The following is a transcript of Episode 117 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 For Heaven’s Sake, our special edition, Israel at War, and today is Day 159.

As the days are beginning to pass, Yossi, I’m feeling that the front line is also shifting. For so much of the war, the front line was the front line where our soldiers are, the front line where the hostages are, the front line where Gazan civilians are. The war was the front line. The front line was also Israeli society. How this war is being experienced on the homefront.

We chose together that on this podcast, our theme is the critics. Group of people principally from around the world and also some in Israel, who are increasingly shaping the outcome of the war. From the first day, there were critics. Let’s call them the 159-day critics, the people who claim that Israel had no legitimacy to defend itself, the people who claim that Hamas, by virtue of being occupied, have a right to lash out and to murder and to maim and to terrorize and to rape. Those critics, Yossi, you and I, we categorize them as the anti-Semitic critics. And from our perspective, a plague on all their houses. We have to work. We have to defend ourselves. They could go to the Hague and we have to take their arguments seriously. But as Tal Becker, who defended Israel so beautifully said, it cannot be that the only country in the world that doesn’t have a right to defend itself is the state of Israel. 

But there is a new group of critics who they’ve been, they’ve been around now for two months, but the voices are getting longer, are getting louder. The voices are also merging together in different ways.

One of the things that unites these critics is the Michael Walzer principle in his book on social criticism, that critics essentially have to be insiders. If you’re an outsider, you can’t be a social critic. But we are now experiencing a cacophony of insiders criticizing us. 

There are three groups of critics that we want to concentrate on today. The first is the Biden administration. The second is the Jewish community in North America, and there are multiple voices. And the third, we’re adding special for you, Yossi, and that is the Jonathan Glazer Academy Award critic. But he reflects something. 

Let’s start with the Biden administration. Friends, critics, how do we have to relate to this criticism?

Yossi: So, Donniel, before I try to address your question, let me just note that the disparity between what’s happening in Israeli society and what’s happening around the world is growing in precisely this area where not only are we losing the people who we never really had to begin with, but now we’re beginning to lose our friends. And that divisiveness within the pro-Israel community, the broad pro-Israel community, is not being reflected in Israel. 

Yes, it’s true, we have a few voices that we’re beginning to hear, a few critics calling for the end of the war, and that is new in Israel. But by and large, the consensus that emerged here on October 8th has held. And that’s true for the moderate left, the center, the right. 

So the fact that we’re now facing growing criticism from our friends abroad really is widening. It’s creating greater dissonance between what it means to be an Israeli today and what it means to be a friend of Israel. And when that gap starts to open, we need to pay attention. So I think that’s the background that I bring to answering your question. The fact that the criticism is coming from the Biden administration, which has stood with us in remarkable ways, obligates us to pay attention. 

Now, it doesn’t obligate us to agree with the criticism. When Biden, for example, said that the casualties in Gaza are over the top, that’s the phrase he used, I disagreed. I don’t understand what over the top means. One dead innocent person in Gaza is over the top. What’s the cutoff? What’s the ratio between fighters, Hamas fighters, and innocent Palestinians that would qualify for being over the top? So no, I don’t have to agree, but I have to engage. I have to listen. 

You know, Donniel, today in one of the Hebrew news sites, I saw an article for the first time that I’ve noticed, How the World Sees Us. And the article didn’t make the distinction that you’re making, the crucial distinction, between friends and enemies. It was all presented as this kind of assault against Israel. And so what could have been an opportunity to really begin to seriously reflect about how we’re being perceived by our friends became kind of absorbed into this general assault against Israel. And so we need to make that distinction. And I think the Biden administration is a very good place to begin. They have earned not only our gratitude, but the right to be heard as insider critics.

Donniel: The article you mentioned is very interesting. There’s an interesting phenomenon, an additional one. When the Biden administration’s criticisms are reported in Israel, they’re invariably connected to American politics. We’re looking for, what is the impetus? Why are you doing this? 

