About

Thoughtful debate elevates us all. In For Heaven’s Sake, Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi revive the Jewish art of constructive discussion on topics related to political and social trends in Israel, Israel-Diaspora relations, and the future of Zionism in Israel and on the global stage.

The podcast draws its name from the concept of machloket l’shem shemayim, “disagreeing for the sake of heaven” and is part of the Institute’s iEngage Project.

Looking Forward 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, and this is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel’s Still at War, Day 452. And our theme for today is the new Israeli silence.

You know, we’re, we’re constantly trying to figure out what’s happening here. You know, sometimes we understand, sometimes we don’t, but we’re, we’re watching this remarkable country and this remarkable people evolve and make sense and, and struggle. And one of the interesting—and, you know, it’s a complicated term, interesting, because it’s not necessarily a positive term, but it’s no doubt that it is interesting—is this silence that has emerged over the years, with regard to so many of the central issues defining the future of Israel in our political discourse. It’s so different than a year, it’s like almost two years ago with the judicial reform.

Yossi: Feels like 10 years ago.

Donniel: We don’t even know, right? It’s where Israelis found a voice which shocked everybody. But that voice was actually so consistent with the core ethos of Israeli society, even though it didn’t always express itself publicly in political discourse.

Zionism is about the empowerment of the Jewish people. It’s about our refusal to accept that events will define us, that events determine us. It’s a beautiful definition of Zionism. It’s like there was a, it’s not, and it wasn’t just victimhood. We were tired of the victimhood, but we didn’t count. And Zionism is about the Jewish people standing up and saying, Hineni, I am here, and I am going to be a player in shaping and determining my history.

And Zionism is one of the most remarkable and successful movements, not even national movements, just how it transformed our people. On a political level, it overcame the impossible. Truly, in fact, if there was anything impossible, was the achieving of sovereignty for the Jewish people. The achieving of some modicum of self defense, adding that to the Jewish people’s equation, power, it’s remarkable.

When you look at its achievements, and these achievements ultimately transformed the way Israelis see themselves. There was almost like nothing that, that we can’t do. You know, very often, you know, our friend and colleague Tal Becker has a line that what one generation thinks is impossible, the next generation thinks is inevitable. That’s a Talism. It’s a beautiful one, a very, very important one, but nowhere is that more central than in Zionism. And in Israel, what seems to be impossible, we—give me the impossible and I’m going to make it a reality.

Even if I don’t have to, I’m going to make the desert bloom or I’m going to transform the North. It turns out that we caused trouble with drying up some of the swamps, but here, we’re going to dry swamps. We’re going to create agriculture. We’re going to create an economy unparalleled in our area, we’re going to create “startup nation.” Like think about it, a country, which is constantly on the verge of this or that form of BDS country, always where sanctions are, are at least on the table and to be able to create startup nation in this environment, this level of creativity, you know, how Saul and Dan, you know, their whole idea Idea of the ability to think and to think outside and creativity and basically to make the impossible possible. It’s just so deep in our culture.

And the army—part of the shock of October 7th, which shouldn’t have been a shock. It’s because we expect the impossible. You know, we expect that you’re going to always do the impossible.

Yossi: Well, the impossible happened on October 7th, but in reverse.

Donniel: The reverse, but you know, if a country that could do beepers, you know, that could somehow, you know, could…

Yossi: The beeper attack against Hezbollah.

Donniel: Yeah, that’s the, it’s a slogan. I think most of our listeners know by now. Yes, and the beepers is the thing that I was against and changed my mind. Everybody knows the beepers.

Yossi: You’ve already done, you’ve already done your vehicle. Okay.

Donniel: But the beepers, the killing, assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran. And not injuring the person in the room next door, you know, it’s like, like, we’re so used to, like, you could just do, you know, Iraq, Syrian, nuclear, I, it’s like, if there’s an impossible, which is perceived as being just self evident, self evident.

I think Sharansky has some line about that, about how miracle is the normal in, in when it comes to Israel, but so like we, we don’t feel frustrated by reality. We fight it and we overcome it. Yet right now, as we’re, I don’t know whether we’re winding down or not, and we know we can’t return the hostages on our own through our own power. That we know.

But it goes deeper than that. There’s no conversation about the day after in Gaza. There’s no conversation. What do we want? You know, what do you want to do? What do you want to achieve? And today we’re not going to talk about, so what, the plans. We want to try to understand the source of this anti-Zionist passivity, this silence. Because only if we understand where it comes from could there be a possibility of overcoming it.

