The following is a transcript of Episode 103 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 our podcast for Heaven’s sake. Our special, maybe it’s not so special anymore, our ongoing series, Israel at War. And today is day 72.

And today, my heart is broken. I don’t even fully know what I want to talk about.

Possibly after October 7th, it’s not sadness, it’s deeper than that, there’s a need to try to find an inner strength in the midst of something profoundly, profoundly. broken. 

Seeing those three Israeli hostages, they made it. Yossi, they made it. For 70 days. We now know what they were experiencing. We now know that when the hostages were released, they had drugs which were making them high and seemingly much more positive. They were beaten. They were terrified. They made it. They exited the valley of death. They exited and left the forces of barbarism and they heard Israeli soldiers. 

And I’m trying to think about what they felt, how they were feeling at that moment. And they were smart enough to know that it was dangerous and they come out and their hands are raised and they’re waving a white flag and they took off their shirts and they’re screaming and shouting and then they get killed. One of them even escapes. And he hides back down in a tunnel and he shouts save me, hatzilu, hatzilu, and he comes out, and he’s killed.

Just my heart’s broken. This shouldn’t have been. It could have been a moment of such celebration. And that their lives ended after heroically surviving? My heart’s also broken at what happened. I’m not talking about the army and I hate these generalizations. But how did some people in our army reach that moment where they see somebody with their hands raised and they shoot?

Yossi, I’m in, it’s a tough day. And I’m feeling it very, very deeply. I don’t know what to call it other than to say my heart’s broken. Where are you my friend?

Yossi: This is the worst day since October 7th, and that’s saying a lot. I’ve been thinking about the soldiers who accidentally killed the hostages, thinking of the families of the hostages, thinking like you, what could have been a little mini Entebbe moment, and instead we have the antithesis of the Entebbe rescue. 

But you know, Donniel, I’m trying very hard not to let myself go there, not to be overwhelmed by emotion because it’s so easy. And the reason that I’m trying hard is because I’m afraid more than anything that this war is going to be stopped, either by pressure from within Israeli society to prioritize the hostages over winning the war. 

And this is the moment that, you know, you and I talked about, this was the moment that I personally dreaded when the Israeli public would be presented with an impossible decision. What comes first? Saving your fellow Israelis or continuing the war? And I have to admit, and you know, we’ve had this conversation, for me, the worst scenario is ending the war after all, after going so far, after alienating so much of the world, creating such hatred against Israel, to then end the war inconclusively, that’s the greatest nightmare for me. So I’m suppressing my emotions, Donniel. I’m forcing myself not to go there.

Donniel: I hear you and I understand you. I’m not with you, but I understand you. And that’s For Heaven’s Sake, you know.

Yossi: I would say if we have to sum it up in one line, that’s what we’re trying to do here.

Donniel: Because I am so not with you. But let me explain where I’m not with you. I feel that if we don’t connect to our emotions, we’re not Israel anymore. And we lost. Who are we? 

I hear you. You’re afraid that this conversation is gonna have political consequences. And I appreciate it. And last night I went to the, I was called. I wasn’t even a decision. I was literally like a magnet, pulled to go on Saturday night to the hostage families’ tent and to the gathering. I was pulled. I literally didn’t have a choice. I just knew that I had to be there also.

This is what makes Israel so tough. But I don’t wanna shut down. I shut down all the time, it’s true. Let the truth be told, I do shut down all the time. And Israel forces you to shut down. But I wanna be in a place where I am completely connected to what I feel. And despite that, I continue. 

I don’t want to win. I can’t win your way, Yossi. I can’t, like I even, I hear your tone and I know you. Maybe it’s because I’m better at suppressing emotions than you are. Maybe, but I hear you and I, like, I don’t want to talk about victory right now. I don’t even, like, I almost feel like it’s just, that’ll be my conference tomorrow. 

But there has to be room for this powerful mourning, for a wreck to look at it. I just, I have to see the hostages for all that they’re experiencing. I have to feel these three boys. If I don’t feel it, then who am I, Yossi? If I just say, you know, okay, you know, this was like, you know, I heard Netanyahu, these are tragic losses. And we have, I don’t know, maybe I’m trying to do something that can, maybe you’re more realistic. Maybe, I don’t know. I just can’t go there. I have to stop today and not talk about tomorrow and not talk about the larger political consequences. I can’t do calculations of hostages and war and victory. 

Just what those kids felt, Yossi, I can’t get out of, I can’t get it out of my head. Like what they felt, this exhilarate, what they felt at that moment, I just can’t silence it. And I don’t want to.

Yossi: See, I really respect that, Donniel. I respect your, not just need, insistence, that we fully absorb this moment. But you know, when you called me last night and asked if I wanted to come with you to the, the way you phrased it was to the solidarity gathering, not as a demonstration. And you said it in such a beautiful way. You said, I feel I have to stand with the families. And I was so tempted. And I couldn’t tell you no right away. I said, let me sit with it. Because I wanted to go with you. I wanted to stand with the families, more than anything. 