Now, it’s an interesting move. You’re not calling him an anti-Semite, which is one way of quieting the criticism. You know, you say by putting them all together, I don’t have to listen to any of them. But this is a much more subtle move. What it is doing is it’s saying there is a motivation that has nothing to do with the content of the argument. And when you focus on the motivation, guess what you get? You get the right to ignore. 

So here it is, we have a critic who was talking to us. And I have to tell you, I understand Biden. When someone says 30,000, a counter-argument of “what exactly is over the top,” “what’s the ratio of other wars,” that’s a mathematic game. I think part of what our critics are saying, and this, as Israelis, we don’t hear, is that there is a horrific price being paid here. And somehow, it doesn’t seem justified. 

If you argue that to move into Rafah, he says it, are you going to kill another 30,000? And so you know what? If you kill another, if you get to 60,000, you’ll be better than Assad and maybe you’ll still be able to statistically claim that the ratio between civilians and combatants is still not over the top. There’s a feeling that something is at a balance, that something is at a balance.

And I think part of what Israelis are doing, and I think your comment is really important. The Biden administration are our friends. You don’t have to agree. But you also, it’s forbidden for you, or I think it’s destructive, to talk about motivations instead of dealing with the content. Because there’s still almost no debate as to the content because once I’ve,

Yossi: Okay. I hear that. It’s not a zero-sum game in terms of assessing motives. I believe that Biden is sincere in his criticism. I believe we need to address the criticism. I also believe he’s under tremendous political pressure in an election year in a Democratic Party that’s moving left. 

Now, to say that is to acknowledge that I live in the real world. You’re right that when that’s used, and it is used that way in Israel, when it’s used to effectively delegitimize his moral critique, that’s where it becomes illegitimate. But to know that our interests don’t necessarily always converge. Biden has his own interests. And you know what, Donniel, I respect those interests. It is in the interests of America, I believe. It’s in the interests of the world that Trump not win the election. That’s a legitimate political interest on Biden’s part. But I think it’s really important for us to understand the complicated web of motives that we’re facing here. That’s it.

Donniel: Yossi, everybody always has multiple motives. And I think one of the ideas of creating a society that embraces criticism, and I think the Jewish tradition has made social criticism into a mitzvah. It’s a commandment. It’s one of the 613 commandments. It’s an act of love and loyalty in our tradition. That even though you can find motives, I think you do yourself a tremendous disservice because it enables you to stop listening. Now nowhere is this even more relevant when it comes to the American Jewish community. 

And there are, you know, these are people who’ve stood with us. They stood with us on October 7th, they stood with us on November 1st. They raised untold amounts of money. They created, they cared, they created a sense for Israelis that you’re not alone in solidarity missions. Rabbis who love and care and who speak about Israel day in and day out. They’re looking and they’re saying, this is not right. 

You know, you look, you open up The Forward, you read Tom Friedman. Like these, they’re there. You know, I even wrote a piece of criticism. So it’s there. What does Jewish criticism do to you? This inside criticism.

Yossi: Jewish criticism during war. I have to admit to being deeply ambivalent because in principle, I’m with you. I agree and I’ve said this, I’ve written this, that diaspora Jews not only have the right, they have the obligation to criticize Israel. That’s an affirmation of Zionism itself. It’s an affirmation of the centrality of Israel and Jewish life. We can’t expect for Jews around the world to take Israel seriously as part of their lives if it’s a one-dimensional relationship. And we are obligated, Zionism obligates us, to take seriously the criticisms of diaspora Jews and to welcome that criticism. 

Now, in normal times, I think I can do that. In a time of war, very difficult, very difficult. And I have to resist the destructive response, the emotional, destructive emotional response that I feel that says this is an act of disloyalty. Now, for many Israelis, there’s no ambivalence about that. The instinctive reaction is you are being disloyal. If you’re criticizing us during war, you’re joining our enemies. I really am trying not to go there.

Donniel: Could I help you, Yossi, with that? I want to quote someone really, really close to me, someone who’s one of my closest friends and chavrutas and teachers. This person wrote a letter last year.

