About

Thoughtful debate elevates us all. 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 collective consciousness of being Jewish. 

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.

They Are Dying 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, a podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute, Israel at war, day 410.

Our theme for today is: “They Are Dying.”

And by that, we’re referencing, the hostages are dying. Even the prime minister said that he hopes that half are still alive. And our goal today is to talk about what needs to be talked about, elevate awareness, elevate commitment, and also to understand what’s going on here. What is going on? Because they’re dying.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak at a conference for doctors for returning the hostages. And my lecture was scheduled for 11:30 and I got there at 11:20. And when I came, they told me that we’re running an hour late and I was aggravated. And so I sat down. And I listened to two lectures that shook me really to my core.

I listened to two doctors speaking to a couple of hundred, 300 doctors, talking about what is the medical reality facing the hostages. And these two doctors were the chief dieticians of Sheba Hospital who are leading the care for all returned hostages, including those who were returned hundreds of days ago. And brilliant women. And the first one, very clinical, no charisma, no. They just said, let’s just analyze a case.

In a case of a 70-something-year-old woman who came back after 52 days. She had lost 30% of her body weight. She hadn’t eaten any protein in 52 days. Her sources of water were all infected. And from a completely functioning and healthy woman, within 52 days, she returned with significant neurological, cardiological, immunological, if I’m even using the right words already, deficiencies, diseases. And this woman never was going to live a normal life and independent life again. This is after 52 days.

And after analyzing each one of the factors of her well-being that changed, the other one got up and did analysis. What happens to a human being who is eating 500 calories a day? 500 calories a day. Most of them, it’s a pita, and if they’re lucky, there’s a date. A few of them were exceptionally lucky. They were being held by a doctor, and they got a teaspoon of olive oil a day. What happens to a body that has no protein? Where you begin to eat first your fat reserves, then your muscle reserves, then your bones.

They were talking about people who returned, what was it, six months, eight months. They had no medical protocol for, how do you treat somebody who lost 30% of their body weight, 40%? And they said, these are Holocaust bodies. These are Holocaust camp bodies. And they just told the story.

We know Hersh’s parents told the world that when his body was returned to them, he weighed 52 kilos. 5 foot 11. He had lost 25, 30 kilos. You know, we talk about the numbers and we know some are alive and some are dead and we know how difficult, they are literally, they’re not going to survive. The winter’s coming.

Yossi and I felt, we have to talk about this today. We get used to everything. You get used to tragedies, and we get used to it. And so everybody is either wearing their yellow, I don’t even know what it is, this yellow pin, or we’re wearing these masking tape, little pieces of paper with days, and we’re going on and the truth is, we’re living our lives. But our people are dying, are literally being starved to death, are gonna be dying of disease.

It doesn’t seem to be part of, the families are screaming. They’re screaming and they have to be screaming. They have to be screaming. But their scream is being painted as political. Many people are tired of their screaming, especially those within the government. The coalition doesn’t want them to scream anymore. But they’re dying. And we want to talk about it today.

And Yossi, I want to, I remember right afterwards, I felt like someone had raised the possibility of a four-day ceasefire or a week-long ceasefire and four would come back and I said, of course, like we got to do this. It’s like anybody who you bring back, anybody who you can bring back, any day that you can shorten the captivity for anyone. And yet there seems to be time, you know, let’s wait at the time. Let’s wait till after the elections and let’s wait and see.

Now I know Hamas is at fault, but there’s an urgency on the part of our government that seems to be lacking. Let’s talk about that. Yossi, in the Israel that we love and the Israel we were raised in, this doesn’t happen. We used to endanger life to make sure that no soldiers are captive, are held back, no one is left behind. These are our people. Like, they’re literally, we don’t have time. Like, as bad as it was in Syria, and people were tortured in Egypt, we know that if you were there, you were gonna come back alive.

Now, we know they’re not gonna make it. We don’t even know how many of them are still alive. Why, why isn’t there urge? Like, why, why isn’t everybody, you know, you wear your ribbons, but that’s just, why isn’t everybody screaming?

