The following is a transcript of Episode 107 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 our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, the special edition, Israel at War. And today is day 95.

Yossi, I was wondering when we could stop counting. We’re now starting stage three, whether we announce it or not. I know for me, when we talked about stage three of the war, I felt that was the stage that I could start worrying less or maybe start worrying about other things. But things would start being calmer, safer.

We still have this chaos going on in the North that we don’t sort of know what to do with, and it’s just there. But at least stage three was supposed to be some stability, entering a different level of fighting. And then today it’s announced that today was one of the bloodiest days of the war. Nine soldiers were killed. And the rumor mill says that we don’t have the full count yet because families haven’t been informed. And I know you’re going today to the funeral of the son-in-law of a family member.

And so we’re in this emotional roller coaster, like we’ve been. But I thought we were getting a little safer. But this war is a tough one. It’s a tough one. But at the same time with all these multiple fronts and emotional transitions that are expected of us, you and I, Yossi, we decided to talk about a new front that we can’t ignore, a new critical front threatening Israel. It’s not from the north, it’s not Iran, it’s not from the south, it’s not the Houthis. It’s actually from the west. It’s the front in the Hague, in which Israel is now being brought up on trial accused of genocide. 

And that accusation, and the consequence of that trial could have tremendous significance for the future well-being of Israel. And so while we’re in stage three and chaos, there’s another front we have to talk about. 

How does this trial in the Hague, this accusation of genocide, meet you, Yossi, as an Israeli? What does it mean, this new front? Because I imagine in your life you would have never imagined that Israel was going to be brought on trial. That some crazy people want to accuse us of genocide. Okay, you know, we could call it genocide, anti-Semitism, done. But in the Hague, there’s a normalization of this. How do you feel about it, Yossi?

Yossi: Right. Yeah, you know, it was relatively easy to dismiss the accusations of genocide, but now the very fact that we’re in the Hague and facing those charges means that to some extent we’ve already lost. Even if we manage to somehow extricate ourselves from this, the accusation itself will linger. 

And so the way that this hits Israelis is, first of all, on the level of emotional overload. We’re dealing with the after-effects of the worst massacre in Israel’s history. We’re dealing with a daily death toll in Gaza. We’re dealing with a society that still hasn’t found its most basic bearings. And to find ourselves on trial for an accusation that we know we’re fighting a war against a genocidal enemy. It’s this sense of there’s something surreal going on, Donniel. It’s genocide inversion.

And in that sense, it’s really an escalation of the war against Israel’s legitimacy. We are in the next phase and maybe in some sense, the inevitable phase, because once you start laying the groundwork, once you have the accusation of genocide being amplified on campuses around the world, on the streets, there’s something that feels almost inevitable about, now we find ourselves on trial in the Hague. 

And the only response that I think is worthy of this is contempt, beyond outrage, simply contempt for those who would put Israel on trial for defending ourselves against a genocidal regime.

Donniel: So is there any basis whatsoever, Yossi? Is it just contempt? And you’re right, that’s the discussion in Israel. We don’t wanna take it seriously. We basically say it’s anti-Semitic, it’s contempt, it’s baseless, how dare you, it’s chutzpah, and then we shut down. 

But is there anything, you know, you and I both understand Zionism as the willingness of the Jewish people to be a state, a nation amongst nations, and to be judged, to be part of a community, to be part of a world conversation. We welcome the conversation, the criticism. You know, we signed, Israel signed onto this charter, opening and exposing ourselves, yes, that we too, if we violate these standards, we are open to, we want to be brought on trial, so we said we will defend ourselves. 

So it’s like there’s an ambivalence here. On the one hand, I want to be judged by the world. I welcome it. I think, by the way, it’s for the better of Israel. I think that when you open yourselves up to external judgment and criticism, it’s a protection, it’s a check and balance against self-righteousness and moral justification of your own failures. Because listen, I’m beyond judgment. 

And by the way, I think that’s one of the basic challenges that anybody who has a veto in the Security Council faces. And that we spoke about that, that they get to determine not just what they could do, they get to determine what’s good.

And so on the one hand, I welcome this, but at the other hand, I don’t trust them. If I felt, you know, we’re gonna get a real fair hearing. And in a moment, we’ll talk about the details of the accusation. But if I was gonna get a fair hearing by people who really understood and were committed to justice, that would be one thing. So I want to be welcome. I want to be judged by a world, but I don’t trust the world. 

So I’m stuck in this limbo, Yossi. I don’t know what to do. I can’t shut down because it’s against everything that is a core of my Jewishness, a core of my Zionism. I want to be a nation amongst the nations. I don’t want to live in my own private ghetto in which the world is irrelevant. I want to be part of that conversation. And at the same time, I don’t trust them. 