Yossi: Uh oh. Uh oh, I knew this was coming. Donniel, I’m so on to you.

Donniel: Well, this friend of mine, who will remain unnamed, joined together with two other very prominent, other good friends and serious thinkers and Zionists and lovers of Israel, who when they felt that the future of Israel was endangered, if for them it was an existential threat, life and death, they turned to North American Jewry, World Jewry, and said, we need you. We need you. So, Yossi.

Yossi: Donniel, there’s nothing worse than being quoted against yourself. And you’re right. You’re absolutely right. You’re right.

Donniel: No, so, but like it’s, but you want, I want, but could I tell you, could we do an analysis, could we do an analysis of you for a moment? And this, okay.

Yossi: Yeah, go ahead.

Donniel: You were in despair. And when you were in despair, you said, I need help. I have a government which has 64 seats. And they could pass whatever they want. I need to put together a coalition that will be stronger than 64 members of the Knesset. That’s what you said. 

And by the way, that’s part of what happened. The government couldn’t even put forth the override clause, even though it was part of their coalition agreement, and it would have been simple, just put it through. They didn’t even put it up for vote, because the Israeli population, together with the world, which marshaled investors and political forces.

So when there’s an existential crisis, which agrees with you, it’s there. But Yossi, what I would want to suggest to you, is why can’t you not allow a North American Jew to have that same sense of existential crisis? A person who from the inside is saying, I love Israel and I want to tell you there’s something that I see that you’re doing, I might be wrong, I’m not coercing you and I make a very big distinction between people who write a letter and who write papers and people who try to tell the Biden administration, implement this policy, Instead of trying to criticize and influence, you’re trying to determine. 

One of the important things about criticism and social criticism is that it doesn’t, it’s not accompanied with power. It is with political power. It is the voice, it is the argument which is put forth and that the onus returns to the person who hears. There’s a whole dynamic going on that I feel that many of our friends, and I know you’re traveling now in the United States and Canada, more and more of our friends are feeling that this is an existential crisis right now. Not a crisis of them losing their progressive friends. Okay, that’s part of it. 

A deep sense that Israel is about to harm itself, echoing the Biden statement. We need to stand up. And so I would say to you, according to my friend, when the moment is, you believe it’s of existential significance, greater leeway has to be given to those critics.

Yossi: Donniel, you convinced me. Look, intellectually, I was there, but emotionally, you’ve really convinced me. And I’ll make your argument even stronger, that what’s happened since October 7th is that the diaspora itself is experiencing acute vulnerability, certainly emotional and psychological vulnerability, but also to some extent physical threat. 

This is the first time in the history of the relationship between Israel, and I’ll speak specifically about North American Jewry, where both communities feel vulnerable together. Now we feel vulnerable for different reasons, but the source is the same, October 7th and the aftermath. And so that’s all the more reason why we in Israel have a moral responsibility to hear these anguished voices coming from the diaspora. Now when, you know…

Donniel: You know, Yossi, you put it in physical vulnerability. I think part of what these criticisms are echoing is they feel that Zionism is vulnerable. 

Yossi: Right. Yes. Yeah.

Donniel: Yossi, you have to hear that. Now, Israelis, you know, how Israel becomes a society that listens is one thing, but how do we create a culture in which we understand that when people feel that Zionism is vulnerable, that is an existential crisis for them? That, we have to respect the voices, listen to them, and certainly not delegitimize them.

Yossi: If I had to come up with a tagline for what these podcasts that we’ve been doing since October 7th are about, it’s the tension between the moral dilemmas that we’re facing and the existential dilemmas. And everything that we’ve been discussing, Donniel, in one form or another, is playing out exactly like this issue. 

So when you talk about that Zionism is under moral, even moral existential threat, and I hear that, at the same time, we both agree that the state is under a certain existential physical threat, if not immediate, then certainly in the long term. And we’ve been playing that out over these last months.

