The following is a transcript of Episode 115 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 Hartmand and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute, and this is our podcast For Heaven’s Sake, our special edition Israel at War, Day 143. 

And before we get into today’s subject, I, personally, and Yossi, I know you do as well, we want to thank all of you, our listeners, our loyal listeners who’ve been our community since this war started, and the people who we talk to and indirectly are influenced by. Also directly, through your writing, and because of you, this podcast, this series has become the number one podcast in the English-speaking Jewish world. United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, sometimes South Africa, and very often episodes become number two or three in Israel. So it’s very gratifying. We walk together and we appreciate the fact that this is a format and a framework within which you find meaning, and for some of you, some comfort, and for others a lot of challenge. And that more or less is where we are as a people. 

And that leads us to today’s subject, Rafah or Rafiach, the last section of Gaza, which has yet to be controlled by the army taking over, troops have yet to invade that area. It’s also where 1.4 million Gazans now reside, all those who were in the north and the center, the humanitarian corridors sent to everybody down south. It’s also where our hostages are. It’s where Sinwar is. Hopefully, unless he’s now in Egypt or somewhere else. It’s the last stand of we’re not sure what there’s Rafah, Rafiach, we’ll use the word Rafah, is an inflection point almost for everything that’s happened in the war.

On October 8th, our desire to win, our declaration of our moral right to win has all come down now to Rafah. Without Rafah, the Prime Minister says there is no victory, because we know they’re still there. The organization is still in power, the terrorists are all there, the tunnels are there. What have we achieved? The hostages are there. There might be a hostage deal. We don’t know. But they’re there. Do we just leave them? Do we not? 

The humanitarian crisis that we started to understand later than the rest of the world, but it’s also coming to it, like how you can’t avoid the humanitarian crisis anymore. If you go into Rafah, what are you going to do? What does it mean to move people back north? Do you have an infrastructure back north? What are you gonna do? There’s people.

And in many ways, Rafah also is an inflection point for the world. We spoke about the shifting attitudes of the world towards the war, but even our greatest friends on October 8th, even those who continue to support us throughout these last 140 days, the United States, which vetoes a resolution calling for a ceasefire, they’re saying don’t go into Rafah. This is a bridge too far. This is the next stage which will bring a catastrophe. 

And so how we’re going to think about Rafah, how do we how do we engage in the next number of days? The army is preparing military plans. Everything is moving forward. It’s almost as if everything is coming to a head right now. Rafah is now the encapsulation of the whole war, where it’s going to go and how history will judge it. So when you think about Rafah, this this city, this reality, all the packages, all that’s involved, how do you want how do you understand it and how do you think about it?

Yossi: So Donniel, I really appreciated the way you framed the dilemma. And for me, this is the moment of decision and we are facing a choice between, on the one hand, the achievement of of the goals of this war that have appeared elusive all these months. You and I have debated whether victory is even possible anymore.

And now suddenly it seems, one last push, we have Hamas cornered, maybe, maybe victory is really in reach, and at the same time, maybe a far-reaching hostage deal is at least in reach. So that’s on the one hand. 

On the other hand, the terrifying possibility of the humanitarian crisis intensifying in ways that we can’t imagine. The U.N. is warning about widespread hunger and disease, tens of thousands of additional casualties. And we know that if we go into Rafah, we may well lose the support of our of our last allies. And so we’re standing before the moment of decision.

Donniel: So what do you decide?

Yossi: What do you decide?

Donniel: Where are you? Like, we’re not, our job isn’t to be prophets. So maybe that question wasn’t fair. So let me pull it back.

It’s not even where you are, personally. I don’t know if I’ve said this over the last months. When you ask somebody today in Israel, how do you feel, what you mean is the last hour. Because otherwise people give you this four-hour answer. How do I feel? Well, it depends personally, collectively, and so this, it’s interesting, no, I’m just talking to you for the last hour, how you feel. 