So part of the ambivalence, the confusion, the emotional complexity is that I can’t just shut down. I have to look at this seriously, but it’s a very strange place because I’m not sure that everybody who’s judging us is judging us fairly, and so it puts us in a very difficult place.

Yossi: So I have no ambivalence about critiquing this as a lynch mob. And it’s interesting you’re bringing up the Zionist longing, the pre-state Zionist longing for the Jewish people to be accepted among the nations. This is an inversion, if we’re speaking about inversion, of those Zionist aspirations. This is the opposite of what the Zionists hoped for. This is singling out the Jewish state for a degree of treatment that is just beyond the pale. 

You know, Donniel, I’m ready and to some extent would welcome a serious conversation about whether we are fighting a just war justly. I think that that’s important for our souls. When I hear you speak, that’s what I respond to. We need to be accountable for our actions within the context of the world’s recognition that we have no choice but to fight against Hamas. But that’s not what’s being played out in The Hague.

And there’s something about bringing up the charge of genocide, which is the ultimate charge, that damns you even if you manage to prove that you’re not guilty of it. That charge is now going to follow us into the future, in the same way that when we were accused of apartheid, you know, there’s an expression in Hebrew, go prove you don’t have a sister. And I won’t elaborate what the context there is, but go prove you’re not an apartheid state. We already lost as soon as we were accused of apartheid. And the same is true for genocide, except even more so. This for me is the ultimate accusation. And we are going to find ourselves facing the burden of proof on us. We have to prove it.

Donniel: You know, I want to do something that’s not going to make me popular. But I never, I don’t have it, I might have a desire, but I clearly don’t seem to have a behavior pattern which, to pursue popularity. But I want to talk for a moment about this accusation of genocide. And I want to take it seriously. And I think we have to. Because I think there are two consequences, Yossi. 

I think one of them is what you said. This is now going to be part of the categories associated with Zionism. You know, it broke the apartheid. Now, okay, of course, Zionism is apartheid. Zionism is colonialism. Like there’s certain things when you get, you get used to saying them. The mere fact that they’re said often enough becomes a reality. Zionism, at least you could speak about genocide. 

But let’s look for a moment at what, where does this come from? Because while South Africa and other accusations could be completely unfounded, there’s a serious court of law, which is gonna be standing and asking, what’s going on here? And the crime of genocide is very, very hard to prove. I don’t know if it was ever proven in the past, but I want to read the definition of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2, very briefly. It says as follows:

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such, the intent to destroy them in whole or in part, by doing one of the following things.” 

And there’s five categories. One, killing members of the group. So if you kill members of the group with the intent to destroy whole or part, one thing. Two, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. C, and this is the one where we are most exposed, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and the last two imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

So this, the accusation has two fronts, Yossi. One is that it’s the intent clause, which is the hardest clause to prove. That means if you’re just causing serious amounts of civilian casualties, that’s not called genocide. Genocide is the intent to wipe out the group. The second is either causing killing, harm, and then the extent of that is relevant. But the third, the C was the creating conditions in which their life would not, where they can’t basically function as a society.

Now, the two criteria on which we’re going to be judged is A, the massive destruction in Gaza, inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. And the second one is the issue of intent. Now, on the issue of the damage in Gaza, we, everybody knows objectively, northern Gaza is no longer inhabitable. Central Gaza, half uninhabitable. The amount of physical destruction, at least on the surface, if you just look, how much was destroyed, there is a question. 

What is our core defense, Yossi? Our defense relates to what you said at the beginning, intent. Our intent in bombing Gaza was not to destroy Palestinian society. Our intent in bombing Gaza was to destroy Hamas, was to destroy evil. We have no intent to destroy. We have no desire to wipe out. Our challenge is, how do I fight a just war, under the conditions in which a 400-kilometer area populated by two million people has been turned into a military installation?

So if we say that was our intent, it is very difficult to find us guilty of genocide. But here comes the weakness, and that’s why I never want to waste an opportunity when there’s criticism against us to think about it seriously.

Do you know where we are most exposed? The key, the key to intent is our army said we’re fighting after October 7th. But a whole slew of Israeli politicians have used language calling Hamas Amalek, calling for the destruction of all of Gaza, calling and saying there is no distinction between Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians, they’re all Hamas, calling for the transfer of Gazans from Gaza, to the extent that the American government over and again has to say, there is going to be no transfer. They tried to push Netanyahu to say, officially declare that you are not going to transfer people and Netanyahu still has not done it. Smotrich still says it. Other people speak about it. 

