The following is a transcript of Episode 116 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 151. And our topic for today is the food crisis.

Yossi, last week a tragedy occurred. Possibly tens of thousands of people in northern Gaza converged on a convoy of food brought in by Israel and supported by the Israeli army. And we’ll talk about the context later. And in the process, and we don’t know the exact sequence of events, some people were killed by Israeli army. Some people were trampled to death. Some people were run over by the trucks themselves. And roughly 120 people died, and hundreds and hundreds were injured, in an attempt to feed themselves and their family.

This wasn’t the issue of civilian casualties in the midst of a military operation, where very often there’s a zero-sum game, calculation. And Gaza puts that zero-sum calculation all the time. What do we do? How do we win in the midst of an enemy embedded in a civilian population? Like choosing and having to choose.

And with all the complexity that it entails, proportionality, this was not a zero-sum game moment. This was a moment where people’s right to food is on the table. And one of the things that upset me deeply and I struggle with is the different responses to this tragedy in Israel and around the world, and in particular North American or the Jewish community.

I wrote a Facebook post immediately after the event occurred in Hebrew saying we’re responsible. We are responsible. We’re not necessarily guilty, but we are responsible. And that there has to be a way for people, for human beings created in the image of God to have access to food and that we have to fight a just world war justly. And that does not only include the fighting itself, it also includes the responsibilities that come as a result of the war.

Yehuda and I then translated this in English and put it on our Hartman Facebook page and what other forums. In North America, the responses were uniformly, thank you, positive, thank you for saying this, thank you for being aware. And in Israel, there’s ambivalence. Hundreds of people liked it and over a thousand people, and for a Hartman Institute Facebook comment, horrific anger. What do you mean we’re responsible? Are there innocents in Gaza? Some people were absolutely vulgar and I’ll leave those alone. Besides calling for more civilian casualties in Gaza and also my own death, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

It’s just, the dissonance was huge. And there was a tragedy. And when Israel, maybe this’ll encapsulate it, when Israeli news came to report on the event, a few hours after the tragedy, there was a terrorist attack in, I think it was either Eli and two Israelis were killed. The news started with the terrorist attack. 10 minutes. Item two on the news for four minutes was Hamas’s shift in negotiations about the hostages. Number three for two minutes was this tragedy. 

And the person who was reporting it, the essence of the report was it’s not ours. It’s not our business. It’s like, it’s something happened as if somewhere, somewhere, and so, you know. Food. Is it our responsibility? Why is it clear to some and why is it so hard for so many in Israel, who, on another day, this would be so clear? 

Our job is to talk about Israel, to reflect on it, to give voice to it, but also to notice some of the trends that are taking place. And seeing the different responses to the posts and my own feeling that this humanity requires that we call out. If not at this, then for what? And realizing that for many Israelis, that is a difficult place to be. And so, we decided, let’s talk about the food crisis. 

But it’s bigger than that. It’s not just the food. It’s about our moral responsibilities. And how do we feel at this moment? Yossi, how do you feel at this moment?

Yossi: Deeply conflicted. Intellectually, I’m with you. Yes, we have a responsibility, certainly, in providing safe access to food. And I would go beyond that, saying we ourselves have a responsibility to be providing food. We should be airlifting food. That’s me speaking conceptually. 

Emotionally, I’m the Israeli everyman. And where this hits me, Donniel, is that in the current atmosphere of this lynch mob against Israel, it’s too subtle to make the distinction between responsibility and guilt when we were already being proclaimed guilty. No, I didn’t believe for a moment that our soldiers fired into an unarmed crowd for no reason, without provocation, without feeling themselves at risk. I don’t believe we do that.

And yet, for much of the world, it’s almost axiomatic now. Well, that, of course, that’s how the Israeli army behaves. So my initial reaction was defensiveness and anger. And I drew a straight line, and again, I’m speaking emotionally now, between how this war began, with the false accusation of an Israeli attack on the hospital, with this accusation now that Israel deliberately created a mass tragedy in a food line. 