Is this silence understandable? Is it trauma? Is it politically motivated? Is it ideologically motivated? Where does it come from? Yossi, what are your thoughts about this new silence?

Yossi: The paradox is that every poll in the last couple months shows an overwhelming majority of Israelis have a very clear idea of what they expect the government to do in the morning after, which is make an all encompassing deal over the hostages and end the fighting in the way that we’ve ended the fighting in the north. And just the other day, Netanyahu said that we have to make clear to Hamas that we’re going to continue the war, once we get the hostages back, which is another way of saying we’re not getting the hostages back.

And everyone in Israel understood that those are the consequences of that policy and that mindset and yet there’s no uproar. So you have the passive polls and yet it’s not taking any concrete expression in terms of a national conversation.

Now, it’s not only the fate of the hostages in the morning after, and what do we envision as a future for Gaza and our relations with the Palestinians. And that I think is something we should really focus on today. But just for a moment to widen the frame further, we’re about to get saddled with the least popular law in the history of the state of Israel. Which is formalizing the mass exemption of Haredi ultra Orthodox young men.

Donniel: From military service.

Yossi: From military service. And this is coming out right after we’ve pushed our young people to go beyond the limit in reserve duty. We have young people who’ve served in the army for nearly a year. Businesses have been collapsing, professional careers, families have been unraveling. And at this moment, to push through that law is so counterintuitive to what Israelis expect from their leaders. And yet, and here I have to tell you, I’m surprised, Donniel. I expected the reservists coming back from the front to be leading enraged demonstrations and yet—silence.

So the silence that you’re talking about seems to be endemic to this moment. And there’s something about the post October 7th trauma that has left us speechless. And I don’t know where to take that. I don’t know what to do with that.

Donniel: I agree with your analysis and I think your adding the silence about the ultra-Orthodox draft is a phenomenal thing to add into the equation because it’s not just Gaza. It’s not just, even though that’s what we’re going to, it’s not just Gaza. Just the day after, what are we going to do? It’s not. There’s something, it truly is remarkable. And I think what it is, is this is a legislation that the government has to pass in order to pass the budget, basically in order to sustain the coalition. But this is also the legislation that’s going to cause the overturn of this coalition in the next election.

It’s like, so even though now there isn’t, it’s like, I think there’s a passivity about once Gidon Saar joined and gave, what was it, four or five more seats to the coalition? Political upheaval, like the demonstrations, he bought himself two years of stability.

Yossi: Netanyahu did.

Donniel: Netanyahu did. And so there might have had sentiment, and I think it’s really important, we have to keep that into account.

Yossi: But we can look specifically at the Palestinians in Gaza.

Donniel: But I don’t think that Israelis have a clear idea. You said Israelis have a clear idea and you said the clear idea is they want a hostage deal. And they’re ready to pay a comprehensive deal.

Yossi: They’re ready to pay the price of an end to the war.

Donniel: I don’t think that’s the case. There’s a dissonance, and Netanyahu in that sense, what’s so destructive about what he said is that he actually said it publicly. You can’t be in the midst, he’s literally destroying the possibility of the negotiation. But, like, I’ve been teaching, you know, I get this regularly. Why are we continuing to fight? So that we can have a hostage deal. So I say, okay.

Yossi: Who do you hear this from?

Donniel: This is like, I’m talking literally hundreds of Israelis, thousands of them. It’s like, it’s like, this is the discourse. Yes.

Yossi: These are your students?

Donniel: Students at the Hartman Institute and the public, I’m just, wherever I travel, all over the place, those in the Institute, out of the Institute, hostage deal is a consensus. There’s a very large percentage that realize we need to do a deal. And then, so then I asked him, and what’s the day after? He doesn’t say a comprehensive solution, a deal. He says, yes, and the army will continue to control in Gaza.

Yossi: Okay. So let’s look at, let’s look at that.

Donniel: So like, they haven’t, it’s like it’s unworked out.

Yossi: I, okay. I accept that. That’s right, Israelis want a comprehensive hostage deal, but they’re not quite sure if they’re ready to pay the full price for it. What even the price should be. Right. And maybe Netanyahu, who is the master reader of the Israeli psyche and the mood of the public, he may, he may be intuiting this and know what he can get away with.