So when we come along and say, our intent is just simply to destroy the terrorists, the language of many of our politicians is exposing us and endangering us. What’s your intent, Smotrich? People who say, I want to move back to Gaza. I want to resettle. You want to reclaim Gaza. That means you have created a reality in Gaza, which is now uninhabitable for Palestinian Gazans. Jews are going to move back. You want Gazans to leave. All those declarations, they are what are being, it’s what’s being quoted as evidence against us. 

And so here, shut up! I want to, like, I can’t scream loud enough. It’s like, we are fighting. We’re trying to stay united as a people. We’re trying to defend our inalienable right to be. And what are you talking about? What war in Gaza are you fighting? Are you fighting a war of self-defense? This is the challenge.

Yossi: Fair enough. And this is really exactly what the consequences are of empowering the far right. When Netanyahu brought in parties that were previously untouchable in the Israeli political system, he laid the grounds for exactly what’s playing out now. 

But if you look at the statements, and you have to look at, first of all, who said what, and secondly, what is the difference between, let’s say, the statements by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Galant and the statements of the far-right? And you’ll see there’s a qualitative difference. 

The statements by the politicians of the far right, especially Smotrich, who is not a negligible figure admittedly. He is the finance minister. Nevertheless, Smotrich, who has called all residents in Gaza Nazis, who calls for voluntary transfer, and we know that there’s no such thing in this case, and who also calls for rebuilding the settlements that we uprooted in 2005. Smotrich has no decision-making power in the war cabinet. 

And that’s a crucial distinction, which means that the vision of the far right is not going to happen. We all know we’re not going to rebuild the settlements in Gaza, we know that if nothing else, the United States is not going to allow us to implement the lunatic vision of the far right. And so the most serious statements, it seems to me, that we’re up against in the Hague are quotes from Galant and Netanyahu.

Now, far be it for me to defend Netanyahu, but in this particular case, when he used the word Amalek, he did not mean Amalek as all Palestinians. He meant Hamas was Amalek. Now, Amalek is a very complicated metaphor in the Jewish mindset. Amalek really stands for evil. Amalek is the ultimate distillation of evil. But Amalek doesn’t mean a whole, in this case, certainly not in Netanyahu’s vocabulary. Amalek does not mean a whole people. It means the organization, the regime that we’re up against. 

Now I would not use that loaded language. I think it was a problem to begin with. But we have to be very clear about what he meant and didn’t mean.

Now the other quote that’s problematic comes from Gallant. And Gallant, right after October 7th, said we’re up against animals. We’re fighting animals. Now here again, did Gallant mean ordinary Palestinians? We know he meant Hamas. The problem, and you’re right, Donniel, is that the recklessness of speech, which is a problem not only on the far right, we’re seeing it throughout the Likud and there has been a radicalization in part of the Likud under Netanyahu. 

So we’re facing a self-imposed goal here. And this, you’re right, this is going to be the most difficult part of what we’re up against. But there’s also another element here.

Donniel: Yossi, before you get to that other element, I want to respond to those two first. As I was listening to you, I agreed with every distinction, but I felt, really? This is all you got? Smotrich is not in the war cabinet? And on the basis of that, we’re going to either be found guilty of genocide or not?

Netanyahu, when you said Amalek, we have to realize, the commandment to fight Amalek is a commandment of genocide, to wipe them out. There are certain terms that are very, very loaded. 

Now, I think a distinction that I find meaningful is something that is said on October 8th, October 10th, October 25th, November 2nd, when you are still emotionally defined by the experience of October 7th. And then I said this to somebody, and I know it doesn’t apply to politicians, but it applies to colleagues. I said, I think everybody has to have an amnesty for anything they said over the last three months. You’re in such, like we are so emotionally confused, and it’s just such a difficult time. But politicians never get that amnesty.

So part of our challenge is that there are real serious categories in our tradition which shape a conversation and to defend ourselves on these fine distinctions is very difficult. 

What I find completely unexcusable, and I know that if we take more seriously this accusation, we could improve. If we don’t, we’re going to continue to do the same thing. You yourself said, of course we know that we’re not going to settle back in Gaza. Everybody knows. America wouldn’t even allow us. Look, look at the argument. Do you, I know you, Yossi. You would never want to resettle. What does America allowing us or not allowing us, have anything to do with the conversation? What is it that we want to be? What is it that we want to do? Smotrich says something, why doesn’t our prime minister get up and say, stop it? Why isn’t there a public conversation which says, of course we don’t want to, of course they’re not animals? We have to stop the language of October 8th. We are now in the middle of January. We’re on day 95 of the war. We’re now in stage three.

Stage three is not just shifting the way we fight, it also has to be a shift in the way we talk. The world is now talking to us, Yossi, and putting a mirror up and saying, there is something wrong going on. Now I know a lot of that is crap, and I know a lot of that is completely biased, and I know a lot of it is anti-Semitic, and I know and you know that we’re not committing genocide, and that we have no such intent. 

