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Thoughtful debate elevates us all. Donniel Hartman, Yossi Klein Halevi, and Elana Stein Hain revive the Jewish art of constructive discussion on topics related to political and social trends in Israel, Israel-Diaspora relations, and the collective consciousness of being Jewish. 

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 — Nine Months Transcript

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 Shalem Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War. And today is day 277. And we’re taping tonight with our favorite audience in the world, with our rabbis, our friends, our community, members of the various rabbinic programs here this summer. For Heaven’s Sake. The theme Yossi, you and I picked for today is nine months.

It’s nine months and at different times, three months, six months, and now nine months, you and I felt that we have to just sit and try to figure out where we are and where Israeli society is. No, when we first just picked nine months, it was just a round number. But as I was thinking about it, nine months is a period of birth. After nine months, it starts with hope. It has a lot of bumps and fears and trepidation, and then God willing, life emerges.

We’re in day 277, nine months, and our hostages are still there, and Israelis are still being killed and wounded. We’re still at war. It’s a strange nine months. What are these nine months giving birth to? How have you changed or I changed? What have we learned? Where are we after nine months? And so that’s where we’re going to start. And let’s start like we often do on a personal level. What’s changed has something changed in you. Now that we’re at month nine.

Yossi: You know, listening to you, I’m talking about the promise of birth. I remember six months after the war, we had this conversation. We probably did it three months after the war. And it’s astonishing how little has changed objectively. Here we are, still with the government of October 7th. Could we have imagined on October 8th that we would be still in this place?

But personally, I think we’ve all changed. And what’s changed for me very immediately was that for the first time since October 7th, I went to an anti-government demonstration just the other night. And since October 7th, I haven’t been to demonstrations as opposed to, as you know, the previous year. We would be out demonstrating every week. Initially, I decided not to join the demonstrations because we don’t demonstrate during war. And then seeing the conduct of the government and how the government is acting, business as usual, dirty politics as usual, that was no longer a good enough excuse.

But I still felt, I’m not going to go out and demonstrate for the hostages because here I believed that the government was right, that we’re only undermining our position. We’re strengthening Hamas by encouraging them to toughen. But that was working under the assumption that the government is negotiating for the hostages. And what we’ve seen in recent days is that Netanyahu is not really negotiating. He’s undermining his negotiators. He sends his negotiators to the table, and then he issues his public list of non negotiable demands.

Donniel: Which contradict the offer that he put on the table.

Yossi: The Netanyahu proposals. And anyone knows that you don’t negotiate publicly by issuing a set of non-negotiable demands, which, how do you walk back from that publicly? So, I went out to demonstrate. And it was very interesting because there have been two protest movements here in the last months. A movement demanding elections now, and a movement demanding that the government prioritize hostages, even if it means not defeating Hamas. And what’s happened now is that effectively these two movements have merged. And that’s what you felt on the streets. That demonstrating for new elections, demonstrating for hostage release, it’s the same agenda. And so, I felt, morally at least, I had no qualms about going back into the streets.

The question is, is it effective? And there I have a very big question mark over the future of these protests, because we’re not reaching new communities. We’re not bringing, it’s the same people who demonstrated before October 7th.

Donniel: How did it feel?

Yossi: It felt very anemic. And it was a sweet demonstration. It was Jerusalem. So maybe it has a bit of a different tone from Tel Aviv. And you don’t bring this government down by bringing together the nicest people in Jerusalem.

Donniel: I also haven’t been going to demonstrations. I didn’t have an ideology. It just didn’t feel right. But what brought me out again was actually different than you. It was the hostages and I wasn’t demonstrating to be effective. I wasn’t demonstrating to bring down the government. I was trying to demonstrate so that the hostage families feel that we see them, because they feel that they’re not being seen.

Part of the problem over the last nine months is that we’re not speaking honestly, and they know it.They know, like, I remember when my brother-in-law was being held in Syria. And we didn’t know if he was alive or dead. And it was about a year, year and a half, till we sort of figured out that he had died. And that was when the rabbinate declared that my sister wasn’t an agunah, wasn’t a chained woman anymore.

Yossi: And could marry.