Donniel: Correct. But the problem is that the majority want the hostage deal, and we know that when you say this, it’s one thing to, at the end, you know, have the army go back and fight. Because every, this is a common discourse in the country. Why can’t Netanyahu sign a deal for Gaza, which is similar to what he signed with Hezbollah, which was not a comprehensive deal. It was, there’s a ceasefire, and we reserve the right to return whenever it is that we feel it’s necessary.

Yossi: If the other side is violated.

Donniel: And here too, that If we could, if Netanyahu declared, we could go back and deal with Hezbollah, if they begin to with…

Yossi: With Hamas?

Donniel: With Hezbollah.

Yossi: Ah.

Donniel: Even if they can, if they continue to attack, then it’s self-evident that we could go back and attack Hamas if and when.

Yossi: In other words, you don’t have to spell it out.

Donniel: You don’t have to spell it out. Right. But so spelling out is, but, it is those two sides, like, what are we going to have to do in order to have a deal? And here, you want the deal, but, so, the beautiful and remarkable father of the soldier from Jerusalem, Yuval Shoham, who died in Gaza from a tank accident, at his funeral said to the prime minister, he said, make the comprehensive, bring the hostages home, make the comprehensive deal, and it seems that Yuval was walking, he was a good friend of Hersh, he knew Hersh, they were in school…He was walking around Gaza, shouting his name, like, hoping…

Yossi: That was so, that was so touching.

Donniel: It was like, he’s been there for 15, like, he’s like, maybe, maybe he’ll hear. He says, make that deal. But that’s not where Israeli society is. They don’t know what that comprehensive deal should look like. Now, why do you think, when it comes to Gaza in general, you know, and this could also have to do with Palestinians in general, we can’t have a comprehensive, not that we can’t make a deal, we don’t even know how to talk about.

Yossi: So you’ve just put your finger on it because it’s not just Gaza, it’s this deep Israeli ambivalence, and ambivalence is a euphemism for much harder feelings toward the Palestinians. And Israelis generally, for many years have felt we have no options with the Palestinians. We’ve exhausted all our options. We’ve talked about this.

Donniel: Ein partner l’shalom.We don’t have a partner.

Yossi: But not only don’t we have a partner, we tried every approach and every approach failed. And we tried territorial concessions in the Oslo process in the 90s. That failed. Then we tried unilateral withdrawal from Gaza… blew up in our faces, literally. Everything we’ve tried has been a failure. That’s the Israeli consensus. If there’s any Israeli consensus on any issue, it’s that we’re stuck. And whatever we do will make it worse. And it’s true. Any initiative we’ve taken, whether from the left, the right, the center, it’s made it worse.

And so the Israeli mindset toward the Palestinian problem is you deal with it militarily. There’s no political horizon. And then October 7th intensified that feeling of paralysis immeasurably. And so what we’re looking at is the consequence of years of cumulative Israeli despair, or you could also call it an Israeli refusal to deal with reality. I mean, that’s the other side, but the consequence is we have come to a moment of truth and this isn’t a question of the future of Judea and Samaria. All of those loaded questions are not what’s at stake here. All that’s at stake is almost a technical question. And not only…

Donniel: What’s the technical question?

Yossi: The technical question is how do we arrange the governing of Gaza in a way that politically, not just militarily, but that politically will prevent Hamas from returning to power. It’s in our interest to come up with some kind of a political arrangement. I’m not using the word solution. It’s not a political solution, an arrangement. Take it to the next step. What’s the political? The only real political arrangement on the table is to bring the Palestinian Authority back into Gaza.

Now, everything that the Israeli right says about the Palestinian Authority is true. It’s hopelessly corrupt. It doesn’t have the trust of its own people. It isn’t a partner for a lasting peace. But what we see in the West Bank is that the PA is a partner for tactical arrangements. Right now, they’re fighting Hamas in Jenin.

Donniel: So not that effectively, by the way, but like we’re watching it from the side as weeks pass and they arrested another two people or something. But I think I want to reinforce the other side of what you’re saying. And that is, and I think it’s a very deep consequence. It’s a strange consequence, but it’s an interesting consequence of October 7th, and that is that we refuse to put our security in the hands of anyone else.

Yossi: Very important piece of this.

Donniel: Yeah. But it’s strange, because October 7th happened when we put our security in our own hands, so you could actually have somebody who thinks about, maybe so try something different.

Yossi: And October 8th was made possible because America stepped in and helped us.

