Israel at War – The Clocks Are Ticking 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 our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, Day 614. Our theme today is entitled, the Clocks are Ticking, plural, in the plural, and I, I know it sounds ominous, the clocks are ticking and… we’re trying to give a window into what’s happening in Israel today.

You know, we debated together, maybe we should call this, “A society in Transition and Flux.” You know, we’ve talked about that so many times, but it’s like the temperature of this transition is growing and it’s not just a transition. There’s a sense that we’re coming to moments of decision. The clocks are ticking.

Now, Netanyahu, this is my impression. His whole methodology is to avoid deadlines, is to deny them, is to not make decisions until the absolute last second, and then when a decision is made to have somebody else make the decision, especially since every decision will be partially unpopular to present himself as. The unwilling victim of a coalition, but he’s still navigating us and saving us from the worst possible outcomes.

And that’s why, as we all know, Netanyahu’s ideal coalition is one where there’s people to the right of him and people to the left of him, and they battle things out, and then eventually decisions are made, but not by him. His decision is the Statesman’s decision to keep, to be above and to let the children decide whatever they decided.

But he doesn’t have that balanced coalition and an Israeli political environment. Today, it’s the country’s divided between just Netanyahu and just not Netanyahu, and the polls are roughly 65 seats in the Knesset, “Just Not Netanyahu,” 45 seats, “Just Netanyahu,” and 10 seats which belong to the Israeli Arab Palestinian, the two parties of the Israeli Arab Palestinian Society.
Part of them would join a coalition if they’re invited and part would not, but there’s this split.

Everything now is about him, and at this time, we’re at a decision inflection point, and there are four primary inflection points that are, I feel they’re assaulting us, like, it’s like exhausting. They’re like, it’s like how many things, like every time you open, you look at the website, things are changing and each one of these issues is coming forth very briefly.

The four are, the first is today there’s gonna be a vote on whether to disband parliament and call for a new election. If the vote passes, it still needs three additional votes by a majority of the assembly. If it doesn’t, then the opposition has to wait six more months before it could put another legislation of this type.

So if it fails today, the government wins six months reprieve. If it passes, there’s a clock ticking. What’s gonna happen? Is the government gonna survive? And to survive, the issue is whether the government passes a legislation that the majority of Israeli society, on the one hand, it survives as a government for now, and the other hand, it undermines its ability to win the next election because this is an issue that unifies most of Israel’s society, i.e. the drafting of the issue on the table, maybe I everybody knows, is the drafting of Haredim into the Army.

Yossi: The Ultra Orthodox.

Donniel: The Ultra Orthodox. The second is Ultra Orthodox Society itself. Clocks ticking on them. What are they gonna decide? Are they gonna leave a government, which is more favorable than any other government they ever will have? Or are there certain principles that they say, as we say in Hebrew, atah up till here, like, who am I if I don’t stand?

You know, Charedim, the Ultra Orthodox pride themselves as being a deeply ideological and principled community. Here it is. It’s the study of Torah on the table, the clock’s ticking. What are they gonna decide? And within the next few hours, or could be the next couple of weeks during the upcoming negotiations, where are they gonna go? Are they gonna officially break with the rest of the country, or are they gonna somehow recognize that October 7th requires something from them? The clock’s ticking.

If you’re not yet exhausted, the clock’s ticking also on a relationship with World Jewry, the war in Gaza. It’s draining. World Jewry sees the war in a different way than we see it here in Israel. You know, 70% of Israelis in a recent poll said, I don’t wanna even hear about Gazans. Like, just, just don’t bother me, you know?

But every day, every day something is reported again today. More people. We don’t know all the details of why civilians are being killed. Does it have to do with the food distribution? Is it flawed or not flawed? Or is it Hamas manipulating or who’s shooting and there’s a lot of mess around it, but there’s just a tiredness about it and to really, in many ways top what do you, you top a cake, what do you do?

We have a member of the Likud party attacking a reformed Rabbi Gilad Kariv, who’s a member of the Opposition saying to him, you’re a Reform man. Please leave the room. We Jews wanna talk and, oh, by the way, when you officiate a Bar Mitzvah for a dog, invite me, I’ll come. Like this, it’s like, the nightmare of this anti-Reform discourse.

But what’s worse is Netanyahu didn’t mention a word. The only ones who condemn it, of course, the official, you know, conscience of the country, the president, Herzog the Jewish Agency, but like nothing, not a word. It’s just like as if they don’t matter. But there’s a clock ticking.

