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.

Israel at War – Victory? 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, podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute, and this is Israel at War, day 374. And The title, the theme that we picked for today is “Victory?”

And in many ways, our issue is, when do you declare victory? Or when do you know when to stop? When is it total victory? When is it a Dayenu victory? This is enough victory? I felt the rollercoaster, I don’t know if you did, Yossi, I felt it very much. Over the last number of weeks, it even reflected itself in the podcast, where I was extremely skeptical about us moving into Lebanon. I know Lebanon. We all know Lebanon.

And then we had the beepers. And initially I was angry at the beepers, because I thought the beepers were going to push us into something that we shouldn’t be in, and that there’s no way out. And then after beepers and handheld radios and Nasrallah and Nasrallah’s replacement and Nasrallah’s replacement’s replacement and his replacement’s replacement’s replacement and after it turns out that there were 17 different people or so, let’s use 18 because that’s a Jewish number, 18 people who were the chief of staffs of the Hezbollah, it’s like, we kept on. Assassinating different people who seem to have the same positions, but it was, unless they were replacing them so quick, and like, it was just, there was this plethora of stuff.

And I remember you said something that was really important for me, and it was, it was good for me, when you said that this was really valuable because it was a deterrence from despair. I think it was a term you used. And I let myself, and I said, you know, Yossi, you’re right. And that’s really what it was. You hit on something really powerful. It wasn’t a strategic, dramatic. There was something. We deserved to have those few moments. And I said, so you know what, and I, and I dared to believe.

Because, you know, the minute you put your despair aside, you begin to believe and, yes, and you start looking at the achievements of the army and what they’ve succeeded. It’s remarkable what they’ve done. It’s remarkable.

And then things continue. And then you realize this is not a beeper war. It’s not a beeper war. It’s not gonna be poof and boom. We wanted for a few moments to feel that it was, and this week has been a very bad week. Many of the things weren’t even reported. We all know of the horrific casualties at the Golani army base. And here, one of the co-producers of our podcast here in Israel, his best friend’s son was killed, and then just that same day, the same, David Dishon, who is our dear, dear friend who lost his grandson, and as his son in law was severely injured in Lebanon, 20 other people were injured, but it wasn’t even reported.

If there’s no deaths, it’s as if everything’s okay. And now as we sit here on day 374, Haifa is attacked every day. Haifa is the new Kiryat Shmona. We were moving into Lebanon in order to enable people to go back into Kiryat And now Haifa is, that’s the new line and Hezbollah, who we ostensibly destroyed all of their leadership, are working with complete and total command and control. Complete. This is not some little sergeant or some little somebody deciding when to fire where. Everything is coordinated.

So something’s going on. So there’s a shift. I want to talk about that shift, like, it hit me in the gut. It hit me in the gut, you know, there, you know, it’s like, it’s true, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. But hope, when it comes to Lebanon, is very, very elusive and sometimes even dangerous.

Just before we even get into the full, like this story, I just told a whole story. Did that story aggravate you? Do you share it? No.

Yossi: It didn’t aggravate me because I think what you’re evoking is the price that we’re now paying for this string of extraordinary victories and the blowback was inevitable. But it doesn’t speak to me. It doesn’t speak to me.

Donniel: It doesn’t speak to you?

Yossi: No, it doesn’t speak to me strategically. It speaks to me personally, it speaks to me humanly as an Israeli, but not on a strategic level. And before I say why I’m still hopeful on a strategic level, I should say that our generation, your and my generation, the generation that really in some ways came of age in Lebanon, the first Lebanon war is permanently wary of imagining a new Middle East emerging from a war in Lebanon. We’ve been there. It was a disaster. It was the first war and really the only war that Israel decisively lost. And we lost it because of overreach, because our political ambitions were, were grandiose.

Donniel: Our strategy was wrong.