Donniel: That’s true. I think we had, we already had enough of the ammunitions. Like they stepped in beforehand. Now there’s our ability to campaign, but it still was the Israeli army. I don’t want to, it’s not, I don’t think it would go, I don’t want to go that far. We were able to fight for 15 months.

Yossi: You’re right.

Donniel: For 15 months. Right. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that is recognized. But, I think there’s this bind. See, in Judea and Samaria, we would have actually been in a real bind if the Palestinian Authority did an Arafat, did an unleash, a second Intifada.

Because at the end, we’ve never had a political solution to any of our conflict with the Palestinians. We had political conversations. We had discussions. You know, a lot of withdrawal.

Yossi: We had wishful thinking.

Donniel: We had wishful thinking. But we never had, we’ve never seen, it was always stopped early, very early. And we actually believed, most Israelis believe that the status quo in Judea and Samaria is sustainable for the long run. Sustainable for the long term. And we stopped thinking about it. You know, the Palestinian Authority would on a constant basis give us information. We would go and do the operation. They were never arresting people, by the way, they would give us the information and our troops would go in and arrest or…even though it’s a tinderbox, but it’s a tinderbox under control.

Those who are suffering the most about the security situation in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, were the Israeli citizens who lived there. Outside was more or less contained. And even there it was, I don’t want to say it’s manageable because you never want to say somebody else’s pain and sorrows is manageable. It wasn’t. But for overall, we were, we were perfectly comfortable continuing, just like we were perfectly comfortable continuing in Gaza after the unilateral withdrawal. And we were looking for ad hoc solutions, including funding Hamas.

But now we’re at a point where we’re actually going to have to make a decision. Something is going to have to happen. It’s not a messianic moment. It’s not a peace moment. But a fact: If the hostages are going to come home, we’re going to have to change our current military posture. Right now, the Israeli military controls approximately 30 percent of Gaza, which, by the way, is the same size as Area C in Judea and Samaria.

As you know, the West Bank is divided into three areas, A, B, and C. A is where all the major Palestinian cities are that’s under military and political control of the Palestinian Authority. Area B is A lot of the mountains, agricultural areas and smaller villages, that’s under Palestinian political control and Israeli military control. Area C is wherever the Jews are, and that’s about 30 percent of Judea and Samaria right now, of post 1967 borders.

The Israeli army, right now, between the Philadelphia Corridor, the Netzerim Corridor, and that kilometer wide security zone that we’ve now created within Gaza, we’re in control of 30 percent of Gaza right now. That’s where our army is sitting. Gazans aren’t allowed in those, they’re not even allowed to appear within those 30%. That, that is, no one’s signing a deal keeping that in place.

So then, what do you want to do? That means you’re going to have to do something if you want the hostages back. But no, what do you want to do? Talk about what you’re willing to do. How, so people speak about, oh, no, we’re going to have security arrangements. We’re going to continue the, our new defense minister, if we could call him that, speaks about how Israel is still going to maintain security control over Gaza. But what does that mean? I don’t know. Does that mean like in Judea and Samaria, that we’re just going to go in whenever we see something but basically stay out, or not? What do you want to do? What political…something…and we’re not.

Yossi: And we’re not asking the question that you just posed. Israeli society isn’t asking it.

Donniel: What do you want to do? How? A prime minister could say. Yes, or Israeli societies could delude itself. I want a hostage deal that’s self-evident. I want a hostage deal. And I don’t want a partial hostage deal. You remember we talked about, doyou want a partial one or you want the total? Israelis understand that any partial hostage deal will be the death sentence for anybody. But you know why they understand that? Because they know we’re going to attack again.

See, if Israelis really thought that they were open to some comprehensive deal in Gaza, then you could do a partial deal. This will be the first stage and a few months later. But because we don’t have that, we’re not talking about it. And so you have this reality where we’re coming close to a change in reality. And Israelis, there hasn’t been a conversation. I don’t care what you think. You know, even those who are saying, I want to resettle northern Gaza, like, so what does that mean? Like, is it just saying, Oh, you’re crazy. That’s not our plan. The international… What do you want to do?

Yossi: And the irony here is that the only way to really prevent Hamas from coming to power, other than permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza, is to bring the PA back, the Palestinian Authority, which would be the fig leaf allowing the Arab world to come into Gaza and the international community and to begin the process of rehabilitating Gaza without the danger of a return of Hamas. And so we’re sabotaging ourselves.