Donniel: And therefore could marry. But I remember, when you’re living with uncertainty, every single thing that somebody says to you, you analyze. You look for consistencies, you look for nuance. The commas are really important. And, in this country, we were never honest from the beginning about the hostage issue.

Yossi: That’s right.

Donniel: Because we could, you and I spoke about this.

Yossi: Right at the beginning, that there’s a contradiction.

Donniel: There is. It’s a legitimate contradiction. You’re not an immoral, insensitive person if you say we have to win this war, whatever you think it might mean, if it was achievable, and say to the hostage families, it’s a tragedy, we’re going to do whatever we can, but our priority is winning the war. We never said that to them. We didn’t speak to them straight. And I remember people telling us, yes, his parachute didn’t open up. The person who folded his parachute is going to come talk to you. They never showed up. Never came to talk to us. Yes, this happened to him and then we hear it didn’t happen to him, and you’re sitting there, because you’re in the midst of this darkness, and a fair and honest conversation, say, just say, Netanyahu, say. It’s legitimate for you to say, as Prime Minister of Israel, I cannot end this war if I don’t have an ability to continue to fight and attempt to destroy Hamas wherever they may be to the best of my ability.

Say that, but don’t say, yes, I’m offering a ceasefire deal. Yes, it’s not going to be in the first stage because I’m not going to guarantee a ceasefire because then you’ll procrastinate in negotiations. Stage one, we’ll have ceasefire for 16 days, then we’ll begin negotiations. And then we will move towards a ceasefire. But then you can’t say, yes, that’s my deal. But my precondition is that I will never stop fighting. So they’re sitting there and they could go insane. That’s what brought me out in the street, like to say, I see you, to say, hostage release is a priority for me. Hostage release is victory because the other victory, I don’t know what I’m going to get. And another month or two, I don’t know how much better it’s going to be. But right now, every day counts. That’s why I came out.

But I have to tell you. The fact that the demonstrations, what you actually liked, made me uncomfortable. The fact that it wasn’t a demonstration of solidarity with hostages, but it was a combination of hostages and bringing the government down. Even though I hear you and I understand what you’re saying, that they’re connected, I almost felt that it was, my soul shut down a little bit.

Yossi: Do you know what the connection for me is? That when you and your family were going through your agonizing uncertainty, you could reasonably depend on the government’s concern. The hostages can’t depend on that. Netanyahu has done almost nothing to embrace the families. And so, yes, I’m with you on the need of Israeli society to compensate. for the absence of a government embrace. But the fact that this is the first government in Israel’s history that has shown almost contempt for the families of hostages is just further proof of why this government cannot lead us to the next stage.

Donniel: Again, I feel we’ve entered into a catch-22, or I don’t know if that’s the right term, or a dead end, where once hostages are part of bringing the government down. How could the government talk and meet? It’s like, how come you’re not reaching out to me? But when you reach out to me, it’s a one sided attack. It’s blame.

Yossi: Here’s where nine months comes into play. Because nine months is a significant passage of time.

Donniel: It is.

Yossi: And the fact that many of the hostage families initiated this connection with the bring the government down movement, I think really tells us they don’t have faith, that the government is really seriously negotiating.

Donniel: The other thing that I felt, I don’t know if you feel this as well, that in the demonstrations, I loved the demonstrations last year. That I felt that they were the embodiment of the most noble of Zionism. They started with anger and with fear that we’re going to lose our country. But very quickly, they morphed into visionary demonstrations. Demonstrations about liberal values, about human rights, about equality. It wasn’t just fear, it also had a noble aspiration to it.

These demonstrations, maybe there’s nothing noble right now, maybe you can’t, but part of what I was missing there was, what are you calling on us to become? And that’s like when you bring the hostages together with bring the government down, it just didn’t, it wasn’t calling on the best of me. And at the end, the demonstrations aren’t bringing out the numbers that the demonstrations last year did.

Yossi: No, for me that’s the, that’s the final critique is that it’s ineffective. But you know, Donniel, these nine months are weighing on the Israeli soul. And what you’re asking for at this moment is impossible. We can’t do it. We have to bring them down. We have to try to begin again and move on.