Yossi: Before we unpack your question, just two quick responses to how you began the episode. The first is that you focused on the physical deprivations. You didn’t even begin to touch on the psychological implications. Those who will manage to retrieve, what kind of condition are they going to be in after over a year of being confined to dark tunnels, wondering every day if they’re going to make it through the day.

And the second thought that I had was, we’re being accused around the world of using starvation as a military tactic. It has never been proven we’re not using starvation. There is humanitarian aid coming through. And as our friend Tal Becker said to me recently, he said, if you want to know what a genocide looks like, go to Rwanda. Go to that period. And he said, in Rwanda, they didn’t allow UN aid trucks to come through. And yet Hamas is deliberately starving to death our hostages. And there’s no outcry around the world. So that’s just as a preliminary response to what you were saying.

In terms of your question, and we’ve talked about this, Donniel, that one can make a case, maybe still, although I think it’s much less of a powerful case today, that the government needs to prioritize the defeat of Hamas over rescuing the hostages.

As you know, I certainly felt that way in the first months of the war. I felt that October 7th was such a devastating blow and such a threat to our credibility of military deterrence that we needed to bring Hamas down.

But in the last weeks, we have restored, we’ve gone a long way to restoring our military credibility in Lebanon. And there’s much less of an urgency today to prove that we still have it in us to defend ourselves and to deter our enemies. And yet the government seems to be proceeding exactly as it has over the last year without any sense of urgency.

And before we get into the technicalities of policy, for me what’s most appalling is the lack of urgency in the government, the lack of empathy. And worse than that, the subtle and sometimes not so subtle message that the government and especially the government-related media has been conveying to the Israeli public, which is, if not the hostages, certainly the hostage families are a nuisance, are an obstacle to winning the war.

This is the first time in Israeli history that the families of hostages haven’t been embraced by the government, haven’t been held up as national heroes, rather than the objects of contempt. That’s, more than anything else, that’s what I can’t forgive the government for.

Donniel: Thank you for that. It’s, you know, there, I don’t want to lay blame. It’s, maybe actually, maybe I do.

Yossi: I think it’s time, a year into this situation.

Donniel: You are, and I appreciate that. I think it’s time, it’s true. You know, there was an element where the hostages represent the failure and the shame. And they’re directing their anger at the government. And this government has no shame. They’re not even willing to say we’re responsible.

Yossi: It’s a great insight, Donniel. Yes.

Donniel: Every time the hostage families talk, they’re talking anti-government and the government is defending itself. So there is this conflict. They’re not our hostages. They say it, but they’re really not. They’re the, the, the hostages belong to the political opposition.

Now, whether the families allowed themselves to be in that place, were pushed into that place, were defying that place by the government. I think it’s complicated. There was anger, the anger of the hostage families. These weren’t hostages in a normal context of a war, where things happened. There was an anger and a call for resignation. And they’re the failure that the government has yet to want to recognize. And that’s why there is this split.

So the majority of the country in the recent surveys wants a ceasefire for the return of the hostages. But increasingly you’re seeing now very open conversations that no, we’re not going to stop the war for the sake of the hostages. Netanyahu is saying it, Smotrich is saying it every day, but this notion, how are you going to get them home?

So Netanyahu in his recent speech, you I offered $5 million for each, even for information. But really, what do you want to do? The issue is I want to defeat Hamas; that has still not been removed from the table and as a result there is no solution that this government is willing to address.

And I know this is just going to activate you, so I’m going to mention it but in all the recent scandals or the most significant one where it turns out that, not the prime minister, but people in the prime minister’s political milieu, and it’s not just them, but as you could see all of his minions in his party, the hostages, the demonstrations are the enemy and they leak information. They leak very often distorted information in order to silence sympathy towards the families and the demonstrations, that this is something that the government is even doing. I’m going to turn it over to you because this is a story that I’m sure you want to elaborate on.

Yossi: Well, first of all, you mentioned earlier that the hostages, the ongoing hostage situation, is a source of shame for the government. I think it’s even deeper than that, Donniel, because the ongoing hostage crisis undermines the government’s claim that we’re winning. And the ongoing hostage tragedy connects us back to the October 7th shame. And I so much appreciate that word in the context of October 7th and the hostages.

