sake, our special edition, Israel at War, and today is day 348. And Yossi and I, we chose for the title for today’s session, we called it “Looking Forward.”

Last week we were at a crossroads, and this week, feel like we’re probably still in that—nothing’s been resolved—but we could begin to see certain directions. Maybe it’s even possible to say that we’re looking forward to stop calling this podcast, For Heaven’s Sake—Israel at War, and the counting of the days. The end, it’s in sight. It’s not close. It’s not over today. Unfortunately, two soldiers again died and Yemen attacked us and half of Israel was in a shelter yesterday. And we’re going to have to do something.

But it looks like the end is getting closer. We’re looking forward to a hostage deal. The things that we spoke about last week have accelerated and we need to talk about that—what hostage deal are we going to have? But somebody’s coming home, we believe, soon. Is it a full hostage deal, a partial hostage deal—we’ll talk about it. We’re looking forward but maybe…with more trepidation. I don’t know if the word is looking forward, we’re looking at an increased shift of the front lines of the war, from a war against external enemies to a war within Israel.

One of the more vicious representatives of the government who very often serves as a mouthpiece to set the public agenda. Instead of Netanyahu being this voice, he lets her be this voice, member of Knesser Galit Distel-Atbaryan declared today that we are at war. She said, use those words, we are at war. We are at the war with the leadership of the army. We are at war with the judiciary. We are at war with the press. Basically saying that she said, we’re war with Israeli society.

Yossi: We’re at war with the state of Israel.

Donniel: With the state of Israel. The government of Israel is at war with the state of Israel. You know, again, it’s like, there’s the Goliath, and the Likud party, who’s been in power for 17 years, is the David. And she’s sensing that the external enemies aren’t there. That war has been successful in many degrees. So what’s the war? We need a war. And so I’m not looking forward to that, but we’re walking through that crossroads.

And so let’s analyze each one of these, just to clarify. Looking forward, let’s talk about the end of the war, what it looks like. And it’s connected very deeply to looking forward to a hostage deal. What end of the war will happen, are connected to the hostage deal. And then, what is it that’s changing in Israeli society, the political realities that we’re facing? It’s not a good business to be in, but what is tomorrow beginning to look like on the basis of what we know today?

So Yossi, do you think it’s okay for us to say that we’re, maybe the war’s coming to an end? Do think it’s getting close?

Yossi: One of the main experiences of this last year has been kind of acute ambiguity. And even as we anticipate the winding down of the war, it is winding down already, it’s not over yet, as you noted, but even as we anticipate some kind of ending to this time, we don’t know what that’s going to look like. It’s so unclear. And just to begin with the question of the hostage release, is this going to be the definitive end of the hostage tragedy? Will we get all of those who are still alive back? Or are we going to see another piecemeal arrangement and how much more time do the hostages have left? How much longer can they hold out in those tunnels?

Donniel: What would you, would you take a piecemeal deal? You, Yossi, would you take a piecemeal deal? Last week you were, we didn’t speak about it, but briefly you said no, you’re against it. let’s take, would you take a partial deal? How do you feel about it?

Yossi: Look, I am against a partial deal, but of course, anyone we could get out at this point. But it’s such a cruel dilemma because really what we’re struggling with is how committed is the government to saving all of the hostages? And if it means ending the war, will the government continue to say no? In which case, a partial deal is a death sentence for those left behind. And am I ready to make that kind of deal? It’s impossible. It’s an impossible situation that the government has put us in.

Donniel: You’re right, Yossi. I don’t think the words should be, am I ready to make that deal? It’s, could I live with that deal? I think that’s, could I live with, or we’re in such a bad situation, the hostages are in such a bad, anybody who gets saved, there’s something beautiful and something very cruel about the song Dayenu, it’s enough. It’s very cruel. And here’s a cruelty. It’s an impossible, like, would you accept…? But I would do a deal in which anybody, anybody is… five, 10, 20, 30.