So where are you right now? Because it changes all the time. There’s you know, we, you and I literally are on top of the news. Right now, where we are, with no guarantee for the next 2 hours or 3 hours, given these four constellations right now, what decision, where are you? What weighing on you more? 

Yossi: All right. So first of all, tactically, I think we need to keep threatening that we’re going in, and that’s to get a better deal on the hostages. That’s clearly Benny Gantz’s approach.

Donniel: I think, by the way, Netanyahu, I know you don’t like to do this, but he deserves some credit, some of the time. Don’t worry. Just, just let me say that. And no go on.

Yossi: Donniel, say it. But you know, in my answer to your question, he factors in. 

Donniel: I appreciate that.

Yossi: He does, because when he speaks about total victory in his bombastic way, that’s what I begin to think, well, maybe victory really isn’t possible.

Donniel: I’m not sure that that’s not a posturing towards Hamas as well. Okay. But our issue is not Netanyahu. 

Yossi: No, no, no, but it is in terms of factoring in,

Donniel: This notion that the war is continuing, Hamas, we’re going to move in, what do you want to do?

Yossi: If there really is a chance of destroying Hamas’s capability of governin in the morning after? I say we go in, and take a deep breath, and hopefully there’ll be competent measures in place to deal with the humanitarian crisis. And in terms of losing our allies, deep breath time.

Donniel: You know, first of all, I appreciate that. For me, Rafah is less the moment of decision between values. It’s both my fantasy and my nightmare at the same time. 

Throughout the war, from October 8th, we’ve had the fantasy that we could live. And I love that fantasy. And it’s really important for me, in my life here in Israel. Part of the way we get through the day is with that hope, and it doesn’t have to be messianic hope, as I presented it in the past. It’s just hope that maybe there could be some victory, even if it’s not all that victory.

Yossi: That we won’t have a genocidal regime.

Donniel: But you’re always, you’re going to have something. But maybe not, you’re not going to have a genocidal regime on the border. Correct. Something. But we’re holding onto some aspiration for victory. And I want to tell you, I don’t even know if it’s anymore the genocidal enemy on the border. I don’t know if it’s also not very deeply psychological, that we need a victory to heal the wounds of October 7th, to heal our trauma, to heal our fear. Some victory that will give us an ability to have a different myth of stability. There’s a myth of stability. I need a myth. And we all know we create myths.

Yossi: Or that will give the residents of the southern border a psychological framework for returning to their home.

Donniel: Something. Even though, as one of them said to me, would you go back? You know, so I could have a myth of stability for them, which might not be that, which is, there’s something immoral about that, or problematic about that. But I think we’re trying to bring something to a closure. And the tantalizing fantasy of Rafah, it’s the last place, like, we thought we were going to get in the minute they moved into Gaza City. Shifa Hospital was this, do you remember that? Do you remember? I think it was day, I don’t know, 60, 50.

Yossi: We got them.

Donniel: We got them. Oh, and what did we find? Command and control bunkers and 16 Kalashnikovs. So it was like, I remember, I wanted that closure. So I’m worried. You know, Rafah, it’s like, oh, maybe, you know. So we quote facts and it’s true, because if Hamas is becoming more moderate in its demands on a hostage deal, it’s not because all of a sudden it’s discovering that, yes, pidyon shvuyim, returning hostages is a value in the Jewish tradition, and therefore, we want to allow Jews to live a more full Jewish life. 

The only reason why they’re doing it is if we are literally threatening and squeezing them to a place that they, even a 60-day cease fire could be critical. And in those contexts, many things could happen. 

So there’s something about this possibility that I want to hold on to when people ask me, Donniel, so in light of everything that you’ve said, are you for a ceasefire? And my answer is, I don’t know. Right? I don’t know. That’s what I wrote in my article in the Forward.

Yossi: That was a terrific piece, by the way.