So the government is trying, as Netanyahu always does, to deflect blame and responsibility. And so he does what he does, which is ignore bad news. He rushes to the podium to claim victories. And it disappears from public view when there is defeat or bad news. And the hostages are permanent bad news. So, Netanyahu prefers not to deal with it.

Now, you raised the extraordinary revelations of recent days about the scandals of the existence of alleged existence of what one can only call a political spy network in the army, apparently embedded in intelligence, and stealing, there’s no other word for it, stealing the most sensitive documents which places soldiers in danger, according to news reports, publicizing these documents places soldiers in danger in order to give Netanyahu the information he needs to sway public opinion against the families and the demonstrations.

Now, by the way, the families, for most of this last year, did not join with the political opposition. They were very clear about maintaining a politically neutral position. It’s only in the last month or two that in their desperation and in their growing sense, that the government is consciously abandoning the hostages, that they joined with the opposition. That was a move of desperation. It wasn’t really a choice.

But what we’re looking at here, Donniel, is first of all, the moral scandal of effectively abandoning the hostages and turning their families into public enemies, which is the language that’s being used on Channel 14 and other government, pro-government media.

But now we’re facing an actual scandal, a criminal scandal. And when have we ever seen anything quite like this, where the government creates a spy ring within the army to effectively undermine the army and for the purpose, political purpose of undermining hostage families?! It is moral scandal compounded on political and legal scandal.

Donniel: So let’s, so let’s now, you know, I was very affected by those lectures and, like every day I give thanks to the fact that the conference was delayed because otherwise I would not have heard them. And those were like two lectures that really, it’s like you hear brilliant people and they just completely change the way the lenses that you wear and what you feel. But when we look at how we’re proceeding now with Gaza, and now we could compare it to Hezbollah.

Today, the American envoy Hochstein is back in Lebanon and it looks like

Yossi: I love the way you pronounced his name because he’s actually of Israeli origin.

Donniel: I know, we know his family. We know, we know him. We know the whole family. They’re friends. What did they say? He’s called Hochstein or whatever. He’s a nice boy. But he’s now in Lebanon and we don’t know, but it looks like a deal is about to be signed of some form, of some form of version of 1701, in which Hezbollah and Lebanon all agree to not have any military force south of the Litani.

And whether we put it in the deal or not, Israel and the United States all agree that the United States has to oversee together with England and Germany and France and that Israel will have, will be justified in intervening to ensure that the situation does not return in which there is an imminent danger to the northern cities.

But we all know that Hezbollah, even today, today they just hit Ramat Gan, they hit the Tel Aviv area. So we’re about to negotiate a deal in Lebanon where Hezbollah wasn’t defeated. The danger is still there. They could still endanger the northern settlements. They can’t endanger them with the Coronet anti-tank missiles, which we now also discovered that Russia supplied either the Syrian modern versions, not antiquated ones.

Yossi: Because they have limited range and if we push them back…

Donniel: They have limited range. They can work five to 10 kilometers, and they need direct eyesight. They could still bomb. They’re bombing every day. 50, 100. Sometimes they’re bombing Haifa, they’re hitting Ramat Gan, and we’re going to declare victory. We’re going to declare, because we realize that power has its limits and now politics is entering into the conversation and everybody’s quiet. Even the right wing isn’t talking anymore. Nobody’s going to complain. There’s not going to be any political price. They threaten, but right now they’re going to allow politics to take us to the next stage and to give us the victory that our army prepared.

But when it comes to Gaza, those aren’t the choices. We’re still talking about this complete, the destruction of the military and political power of Hamas, as if that is something achievable by our military. And we’re given a choice. We’re given a choice either to allow, create a ceasefire in which Hamas could return and therefore threaten our existence. That’s one choice.