But you’re right. What’s on the table is that the reason why a full hostage deal is not imminent and the government is speaking more about the temporary hostage deal. That’s what everybody’s talking about—we don’t know, is it 20, is it 30?—is because the first 60 days of a ceasefire will not require a massive withdrawal of Israeli troops. And there’s no doubt that the government is looking for at least a face-saving measure to say, we haven’t pulled everybody out right away.

Even in Lebanon, they didn’t want to call it a peace treaty. Could only, everything is a ceasefire. know, a hudna. You remember the word hudna that everybody, we used to speak about? Because Hamas wasn’t ready, Hamas couldn’t accept Israel’s existence. So therefore they could never have a peace treaty with Israel. The Palestinian authority could, in theory. Hamas couldn’t because their charter calls for the destruction of Israel. So a hudna, which is an agreement. So Israel’s looking for its own hudna now.

Yossi: A glorified ceasefire, right. But you know, something that you said, Donniel, something you said in one of our recent podcasts, which is that how is it possible that, how is it acceptable to have a withdrawal from Southern Lebanon where we don’t have a hostage dilemma and yet, in Gaza, we’re insisting that there will be no withdrawal, even if that means dooming hostages.

And so here, the great fear that I have is that Netanyahu is playing politics with the Gaza front, with the lives of hostages. Now we’ve talked about the end game of the far right and they make no pretenses about it. Their goal is to rebuild the settlements in Gaza, which is one reason why they don’t want the definitive withdrawal from Gaza. They want to hold that option open. Now, are we really going to be sacrificing hostage lives in order to appease the fantasies of the far right? Is that the game Netanyahu is playing?

Donniel: You see, don’t think, again, here you’ll see, we might disagree about this and that’s okay, because none of us is certain about anything. But I don’t think that’s the game that Netanyahu is playing right now. I don’t even think that that’s the game that the government, I don’t think that’s even on the table. I know it’s there. Like, one of the more horrific things,

Yossi: You mean rebuilding settlements, you mean?

Donniel: Rebuilding. I don’t think, think what’s on the table is, I think that’s a no-winner. You can’t win saying, I need settlements, as distinct from hostages. So even if you look at Ben Gvir in one of the more horrific conversations that were recorded, I think since the beginning of the war almost, and that’s pretty bad. One of the hostages who were released, and Israel has been very sensitive to not delve and not to expose, and every hostage talks when they’re ready to talk about whatever it is they’re ready to talk about.

And this woman got up and said, I was sexually assaulted. I was sexually assaulted.

Yossi: This was a former hostage, Donniel?

Donniel: Yes, who had up till now been quiet about her experiences. And she said, are you willing to allow our women to continue to be raped on an ongoing basis? And Ben Gvir’s response was, I want to prevent tens of thousands of Israeli women from being raped. This was his response. And basically, he’s not saying, he’s not saying settlements. He’s not saying holiness of the land. He’s creating this mythic notion that there is this existential crisis, it’s even worse than to Israel’s survival, to the safety of our women, that there is this mass horde of rapists from Gaza merging and about to, and he is standing, he’s standing at the gate, protecting and therefore these hostages have to be sacrificed.

The 50 something hostages who, God willing, 60 are alive. There’s nothing we could do because we need to the tens of thousands who are going to be raped and killed imminently. So there’s this…

Yossi: Now, think about the morality of that statement. It is so antithetical to a Jewish way of thinking. You sacrifice people who already we know definitively are being subjected to the worst kind of treatment, because theoretically there may be a greater threat if we release large numbers of Hamas terrorists and they could eventually rape Israeli women. The distorted…It’s so…

Donniel: Yeah, but even that, you see, you’re doing a technical argument, you’re doing the—I know, but you’re doing the technical issue. It’s just not even true. What is it? We are this powerless, like, as if 438 days haven’t passed, the military capacity of Hamas has been destroyed completely.

But it’s like there’s something shifting. And when Ben Gvir has to speak that way, my sense in Israel is that the—You know, we try to smell what’s going on here. And you do that as a journalist. I’ve started with the hours and hours of every day and 20 hours a week studying press and to try to understand. Something is shifting right now.