And then I thought about it. And I said, you know, this is going to be a demonstration. It’s going to be a demonstration to demand that the government pause the war, prioritize negotiations, however one wants to phrase it. Right, the slogan last night was “Now”, right? Now, achshav. And look, you and I spent this last year demonstrating against this government every Saturday night. I have no problems demonstrating against this government, but not now. Dafka now, not now, not during the war. 

And I know how tempting it is for Israelis to demand of the government to change direction. And there’s a part of me that wants to do that too, because we’ve talked about this before, Donniel, in our podcast. This is drawing on the deepest – not just Israeli ethos, but the Jewish ethos of pidyon shvuyim, of redeeming prisoners. But I’m terrified of reopening our schisms. You know, we have this thin layer of national unity, which I regard as a kind of miracle. And it’s allowed us to get this far in the war. 

And to jeopardize that almost inconceivable consensus before October 7th, who could have imagined we would be able to come together from left to center to right. I’m so afraid of reopening that schism even if the issues are different. It’s going to reopen that wellspring of mutual suspicion, of mutual rage, and we will not be able to win from that place.

Donniel: You know, again, I hear you. I wonder what victory is going to look like if we don’t maintain that openness to pain. You know, very often, what is, what is, again, I’m not, I’m never accusing you this of this, and I don’t want to be mistaken, but ultra-nationalism, an uber alles, like overall, scares me, scares me. 

And I love Israel. And I wanna fight, and I feel morally compelled to continue the fight. But there has to be other things beyond victory that we never forget. I don’t know, I know your fear. And you’re right, because Israelis, we could lose it in a second. But there has to be something else, because otherwise, what are we fighting for? 

And it’s both, you know, I was at the demonstration. It’s cute, I used the word demonstration. Here I’m telling our editors, don’t cut it out. I was at the solidarity thing. Don’t, don’t ever say, Yossi, I told you I was right. 

Yossi: Are you kidding? I’m saving up a list.

Donniel: We went there last night and there were masses, masses of people. And at some moment, somebody mentioned Netanyahu’s name. And there started this chant, boosha, boosha, shame, shame, which is the core chant of the demonstrations of the last year. Shame. That was like the essence of what our protest was, that this is not what a Jewish state is. Boosha. This is not what you do with democracy, boosha. And some people just started to say boosha. And then they were silenced, and somebody got up and said, boosha is not our slogan.

This is not a gathering to declare blame and shame. It’s a gathering to call for achshav, for now. And you’re right. You know, when Shalom Achshav, the weakest part of peace now was the word now. You know, we know that. The now is always a problem. 

But what the families were and the voices were so clear, there were two parts last night, which made me so happy to be there and I embrace both of them. One was just being with them and that’s part of what they talked about. Some of the spokespersons, you know, they just said, we see you. You’re not transparent. We see you. And for families, in the midst of this horror, could you imagine, I could imagine a family now wondering if the army’s successful, will we ever be able to get out a hostage which we don’t kill? Because how do you know the difference between them and a Hamas terrorist? And just to hug them at this horror that they are in midst right now.

And the second one was a demand that I accept. We, none of us said, oh, you can’t have a temporary ceasefire. It’s going to destroy the war. Turned out that it didn’t. We had a ceasefire for 10 days and the army continued. It might’ve made it a little harder, but we continued. Could we have a ceasefire for another 10 days now, or no one’s giving us everybody, for another five days? Get all the women, the children, the above 60s, and as 65, I’m particularly sensitive. Just get the frail, get the wounded, maybe insist as a condition that the Red Cross comes to visit, as the first condition before one more hostage, before one more exchange takes place. Condition explicit number one. I want Red Cross to see every single one of them, every wounded, anybody who’s in danger. Could we stand another 10 days? I think we could. 

And what they were asking for, they were very careful. Nobody said at the gathering, stop the war. Nobody, also very interesting, blamed soldiers for shooting. That wasn’t part of the conversation. And I think we have to talk about that too. But nobody wanted to talk about that yesterday. They embraced the army and they encouraged them. 

They just said, you know what I want from my government? I want from you a plan. Don’t just tell me you want to win and you want to bring the hostages home. Tell me what you’re offering. Talk to me. Say, I now want this. I’m willing to give, like I’ll give an example. I am willing to give terrorists with blood on their hands. I’m willing now for the next 60, we don’t even know how many are still alive, for the next 60, 70, for the next 100, we’re willing to release anyone.

I don’t know, I could argue about it, but what they’re asking is say something. Don’t just declare a goal without any particulars. That’s all they said, Yossi, and I could embrace that. Does that scare you too, to the same degree? Not scaring in an irrational level? I mean, for you, could you stand there also?

Yossi: I hear that, I hear that, Donniel, and certainly framed in that way, of course, another ten days won’t appreciably make a difference one way or the other, I hope. It’s more a question of launching a new protest movement. This is what opens up the wounds that we’re papering over for the duration of the war. 

That doesn’t sit well with me. That worries me because I know what’s also waiting on the other side. On the right and the far right, we know the ugliness that’s already simmering. You hear it, you hear it on the right TV station, Channel 14, you hear the vulgarity of counter-protesters who show up at the hostage tent to taunt the hostage families. It’s inconceivable. In the Israel that we knew, could you imagine such a thing? 