But if we don’t have that intent, we have to talk differently. And if we don’t talk differently, then go be surprised when someone looks at you and says, what does Zionism in Israel become? We have to take responsibility, Yossi. We don’t get a get-out-of-jail card based on we know that we weren’t going to do that. The world looks at you, ministers in your government, fire them, fire them from your government. Ah, so Netanyahu says, I can’t fire them, because my coalition will fall. For what reason are you leading this people? 

So with all the Hague and all the genocide, really the vulgarity of it, there is something that we have to look at now, and to recognize, that with all the criticism being flawed, there is something that people are pointing to, that we have to start repairing and we have to start repairing it now.

Yossi: Donniel, that is for the morning after the war, when we go back in the streets and finish the incomplete job of bringing the Netanyahu government down. At this moment, we are facing multiple assaults and we don’t have the space, we don’t have the energy. And frankly, I don’t think we have the responsibility to take accusations of genocide against us seriously when we’re facing this kind of threat. No, I’m not there. I’m not there.

Donniel: Yossi, you could not be there, but guess who is there? Israel is now in the Hague. They’re there. You might not be there, but the world doesn’t get, you don’t get, to determine on your own where we are all the time. Sometimes one of the challenges, it comes from another place completely. 

I remember someone once came to Heschel and said, I can’t pray right now. The spirit’s not moving me. So you know what Heschel said to them? I think it’s time that you move your spirit. I know you’re not ready, Yossi. I know you’re not, and I’m not blaming you for that. But I’m also not ready for a fight in the North either. And I’m not ready for a lot of things. And I’m not ready for the unbelievable dangers that our soldiers are gonna be facing in stage three, because it turns out that stage three might be the most dangerous, because the Hamas terrorists are just gonna be waiting all the time. We don’t get to decide what we’re ready for. 

There is a conversation going on in the world, Yossi, and if you and I, and I know I’m aggravating people right now. But if I know that, okay, well, okay. Here, love, Donniel, I’ll talk some more about antisemitism. Oh, how terrible it is. I’ll give you four speeches on antisemitism and how much the world hates us. Okay. And that we’re always right. Great. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not going to help us. You don’t move. It’s time to move the spirit. There is a conversation, not the crazy conversation on campus and even there, by the way, our students can’t afford to ignore it either. We don’t get to choose that. 

It’s interesting. It’s coming back to a certain debate we had in our research seminar. We don’t get to decide what we talk about all the time. I think that’s part of the challenge of growing up in Zionism. So I don’t know, Yossi, I’m with you. I’m not with you. I don’t know who I’m with right now. Last word.

Yossi: We’re in the Hague, we’re fulfilling our contractual responsibilities, our legal responsibilities to show up, we’re in the dock, we’re going to defend ourselves, but to take responsibility at this moment, to take any of that blame, to my mind is to really play into the hands of our enemies and that’s that.

Donniel: What do you mean to take? What do you mean taking? What do you… 

Yossi: Donniel, the last word, you gave me the last word.

Donniel: I’m giving it to you. That’s why, you see, I interrupted you. Don’t you realize? Otherwise I would have waited until you finished. That’s why I’m interrupting you, but I’m asking you. I’m saying you’re going to get the last word. Who’s taking the blame? I’m talking about the Israeli government getting up and saying clearly. Now. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, you want to wait for a day after it’s now. We have to at least talk.

Yossi: Donniel, we know who we’re dealing with. We know that Netanyahu doesn’t have a moral instinct in his political body. We know exactly who we’re dealing with. And you and I spent,

Donniel: So frustrated! So frustrated!

Yossi: Yeah, good, okay, I am too. And this is added to the list of his crimes against the state of Israel. But right now, we are standing before an accusation that is simply outrageous and unacceptable. And that’s the only emotional response that I’m capable of. And I’m sure that those of us who are defending us in The Hague will come up with more learned legal defenses for us. But my instinctive response, bringing this full circle to where we began, how does this hit me? How does this hit us as Israelis? And I know it hits you in the same way, Donniel.

Donniel: I gave you the last word. 

Yossi: This is an assault. This is an assault on our being.

Donniel: I’m giving you the last… I’m giving you… Yossi, I’m giving you the last word. I’m just telling you I’m also not with you. I’m fully… I don’t know where… I don’t know where I am!

Yossi: That’s, Donniel, that does, no, not Donniel, that does not qualify technically legally as the last word. 

Donniel: Okay, this is the last word. This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at war, Day 95. And my friends, we’re gonna have to find a lot of strength. The war, stage three, and all the fronts are gonna require of us strength and a lot of wisdom. Yossi, it’s a pleasure talking with you.

Yossi: Always.

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