I think Ben Gvir is losing his hold on the government. He is, you know, he’s not voting with and not voting on the budget, which is basically voting no confidence against the government. He’s moving himself out. He’s looking for an exit strategy because there’s, he wants to be, he wants to go out, I’m the protector of Jewish women. You know, like this is his, this is his cause because as an ultra-nationalist, any compromise is unacceptable.

And I think we’re moving closer. The weight of the hostages is beginning to win. And I think something is beginning to shift. You sense it in Netanyahu. You sense it from the government. You even sense it from Smotrich. Because at the end of the day, even a partial deal which won’t bring the full withdrawal of soldiers, the end of the war, it is going to involve a massive release of, as you were mentioning, a massive release of Hamas terrorists, which from Ben Gvir’s perspective is a defeat any comp, ultra-nationalists, we always have to win. We have to win when the other side is powerful. We have to win when the other side is powerless. It is our power.

The correlation between ultranationalism and power is very, very deep. Power is not an instrument. It’s the identity of the ultra-nationalist. And so there’s…something is beginning to change now. And do you sense that change?

Yossi: Well, it’s very interesting, Donniel. Yeah, well, I wanna go back to Ben Gvir’s statement because I think it reflects a deep struggle in the Israeli psyche over the last year. And that is the acute sense of vulnerability and really existential dread that October 7th reawakened in the Israeli psyche, as opposed to the restoration of our military credibility in the last few months. So the question is what really defines four Israelis this last year?

And it’s one of those profoundly schizophrenic moments where on the one hand we feel very powerful. We have just destroyed the Iranian axis that was strangling us around our borders. On the other hand, there’s October 7th, and that trauma is not going away. That experience, that primal experience of losing your border and thousands of terrorists pouring across it, and your civilians are completely helpless, that was an experience, a kind of pre-enactment of what the destruction of Israel would look like.

And so we’re now carrying a credible scenario of Israel’s destruction. At the same time, we’re all proud and experiencing the aftermath of the restoration of our power. And in that sense, I think that October 7th versus October 8th is one more kind of disturbance in the Israeli psyche and our relationship to power. Just think about it for a moment, Donniel. We go from 1945, the lowest point of our powerlessness in Jewish history, three years later, 1948, we restore Jewish sovereignty. And the shift from October 7th to, metaphorically, October 8th, even though it took longer than October 8th to restore our military credibility, but we did, there’s that tension between existential fear, between 1945 and 1948, that is imprinted in the Jewish experience of modernity.

Donniel: It’s interesting, and I hear you and I agree with you. There’s now he, Ben Gvir wants to hold on to October 7th because he wants to be the solution. But now the government…

Yossi: Yes, exactly. He feeds off of October 7th. Yes.

Donniel: He feeds off of October 7th and he tries to feed off of that fear. The government though, what we’re looking forward to in many ways is the unfolding of October 8th or its aftermath, which somewhere in December or early January, there’s going to be some form of a ceasefire.

Now, even if you notice, let’s just analyze what different spokespeople are saying. The Minister of Defense speaks in English about how Israel is not going to resettle and doesn’t want to control the lives of Gazans. He says, we do not want to have either military or political control, he said, over Gaza. He says this in English. Then in Hebrew, he refines it. And he doesn’t say that we want to have military control, but he says we want work. We are going to ensure our own safety and our army is going to function in Gaza the way our army functions in Judea and Samaria.

Now let’s just clarify. There’s three areas. There’s area A, B, and C in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria. So he’s not talking about area C or area B where the army has military control. He’s basically talking about area A, which is under Palestinian authority, political and military control. And what it involves is that when a danger appears, the Israeli army enters and the Israeli army does an operation.

So we’re not talking about a permanent military occupation of Gaza. We’re talking about troops on the borders entering and doing operations, by the way, similar to what the deal was in Lebanon. So you could sense that there’s a shift. We’re beginning to shift out of October 7th.

And some want to keep us there. And there is no doubt that the hostage deal of any form is what’s going to bring October 7th to an end, as a partial, it’s not completely because there aren’t… whoever comes out alive and it’s not going to fill the hole, there’s going to be another stage that we have to go through. But we’re looking forward to the challenges of these moments. Yes, Yossi?