And finally the last clock is world opinion. We’re feeling it. Israeli press is reporting it. We see now there’s five countries who are condemning Israel and starting sanctions. There’s sanctions against two of our ministers. Things are happening and there’s a clock ticking something. Is happening and maybe the fifth clock, but we don’t wanna talk about what we don’t know is a clock ticking on the end of the war.

You know, it seems that in the conversation, it’s been reported on a conversation between the Prime Minister of Israel and the president of the United States that President Trump said, finished the war already. It’s done. You’re not achieving anything. And it’s important for our negotiations with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

It’s like, go move on. And. There’s conversations that within the next few days we might be implementing stage one of some hostage deal, but we don’t know. We’ll have to wait for the news to evolve around that. But this, all these things happening, Yossi. I know this introduction is very long and I apologize, but it’s just maybe you’re exhausted, not you, Yossi, ’cause you love listening to me. But our audience, it’s just been a long, but that’s where we are. It’s just the clock’s ticking on so many fronts and our world is gonna change each one of these clocks. It’s not, it’s not a minor little issue. These are significant. Which clock do you wanna start with?

Yossi: You know, listening to this, this litany of converging crises is so exhausting, it’s so overwhelming. And you just say to yourself, he can’t possibly survive this.

Donniel: You know, I had that same feeling. It’s like, but everybody always says, oh, but you don’t, never count Netanyahu. But I’m saying like, really, really?

Yossi: Really, really, and really any one of these issues would be an existential political challenge to Netanyahu. And here he is facing all of them together. The one issue I think that is insurmountable for him, because in the end he could probably continue to finesse the war and world opinion and Trump’s pressure and the split with diaspora… You know, the old Netanyahu would’ve felt this responsibility to the future of Israel. This version of Netanyahu feels only, I think, only a responsibility for his continued governance, and he could limp along.

The one minefield that he can’t navigate is the Haredim, the Ultra Orthodox draft for the reasons that you said that. For the Ultra Orthodox, this is what we say in Hebrew yehareg ve-al ya’avor. This is the bottom line, this is the red line. It’s the issue of ultimate principle for them. And what’s changed in the dynamic of the relationship of Israeli society, the majority to the ultra Orthodox, is that it has also become a yehareg ve-al ya’avor.

Donniel: A red line.

Yossi: A red line for the rest of us. And we know the army keeps telling us this. It can’t continue fighting effectively without an infusion of new recruits. And the only community that’s left is the Ultra Orthodox.

Donniel: And if I could just add to that, not just fight effectively in Gaza, ’cause the war might come to an end, but it can’t defend the borders effectively.

Yossi: And if you project 10 or 15 years from now, the Ultra Orthodox today are 15% of the society. In 15 years from now, there’ll be 20%, 25%. Well, 30 years from now, they’ll be a quarter of the population. So are we going to exempt a quarter of the population? And we know that this arrangement began in 1948 when there were a few, a few hundred Yeshiva students.

Donniel: I believe it was 400.

Yossi: 400.

Donniel: Ben Gurion agreed to exempt 400 of the top Talmud students, as we say in Hebrew, he was being large. He was being generous. Generous. And it’s become. Impossible. And you know, one can argue the pros and cons, and I understand the Haredi world on this. I really do. I understand that it isn’t only about the study of Torah. In some ways it’s about the preservation of their way of life, which really depends on separating from the rest of society. And the army is a melting pot, and they’re afraid of that melting pot for good reason. Even though the armies has set up structures that can help them maintain their lifestyle, there’s no hermetic seal and the Haredi world worked heroically to reconstruct after the Holocaust, and this is a threat to them.

The problem is it’s also a threat to me. And what you have now in Israeli society are two existential threats or two perceptions of existential threats converging, and we’re the majority we’re going to win. The question is, how far will Haredim society go in breaking as you put it in?

Donniel: You know, it’s not just that we’re the majority. Their ability to survive is dependent on our willingness to fund our own existential threat. This is the paradox.

Yossi: That’s right. Exactly. So even if we come to the point where, and, and I think we might, and, and you’ve said this in the past, Donniel, that you know, we’re not going to draft you by force, but we’re cutting off all the funding. Once a Haredi young man turns 18, the funding stops.