Yossi: Everything was wrong. And if you well remember that in the first week of the war, there was near wall to wall consensus here. We’re pushing, at that time it was the, Yasser Arafat’s PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, 40 kilometers back from the border. And that was never the plan. It was never Defense Minister Sharon’s plan. And he even hid his true intentions, at least in part, from Prime Minister Begin. The intention was to go all the way to Beirut and change the Lebanon government, install our Christian allies, and we all know how that turned out.

Donniel: I was part of his private war.

Yossi: You were.

Donniel: That was my war.

Yossi: And it was, and it turned out to be his private war, which half the country decided wouldn’t, we didn’t sign up for. Sharon, interestingly, Sharon’s takeaway from that was you can only govern this country by consensus. And when he became prime minister, he implemented that policy. He became prime minister in 2002 at the height of the Second Intifada.

Donniel: Because his personality was the antithesis of consensus.

Yossi: Antithesis. But this was the elder Sharon.

Donniel: Interesting, interesting. I never connected.

Yossi: And when he became, what I remember is that he became prime minister at the height of the suicide bombings, the Second Intifada, and he didn’t respond. And people were saying, what happened to Sharon? And he said enigmatically, restraint is also a sign of strength. He sounded like Shimon Peres. And he waited and waited until the Passover massacre. And the Passover massacre of 2003 was the moment when the entire country was saying enough, and that’s when he gave the order, now we’re going to go after the suicide bombers. So that’s the background that you and I bring to this conversation.

Where I disagree is that we don’t have to create a new Middle East. It’s waiting, it’s pleading to be born. It’s the Abraham Accords, it’s the Saudis who are desperate to throw off their caution and publicly throw their lot in with Israel. In order to do that, we need to reassure them that we’re still Israel.

And so here I think that the dynamic is the opposite of 1982. We need to defeat, and now we’ll unpack that word defeat as we need to unpack the word victory. We need to defeat the Iranian axis in order to reassure our potential Arab allies and those Arab countries that already have thrown their lain with us that we’re worth the price that they’re going to pay.

Donniel: See, we achieved that in the first two weeks with the beepers and the assassinations. My big fear is that we don’t have a plan on how to declare victory right now. And if we break it down, let’s break down what was the initial strategy, the initial goals, and what’s being discussed, and why it is that I’m again starting to feel uncomfortable.

If the goal is to destroy all the bunkers and all the homes within a kilometer of the border. And it turns out,

Yossi: The homes that had tunnels under them.

Donniel: And the homes, it turns out that every single one of them was serving as a staging ground against the will of the people. Hezbollah’s not asking.

Yossi: Maybe or maybe not. Maybe they were paid.

Donniel: Maybe or maybe not. Maybe they were paid or whatever it was. But this, every single one of these homes had extensive caches where we know Hezbollah terrorists could come and dress as farmers, go into the house, dress, have all the equipment, and do whatever, and then from there launch an attack on Northern Israel. We have to remove that.

That goal, at Israel, and we see, they’re not telling us a lot of what they’re doing, but that they’re telling us, and we see across the whole, from the east to the west, this job is being done with great skill, but also at great price. If that’s the goal of the war, I got it.

Second stage. The Coronet.

Yossi: What about pushing back to the Litani?

Donniel: Let’s go to there. Second stage. Coronet missiles, which Iron Dome has no ability against because their trajectory is straight. They fly one meter above the ground with laser guiding systems. They could fire up to 10 kilometers. Basically making anybody within 10 kilometers. You just can’t live there. You never know when a terrorist is going to get up, fire. Blow up a house, blow a car, great. Clear out the, up to the Litani, try.

Yossi: 20 kilometers, roughly.

Donniel: 20, 10 kilometers, up to Litani. If that’s the goal, not only is it a just war, it’s our right to try to achieve that.

Yossi: And that really brings us back to the 40 kilometers consensus of the first week of the first Lebanon War.