Yossi: Just listening to you now makes me wonder whether what we’re really groping toward is the end of October 7th. And that’s the struggle, I think, of this moment. Bringing the hostages home will be one sign that October 7th is over. We’ve already broken the siege on our borders. That’s another crucial element of freeing ourselves from the trauma of October 7th. And Ben Gvir is sensing, I think, Ben Gvir is very shrewd and he understands that he needs Israelis to be in a state of constant fear.

So, I’m wondering, Donniel, if what we’re seeing is the beginning of the emergence of a struggle within the Israeli soul between holding on to the trauma and starting to let go. Now, until the hostages are returned, it won’t happen.

Donniel: Also, some withdrawal from Gaza, whether it is that it’s the Netzarim corridor, it’s not a corridor, it’s a massive land, you know, four miles wide. Some withdrawal from moving our troops out will also symbolize officially we won. So you can’t withdraw when you have an October 7th consciousness. Just the fact that you withdraw, just like, maybe that’s why we were able to also withdraw from Lebanon. It’s not that we achieved, you know, listening to you helped me, I don’t think I could have said this if it wasn’t because of what you just said.

We could withdraw in Lebanon because we feel we achieved something. We changed the status quo. You don’t have to win everything. Life is filled with uncertainties, but you can’t be in October 7th. You can’t be in a sense that Hezbollah is about to destroy you. Hezbollah’s dangerous, but they’re not about to destroy you. Therefore, the withdrawal was symbolic of a sense that we’ve changed the equation.

And similarly in Gaza, it’s going to be so. And the challenge is not to go back to the form of status quo of pre-October 7th, where we really just allowed our enemies to amass not just weapons, but a capacity to destroy us. We were truly, I believe, like, I don’t know if we were insane, naive, there was something fundamentally wrong in the way we conducted our business for 15 years. We so much didn’t want war that we just sort of, we just constantly just tried to just almost deny the danger because we were having too much fun building startup nation.

So the withdrawal from Gaza is also going to symbolize, the withdrawal from Gaza is going to symbolize the end of October 7th. And the hostage deal, I think by the way, more than a hostage deal, because I think the hostage deal is going to feel so incomplete to us. We want it so much. We want them to come home. We want 101 to come home, but we already know 35, I forget the exact number, we know for sure in the high 30s are confirmed, so like, are dead.

So the top that we could aspire for is what? 70, 60, and we know that that’s not, so there’s going to be such a gut wrenching, you know, and I think precisely because of that, and this is a time to shift, because the government is going to be so vulnerable at it, admitting now, you know, that we’re going to start withdrawing from Gaza, there’s going to be an incomplete hostage deal, and that’s why now we need a new war. This war against us.

Yossi: The internal enemies.

Donniel: Like, I don’t know, like a war of, my government is fighting against, like she didn’t name me, that’s because I’m not important enough, but I feel like she’s at war with me. It’s such a strange, you know, there’s serious debate. We could have arguments. We could have different political positions about judicial reform, about the trials, about the attorney general, but to be able to use this language, “We are at war with…” like, I feel like what? I’ve now become the enemy? It’s just this, it’s a very, you know, especially after, especially after all this period of time where we were, where we were under, you know…

Yossi: So, Donniel, so there’s a, yes, so there’s a positive side, Donniel, there’s a positive aspect to overcoming the trial of October 7th, and there’s a negative aspect, because what this government wants to do is set the clock back to October 6th, and to bring back the schism and the hatred and the search for an internal enemy. In that sense, I think it’s really important that we don’t entirely free ourselves of October 7th. We need some of that lingering trauma in order to keep, in order to heal, paradoxically. In order to heal, we can’t totally overcome October 7th.

And look, know, even, and when we talk about overcoming October 7th, I think we need to be very careful. We’re a people that still remembers the slavery in Egypt. We’re a people that doesn’t forget. And we are not going to forget the trauma of October 7th. And the question is really, what will be the emotional weight that we give to October 7th as we try to move forward?