Donniel: Thank you. I wasn’t searching for a compliment, but I’ll take it. 

Yossi: No, no, no. But I’m saying it because I want to emphasize that people should read it. Donniel: Thank you. But it’s like, I don’t know. It’s also, why don’t you know? Because I don’t know. Because I don’t know if a little more work in Rafah, what they call destroying the last brigades of Hamas will be critical or will give Israeli society, and you want to do something, but I don’t want to admit ,will also give me, some psychological closure, some feeling that we can go on.

So for me, Rafah has this fantasy, but increasingly, and I’ve been feeling this more and more, and here I am, I’m more in tune with much of our audience who lives outside of Israel and less of the audience or the population in Israel. As you know, the humanitarian crisis, civilian casualties. We need to give an accounting, We cannot continue to fight this war without even talking about this. I’m not saying that these people were killed unjustly. I’m not even going there. But to not talk about it, to not struggle with it. And when I look at Rafah and I look at the over million people who are there in tent cities and hunger, what are your plans?

And so we could say, oh, don’t worry, the army knows what it’s going to do. The one thing I learned from October 7th, or for the last 140 days, is that on these issues we are always unprepared, and we could come up with a plan, and we appoint some system of distributing aid. It’s not there. And I think Rafah is the place where we could no longer fight this war justly. This is the point where, it’s a just war, but we have to fight a just war justly, and without much more serious engagement with the humanitarian crisis, the fantasy of that moment doesn’t override the terror of a total moral collapse on the part of Israel and the suffering and unjust suffering. We need we need real solutions. And we can’t be just to tell us. I want to hear what they are.

Yossi: So Rafah is the moment where our moral credibility will be decided. That’s how you that’s how you’re seeing this.

Donniel: For me, it’s not a public relations issue.

Yossi: No, no. I’m saying for ourselves.

Donniel: It’s where our morality is going to be tested now. Now, Israeli society, stand up. Now, you said beforehand the corridors were enough and corridors were a deal. It’s a story. It’s correct. When you’re fighting a war, get civilians out. That’s, maybe that was the best we could have done. Were there other things we could have done? We’ve also talked about that. 

But right now, how are you going to seriously deal with a million people and they’re not just disappearing. You need, what do you think? They’re just moving? Do you know what type of infrastructure you have to create for people? Do you know what type of support? I don’t know what it’s like, all I do, you know, we live in privileged existences, but what does it mean to move back to destroyed territories? How do you, you think that’s just a matter of a week? You think, oh, let’s just move 1,000,000.2 or 4 people, let’s move them three kilometers here?

Yossi: Donniel, I’m with you. The reason, the main reason that I think the Israeli public is not capable of that kind of essential conversation is because of the hostages. And I’m not saying that as a justification, but an explanation. 

But I’d like to go back to the earlier point you made before we lose it. And that is the the need for psychological closure. And I agree with you that the psychological dimension of this war is critical. But for me, it isn’t so much internal, but external, toward the region, toward the Palestinian people, toward our enemies, Iran, Hezbollah. They need to understand that we are not the nation of October 7th. We’re the nation of October 8th.

Donniel: But you, Yossi, said last week that you achieved that already. Before Rafah.

Yossi: Ah, so yes. No, no. So now what I’d like to do is actually offer some affirmation of a point you made earlier, which is the question of whether, it’s whether we can begin to let go of the fantasy of a total victory, because maybe we’ve already won, to some extent. And this is a really important part of this conversation.

This morning, I read an interview with one of the Hamas leaders, Abu Marzouk, an interview he gave to Egyptian television, very important interview. And the interviewer was angry at him. He said, look at the devastation that October 7th has brought on Gaza. Do you have any regrets?

Now, that’s a very important question to be to be asking a leader of Hamas from an Arab journalist. That question in itself is an indication that we may have already inflicted enough devastation that the message has gotten across.