Donniel: Of the first. So let’s say we don’t do 40 kilometers, let’s say 10 kilometers. Let’s talk about U.N. Resolution 1701, which basically says that, it says there should be no armed military groups other than the Lebanese army south of the Litani. There’s a U.N. resolution. It’s not like Yossi, Donniel, the people in the North, but the U.N. is, you know, when soldiers from Fiji and Ireland are enforcing it, it means we know, we see, again, the newspapers begrudgingly admit it, but we see this.

Yossi: We see bunkers literally a few meters away from UNIFIL positions.

Donniel: But you know how it’s reported? Again, there’s always the word alleged. Like, I feel, there’s not a word that I hate any more, more than alleged. Because, one second, the reporters, you see it, like, what, they take them to the bunker, they put them downstairs, you see what’s there?

Yossi: And you say, look, over there, you see that? That’s a UNIFIL position.

Donniel: So here it is. There’s a bunker. There’s a UNIFIL position. There’s arms. There’s everything. But you have to say “alleged.”

So, like, there’s no fact to, like, that could just drive you, that, you know, even me as, like, even I get infuriated by, like, there’s at least something, so, that. But you can’t say anything. Everything has a political twist to it. If we just say that, I can understand. But one of the things we’re seeing right now is we have no ability to stop Hamas, Hezbollah, from being able to fire missiles.

Lebanon is not the 400 square kilometers, 40 kilometers by 10 kilometers of Gaza. It’s huge. It’s bigger than Israel. They have missiles spread all over the country. And even when we destroy 50 percent, the whole number percentage is so interesting to me because what does a percent mean? A percent is of what?

As you know, in my past I used to run marathons. So normally it’s a circle.

Yossi: Why the past? What happened? You don’t run marathons?

Donniel: I can’t. I just had my 66th birthday, so I run half marathons now.

Yossi: Oh, happy birthday, Donniel.

Donniel: Thank you. It’s a little healthier for me. Half marathons. Half marathons are a little healthier. But the strangest marathon is the Tiberius Marathon, because you run half, and then you turn around and run back. This is like, they don’t want to, because it’s easier to manage, and whatever, it’s very different than Manhattan or any other place that I ran. So you reach the half, you still have this, like, what does half mean? You have to like, you have to run a marathon with a half point to understand what does half mean.

So half, half of 150,000, what is half? They have an ability to hit, consistently, Haifa. But I’m worried now, they’ve gotten us into a war of attrition, Yossi. War of attrition. What are we going to do? So now we’re going to say we’re going to continue to bomb and we’re going to continue to put troops until we stop your ability to hit Haifa. I’m afraid that’s on the verge. You know, in a moment we’ll talk about Iran, the larger, but what are goals that could be achieved right now?

Yossi: I don’t think you and I have a fundamental difference in terms of the need to establish clear and relatively limited goals. I think that pushing Hezbollah back across the Litani is huge. I don’t think that’s an insignificant goal at all. I think it’s, after our successes of the last weeks, it may be doable.

Donniel: I understand that we’re moving very quickly. We’re not far from that.

Yossi: Yeah. I just went to…

Donniel: My secret sources.

Yossi: Well, this is, my secret sources, my acupuncturist, who I went to today.

Donniel: I have much better sources than you, but they’re so secret, I can’t.

Yossi: Well, he, I can’t tell you his name because, it’s that secret, but he looked exhausted. I said, Ami, you know,

Donniel: He was doing acupuncture on all the officers in the army?

Yossi: I said, you don’t sleep? He said, I just got back from Lebanon last night. He’s been in active combat for the last half year, and he’s going back in two weeks. And that, by the way, is one of the things that worries me, is that we’re stretching our reserves too thin on two fronts.

But what he did say was that we are making such impressive progress that the army is actually surprised. He said, Hezbollah, they’re running. They ran away. It’s like the old Hamas. That’s the way the Hamas used to be.