And the other choice is in many ways a perpetual conflict. Now with those choices, why is it that that’s the choice? That choice is not being offered or presented when it comes to Lebanon, even though it’s even more pressing because Hezbollah is far more powerful and the danger that Hezbollah faces to Israel is far greater, and our inability to, as we see, to completely stop it is more limited.

When it comes to Hamas, Gaza’s destroyed. It’s true. Hezbollah could still convene as a police force. They could still steal humanitarian aid as they’re doing and then sell it and collect literally hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars every month or two funded by the international community and its humanitarian aid. Use that to instill or to preserve its political power.

But Hamas’s ability to destroy and to harm us has been seriously limited. Yet there is, we’re not going to the political. How do you, you know, and when I put that in the context and we put it in the context of the hostages, it makes, I want to scream. It’s like enough. It’s like, this is not a political debate anymore. Like really, like what’s going on with you now?

Yossi: Alright, so the question that you’re raising is why has the government gone for a political option in Lebanon and not in Gaza? I think there is one answer that’s understandable and one answer that’s simply outrageous. The understandable reason is really what you said a moment ago, which is Hezbollah is much more powerful. In order to defeat Hezbollah, we need to commit ourselves to months more of war.

Donniel: Years, Yossi. Years, Yossi. And it’s not even achievable.

Yossi: Or years. And so there’s, so that’s one answer. And factor in the urgency of bringing back the uprooted Israelis back to their homes on the northern border. Now the question is why isn’t there that same urgency for the hostages in Gaza who are not just displaced from their homes but, as you put it, are dying or facing death every day. And here we get to the more outrageous reasons for the government’s refusal to go for a political solution in Gaza, because that means keeping Hamas in proximity to power for a very simple reason, Donniel.

The far right is vetoing a morning-after political decision. They’re vetoing an arrangement that would politically displace Hamas and replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority or some other Palestinian self-rule that would preclude any further Israeli presence in Gaza.

Now, I argue with myself about how far to take this, because what is the ultimate goal of the far-right? And they themselves have not been shy about telling us. The end game for Gaza is rebuilding the uprooted settlements.

Now, look at what the far right is doing here. They’re saying that we reject any political solution to Gaza that would replace Hamas. Therefore, the only way to ensure that Hamas doesn’t return to government is by remaining indefinitely in Gaza, which also happens to neatly dovetail with their goal of rebuilding settlements. Now, I don’t know how far, again, I don’t know how far to take this. Is this conspiratorial? Is this simply connecting the dots that the far right itself is laying out for us? But there’s something going on here that’s not playing out in Lebanon. And I can’t help but think that the far-right’s veto on a political solution has a very profound influence here on the fate of the hostages.

Or to put it in an almost unthinkable way, and I’ll put it as a question rather than a statement, is the government prepared to sacrifice the hostages for the sake of appeasing the far-right’s goal of building settlements in Gaza? Is it hostages for settlements? Is that really what we’re seeing?

Donniel: You know, first of all, I’m happy, the question has to be asked. And I’ve been reading more and more articles of, are detailing the extent of Israel’s presence today in Gaza. And it’s looking less and less temporary. And they’re, the cutting it across, the corridors, the bases.

There’s something else going on that’s not explained by the military campaign in Jabalia or in which part of Gaza. Something else is happening. And some people are saying, you know, it’s time for us. There is a secret story going on that we’ve never admitted. And whether that, I think a very small percentage of them has to do with the settlement, reclaiming and rebuilding the settlements in the Katif area, the northern Gazan area. That’s there.

But it’s interesting, Smotrich, the Minister Smotrich, Betzalel Smotrich was interviewed on Saturday night. And he said, you know, I have my own personal agenda, but now I want to talk about, I want to talk about unifying the Jewish people. And he said, I am against ending this war for the sake of the hostages. He says, I’m pained by it, but we need to achieve, and he says, there’s a broad consensus in Israel that we have to defeat Hamas.

Now, the part of the challenge is that nobody is presenting, and here comes the right wing veto, that their way to defeat Hamas is through political means, not through military means. The notion that if we stop fighting, Hamas is victorious, that’s the fallacy. The only way to defeat Hamas is to put in place another force led by our coalition partners, both around the world and in the Arab states. That’s a different story, but no one’s talking that story.