Donniel: Again, I, I think we have to do the impossible, because the way we’re going to bring people down is by offering and having a discussion about Israel tomorrow. And it’s not just going to be through anger. And I don’t think it’s going to work that way. And it even actually solidifies the partisan divides in the country, unfortunately. And then when hostages become a partisan divide, when yesterday in the Knesset, a member of Knesset could say to a brother of a hostage, who gave you the right to even speak to me?

Yossi: And then throws him out of the committee meeting. Violently.

Donniel: So, nine months, we’ve shifted, but something’s changing. Both of us are feeling a little different. But, let’s go to another level. Let’s try to keep on unpacking these. Like, nine months, you know, we think about it in terms of the hostages living and dying in Gaza, but Israeli society, for nine months, we have soldiers now going into their third time they’re being called up. And they’re the lucky ones. Some of them have been continuous, leaving families. Families are tired. Families aren’t as strong. The infinite strength is, something’s changing. When you look now at nine months from a bird’s eye, like, not only what you’ve experienced differently, but has anything changed for you, or any questions or issues that are now on your mind?

Yossi: In the first months of the war, I spoke the way Netanyahu speaks now. Decisive victory. Anything less…?

Donniel: What was his term? Complete victory. Nitzachon muchlat. Nitzachon muchlat.

Yossi: Total victory.

Donniel: Total victory. Sounded good back then.

Yossi: To me it did. And I felt that if we did not defeat Hamas, if we risked the possibility of Yahya Sinwar emerging from his bunker waving the V sign at the end of this war, then, we were on a downward trajectory in which, in the long term, and maybe not the long term, we would be losing our most basic military credibility, our deterrence, which is fatal in the Middle East. And so, I define this war existentially.

Now, I still do, but what’s changed for me after nine months are two things. One is the realization that we seem to be moving in circles. And you’ve said this in the past,

Donniel: I hate being right.

Yossi: Yeah, well, you were right about this. And I have come around to that way of thinking as well. That now we’re, you know, we’re in Khan Yunis, but wait a minute, weren’t we already victorious in Khan Yunis? And so we seem to be going in circular motions.

This is already the longest war that Israel ever fought, by far, by far. The only thing comparable was the Lebanon War, which really, after two months, was basically over. Lebanon won in 1982. The Yom Kippur War, which we remember as really our greatest trauma, was three weeks. And so, after nine months, you ask yourself the question, what’s the end game? What’s the strategy? I haven’t heard a credible strategy except Netanyahu repeating his slogans. As we well know, and as we’ve said often, there’s no strategy for the morning after. And if there’s no political component, there’s no final victory. So, that’s the first thing that’s changed for me. I don’t see what final victory looks like, and I’m not willing to give Netanyahu a blank check to continue this war while the fate of the hostages is ticking away.

The second thing that’s changed is a much more immediate realization that this is not just the Israeli-Hamas war. This is a multi-front war that is really the Israeli-Iranian war. And we need to stop focusing relentlessly on Hamas and defining victory in such narrow terms. Now, Netanyahu is doing that, I believe, because he’s not only a prisoner of his far right government. He’s also a prisoner of his fears for his legacy. And he, I believe, has defined his legacy as being determined by his ability to undo October 7th.

Now, October 7th is not going to be undone. That stands. And so this obsessiveness of destroying Hamas because that’s where October 7th happened, that’s where he has to undo the,

Donniel: People don’t trust him.

Yossi: Exactly right. And so my feeling at this point is negotiate. If we have to stop the fighting on this front, let’s do it. Let’s get the hostages back. New elections. And then with a government that hopefully will have more moral credibility internationally and have more credibility domestically, then we’re going to have to confront Hezbollah and Iran.

Donniel: You know, I felt this early on, but you know, nine months is enough time to change your whole being. It’s enough time to give birth to a human being. It’s enough time to be in a certain place where certain ideas and thoughts and feelings become solidified and crystallized.

From the beginning of the war, I was skeptical. I shared it with you, sometimes I spoke publicly about it, but it was maybe too early. My deepest feeling now, nine months into the war, and when I add the other stages that you’re talking about, whether it’s Hezbollah and Iran, I’m going through a realignment of my assessment of power and Israeli power. And it’s very frightening. But I don’t like to be frightened, so I’m deciding not to be frightened. It works for me, whatever universe I live in. Because the Israel that I grew up in was an Israel in which our power was always a solution to the problems that we face. We had a solution.