Now the basis of their separatism, and this is their fatal weakness, is that it depends on the larges of an increasingly aggrieved and threatened majority. So it’s not sustainable.

Donniel: I don’t know if you noticed when there was a tipping point on this is when the Haredim, in the coalition agreement insisted that the government pass a basic law of Torah study in which the country not only funds the ability of the Ultra Orthodox community to maintain their position, that they could only exist separate from the country, which is just, if you try to put your head had it just, it’s not even, you could go crazy.

But they wanted to pass a law in which the government would decide. We, the secular and religious Zionist, we, those who serve in the army send our kids to the army with all the price, that we should officially vote that the study of Torah is an existential importance to the country, just like the soldiers. Like that was a bridge to… You wanna do it? You do it. You wanna take the money, take the money. But now you want me to actually officially declare right that you’re as important as me. And that’s what October 7th changed because like, we’re exhausted. Israeli society who serves are exhausted. We can’t do it anymore.

People, you know, every, like my friends are all like, we’re old, you know? So we don’t go anymore. But our kids go and our grandchildren go. Friend calls my son just got a three month, like now, another three months. This is his fourth three months. Like, what are you supposed to do?

And here you have someone saying, no, you vote to declare my importance to you. That was the tipping point. Israeli society can’t tolerate it anymore.

Yossi: You said something, just now in passing that I want to slow down and focus on. You said that the secular and religious Zionists are both outraged now. That’s new. Because in the past, that coalition, that coalition is new and I think that the fault line that’s, that’s emerged within this coalition between the Ultra Orthodox on the one hand and the Religious zionist on the other is the most important fault line at this moment politically, because that’s the fundamental threat to the stability of this coalition. What has held together…

Donniel: In other words, it’s not the opposition, which is against the draft exempt, it’s Netanyahu’s right wing coalition partners.

Yossi: Donniel, this is the first time that Netanyahu couldn’t pass a bill that he defined as essential to the survival of the coalition. The revolt happened from within the Likkud. It happened from, from the Religious Zionists, his Religious Zionist allies, he can’t do it. That’s why we come to this.

Donniel: And the religious Zionist Edelstein, who’s the chair of the security committee, which has to agree to the legislation. So he too, it’s like…

Yossi: He’s a Religious Zionist. A Likkudnik, but this is the first issue that the Likud, a revolt on principle who, who could have imagined a revolt on principle within this…

Donniel: It’s remarkable and it’s so interesting, you know, when, when you see how Netanyahu has been functioning, anytime he has a contentious issue, he just decides between him and Ron Dermer. They just decide. So here it is.

The government has decided, I know it’s a whole other issue, but it’s relevant. They’ve decided to begin to arm and fund a new force in Gaza. And we’re funding weapons to someone who we never heard before. Someone named him Abu Shabab, you know…

Yossi: Head of a gang head, basically.

Donniel: Basically he, he’s probably some mafia, right? He’s some mafia guy who is corrupt. And today the Minister of Finance, his chief partner. The guy who’s funding the guns, who sits on his security on the committee that determine everything, says, no one spoke to me about this one. So here it is, like this. No one told me we’re funding a mafioso, we’re giving him guns that could be directed against Israel.

Now, in this case, I happen to think that Netanyahu’s, right? I’m not saying anything about Abu Shabab, but eventually we’re gonna have to find some serious Palestinians who are gonna take over from Gaza.

Yossi: Yeah, but this is, this is not that.

Donniel: Donniel: This is, I don’t even, I, this is like, there’s a joke.

Yossi: I hate to say, I, I agree with Smotrich on this.

Donniel: I, I wanna just, I don’t know. I don’t think, and this is part of the issue. I don’t think any of us know enough. I don’t even think Netanyahu knows who Abu Shabab is. I don’t think he’s even thought about it. He’s just found somebody who maybe could help do some of the security for the distribution of the humanitarian aid so that it doesn’t get in the hands of Hamas, which is by the way, a legitimate absolutely. I think this was, I, I feel it should have been done a long time ago, but it’s absolutely legitimate.

Yossi: And the international community has ignored the fact that Hamas has been hijacking the age from the beginning.

Donniel: The whole thing is just insane. But this Abu Shabab, here it is. So now Netanyahu can’t. Actually it’s, it’s, you know, what is it, what did Brandeis say? That sunshine is the ultimate anaesthetic?

Yossi: Disinfectant.