His answer was very different from what he what he said in the past. In the past, he was all bluster. He said we didn’t expect this kind of barbaric Israeli response. Translation: We didn’t expect that Israel would not honor our immunity behind the human shields of Gaza, because it’s worked every time in the past. We didn’t expect Israel to go into hospitals in search of Hamas. We didn’t expect them to go into mosques and U.N. facilities. 

So what he’s saying is maybe we have already achieved the psychological victory that I’m looking for, which is connected to restoring our deterrence. And so that’s an important question that I’m asking myself before your question about Rafah.

Donniel: I appreciate that. Just like we’re looking for a psychological victory, there’s no doubt that Hamas was also looking for a psychological victory of some form. October 7th wasn’t a that Israel wasn’t destroyed. But in in a world in which Israel is the evil and any defeat or harming of Israel is both a political national, moral, and religious celebration.

The last 143 days took away that sense of victory. You just look at Gaza, it cancels the victory, the massacre, the victorious massacre of October 7th. It’s interesting, the hostage deal will return for Hamas some measure of a psychological victory. And we’re going to have to learn how to deal with it. The question is whether whether psychologically we could allow them to also have a psychological victory or whether we could not allow them we can tolerate it. Or is that intolerable? And that, I think that’s, 

Yossi: I don’t know the answer to that. As I’m hearing you speak, a part of me is cringing. 

Donniel: Cringing, I know that. And I think that’s the, deep down, that’s the struggle in Israeli society that we know. Do we want to reclaim our, bringing them home could be a profound closure that we need. Maybe that’s all we need. 

Yossi: There’s a slogan that’s now on posters around the city, and the temunat hanitzachon, the victory picture will be the return of the hostages. And that’s a powerful argument. For me, it’s not enough of a victory picture. But I hear that.

Donniel: See, because maybe the difference and this is a little difference between us. It’s not an argument, but it’s a difference. I am thinking about the psychological healing of Israeli society after October 7th, and I’m going to assume that my enemy is still going to be there. It may be I achieved the victory, but given their ideology, they’re going to be back. That is significant military deterrence is not going to be the game changer for Iran. It might give us another ten years. But you remember, they think in hundred-year terms. So what we think is, oh, we return to, they’re thinking in the categories that we’re, they’re in the major leagues, we’re still, there’s something primitive about our notion of victory here. They have a long term strategy and tactic. So I’m giving up on getting them to recognize that they have no psychological victory. 

I want to know how Israeli society heals. And the question is whether Rafah is needed, is it needed for us? And so I know that attaining that psychological closure does not justify a mass humanitarian crisis and civilian deaths. It just doesn’t. 

And at some point without the the fantasy of victory or the hostage deal and we have to let this play out maybe because maybe it’s helping, we’re going to have to sit down and say, enough.

Yossi: There is an immediate strategic question. I agree with you that the psychological dimension is not enough of a justification for inflicting humanitarian disaster. There’s a strategic dimension here, and that is, we are trying to negotiate a deal with Hezbollah where they’ll move back from the border. If we don’t negotiate that deal, there’s going to be a war. The war is going to expand. And we we know that’s going to be the worst war that Israel has ever fought, both in terms of the home front and how that will play out in Lebanon.

How this war is perceived by Hezbollah will influence the trajectory of those negotiations. And so that’s that’s something else to throw into the mix. It’s not only a question of deterrence and long-term calculations. There is an immediate strategic consequence here.

Donniel: I don’t think in those terms and I’m not making my lack of thinking in those terms a virtue. It’s just describing, because I don’t know, it would be very hard for me to argue Rafah is going to make the difference to Nasrallah. Like, do we move in, do we not move in? I don’t know. There is a war going on in the north that is more or less hidden from the public eye. And so I don’t know. 

Or here I want to argue with it for a moment. Even psychologically, there’s like, there’s this new strategic objective that we don’t know for sure that it’s there. It might be there. I’m telling you that it’s there. And then behind that language, we go back to justifying something which at its core is not strategic, because we could always, you know, if you just get that next bridge, that’s the strategic tipping point that we need.