 

Given the fact that we’re living under the physical existential thread, it’s very hard for us to hear the moral existential thread. And look, and we also know that what begins as a moral threat also can have tangible physical consequences for Israel.

Donniel: You know, Yossi, I’m tempted to stop the podcast at the moment where you said, Donniel, you convinced me.

But as your friend, I owe you the Jonathan Glazer critics. And it’s that activates something by you that is unforgivable. I don’t know if I share it, but because I read the same thing and I hear and say, okay, I can understand it. But by you, this crosses a line.

Yossi: It was visceral, visceral.

Donniel: What is the line? And I maybe start by telling, like, what was the sin? What was, before you even interpret it, what did he even say?

Yossi: There were two sins here. The first is to invoke the occupation as somehow being the motive for October 7. And that is a fundamental misreading of what happened to us and why. Hamas did not attack us because they were protesting the occupation. Hamas attacked us because they are a radical Islamist movement that is committed to Israel’s destruction. And so just on the political level, and again, that is for me, that’s almost an aside for the real issue. The real issue was visceral. 

Donniel: You know, by the way, Yossi, if you would speak to Jonathan Glazer, I don’t think he in any way even said what you said. I read the piece again, that he was basically being a 159-day critic, saying that we, that the occupation is what caused October 7th, I didn’t see it. I saw that he was speaking about the evils of occupation, that the occupation led to the massacre of Jews and to the killing of civilians. But it’s interesting, you see that, but you know what, we’re not going to resolve that.

Yossi: Yeah, we’re not, and that’s almost a side argument. The main, for me,

Donniel: It doesn’t matter. Could you just on this one just say I’m right to?

Yossi: No, you’re not. But the main offense, and I would use the language of sin here that he committed, was to connect occupation, war in Gaza, and the Holocaust. If he had started off by saying, start off by saying, I’ve just made a film about the Holocaust, I’ve just immersed in the greatest evil in history. And any comparison to any event is beyond the pale, let alone an event where the Jewish people was attacked and is defending itself. The question is, how do we defend ourselves? How do we fight a just war justly, as you and I have been putting it all these months? 

He didn’t do that, Donniel. He went on the warpath, and he used it from his Holocaust pulpit to attack us at our most vulnerable. No solidarity with the Jewish people, no warning about the eruption of anti-Semitism. Look what’s happening in his native land, in England. The government, the British government just made a statement last week saying that central London has become a no-go zone for Jews every week when there are these massive pro-Hamas demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of people supporting Hamas every week. 

And you’re speaking now as a Jew, and he said, as a Jew, and you’re speaking in the name of the Holocaust. You’ve been given a platform. And all you can do with that at this point is condemn Israel? That for me, that hit me, Donniel, as the son of a survivor. That hit me at the most vulnerable place. 

And you know, I tweeted about this. I never tweet. I never comment. I’m not a successful tweeter. I don’t know how to condense my thoughts into two lines. And I put out a tweet that was incoherent. It was an expression of rage. My son, my son Gavriel, writes to me, Abba, what was that about? So I realized, okay, I have to redo it. I redid it. He said, still, no good. I redid the tweet three times. And it was a learning experience. First of all, don’t tweet.

Donniel: What was the thing you said at the end? Let’s get to the third one that you said was okay.

Yossi: The third one was that in his grandstanding, he is leaving viewers of his film with the impression that the grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors are the new Nazis. And you know what, Donniel? He didn’t have to say it explicitly. That’s what he was doing. And you know how I know that that’s how it was heard? I have been inundated with hundreds of tweets in response by saying, well, maybe you should own your new identity as Nazi.

Donniel: Yossi, Yossi, because you are speaking viscerally, I’m not gonna debate you. And I respect it. And I understand that what a person says impacts us very, very differently. And what we hear. 

I could just say that in my world, maybe that is a flaw unto itself, the Holocaust has become a usable metaphor. It’s a metaphor for a lot of injustices. Israel itself uses the Holocaust as a metaphor all the time. A metaphor for terror, a metaphor for enemies, a metaphor for Hezbollah. This is before October 7th, which sort of put Hamas, you know, in a Nazi moral corrupt context.