This has been 9 months of immense power. October 7th was a power void and a horrific tragedy and failure. But from October 8th, we have been unleashing on the 400 square kilometer area of Gaza a force almost unparalleled in Israeli history and also, I don’t know, not in world history, but in decades.

Yossi: Certainly not.

Donniel: Certainly not. But in decades, the amount of force that we’re bringing to bear in Gaza is immense, yet, doesn’t seem to be, as you said, creating a transformation. Our army is competent. We have all the tools and all the armaments that we need. Today, this morning, the radio reported that at least half of the tunnels, if not the majority of the tunnels, are either still working or 50 percent effective and still could be used on an ongoing basis. We had to move into Rafiah, or Rafah, in order to control the Philadelphi corridor.

Yossi: The Egyptian border.

Donniel: The Egyptian border. The report said most of the tunnels haven’t been discovered now after, what, two months? We’re beginning to confront existential challenges for which our power is not the answer. Now, so we want to blame somebody. Okay, if that works for you, knock yourself out. But at some time in a mature life, you realize that doesn’t matter. And you know where I felt it even more? Not in Gaza. I feel Israelis are frightened of fighting Hezbollah. They’re frightened of fighting Hezbollah. Now when have we been scared? We don’t do scared. Maybe we should more often. But we don’t do scared as a people. We, like, we strut. That’s part of the whole, you know, the whole thing. We strut. You know, the army will know what to do. You’re beginning to feel, not just fatigue, but a recognition that maybe it’s without even Iran, that we’re confronting challenges for which our military power is more alone doesn’t have a solution.

And so, you then have Smotrich or Ben Gvir on the far right saying, fight one more day. It’s like, they’re blaming everybody else for being locked into October 6th conceptions of the world. Their conception of the world is still, if we have a hammer, every problem is a nail. We have to now go in, and we have to destroy, and we have to fight, and we have to pursue, and we have to bring victory, and anybody who’s not ready to fight one more day is somehow buying into the appeasement ideology. Your new Chamberlains, the Chamberlains of October 6th, we have to, but I’m sensing, like, after nine months, and I don’t know what to do with this.

Yossi: That was going to be my question to you. How do you take this? We’re facing enemies on our borders who have no intention of accepting our existence.

Donniel: I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I knew. I have no, I really, I’m just telling you what I’m feeling after nine, I’m not saying that this is great news for the Jews. Like I’m not claiming here I have, you know, this is the word from, but what happens when you realize the limitations of your power, then sometimes you start exploring other options. Maybe diplomacy becomes more central to your actions, because we basically haven’t done diplomacy in years. We don’t, because our power gave us the right. And the ability to hold onto a status quo that we thought was sustainable. Maybe there’s other things, maybe friends in the world.

I don’t know, I’m not claiming that there’s any way for Hezbollah to wake up and to cease being a terrorist group. But I think after nine months, I think we’re learning that there are profound limitations. There’s limitations to what our power could achieve. We have a limited amount of armaments, which can’t work. We know that’s where we’re dependent on the United States and on friends around the world. We’re more vulnerable.

And I felt this, I spoke about this earlier on, but after nine months, as you said, when you hear the Khan Yunis story, or the Jabalia story, or now we’re moving into Gaza again, you know, I don’t know if each one of these actions are an attempt to try to create a victory, like a picture, or it’s a futile attempt to not recognize that we need to start thinking differently.

Yossi: So there are two possible conclusions, and they’re opposite conclusions. One is, power doesn’t seem to be working. The other is that we are not applying our power in the right way. And you know that I felt on October 8th that we should stop fighting Iran’s proxies. Because Iran really had us exactly where they want us. We go back and forth. We fight Hezbollah, then we fight Hamas and the Hezbollah. And on October 8th, I believe we should have gone straight to Iran. Whether or not they were directly involved in October 7th, irrelevant. That’s what I felt we should have done. And I believe that it’s going to lead us there.

And to say, Donniel, that power is not keeping us safe, yes, that’s true. But October 7th was a far worse day, more frightening alternative or scenario than what’s being played out for us in Gaza today.