Donniel: No, even Hezbollah, they don’t fight and surrender. But that’s important. They fight. To live and fight another day, they dissipate. But I understand that they’re dissipating to the north. But the command and control of Hezbollah, which they’re still active and powerful, and they’ve been replaced, and there’s a new command group who are, who have been reconvened and who are in place and giving orders, etc. So it might be that the Litani is achievable.

And you know, again, our sources all speak about the fact that we have to finish any ground campaign before November, basically, or before mid November, early December.

Yossi: Because of the weather or because of American elections?

Donniel: Because of the weather. You can’t do a ground campaign in Lebanon with, with tank, it just, it’s, it’s not Gaza. The weather structure there is completely different. And then, so whatever it is you have to achieve, you’re going to achieve.

But what happens if there’s still, they’re going to still fire on Haifa. And they’re firing on Haifa. Now we know that they’re firing on Haifa is emboldening Sinwar in Azza. He’s not even talking about any hostage release. He’s as happy as could be. He now has, he has a war of attrition. Today, again, there was another terrorist attack. The terrorist attacks are happening every day now. Every day now.

Yossi: I don’t even think it’s being reported abroad. Every day there’s a terrorist attack.

Donniel: At what point should we declare, that’s what we’re calling, let’s call it victory because it’s not a failure. This is part of what I accepted, which is we have to embrace the remarkable power, success of our army and declare victory.

Yossi: Good. Good. But are you ready to, quote, declare victory before we push Hezbollah back to the Litani?

Donniel: I’m willing to accept that that is an intelligent, well-thought-through goal that I think it might pay to try. It might pay to try so that our north could move back home. It’s a just war and I can understand the logic of it, but we have to look at it on an ongoing basis.

Look at the reality on the ground. Are we achieving it? Is it successful? If it’s moving forward. That it’s not, we’re not getting stuck in a new mud. If that is a goal, I’m there. Let’s declare victory. Declare victory because we’re not going to be able, and I hear it, set up a new order. Now people are talking about, we want to make sure that Hezbollah is never going to be able to rearm itself. Okay. Am I going to want to keep on fighting until I achieve that? What does that mean? I want to do it so that there’s a chance that we could have a new order in Lebanon. What happens is with, and I don’t know if I mentioned this, but when they’re successful, when you’re successful, people say, let’s keep on fighting. When you’re not successful, people say, let’s keep on fighting. When do you declare victory?

Yossi: So the problem that I have, Donniel, is that the conversation on all sides about Lebanon is an old conversation. We’ve been there many times before in Lebanon, and it misses, from my point of view, the main strategic goal, which is to use a favorite Israeli phrase, “to neutralize” Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

If we end this war on all fronts, with Iran firmly planted on the nuclear threshold, able, in a matter of weeks, to create a bomb. And if, God forbid, Iran emerges from this war as a nuclear power, then forget our peace agreements with the Arab world. Iran is now the new regional threat, and all those countries that are looking toward Israel today to protect them from Iran, will realize that they need to accommodate, they need to make a deal with Iran. And we will lose our historic opportunity for a new Middle East. And that’s one piece of it.

But the truth is, for me, the primary consideration is this country exists in part to ensure that the Jewish people are never under existential threat again. If Iran, if this regime has a nuclear weapon, we are under permanent existential threat. And I’m haunted by a clock. There’s a clock in Palestine Square in Tehran colloquially known as the Doomsday Clock. It’s a big digital screen, and it’s keeping track of how many days are left to January 1st, 2040, which is when the Supreme Leader Khamenei said in 2015 that Israel will be destroyed. So he gave Israel 25 years, and that clock is still there. is keeping time. If Iran goes nuclear, that clock suddenly becomes more than just a metaphor.

Donniel: You know, Yossi, I’ve changed over the years.

Yossi: On this, I have not changed.