So something has changed here, and I’m afraid of that. I’m afraid of opening it up. But I wanted to pick up on what you said a moment ago, Donniel, which is the unbearable question that we nevertheless need to open up, which is what happened? What happened when three people emerged from the tunnels with a white flag stripped to their waist so that it was clear they didn’t have an explosive belt on them, what was going on there? 

And I think that the fear that I had initially was, is this now standard operating principle for the army? How widespread is this? And I was enormously reassured that it was the army itself that came clean on this. The chief of staff, Herzl Halevi, who I think has, by the way, been terrific through this war, took full responsibility and said, this negates the most basic principles of the army. 

And so I need to believe, as someone sitting on the home front, I need to believe that this is not standard operating procedure and that the army is now going to deeply internalize the enormity of what happened.

But on the other hand, you know, Donniel, the unease that I have is that this, it cuts too close to comfort to the event that we spoke about last week that happened in Jerusalem, the shooting of Yuval Kestelman during the terrorist attack on the highway leading into Jerusalem, where, this is a guy who had neutralized the terrorists. He was a hero. And he’s on his knees with his hands in the air, again, stripped to his waist, calling out in Hebrew. And a soldier who turns out to have been one of the hilltop settlers, the most far right of Israeli society, gunned him down.

Now of course he said, look, it was a mistake, but it wasn’t a mistake. The mistake was he thought it was a terrorist, but even so, as we discussed, there are rules of engagement. You don’t violate those rules. So, there’s something here that we as a society need to open up and here’s where I feel that if we pass over this in silence, to echo what you said before, we lose something essential about what it means to be Israeli.

Donniel: Here we’re much closer together. You know, you mentioned Yuval Kestelman, and I remember when you and I were talking, we took some comfort in the fact that the shooter was from the Hilltop Youth because, you know, those are, that’s the group we wanna be embarrassed from. That’s the group which has morally failed. Their Zionism is not our Zionism. And it’s wonderful whenever we fail, if it comes from that community. It’s like, you know, okay, what did you expect? We told you, we told you, it’s just one more example. 

But this did not, these soldiers weren’t hilltop youth. And again, I want to reiterate what I said. This is, I’m not claiming, and nor am I interested in speaking about widespread actions. I have no idea. And I have, I like you, and I think you mentioned this in a previous, but we know our soldiers. And we know our kids. And I’m not claiming everybody, but I wonder how many people have been shot who aren’t Jews who don’t make it into the newspaper. It’s when do we hear? When do we hear? Which reports are being heard? When does Herzl Halevi get up and he said this was a failure? He calls it, I’m personally responsible. We fail, this is not the military rules of engagement and we are going to reinforce them. 

Now you know what that means, Yossi? It means it’s not the soldier and I never like to blame the private. I never want to, even though privates could do plenty wrong. But there’s an environment. Now part of battle is there’s an environment that you can control. There’s fear, there’s terror, there’s anger. It’s all there. 

Yossi: And it’s also we’re dealing with Hamas terrorists who are dressed as civilians. They’re not in uniform. And who knows? And also, Donniel, who knows how many instances there were of terrorists pretending to surrender, and it was an ambush? So we don’t know. We don’t.

Donniel: You see, exactly, who knows, but that, but part of the challenge, Yossi, is that when we say, who knows, that’s supposed to be a question mark. “Who knows” is not supposed to be an answer. Right? And that’s what you just said. And who knows could be, you know, a blanket. 

Yossi: Right. Well put. It’s not a rhetorical question, it’s a real question. 

Donniel: It’s not supposed to be. And I know without doubt that the soldiers fighting in Shuja’iyya, and that’s where they were, who had suffered horrific deaths. And we have to remember, Hamas is not meeting us in the battlefield. They’re constantly coming out of tunnel piers and holes in the ground. And again, the soldiers themselves. I just want to hug them, but that’s also part of why my heart is broken. Because I know that the commanders aren’t necessarily telling them everything they should be telling them.

And I know, I don’t want our soldiers to endanger their lives for higher moral principles. I never wanted to. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be an armchair moral philosopher pontificating about the risks you should take. But in this case that we know there were no risks. We know the details of the story. I almost can’t tell them over again. They’re so depressing. My heart is broken because there are people, some of us, are losing it.

Some of us after October 7th, some of us after losing their friends, some of us because they’ve been in hell for now 72 days. And the war, Hamas, is not a pushover. They’re brave. They’re coordinated. They haven’t been broken. We want victory and victory is not going to be easily achievable. 

And in that environment, there’s going to be people who lose what we stand for. And it breaks my heart. And we’re going to have to give an accounting not only for that. What is this going to mean for Israeli society after the war? Where are these people going to find themselves? Have they become ultra-nationalists? Are they people still committed to the fact that all human beings are created in the image of God?

I don’t know, as you said, who knows? We don’t know. But today, my heart is broken. And I both mourn, and I worry, and I ask myself, what do we have to do to heal and to move forward?

This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, Day 72. Today was hard, Yossi, and I appreciate being with you.

Yossi: Me very much as well.

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