Donniel: I appreciate that. I’m not saying that you should feel comforted by what I’m saying. Like, I’m not arguing that. But I don’t believe I’m creating that reality. I feel that nine months have taught me something, and I have to look at it, I have to confront it. I don’t know what to do with it. So Lieberman takes it in, you heard what Lieberman said? The head of Israel, the Israel Home Party, who was part of the center left coalition. He now calls himself a right-wing liberal. He’s right-wing liberal.

Yossi: Well, that’s a perfectly Israeli concept.

Donniel: That’s a perfectly Israeli. No, it’s true. Yeah, it is, it’s a perfect and it’s a healthy one because he’s, but part of his recognition of the challenge we face, cause you could say, you know, we have to deal with Iran, we have to deal with Iran, and no one’s arguing, but because we have to deal with Iran, it’s not the same thing as saying we have the capability of dealing with it.

Yossi: So what did he say?

Donniel: He said we should look at the nuclear option. And he is running, right now, everything he says on radio, or on the paper, or on the internet, he is now competing to head the new party, which is going to be the largest party in Israel. He’s competing with Bennett, Naftali Bennett, in this newly-formed, liberal, right-wing party. Who’s going to be the head? Because that party gets between 25 to 32 seats, even, depending on which poll. That’s going to be the largest party. And so, he now is sitting on 10 to 14 seats and he’s saying, I should be the leader of it. Bennett is sitting on no seats. But, on polls, which say he’s the most popular Israeli politician right now. People are being nostalgic back for his time. And so he’s competing. So he’s trying to position himself.

So, who’s he saying, who’s he speaking to? When he says, he’s basically saying, we don’t have a conventional military option. And he says, it’s an existential danger, so therefore we have to do this. But, it’s precisely that. I’m wondering how, after nine months, when we’re going to be ready for what I think is an honest conversation about our country, about our future, about its possibilities, and about the way we try to create as much security as possible. Because nine months have shown us something. You want to go? I know I’m upsetting you.

Yossi: Very much.

Donniel: I know. So tell me, am I upsetting you? Or is it the reality that I’m talking about? I’m not claiming to own reality.

Yossi: No, no, it is, it is the reality. And look, I’m upset because I see what you see. It is there. Of course it’s there. But my conclusions, as I say, are very much in the other direction. You know, it’s interesting because there’s an old mindset that really characterized Israel in our early years and was defined by the Hebrew term “ein breirah,” no alternative. We have no alternative but to be strong, to realize we’re going to have to continue to fight wars periodically. The no alternative mindset has returned since October 7th. And I feel it very strongly in myself. I feel we have no alternative. And we have no alternative in dealing with the enemies on our border.

I think that we do have an alternative that’s beyond our borders, in the region. And that’s the Saudi option, which you and I have spoken about often, and the possibility of ending the Sunni Israeli war, and freeing us to more effectively fight the Shiite-Israeli war. And so I do believe that we’re in a very strange time where simultaneously we have no choice but to keep fighting. And at the same time, I agree with you that we do have potentially diplomatic options that this government is incapable of exploring, but that need to be on the table.

And so I see what will likely evolve in the coming months is, I hope, a combination. And again, I’m speaking hopefully of a new government, a combination of redirecting our power to the source and at the same time actively reaching out. And that includes any possible pragmatic relations with the Palestinian Authority. I don’t believe they’re a partner for a final agreement, but at least in the interim stage, and hopefully in Gaza.

So yes, I think that what I hear you saying, Donniel, is that after nine months, we need to honestly face the limitations of the direction we’re in. But for me, that means opening up multiple possibilities, which very much includes how to use our power more effectively.

Donniel: Okay, that’s already a factual debate, but I’m with you. We can’t just, you can’t just assume that it’s simple and just, we’re just gonna do this. Sometimes, by the way, that’s one of the challenges of the military. That’s not their skill set. Their skill set is fighting yesterday’s war. And part of what we need to do is to start thinking differently. And when you have a political system which is working, which the people trust, when you have a debate, when you have honest conversation, then there’s a possibility of thinking differently.

It’s when you don’t, when you have soldiers doing what they’re trained to do, and we now know that it’s not sufficient. To function differently, we have to talk. We need serious debate. But let’s end, I know this has been sober, but you can’t do a podcast on nine months which didn’t end in a new life and in a new future. By definition, the subject almost destined us to a certain morbidness or thoughtfulness of a non exuberant manner, let’s call it.