Donniel: No, I’ve changed over the years after listening to you about this, because when you first started to talk about it, I had no, I couldn’t relate. It’s just, it didn’t even emotionally relate to me at all. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t worry about it. I’m still not sure that the deal that Obama signed wasn’t better, but I’ll leave that aside.

Yossi: Yeah, I’m not going to, we’re not going to re argue that.

Donniel: I’m not even going to argue it, I don’t even know, I don’t even have an opinion on it. I just, I don’t believe that it was by definition worse than stepping away from it. I’m just leaving it as an unknown. But, over the years, and especially over the last number of years, as this axis of Iranian proxies are attacking us, I agree with you. I understand that there’s something much bigger going on here.

But there’s somewhere in the middle that you lose me. Did you say we can’t stop this war until we neutralize Iran’s capacity?

Yossi: No, no, we can’t exit this war. We can’t end this war. It’s different than saying we can’t stop the war. What I mean to say, I’ll explain what I mean. We can, if we push Hezbollah north of the Litani, dayenu. At that point we go to Iran.

Donniel: Go to Iran?

Yossi: Absolutely. We go to the nuclear facilities. That is the great unfinished business of this war. And I’m ready to stop the fighting in Gaza. I’m ready, when we push Hezbollah north of the Litani, to stop the fighting in Lebanon, in order to deal with the root of the problem, and to stop going back and forth as we’ve been doing for 20 plus years between the two Iranian proxies.

Donniel: See, as I’m listening to, and I appreciate the line that you’re making, and you were very consistent about this in our conversations over the years. You’re not one of those who says Iran is the problem, so therefore we can take on Iran and we can do this and we can. You’re not someone who’s at all drunk with power or delusional at all. It’s not, that’s not you.

You actually said that because Iran’s the problem, we have to make strategic choices. It determines when we go to war, determines our settlement policies, it determines who our allies are. So when you’re saying this, I’m not like, there are people who talk this way as if power, this is desperation, not strutting. It’s not strutting.

So, like, I respect you for it, and I respect the subtlety of the two positions that you’re holding, but here I have such a deep disagreement with you, and that disagreement has even been reinforced over this last year. Let me try to articulate it, and how does that work, because I understand where it’s coming from.

You use the words, Israel was formed to ensure that the Jewish people,

Yossi: In part.

Donniel: In part, right. You’re right. Good. Thank you. Let’s be precise, cause I also appreciate that.

Yossi: That was a deliberate qualification.

Donniel: I know. I agree with you. I know that Zionism, that Zionism has a spiritual moral agenda.

Yossi: Absolutely. So I’m with you. But it also, and, and the state exists not because of the Holocaust exists because of 2,000 years of Jewish law.

Donniel: See, that’s what makes, personally, if I could just comment, you don’t need me to comment on you, that’s what makes you interesting, because you hold positions which so many other people hold without nuance, but you, it’s like, it’s like this either-or, like, you’re holding this position, but that’s, you’re, you don’t get, if I could use a Donniel-ism, you don’t, you’re not boxifiable.

Yossi: I’ve never heard that one. That’s good.

Donniel: Count on me, you know. Like, you see, when you make Aliyah at an early age, you’re not proficient sufficiently in Hebrew or sufficiently in English, so your creative forces, you don’t feel limited by language. You’re not boxing. You’re not.

Yossi: That’s how Eliezer Ben Yehuda recreated Hebrew. He was an immigrant.

Donniel: No, but I really appreciate that. But something that I’ve always believed that I now, it’s like, I know it doesn’t mean I’m going to know it next week because we already know I might change my mind. But at this moment, I existentially feel the issue of limits of power and the limits of our military and the limits of what we could achieve is not just, you know, something that we have to talk about, take into account. It’s not a factor that we have to take into account. The limits of what we could achieve have to guide our aspirations. This is not messianic, and you’re not a messianist. I’m not praying. I could pray for anything. And you could pray because then you say God, you know, first of all, God’s not going to do it anyway. So God is both a combination of the infinitely powerful who can do anything, and at the end, someone who doesn’t end up doing anything. So like, so you pray for whatever, you know, here my own heresy comes.