Donniel: Disinfectant. Like here, Netanyahu can’t. It’s not between Dermer and Netanyahu anymore. This is actually, they have to pass a law and the Supreme Court is sitting and watching and his coalition partners are saying like, I don’t like half the things he’s doing on his own.

Yossi: So do you think we’re seeing the beginning of the unraveling of Netanyahu’s internal authority?

Donniel: I think what we see is that the clocks are ticking, literally. Like I don’t, I, it’s just the problem is, is that all of them, anybody in the coalition, their deep self-interest is to remain, because you know Smotrich, Minister Smotrich, I like to show him respect, almost in every single poll, he doesn’t pass the threshold to get into the next Knesset. He’s not making it. This is the end of his political career. Right? And Ben Gvir swallows him up and the religious Zionist community becomes a party which moves predominantly into the Likud or into Bennett’s party. It’s the end of the religious Zionist party for this next round at least.

Yossi: Yeah, there’s one more element here, which is that Netanyahu has essentially given Smotrich a free hand to stampede toward annexation in the territories.

Donniel: Could you do me a favor, Yossi? That’s another clock. Could we designate one of our upcoming issues? Because I wanted, we have to.

Yossi: We have to talk about this.

Donniel: Cause the things are changing in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank under…

Yossi: And we’re not paying attention.

Donniel: And we’re not paying attention. And it comes every, we have to talk about this. We do. Because this has long term impact, but it’s like, this one’s exhausting enough. If we could just leave that one a little, like that’s enough. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk about it, but part of the problem is, we’re so exhausted that Smotrich knows that we’re exhausted and he’s getting ready to…

Yossi: We’re distracted by these other clocks.

Donniel: We’re exhausted by them, and we’re picking our battles. But I think the issue of Judea and Samaria is something that we, yeah, we we’re gonna have to talk about whether we like it or not, and I want to.

So part of the challenge here is that at the end, are they gonna vote for their dismantlement knowing that the Likud can’t win the next election, or unless Netanyahu somehow finds a way to spin this. So I never wanna count him out. But the clock is ticking. Something is gonna be happening over the next couple of days, either before our listeners here or the next couple of weeks. This is the government, Haredi society, two huge clocks that are gonna reshape all of our conversation. It could be that we’re in a completely different arena.

Pick the next clock that you want, Yos. Is it World Jewry? Is it world opinion? Are they connected? Which one do you wanna talk about?

Yossi: Having recently come back from a lecture tour in North America, primarily within the Jewish community, I’m especially sensitive to what’s happening now and the gratuitous insults against our last, our last supporters, basically, which are diaspora Jewry and how elements within this government almost make it a point of pride to alienate.

Donniel: So how do you understand the silence of Netanyahu? Cause he was always the one who understood that world Jewry are a strategic interest of his.

Yossi: Not for him. Not for him.

Donniel: They used to be, well, they were strategic interest… Ah, not for him. They were for Israel. Ah. So you’re making that distinction.

Yossi: They were for Israel. Yeah, absolutely. And, and this is exactly the line that divides…

Donniel: The old Netanyahu and the new one.

Yossi: Yes, the Netanyahu, who really not only cared about his own political interests, but also cared about the state of Israel, this version of Netanyahu, and we see it in, in policy cares almost exclusively, about his own survival. And as we’ve said before Donniel, you know, he’s come to the point that fatal miscalculation that many leaders make, especially leaders who’ve been around for too long, which is a complete identification of the leader in the state and what’s good for the leader has to be good for the state.

Donniel: Right? And so, Galit Distel Atbaryan is one of his most effective attack dogs. She is. If there’s something vulgar to be said, she will be the one who says it though.

Yossi: There is stiff competition.

Donniel: Competition, there is stiff competition, but she’s one of the better ones and she’s, everything is just Netanyahu. So he unleashed her. And in this context, is it world Jewry or my coalition as you said? I, you know, sometimes I’m shocked, sometimes I’m surprised not by even what’s being done, but by the silence it’s not even an issue for him. Like it’s, everything else has sort of disappeared and all he has now are these short-term tactical moves that need to be made to keep his government going.

Yossi: I think that’s a crucial insight. It’s a crucial insight, Donniel, that Netanyahu has become the master of the tactical on all fronts, all of the ticking clocks that you mentioned.

Donniel: I just don’t think he’s the master of it.