Yossi: And we’ve been there before. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. But when we think this through, we need to look at all of the elements at play, because if this really is a culminating moment, there are lots of consequences that need to be factored in. Internal, regional, international. And how one balances the other, how one plays out against the other, each of us is going to make our own calculations. But these are these are the elements that we to consider.

Donniel: You know, and one of the things that I want to add to the conversation, and I want us to talk about it a little bit, is Rafah also could be the moment where Israeli society has to begin to understand that we don’t get to fight a war in isolation from our allies and the world. 

When is it that we are going to internalize our dependency on the world, the dependency of our economy, our dependency on political allies, that Israel’s military strength is not just whether we could come up with a plan for Rafah.

Yossi: Crucial point. Crucial. 

Donniel: And so here, and Israelis here too again, at the beginning, when do we acknowledge our place in the world and our interdependency, when they’re helping us, when America comes and from the first day is sending tens and tens of huge transport planes with equipment, when we need oh, of course, when the world is supporting us, oh, look, we’re part of the world, we’re the darlings of the world. We have world opinion friends, our friends, our friends. 

The minute somebody comes up and says, uh — no, who said the world? They’re anti-Semites, we don’t need to, we’re independent, and then we’re allowed to say no, and all of a sudden, used the word bluster before. It’s like all this boisterous, this it’s this whole pop, this, Rafah could change not only the outcome of the war, but I think it is a moment where Israeli society is going to have to decide to what extent what does the critique of the world of our war become an internal conversation which has yet to happen?

Yossi: The challenge that you’re proposing to the Israeli psyche is to reconfigure our understanding of power. I think about the far right. And, you know, Ben Gvir calls his party Jewish Power, and he has such a childish notion of power. Power is military power, it’s determination, it’s all will. Well, power is a very complex web that includes an economic dimension. It includes our standing in the world and includes our relationship with the diaspora, certainly with the United States. 

And somehow, when the far right speaks about power, all of those other elements disappear and it just becomes a game of risk, you know, the board game. And you’re right, this is a moment where we need to have a serious conversation about power.

Now, all of the issues that you’ve raised don’t negate the fact that there are moments when one must go for military power and risk weakening those other elements. But if you don’t factor in those other elements, you are not holding power responsibly.

Donniel: So Rafah’s, a moment, it really is a moment for you, it’s a moment where different objectives, different values, different ends have to somehow fit in with each other. And for both of us, the hostages are a game changer. And how that plays out. And I think for both of us, we would be willing to continue threatening Rafah, maybe doing small little minor incursions in order for Hamas to recognize we are serious, because unless there is a fear component, the hostage deal is not going to happen. And that is a victory picture, one victory picture, especially after the psychological deterrence that has been returned. 

So there is this Rafah as the moment when we have to choose and some really difficult choices, really difficult choices, and it’ll be interesting, if the hostages are returned, do we wait to 60 or do we still go into Rafah or do we react? We can leave that aside. 

For me, Rafah is not a moment where we have to decide between values. It’s where we have to decide what are our values. And it’s the moment where some painful decisions and conversations need to start. Maybe Rafah could be an inflection point, not merely for what the army’s going to do and not merely what our politicians are going to decide, but whether Israeli society could begin the first process of some healing from October 7th and begin to have conversations, whether it’s about power, whether it’s about humanitarian crises, whether it is about how you fight a just war justly.

So Rafah is the beginning of something that we’re going to have to watch. And our lives, Israel, the war is in many ways going to be determined by the choices we make in Rafah. This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at war, Day 143. But really looking at the next two weeks as a critical moment and really in many ways in the whole war.

Pleasure being with you, Yossi. 

Yossi: Always.

Donniel: May things be okay.

Yossi: Be’ezrat Hashem. 

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