What I’m revolting against is the weaponization of compassion. Compassion is being used to undermine, first of all, the legitimacy of this just war. And it’s being used ultimately to undermine us generally. And so, I want to be with you, Donniel. I’m finding it very hard.

Donniel: Our personalities, which some people think are slightly different, are finding expression here as well. The last thing I thought about at this moment emotionally, the last thing that I felt was, how is the world attacking us? 

When I saw the videos and the story was revealed, I knew that soldiers didn’t fire. These were the soldiers whose job it was, and we’ll get to that, who, because Israel wants to maintain military control and doesn’t want to give access to food through UNRWA or Hamas because it ends up being stolen by Hamas and used by them, either for their own terrorists, needs or as a vehicle for getting money or support from the population as the savior. Israel doesn’t want to do that. And those in Israel, in particular those on the right wing, who want or believe in the obligation to maintain military control said, we have to take control of the food, of food delivery, of access to food. We’re going to resolve the food crisis by us distributing it. 

And I knew that Israelis didn’t fire just because. And here, those in charge of the food distribution were there to kill Palestinians. I knew something happened. But I wasn’t thinking for a moment about how this is going to get played in the world. Like, there wasn’t even interest me. Here it’s Donniel being an Israeli. I’m not worried. I’m so tired, you know, you speak about the weaponization of compassion. I want to talk about the weaponization of public relations. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of always worrying about how this appears. 

Where’s our humanity? What was it that that guy said at the McCarthy trials? Where is your humanity, sir? Something like that. Wasn’t there that famous line where, where’s your humanity? Like, here was a moment where it was so clear that this is not a zero-sum game. And I wanted to talk about that. Yes, we have a responsibility to enable, like you said, Palestinians to have access to food. And we have refused to strategically come up with an intelligent plan to do so. For months now, we’re just denying it.

And so each time we’re giving into somebody else’s suggestion? Does anybody really believe that the Israeli army could take over control over the civilian population of Gaza with its attitudes towards Israel and Israeli soldiers, with Hamas embedded in the midst? What are they even talking about? 

Each time we say who we’re not going to give it to, we’re not giving it to Hamas. I understand. We’re not giving it to UNRWA because giving it to UNRWA is giving it to Hamas. We’re not going to allow a Palestinian authority because Palestinian authority is worse than Hamas. We’re not going to create an international force because we want to have military control. This is not working. 

And I felt that we emotionally, I wanted to just scream. Human beings die not as collateral, not because of a collateral operation, but because we have not come up with our moral responsibility to be able to deliver food to people. So I was talking emotionally. I called out. It was like a scream. It was an anguish to say something.

Yossi: So we each had a primal Jewish reaction, except it was a very different or even opposing primal Jewish reaction. My main concern was look what they are doing to the name of the Jewish people. And what you’re saying is we need to look at what we ourselves are doing to the name of the Jewish people. 

Now, one of my fears, Donniel, is, and here is where emotionally I am with you, we know that what we’re doing in Gaza and what we’re not doing in Gaza is going to help define Jewish reality for the next generation. This is a seminal moment historically for our generation. And so, how we behave, especially on issues that don’t compromise our security, will really determine or go a long way to determining who we are and not only how we’re perceived in the world. And this, I think, is what you’re really saying, is how we perceive ourselves. And I think that’s a really important point. 

The other point that you raised that I just want to highlight and expand a little bit is the conceptual inconsistency of the hard right. The hard right wants it all. They want to be in control. This is our responsibility, but they don’t want any of the messy responsibilities. 

Donniel: They don’t want to be responsible. We want responsibility without any responsibility.

Yossi: They don’t want to be responsible. Military control, we want to be able to rebuild settlements in Gaza, but the rest of it, and that’s part of the problem of how we relate to the Palestinians generally as basically transparent. We don’t see them. We don’t see them unless they become a threat. And on the hard right, that’s been elevated, that inability to see. Your neighbor has been elevated to an ideology.

Donniel: Yeah, I want to go back and then I want to come back to the role of the government here in a moment. But one of the things that I saw is that behind this really in governmental policy of responsibility of claiming responsibility, the rights of responsibility without the duties of responsibility, let’s put it that way.