Yossi: Well, now what’s happened is that his ability to expand the timeframe of the tactical has been curtailed.

Donniel: He, his tactics aren’t working anymore. They’re not working with anybody. But you see the price, and you and I are so committed to the loyalty of the Jewish people to each other and the loyalty of the state of Israel to world Jewry. And we spend so much of our career trying to work to ensure that world Jewry doesn’t walk away from Israel in a vital relationship with Israel and to see Israel as an integral part of your Jewish identity, not some overseas allocation.

This is what we do day in and day out. It’s, it’s, it’s our deepest commitments and to see there’s enough problems as it is. And there’s issues that I can’t solve. And it’s true that 6 to 10,000 miles away, when you see the war, it’s different than the, when you see it here and there’s gonna to be differences and there’s, there’s ideological differences. But this, this level of disrespect, disdain, this goes, you know, who speaks this way? This is the way the old Orthodox used to speak.

Yossi: That’s right, that’s right. And it’s now, it’s now filtered into the Likud.

Donniel: It’s, it’s, it’s filtered and like this, and it’s normative. And you know, thank God, you know, you have president Herzog, but he doesn’t carry weight in Israel. But he’s such a decent man that, that’s it… There’s a decency. Benmet would never tolerate it. There’s a decency like, where is your decency? It’s just gone. Tthat leaves us, you know, we don’t know. But you know…

Yossi: When I meet with Reform or Conservative congregations and you see the love for the state of Israel and, and you realize how many insults they swallow, how much…

Donniel: When are we gonna get to the tipping point?

Yossi: I’m so moved by that, by their love for us.

Donniel: See what I see, their unrequited love. See, when I travel and maybe we also go to different, I see people just holding on. They’re trying to hold on and they’re trying to hold on for themselves and they’re trying to hold on from their kids and their grandchildren and just like, when’s the moment where you’re just gonna say, enough and the president, the Prime Minister of Israel, hello. There’s a clock ticking, there’s something happening. And the assumption, you know, when a Humpty Dumpty, you know, you’re not always gonna be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Part of this, you know, this children’s, what is it called? Rhyme or whatever it is, you know. Trying to teach kids that you know, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, not everything is resolvable. Not every, there’s consequences.

But that consequence leads us to the last ticking clock, and that is world opinion. It’s a different world right now, Yossi.

Yossi: It is. It is, and I’ve been out there, as you know, since October 8th, defending this war passionately in media outlets in North America, in Europe. Facing fair amount of hostility, but nothing compared to now the discourse has fundamentally shifted against us, and honestly, it’s getting harder to defend this war. A few weeks ago, Netanyahu said at a press conference that the goal of this war is to implement the Trump plan, and by the Trump plan he meant the expulsion of Palestinians.

We talked about this in the last, I, I think we did. It’s hard to remember from one episode to the other, and I might have mentioned in that episode as well, but I think it’s worth repeating. The commander of the IDF, Zamir made a point of responding, not directly, indirectly. He went to the front to meet with soldiers in Gaza and he, and he laid out three goals of the war, and he said the first goal pointedly, is bringing the hostages back, which Netanyahu is now saying is not the first goal. It’s the second. Second goal is bringing Hamas down, and the third goal is changing the political reality on the ground in Gaza. No mention of the Trump plan.

Now in Israel, the culture of the Army is to submit to the will of the politicians of the government, and that’s always been a foundation of Israeli democracy. This time the Army realizes that it has to signal a break with the government, but it’s doing so subtly and maybe a little too subtly because I think a lot of people missed the drama that’s going on here. The drama, I guarantee you, Netanyahu did not miss it.

So as long as the Army is not following Netanyahu into the moral abyss of making expulsion the goal of this war, we’re still holding on by our fingernails to the edge of the cliff. You know, Netanyahu has led us into one abyss after another. And this is, this is the final abyss, the moral abyss.

Donniel: You know, I have never been a great advocate of public relations as if public relations could solve Israel’s problems, you know, and there’s so many people who fall into the trap. Of either believing that we could solve the problem with better public relations, or there’s nothing that we could say because they’re gonna hate us anyway.

And I feel that this government is not even trying, see, I’m, I’m against this stage of the war, but there are serious issues that could be talked about. You can make a case and say this war would stop if Hamas would disarm itself. You can make a case that we’re willing to do a hostage deal and even an end of the war, but Hamas has to agree to disarm itself. And if it doesn’t agree, how could I bring a war to an end? You can make an argument or try to defend the complex reality on the ground, when civilians are killed.