Yossi: Which is very much, very much what you feel in Israeli society today. Everyone feels this deep sense of drift.

Donniel: So we’re going to have to find strength. Is there a bracha? You know, we’re at this rabbinic conference which is entitled “Israel Tomorrow.” Is there a bracha that you feel that if we, besides, let’s go as follows. A blessing. Besides changing the government. Like, okay, but if that’s the one you want to say, you can say it. No, I’m not going to take it from you and you can say anything you want about Netanyahu and it’s okay.

Yossi: I’ll say something else. I’ll say something else.

Donniel: Is there something else that you feel that, that you would want to give a bracha to, a blessing to Israeli society?

Yossi: Yes, but it’s a very hard blessing. And that is that what we learned on October 7th was that we were living with illusions. Multiple illusions. And the Israeli method of coping until October 7th was, yihiyeh b’seder, it’ll be alright. That also goes very deep in the Israeli psyche. We push things away, whether it’s the abnormal relationship between the Israeli mainstream and the ultra-Orthodox community, whether it’s settler violence, whether it’s living with genocidal enemies literally a few meters from our homes on almost all our borders. There were so many illusions that have now collapsed. And Israeli society is facing itself. We’re facing our external weaknesses and illusions and our internal weaknesses.

And so what I hope for Israeli society is, first of all, that we’re leaving this period of the deep freeze where we weren’t really questioning over these months, where we allowed this government to continue ruling as if nothing had changed. And what I wish for us is that we enter into a period of turmoil where we really start deeply confronting our misdirections. And we’re seeing it coming to a head with the ultra orthodox and the draft. We’re seeing it happen in many ways.

And so my hope is that we have the strength and the courage and the vision to take a deep breath, go through this period of turmoil, knowing that this is the necessary precondition and for the rebirth of Israel.

Donniel: Could I say that in Donniel’s terms?

Yossi: Please.

Donniel: And it’s almost the same, but it’s, you know, the subtle differences between us. Our tradition challenges us at various moments during the year, or at various moments in our life, to do what our tradition calls a cheshbon nefesh. An accounting of your soul. A soul accounting, in which you ask yourself who you are. What have you done? What is your life like? Where do you want to go? And how do you get there? How do you think about getting there?

And one of the beautiful things about our tradition is it believes that that’s not a futile exercise. It believes that change is possible. It believes that you can’t necessarily change the world, but you can change yourself. That a human being is capable of changing themselves and being better and being more.

After nine months, nobody’s thinking about what they have to change. We’re all becoming experts in where the other person has to change. We’re blaming each other. We’re putting all the responsibility, all the failures on this person or that person. And the end of the day, you know, we speak about this a lot, how on the holiday of the day of atonement on Yom Kippur, when you have the confession, the confession in our tradition demands that everybody says, chatanu, we have sinned, we are guilty, and you pound your own heart and you say, what have I done? What’s in my nefesh, in my soul? You don’t reach out your hand and pound your neighbor’s soul saying you have sinned.

Yossi: The Israeli way of contrition.

Donniel: It’s the Israeli way of contrition in which we always assume the other one and part of the disunity that has descended in Israel is that we’re not really asking ourselves. You spoke about turmoil. I’m hoping for a period of soul searching, but a period in which my biggest blessing for Israel is that we could start talking to each other differently, that we could come to the table and say, we’re all in this together. There isn’t one person who got us here. It wasn’t this officer, or this person, or this minister, or not. We’re in a place that’s going to require of us new thinking, new creativity, and new challenges.

I love my people. I do. My greatest honor is to be a part of this people. That’s really why I’m Jewish. Judaism’s not bad. But the Jewish people, we’re exceptional. But we’re underperforming right now. And war does that, and political conflict does that, and weak leadership does that. So my bracha is that we can do some real soul searching.

Yossi: How about tumultuous soul searching?

Donniel: Tumultuous soul searching? Okay, you need tumultuous. I’ll give it to you. As long as there’s some soul searching. Yossi, as always, it’s an honor and a privilege to be with you. This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, and it’s day 277. And the other bracha is that our hostages should come home. Thank you.

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