But Israel’s been doing it for a long time. And I can understand that for you, that itself is a horrific injustice. I appreciate it. That any time the Holocaust is a metaphor for other evils, there’s a huge injustice and a lack of sensitivity and a lack of understanding. I appreciate that.

Yossi: And that’s compounded when it’s turned against the Jewish people.

Donniel: I appreciate, I hear you. Just, I, it could be that Glazer at the Academy Awards with his few minutes, you know, he couldn’t give the whole Yossi Klein, maybe if you had given him a tweet, he could have. But I think we live in a world, I think we live in a world, and it’s a tragedy, that after, what is it, 80 years, you know, there’s, time changes the meaning. The Holocaust is a metaphor for evil. And so a lot of us are going to use it very differently. 

Now, it’s that there is something that he said that I heard, which is different. And I’m not debating whether you heard it right or wrong. It just doesn’t matter. But when he said, I don’t want to use Jewishness and the Holocaust as a tool to legitimize an occupation. I’m not saying they’re the same, but he’s saying he’s looking at a Jewish community, which is insulating itself from criticism. And I think the role of the Holocaust in shutting down social critics is a big one. And it’s one that we have to own. But again, I appreciate and hear you.

Yossi: So, Donniel, what he ended up doing then is Holocaust abuse, but for the other side. And I think that what’s useful here is not — we’re not going to resolve this disagreement, but what’s useful here is to look at Jonathan Glazer as an example of how criticism that should have been accepted because it’s generated from within the family becomes so unacceptable that he effectively aligns himself with those outside the family, whether that was his intention or not. And so it’s instructive. It’s instructive in that way. 

Donniel: That’s what you heard. 

Yossi: I can hear criticism that is coming really from our friends. I no longer regard Jonathan Glazer as part of my discourse. For me, he might as well be one of those people demonstrating for Hamas on the streets. Now, that’s an emotional response. I’m not saying that that’s, you know.

Donniel: You know, I appreciate that. You know, a good place to end is the Talmudic ruling that even though it is a mitzvah to criticize, the art of this mitzvah is unbelievably difficult. And how you criticize in a way that the person could hear you is an integral part of a person who feels obligated to be that social critic.

And as Michael Walzer, again, said, the inside critic is not just where they’re located, it’s how the people hear you. And our challenge as we move to this next stage is, we don’t have to agree with every critic. It’s also legitimate for us to feel that certain critics, the way they’re criticizing and the nature of it, is moving them to the outside. But beware if criticism by definition makes you an outside critic. 

And how Israel listens to these criticisms, you know, and there’s something that you and I share, and much of our audience shares. We live in multiple worlds. You could live in Israel today just like you could, whether you’re a Jew or a Palestinian in Gaza, and you could pick who you listen to and everything that you hear is an echo chamber of what you believe reaffirming your righteousness. Part of what happens is that we live within multiple spheres of conversation. We hear Israeli voices. We hear Palestinian voices. We hear North American voices. And that influences us. 

And maybe let’s end with good news. Just a few weeks ago, the whole discussion about aid to Gazans and civilians was outside of the parameters of what Israelis could hear. The plethora of criticisms from all frameworks, principally the Biden administration, has moved Israelis to a place that nobody’s debating, that we should be responsible for humanitarian aid, that it’s part of our responsibility, that it’s something that we have to take into account. That’s what happens when you listen and when you learn. And, 

Yossi: Donniel, I’d like the last word here, which is I agree with you.

Donniel: Oh, I am so happy I gave you that. I’m not even going to summarize further. Yossi, it’s not easy to have critics, but our tradition teaches us that it is necessary. And even in the time of war, we want to reach, we want to move in a new direction. And so hopefully, hopefully we’ll be able to hear.

My friends, Yossi, it’s a pleasure to be with you. 

Yossi: Truly a pleasure.

Donniel: This is Israel at War, day 159.