And I really come back to this idea of a paralysis in Israeli society, a general post October 7th paralysis, but especially on the Palestinian issue and especially on Gaza. To come to the point where we have to make a decision is a reckoning with October 7th. It means that we are going to have to accept the fact that we’ve basically done more or less what we could and go on to destroy Hamas and go on.

Donniel: We have to go on from October 7th.

Yossi: That’s right.

Donniel: That notion of maybe that’s and we can’t, we can’t go on, you know, and that has a whole, the whole world is talking about the plight of Gazans right now. It’s no longer the, you know, civilian casualties. That happens, but that’s. the Israeli military operation is much more moderate and they could count whoever they want to count. We know what we’re fighting and where we’re fighting. And it’s true.

We took over the second to last hospital, but if it’s a military camp, what are you talking? It’s like, but that’s, it’s not civilian casualty. Now it’s 2 million people who literally are in maybe three or four areas living in the midst of the winter without blankets, without food, it’s like, even if they’re not starving to death, so we could debate are they starving or not, what do you think is the long term plan for Gaza? Two hundred, three hundred billion, maybe even more dollars, decade, to rebuild.

Yossi: What, like, even, and do we really, do Israelis really want to be saddled with Gaza?

Donniel: So it’s like, but like, so what is the consequence? I speak with various political figures, and of course, not to stay in Gaza is a self evident strategic decision, but he doesn’t talk about it publicly. There’s this reality. We’re almost walking through life as if it’s happening to us, and we’re spectators. And how do Israelis move back to being players? I want to maybe in future podcasts, I think we have a responsibility to actually talk about what the various ideas, to analyze the pros and cons of each idea. There is no idea that’s a great idea.

Yossi: We have no good options.

Donniel: No, but we need to find out. I don’t know. When I talk, when I talk to Israeli groups, to American groups, Canadian groups, just when I mentioned the need, some, I always get. So what do you think we should do as if, you know, like there’s, it’s like, whoa, I’ve never thought of this idea.

I think we have an educational obligation to just actually talk about the various bad ideas. Because I also believe, you know, this whole notion that sunshine is the best disinfectant, as Louis Brandeis famously said. Just bring ideas out into the discourse so that we could talk about it. You want to hold on to Gaza? What does it mean? You don’t want to hold on? You want military?

Put scenarios forward because it’s only when they’re put forward… it’s not about finding the truth. It’s about within, especially as you said, the solutions are so imperfect. How do you make it less imperfect? How do you improve on it? What are the features? Is it just the Palestinian Authority? Is it, you add to it other equations? None of this is happening. We have become, in many ways, we’re, we’re still victims. We’re victims not of October 7th, but now we’re just victims of reality. And we’re trying to make the best out of it. And in Lebanon, we did great. And in certain places, in Gaza, we’ve done phenomenal. But when it requires that next stage, that un-Zionist silence is remarkable. Last thoughts, Yossi?

Yossi: Yeah, we’re victims of our self imposed paralysis. And the further irony about our paralysis is that one of the main reasons why we’re stuck in October 7th is because the hostages are still on October 7th. And yet we can’t bring ourselves. to commit to what will bring them back, because we’re paralyzed, and so we’re caught in this cycle.

Donniel: It’s like we’re praying now all the time. Zionists aren’t supposed to pray, Zionists are supposed to do something. It’s like we’re praying for the hostages. It’s like we’re, we’re expressing wishes.

Yossi: Right. And in principle, we all know what we need to do to get them back, but we, somehow, we can’t make that next step.

Donniel: Or some people know that the price of that is unacceptable and that’s why they say we don’t want them to come back. But all of this Israeli silence, reconnecting, it’s really going on. I thought your remark, I want to end with that, going on from October 7th. What does that mean? And it’s on so many levels, but here it’s reclaiming your activist spirit, not the army doing, but our society reclaiming and taking responsibility. We’ll talk about the specifics of it in the future, but Yossi, it’s a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

Yossi: Mutual.

Donniel: And to our audience, I know this program, I think the term is drop, on January 1st, our second New Year. We have two. We have the Jewish one and we have the calendar one, the Gregorian one, which we also live in. And I want to wish everybody, however you are, you know, it’s never a wasted bracha to wish somebody a good year, whenever you’re counting. And to give people brachas, blessings, it’s like we should be generous. And if in the Jewish New Year, at least let in this new calendar new year, let our hostages come home and let’s stop just praying. Let’s start thinking about what we actually have to talk about in order to bring them home.

Yossi: Amen.