Yossi: We should have an episode on theology.

Donniel: So pray, pray for what you want to pray. It just doesn’t matter. There doesn’t have to be limits to what you pray for. So fair enough.

But when you want to send our troops in, what you’re sending them in for both the sacrifice that it’s going to require and deep down in the definition. And I know you’re very ambivalent about using moral discourse and when you use it, but war is legitimate killing. It’s when you’re allowed to kill, in which killing is not murder, because you’re killing in self defense. And there’s a direct correlation between the life that you take and the self defense and the efficacy of your actions.

Yossi: So are you saying that an attack on Iran would be prolonging the war in a way that’s not justified?

Donniel: I’m saying two things. I’m saying if we can succeed, the fact that we have an existential need, the fact that you define that Israel was formed in part to ensure that the Jewish people never face an existential threat again. That’s a prayer. If you want to talk prayer, I’m okay. But you’re not talking about military policy. If you’re talking about political goals, I’m there too. I’m with you.

If you’re talking about, listen, part of the job of a military, and Tal Becker gave me this line and I found it very helpful to me, when he said, the job of the military is never to achieve total victory. That’s very rare. That’s operations. The job of a military, when you go to war, in a war of self defense, is to ensure that your enemy cannot dictate policy anymore. They don’t dictate the situation. The job of your army is to ensure that they’re not dictating this reality.

Yossi: Interesting. I would, I would actually qualify that by saying, that’s not true in all circumstances, but it is true for Israel because we’re a very small country surrounded by enemies. And you know many people, especially on the right, tend to make the analogy of World War II. The only way that that the Germans and the Japanese began to change is when the Allies decisively won. And yeah, it’s a very tempting analogy, except we can’t. We won in that way once. In 1967. And it didn’t turn out so good as we say in Brooklyn.

Donniel: And even the world, you know, and there’s so many, like, since then, it’s very rare that you have the white flag. And therefore, the issue of declaring victory is when your army brings you to a place where political solutions, which couldn’t have been thought about beforehand, are now possible. I feel we could have declared victory in Gaza, and I think we lost the moment when Netanyahu declared, no, we have to hold on to the Philadelphi Corridor.

Yossi: And we’re barely there anymore, by the way. And it was a complete, it was, it was a lie.

Donniel: What a surprise. Even though this week another soldier was killed there. So it’s like we’re there and not there. And it turns out there were no tunnels anyway. The whole thing was a lie. There were no active tunnels. Morsi had shut them all down.

But I’m frightened that we wasted the opportunity to declare victory in Gaza. And now I’m not sure what an exit policy is. Because if you don’t activate some negotiations, there’s, what are you, you’re just going to continue to do what? Which is, by the way, what it seems that maybe a lot of people want to do.

But now we’re talking about Lebanon. When do we declare victory? And when you put Iran, what we could achieve, not only morally, but also part of what Israel is about is not, when we say that the Jewish people should never face an existential threat, that’s not a policy, Yossi, that’s a prayer, that’s an aspiration, that’s something you want to work for. That’s not something you achieve. So when Jews are in danger in Entebbe, we have an operation. But we couldn’t, we now have 101 hostages who are an existential threat. Israel can solve all of the problems. I’m with you about the need, but where does what we could achieve factor into real life policy?

Yossi: Okay, you’re right. Donniel, you’re right about the fact that there is no way the state of Israel can hermetically protect the Jewish people from existential threat, but there are specific threats to which there are answers. Listen, if there are, after 25 years of Israel planning for this moment, if we don’t have good answers, then I have nothing to say.

Donniel: Oh, so that’s what I recommend? Not in general.