This move to distribute humanitarian aid in a way that is not given over to Hamas is a perfectly legitimate… not only legitimate. Is morally and justified under, under moral categories and under and under international law. To give humanitarian aid over Hamas so that they could steal it and thus strengthen their stranglehold on Gazan society… All of this is legitimate.

In other words, you can make a case, but you know what happens every single time now civilians are killed or something happens. Do you know what the response to the Israeli government is? We’re investigating. We don’t even, our military spokesperson is not even competing anymore. He’s not even, he’s not even.

Yossi: Well, why? Because Netanyahu fired the last guy, Hagar, who was so effective, because he wasn’t, he couldn’t…

Donniel: This guy is also supposed to be affected, but he doesn’t even show up. So here it is. And Israel says, we’re, we’re investigating. Three days later, we might come up with a result, but by then nobody’s listening. Israel has abdicated. I’m not saying that public relations alone would solve all of our problems, but we’ve abdicated the conversation because that goes back to what you said. We’ve abdicated the moral discourse. The conversation will assume that there are moral standards that apply to us, that we’re willing to abide by and let’s argue about them.

We’re even trying to undermine the chief advocate of the army who’s ensuring that Israel works and, and abides by international law and by the rules of war. And so it’s like we’ve given up, we’ve given up trying to win. A moral argument and we could, oh, so you could say, you know what, that’s why our today, Israel’s public relations is, they’re antisemites. You know, you’re antisemites, a plague on…

But the clock is ticking and we have to ask, likem this lack of decision. And I think it, again, it’s part of the internal conversation, cause right now, all Netanyahu wants to talk about or work on are the tactics to enable this government to survive. This type of conversation assumes that there’s a moral discourse that his government… it doesn’t abide by, it’s not for not that different countries have now decided to sanction ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, whether you agree with it or not is not our issue today, but it’s not for not. These people have said, not on October 7th when you’re traumatized, but now they talk their, the most horrific things about the expulsion of Gazen, et cetera, much worse than Netanyahu himself.

So that’s his audience. Keeping that quiet, it’s as if it doesn’t matter anymore. And so like we’re watching and Israeli newspapers are reporting more and more, more events or more Israelis who are being attacked in various places in the world. I’m not, we’re not gonna go back into the war against the Jews last week, and it’s as if we’ve relinquished any responsibility to try to explain what we’re doing to justify morally. I’m not saying that everything that is happening is justified, but make, try. What is it that we’re doing when we’re not doing something right? Make a mistake. If you accuse us of something that we didn’t do, say it quickly.

Now it’s just silence, and that silence this clock, the clocks are ticking and somebody’s looking for tactics to stop the clocks instead of solve the problems because at the end of the day, clocks ticking are just a metaphor, and you might wanna stop the clock, but it’s a metaphor for profound challenges that we’re facing and that we’re not meeting.

Yossi, last words. Maybe you have something uplifting.

Yossi: Well, you know, on October 8th. This government was handed an enormous gift that is the, the renewed unity of Israel, and it has succeeded in squandering a gift that it didn’t deserve, but we deserved. And what we’re seeing now is the unraveling, maybe still in slow motion, but the inevitable unraveling of the inconsistencies that this government has tried to finesse. And so I’m very hopeful this week. I feel that we may be turning a corner.

What has been obvious to many of us in the year before October 7th, which is that this government is divisive in its DNA and it’s the wrong government to lead, to lead this people, that, that is becoming increasingly apparent. And so that, that gives me hope.

Donniel: So maybe with the clocks ticking, the good news is that maybe this government is coming to an end and that Israeli society will be put in front of a serious decision. What type of government do we wanna have and what type of society we wanna live in?

Yossi: Do we want to go back to October 6th, where we’re tearing ourselves apart? Or do we want to try to hold on to October 8th?

Donniel: We’re not that alone, but to a new future, a future where October 7th doesn’t define us anymore either. Let’s see, it’s an interesting time, exhausting time. I apologize to our listeners. It could be that these clocks that are ticking are gonna shut off by the time you hear. Could be that six other clocks will be there. What’s certain is that clocks are ticking. It’s exhausting. This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, Day 614.

Yossi, wonderful to be with you.

Yossi: Always.