And I wonder, and here I wanna offer another, goes back to what I said at the beginning. Because minorities could push only if a majority is willing to listen, only if there’s something, it’s not just raw power. And I think there is no doubt that the coalition falling is an issue that we know for sure is influencing Netanyahu on an ongoing basis. And we have tens of cases where he made these types of decisions.

But there is something that’s resonating in a much larger part of Israeli society. And I think Israelis, or many Israelis, are still looking for a way to somehow erase the shame of October 7th. And there’s still, there’s the word that Netanyahu is still using, complete victory. He never used that in the North.

Now, you know what the debate is? For some people, complete victory is the hostages coming home. But there’s a counter-complete victory. And that is some flag-waving moment. You know, here in Jabalia, there were 1500 Hamas moment.

Yossi: An Iwo Jima, an Iwo Jima moment of raising the flag, right?

Donniel: They’re waiting for some moment. Now, Netanyahu could do what Netanyahu is doing for whatever political reasons. And the right wing could have multiple nuanced positions. But, there is a group of Israelis who are looking for a resolution that we can’t find. And it’s at this time that you need leadership to offer people new direction. And instead, we’re pushing them back.

And the hostages are the problem. Instead of being our responsibility, they’re our problem. Because if I worry about the hostages, am I going to lose my moment to reclaim, not deterrence, but to reclaim my sense of normalcy and sanity and in many ways also revenge. Revenge, know, blood for blood. These are very deep impulses in the human condition. And there’s a lot of revenge going out there. And in the meantime, the hostages are dying. Yossi, last words?

Yossi: I hope that your explanation is the right one rather than mine and that what’s playing out here are understandable, if sometimes dark, psychological impulses rather than cynical political maneuvers that really are deliberate attempts to sacrifice the hostages and demonize the families. I really hope that your explanation is closer to the truth.

And I’d like to just take us back to where you opened. And that is what I need as an Israeli citizen for my government is a sense of restored emotional solidarity with the families, with the hostages. And then we can have our disagreements, even bitter disagreements.

But what worries me in some way, Donniel, about the long-term implications, the long-term consequences of the government’s emotional abandonment of the hostages and an attempt to undermine the credibility of the families is its impact on Israeli solidarity. And you touched on this before when you said about the Israel that we grew up in, the Israel that we knew. I’m worried about that Israel, the Israel in which we knew we could depend on each other, we knew that we could depend on our government, that that Israel will be one of the casualties of October 7th. And I can’t imagine what Israel would be like without that trust in our mutual solidarity.

Donniel: You know, you said, I hope you’re right. I think that truth is going to be found in a lot of multiple places and that you reflected also a lot of the serious impulses. But maybe a place to end is that I’m not just worried about solidarity. And that’s a very big one. I’m worried about decency.

Israeli society is a decent society, or at least it’s been decent to the Jews. We have a long way, and one of our missions as an institution is to ensure that decency is an inalienable right of all human beings, being created in the image of God, but that’s for another time. But we were a decent society. There were things we didn’t do. They’re dying and that should matter. That should matter. And when people feel that it doesn’t matter, when I hear the families screaming and they’re screaming and going to the Knesset and their inner strength…

Yossi: And being evicted from Knesset committee meetings.

Donniel: And being evicted, and being turned into victims. You and I, we picked today because today, we felt we have to talk about it. But we also may, we have to also give expression to our solidarity to the families. And we want to remind the Jewish people of our decency, of our values, of our commitments. Political debates are fine. But don’t think we have time. Don’t delude yourself. Right now, every single day, there’s another life that might be, that possibly is being extinguished.

So Yossi, you know, it’s a call to all of us. It’s 410 days, not just 410 days since the beginning of the war, 410 days in which the hostages are still there and they’re dying. And we’re trying to do at least our little share, our little part to raise awareness and to reclaim maybe some space for the type of people that we ought to be even in the midst of danger and even in midst of a very, very difficult.

Israel at war, 410 days. Be well.