Yossi: But my assumption is, no, no, no, Donniel, my assumption is when the head of the Air Force successively, every head of the Air Force in the last year said, if we get the order to take out the nuclear facilities, we will be able to fulfill it. Is that bravado? Is it?

Donniel: Yossi, when I hear that…

Yossi: I don’t know, Donniel. I don’t know.

Donniel: Neither of us know. Fair enough. Let’s quote another Tal Becker-ism, who says, anybody who talks about Iran doesn’t know and those who know, don’t talk. Fair enough. But I don’t have to be a great military strategist to know that engaging directly with Iran. And trying to destroy Iranian nuclear weapons from, what is it, 1,500 kilometers away? Even if, as we all know, we’re planning on using the Azerbaijani bases.

Yossi: You’ve just blown our cover.

Donniel: I know. We’re supposed to, we’re using that. Great. No problem. But you don’t use Azerbaijan for a little operation because then Iran’s going to attack. But still, we know that as we’ve been having for 20 years, they’ve been digging. As we’re planning to bomb? They’re digging.

Yossi: It’s a terrible, it’s a terrible, you’re right. It’s a terrible option. Are you ready to live with a nuclear Iran?

Donniel: What do you mean? What’s the alternative?
Yossi: Are you ready to live with a nuclear Iran?

Donniel: If that’s what it is, I’ll have to live with it. If there’s a problem that I can’t solve, what am I supposed to do? I’m supposed to engage in a war that I know is futile? What if we can solve it? Okay.

Yossi: Neither of us know. Okay. What if we can’t?

Donniel: So here, let’s, so let’s resolve this as you and I, because we’re now going to do the,

Yossi: If we can’t solve it, we can’t solve it. If we can solve it and we don’t, then we’re betraying our purpose.

Donniel: Fair enough. Fair enough. But I just want a humility that I don’t trust that Israel has.

Yossi: See, on this issue, on this issue, it’s not bravado, Donniel. On this issue, it’s desperation. It’s desperation. Not bravado. Now, you can say you don’t trust desperation. Desperation is not bravado. Let’s look at desperation. I’m desperate on this issue.

Donniel: Maybe. Fair. So, you know what? You’re finding a colleague who has bravado. And you solving your desperation.

Yossi: You’re talking about Netanyahu.

Donniel: No, whatever, any Air Force person who said whatever they said. It’s like, it’s not beepers. It’s true. We have great abilities. We have great abilities. I believe there are problems in the world that it’s not Israel’s to carry. And it’s true. It’s not right that we should be worried about Iran when the opposition leader in Canada says if Israel would take out Iranian nuclear capabilities, it’s a gift, I forget his name, they are giving a gift to the world. I think that’s true.

I don’t understand and people are talking Trump. Why didn’t Trump? Mr. blah, blah, blah, Israelis, the minute I’m in power, I’m going to bomb. Really? Where were you? You had four years. You didn’t do a peep. Let’s get real here. Somewhere along the line, Israel, I want B1s. I want squadrons of B1s. Not Israel’s 20 bunker, you know, we got 50 bunker busters. I want someone who has a thousand bunker busters. I want someone who seriously has a capacity.

Yossi: And you would then sign on to that?

Donniel: Absolutely. I believe, let me be clear.

Yossi: So you feel we don’t have the weaponry.

Donniel: Here I have changed. Here you’ve changed me. I accept that Iran is a critical, strategic, moral, corrupt force that has to be dealt with. But that’s exactly why you have an international coalition.

Yossi: No such thing.

Donniel: So let’s create it.

Yossi: On Iran, there’s no such thing. It’s true. There won’t be. We’re in 2025. The West is not where it was 20 years ago. America is not where it was. It’s on us, Donniel. It’s on us.

Donniel: Fair enough. You see, but what’s on us has to be intimately connected, not to our existential need, not bravado. It can’t grow out of desperation. It has to grow out of capability, capacity, and implementable strategies. And the fact that somebody in Israel says they have it. It doesn’t impress me in any way whatsoever.