Something you said, I found this very helpful. You said this war is gonna shape a generation of Israelis, or the future of Israel 

Yossi: And world Jewry. Its impact is historic.

Donniel: And world Jewry. Very, very, very, very much so. Part of what I saw here in a very large, in a large cross-section of Israel responding to this issue whether to me directly or to the issue in general, was that beyond the far right, something has happened also to the center and the left. And one of the far-reaching challenges of this war is how do we reconnect back to our basic humanity? Not concern for Jewish life, but concern for human rights and life period. 

Now, the army is doing unbelievable things. And today we had a discussion at the Institute. There was a woman who works at the Institute. She just came back from 120-plus days of reserve duty in Gaza as an officer embedded in the units in charge of communication with civilian populations and making sure that civilian populations aren’t targeted and helping civilian populations to get out of harm’s way. The conversation was humbling, it was beautiful. The Army is taking this responsibility. So I’m not here arguing about, the army, I’m sure, made some mistakes. But overall, I believe our army is trying to fight this war justly. Overall.

Yossi: So is it the government that you’re critiquing?

Donniel: No, the society. We, at home and our kids are there, there’s a shutdown from any semblance of moral criticism, of moral righteousness, of taking responsibility for anything else but our survival. I’m so concerned with this and I know, you know, I’m constantly thinking here in the Hartman Institute, what’s our responsibility?

In many ways, the next government, whenever the elections are going to be, the outcomes are more or less, I believe, clear. Netanyahu is not going to run again. There’ll be elections. It might be in one year. It might be in three years. A far-right government is not going to come to power again. I think that’s pretty clear. You know, let’s wait. But I’m not concerned about the outcome of the next election. I’m concerned now about the moral fiber of our country. 

And I don’t want to moralize. The trauma of October 7th is creating a moral shutdown, which we have to find a way to activate. And even more than that, last year, a large segment of Israel and world Jewry came together in a shared embracing of Israel as a democracy and a Jewish democratic state and liberal values. Our two communities are in diametrically opposite places right now. 

For one, of course, the death of civilians, the right to food, our responsibility to food, is of course a crisis, it’s a tragedy. And in Israel, there’s no room. Like you’re talking about emotionally, they’re not emotionally worried about public relations. They’re emotionally worried about thinking about anybody else. And it’s, it worries me very deeply.

Yossi: All right, I share your concern about the impact of this war, the impact of October 7th, long-term on the moral and spiritual well-being of a whole generation, of a whole society here. But I want to factor in another concern, which is that what you said a moment ago, which is that after October 7th, Israel and the diaspora came together.

And what’s happening now is that we seem to be reverting back to pre-October 7 divisions in the Israeli diaspora relationship on both sides. More and more American Jews are calling for a ceasefire. That’s becoming a normative position in a way that it was not even a month ago. And more and more American Jews are questioning the basic justness of this war. And so what we’re seeing developing, and this is a potential disaster, we’re seeing a reversion to the inability of Israelis and American Jews to hear each other’s concerns. 

And when you talk about what our responsibility is as the Hartman Institute, we have a two-fold responsibility because we operate both in Israel and in North America. And our responsibility here in Israel is to challenge a certain moral laziness or a moral frozenness that has set in to very large parts of the population. And our responsibility in the diaspora is to challenge a retreat from the understanding and embrace of the need for this war to continue and for the evil of Hamas to be removed.

Donniel: You know, it’s a small point, but I just want to clarify. I actually felt that on October 6th, Israel and world Jewry were together in ways that they haven’t been for a very long time. They were together around the struggle against judicial reform. Maybe I wasn’t clear. There was a shared value agenda. October 7th created a shared existential danger. 

But part of what’s happening as the war is progressing, there are increasingly different perceptions about what is achievable and what are the goals of the war and at what point do we declare a ceasefire. But the humanity, it doesn’t even get to the ceasefire dimension. The gap is even deeper. It’s deeper. It’s being politicized in Israel. There’s going to be a huge educational, moral, responsibility for all of us, and I have sensed, and I saw this, because I’ve been teaching about this a lot. 