And I think we both know that a good part of that answer will be the fate of the hostages. If we don’t save all the hostages that are still alive, the residue of bitterness will continue to not only poison Israeli discourse, but keep us chained to the trauma of October 7th. We will not escape the trauma of October 7th if we don’t save those who still can be.

Donniel: You know, the strength of this government has been the way it conducted October 8th and onwards. And I know that I was deeply critical of some of the decisions made by this government and the injection of political calculations into the war in Gaza and the way it dealt with humanitarian aid and Gazan civilians. But from a purely military perspective, using your words, the government did reinstitute deterrence.

The fact is they did militarily destroy Hamas. They did militarily destroy Hezbollah. Fortuitously, under their watch and then afterwards, Syria and the Iranian access is off the table. Their greatest weakness is no longer October 8th. This government’s greatest weakness is October 7th.

Yossi: And October 6th.

Donniel: As the care for Israeli…and October 6th. But in many ways, I, when, by trying to declare war against, I’m going to take it personally, by declaring war against me and you, it’s just like, it’s just a very strange feeling. They actually want us to forget October 7th. What you’re saying very beautifully, and I appreciate it is like, I don’t want to, you know, cause I’ve said this over and again, I don’t want us to stay in October 7th. I don’t want us to stay as victims. I hate that. I hate that dimension.

But there is something about understanding that we need to be together if we’re going to make it in this country. We need to find a way to talk with each other, to argue with each other. And October 7th symbolizes, you know, it’s when you’re weak that you reach out and say, who’s standing with me? We forgot that October 7th reminded us that we’re together. October 6th we were enemies.

You know, whenever, you know, when you look at the polls between the Netanyahu, you know, the two big parties, at least in theory now in the polls, would be Netanyahu and Bennett’s party. Netanyahu’s party is the party which is going to run on, yes, I’m the best guy for security. And Bennett is going to run on saying, I’m the best guy for unity in Israeli society.

These are, and they’re both, they get about 25, 26 seats. Bennett, when he runs, is more popular as prime minister. Everybody else goes down to 10, 11, whether it’s the Democrats, the Gants, Lapid, Lieberman, everybody is a 10. These are the two big, it’s almost an argument about what’s the existential struggle in Israeli society. And when I hear wanting, see her wanting to declare war against me and you and against half of Israel, she’s saying,

I want to forget the spirit of October 7th and the people who want to vote for a Bennett-type ideology are saying, I want to go back to the issues of October 6th, but I don’t want to go back to it that way. I don’t want to be that person again. And paradoxically, October 7th is what endangers her and Netanyahu. And so they’re going to look for a replacement. And if there’s another war, then we’ll forget the war of October 7th. Last thoughts, Yossi?

Yossi: In the last two years, we experienced two scenarios of Israel’s unraveling. The first leading up to October 7th was the internal schism, and that was a scenario of a self-devouring of Israeli society. That’s what, God forbid, the destruction of Israel would look like internally. We fall apart, we have nothing in common anymore. We start seeing each other as enemies.

And the second scenario of Israel’s unraveling was external, coming from outside, over our borders. And you can’t solve one existential threat at the expense of the other. And if this government thinks that the fact that we’ve now, it seems, extricated ourselves from the existential threat of October 7th, and that it’s now okay to go back to the existential threat of internal unraveling of October 6th, then I think that will be this government’s downfall. Because that’s not, it’s not what the Israeli public wants.

Donniel: I share that, you know, I wish I knew what they, I think they’re split. And what they feel is the greatest existential danger. Are we still in October 7th? Is the danger still there? Or is October 7th the call for a new spirit of conversation? I don’t know, I don’t want to, I have no energy to be at war with each other. I, you know, we’re getting through this year. It’s been a hard year. We need to find another way.

Yossi, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you and to think about what’s happening in our world and in our life.

Yossi: Great to be with you.

Donniel: We’re looking forward. The fact that we can even use those words has a hopefulness to it. But it’s still day 438 and hopefully soon some and as you said all and what a choice. How do we even make that choice? I don’t know. We should all be well and all our hostages who are still alive should come home soon.