Yossi: So Donniel, I would say that here is where our different backgrounds come into play. Because for me, this is the most basic Jewish moment. And if we fail to try with our air force, with our missiles, so no, it’s not optimal.

Donniel: Do you know how dangerous that’s going to be, by the way, Yossi?

Yossi: Oh, I know. I know. We’re sending pilots, God forbid, into, into a death trap. At the home front.

Donniel: No, worse than that, Yossi. Not even that. As we’re speaking right now, we don’t know if by the time this podcast drops, Israel’s about to do something in Iran, right? Who said it’s going to be successful? So we told President Biden, we’re not going after the nuclear facilities as if we had that capacity.

Yossi: Maybe we do, Donniel. Maybe we, if we have even partial capacity, and if we’re the only ones who are ready to do it, we have to do it.

Donniel: I don’t know. Maybe my background is realism, is anti-messianism. And just like yours is a post holocaust, I grew up with an anti-messianism.

Yossi: This isn’t messianism. It is apocalypticism. It is.

Donniel: I grew up with an anti messianic father for whom the messianic dimension of Zionism was what frightened him the most. And the covenantal moment was embracing reality. Just like you were embracing modernity, you embrace reality. I think that we need to embrace reality. And whatever that means, I don’t get to determine reality. The Jewish people have faced impossible realities. I wish you’re right. If we have the ability, I would rather that instead of spending 20 years trying to build a capacity that I know we don’t have, we seriously ask ourselves, what does it mean politically for us to build coalitions? And to work together with the United States and others and Saudi Arabia, build that Sunni coalition so that we could create something that’s possible. Right now, we can’t even fly because of the war. We’re not even allowed to fly over Saudi Arabia right now. So what is it that we work for?

Yossi: You’re right. You’re right. And that’s a long term goal. Right now, Iran is reportedly within weeks away of nuclear capacities.

Donniel: Do you know how long they’ve been weeks away of?

Yossi: So it’s months, let’s say it’s months.

Donniel: No, it’s weeks, it’s a day, they have it. Assume they already have the capacity.

Yossi: Alright. So this is, for me, a seminal, I would say even more strongly, this is our generation’s great test for its seriousness on Jewish survival. This is the issue.

Donniel: Or maybe we’re at a moment when there’s a wake up call of reality. But our conversation is about the wake up call with Iran. And I hear you. I don’t know. As you said, you don’t know, and I don’t know. I wish you’re right, and if it is something that’s so achievable, it’s one thing, but I have great doubts, but part of what the reality this moment is also about is not the big war, but it’s the smaller wars, and we are now in a war of attrition on two fronts, at least two. We’re leaving the Houthis aside for a moment.

Yossi: Can’t forget the Houthis.

Donniel: And to declare victory is almost critical to achieve victory. You don’t achieve victory if you don’t declare victory, and when you keep on fighting one more bridge, and every time you capture a bridge, it’s like your appetite is increased, and then you reach the bridge too far, and then victory becomes elusive. And that’s when defeat arrives. We have to have a theory about what victory is. And I think that victory has to be connected to Dayenu. What’s enough? What’s enough?

Oy, Yossi. I feel like today we have to finish with an oy. I’m feeling oy about Israel. Israel’s about to do something in Iran and I want to, I so much hope that they’re going to, that everybody will be okay, you know, like, we’ve gotten used to pilots flying and it’s simple, you know, my brother in law didn’t come home. Flying to Iran is not like fighting in Lebanon and Gaza where there’s, you’re not fighting.

Yossi: He didn’t come home from Lebanon.

Donniel: He didn’t come home because it was, I just so much pray that our people will be okay. And, yeah. It’s very difficult times, a lot to think about. This is For Heaven’s Sake.

Yossi: Sure is.

Donniel: Maybe that’s a title that fits for you, that fits a little less for me, Israel at War Day 374. Be well.

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