Whenever I take a clear moral position, Israelis get very angry. They don’t want you to moralize, you take an issue, no, who are you moralizing,I have my kids in the army, it’s not the right time. When you speak and dance between the raindrops about what, how you might want to think about this, without any specific position taken, they could open up and participate in this. 

And I’ve been testing this on tens of groups. In this Facebook post, we’re at 150 words and I wanted to take a stand. I wanted to say to Israelis, here, at this moment, can’t we unite together? For that, don’t tell me, no, our job is to support the army, as if that was the issue. 

Our job is, how do we fight a just war justly? That’s a critical issue in North American and world Jewry discourse. And how do you fight a just war justly might lead to different positions on a ceasefire. In Israel, how you fight a just war justly has to do with how do we make sure that we win? How do we make sure that we don’t intentionally target civilians? But it doesn’t mean that I have to care about them. There’s something, I don’t have room for that.

Yossi: Right, right. Yeah, I think you’ve summed up the normative Israeli position, that it’s enough that we’re not targeting civilians and the rest of it is legitimate.

Donniel: Just leave me alone. Just leave me alone. 

As we conclude, let’s go back for a moment to the causes of the food crisis. And one of the challenges that we are facing is a lack of planning. These crises are coming in on an ongoing basis. And I look at it, you know, I’ll even now I’m going to channel Yossi for a second from a public relations perspective. 

Yossi: Be careful. You don’t know where that’ll take you.

Donniel: Don’t worry, I won’t. Don’t worry, I think I’ll be OK. I see the world looking, here was the start-up nation, this powerful country, this country that could do everything. And now we just seem to be incapable of putting forth a plan for months. These humanitarian crises aren’t new. The food crisis, the responsibility to civilians, everybody’s been talking about it for months. And somehow I feel we’re constantly playing catch up. And this is not where, you know, we spoke about, this is not where moral Israel should be. This is also not where startup nations should be.

Yossi: Yeah, and there’s a pattern here, because it plays out in the government’s refusal to offer a credible vision for the morning after. It also has played out, I think, all along in the confusion communicated by the government about the hostages. What’s the goal? What are the red lines?

And so there really is a very disturbing pattern here, which, as you know, for me has one address, but we’re not going to bring the prime minister in now. And there really is something here that we need to unpack. 

Our ability to improvise was always regarded as one of our strongest suits. And that was, we won wars because of our ability to improvise. When October 7th happened, the army did not have a credible plan for invading Gaza. Within three weeks, we had the full ground force inside Gaza. And I think the army’s been been performing in a very impressive way militarily. And our capacity to improvise is also what makes a startup nation. 

And yet we come up from time to time, we come up against the deep negative consequences of our dependence on improvisation. And I think that that’s what we’re experiencing now, Donniel.

Donniel: You know, there’s so much of political debate underpinning much of the war. Who are our leadership? How are they functioning? But what we’re encountering now around the food crisis is how, who are your leaders? It’s not going to influence merely your policies or your effectiveness. It actually has a profound impact on your moral principles. 

Our government can’t speak a language of moral principles. It can’t develop a strategy which actually takes humanitarian aid into account. It can’t even talk about it. It has to avoid, it has to dance around, and it has to try to find technical solutions. What are we gonna do? Oh, what are we gonna do now? Now, now you’re thinking about this? 

And the moral consequences of this are when this tragedy occurred and the government couldn’t even express sorrow over it, it wasn’t just a technical problem, though we don’t have a strategy. We don’t have a strategy because we can’t even think about what our moral responsibilities are. And then we just have to come up with some day-to-day solutions.

This is going to require more of us morally as Jews. It’s also one of the reasons why a lot of people are questioning whether we should continue this battle or not. What’s going on here? Those questions, Yossi, I believe are legitimate questions. They can’t be ignored. And there’s a heavy weight on us. I want to give you the last word, Yossi.

Yossi: I actually am going to defer and leave you with the last word. I appreciated very much what you said.

Donniel: This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, Day 151, with a lot of questions, a lot of challenges, and a lot of responsibilities.