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.

War and Corruption 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 from the Shalom Hartman Institute. Last week we were Israel at Ceasefire. From this morning we’re again Israel at War. Last week we talked about the domestic front and about possibilities for healing. Today is, we’re titling “War and Corruption,” with healing elusive. I don’t want to say you were right.

Yossi: I restrained myself last week. I figured, you know what, let’s, let’s have a positive ending.

Donniel: It was a good week. It was a good day. Today’s also day 529.

Yossi: No end in sight.

Donniel: No end in sight, and maybe even further away, and we’re going to talk about that.

Before we get into the depth,there’s little Charlie Robbins, who we celebrated his birth a year ago, if you remember. My dear friend and board member of the Institute, Wayne Robbins, is dedicating and sponsoring this episode in honor of Charlie Jacob Robbins, who is a year. Charlie, I wish you had a better year. And at the same time, when this was decided just last week, this week already, I think Wayne just got up from Shiva from his father, Larry Robbins, of blessed memory, and I’m happy to mention him as well. And our thoughts are with you, Wayne. And our prayers are with you, Charlie. And with all the Jewish people, all people.

We’re in corruption. Last night, we decided to talk about corruption. We wanted to talk about the firing of the Shin Bet director by the government, the first Shin Bet director who’s ever been fired in the history of the state of Israel. Netanyahu decided to fire him. And that has been Sunday, since Sunday night, that’s all we’re talking about in the country. And there’s a profound sense of something deeply flawed about this.

It’s very different than judicial reform, which is about changing the basic nature and the laws of the country and the checks and balances that we need and that Israel needs, given its particular nature. It’s clear a government is allowed to hire and fire a Shin Bet director. It’s just never been done before. And doing it now, something is going on that we have to talk about, something that we, that Israelis are feeling, and again, we’re split, but it’s 51 percent believe that it is pure politics that motivated this firing, and only 33 or something percent are supported in the latest poll coming out last night. And so, again, it’s along the lines of the political parties where we’re a coalition opposition.

Yossi: And every poll shows the same results, 30 percent of the country is with Netanyahu no matter what. And not much more than that.

Donniel: No, that’s his core base of 20 something percent. Plus Ben Gvir and Smotrich, that’s like, you know, they’re parts of his coalition. But he’s lost actually. His government is much bigger than that. His government is 69 seats now, but he has his 30 or so.

So we thought that that’s what we were going to talk about. I didn’t want to talk, but we felt we have to talk about it because this is, as always, we have to talk about what’s going on in Israel. And then we wake up and we’re back at war. And so we really have to start there. I don’t know if you could separate them or not. I want to speak separately about them. I want us to start here. We’re back at war again. I knew it was coming. I didn’t know it was coming this quickly. How do you feel about it?

Afterwards, I want to talk about the corruption, but obviously you could combine them. For me, they’re very distinct, even though without doubt, doing this at this time paints and taints the firing in a different light. But our people are at war again. How do you feel, Yossi?

Yossi: Deeply ambivalent. You know, when I woke up this morning and I saw the list of Hamas leaders that had been killed overnight, I had this feeling of, we’re back, we’re back, we’re doing what we need to do. It didn’t last, because at the same time There’s a convergence of internal threats that, for me, can’t be separated from the question of resuming the wa and three overriding issues.

The first is the fate of the hostages. My deepest fear is that, and families of the hostages have expressed this, is that going back to war could, God forbid, be a death sentence for the remaining hostages.

The second issue, and we touched on this last week, is the government’s about to vote on a mass exemption of ultra-Orthodox young men from the army. At precisely the moment it’s resuming the war, and sending out call up notices for reservists, many of whom have been serving on and off for a full year. And the offense, the outrage of that can’t be separated from resuming the war.

And the final issue, which you touched on in your opening comments, is Netanyahu’s moves against the institutions of this country, and doing so in the most divisive way at precisely the moment when the country needs to pull together. You don’t go back to war from a place of October 6th. But what he’s doing is he expects this country to fight the next phase of this war, as if we’re still united and it’s October 8th, but at the same time he set back the clock to October 6th. And when you put these three outrageous developments together, you say, how can this person lead this country into the next phase of war? So that’s, in the end, that’s where I am.

Donniel: So your ambivalence is not about the war itself, but it’s about going to war in this difficult, divisive, disgraceful way, moment. And so you can’t even think about the war as something unto itself.

Yossi: This overshadows everything.

Donniel: Overshadows everything. Interestingly, I also feel ambivalence, but from a very different place than you. As our listeners know, and as you know, I was for a ceasefire a long time ago, months ago, and I believe that a just war is really only just to the extent that pursuing the war is enhancing your security, and I felt we reached that a long time ago, and so I was very happy that the ceasefire was finally declared also the issue of the hostages that you mentioned is for both of us is issue number one, right?

And that’s really the deal that Israel made under the Biden administration. We made a deal that stage one there were gonna be X number of people released over a certain amount of days, and then we would enter into negotiations which would include an end of the war for the sake of the rest of the hostages. And if you wanted to go to war again later, that’s something that will come up in a few months’ time when Hamas will invariably violate the deal. But the idea was, you’re gonna, there’s a ceasefire, and we’re gonna bring the hostages.

And now, that’s what stage two was. And Israel no longer likes stage two. They feel that the deal that we agreed with, under a Biden administration, we can get a better deal under a Trump administration.

Yossi: That’s the Israeli government. The Israeli people are for stage two.

Donniel: Are for stage two. The Israeli government said, I really want all the hostages back. In stage one, which is basically what they want. I’ll give you some more terrorists in return. I’ll give you another extended ceasefire, but I don’t want to deal at all with any language of ceasefire or end of conflict, which for them is politically unacceptable.

I don’t know if you saw it just half an hour ago, Itamar Ben Gvir is back in the government. Cause you’re fighting. If you’re fighting, this is a government, I can’t be in a government that has, that’s looking towards a political resolution or even willing to lie about a political solution.

Yossi: Ben Caspit, one of our commentators, said that this phase of the war needs to be called Operation Return of Itamar.

Donniel: Of Itamar. He’s very clever. Yeah, it’s not about the return of the hostages. It’s the return of Itamar. So, we see this, and it’s really Israel which is reneging on stage two, because the deal was, accept that the war is over, and you might resume it at another day. Get everybody home. The basic idea is agree to whatever you need to agree to. Right now, get them home, and we’ll deal just like we did with Hezbollah in the north. And then we’ll talk at another time. It could be six months’ time, and it’s not going to be dramatically different.

Yossi: The hostage families are devastated.

Donniel: Are devastated. It’s really, it’s like we don’t even know what to feel. It’s like, it’s this, the first war we were fighting to bring the hostages back and now we know there was another way to bring them back. So the government is lying. They’re saying we’re going to war in order to force Hamas into a hostage deal, as if Hamas is going to agree to a deal that basically disempowers them. Here, what’s the deal? You go back to the hostages and what am I going to give you? A few more days of rest, and that’s it. That’s the deal. Like, who wouldn’t want such a deal? Anybody sane and Hamas may be morally corrupt, but they’re sane and they have a clear sense of their own political interests, they don’t want the deal. So, all of this is the context. And so, part of me, it’s clear, why are you going to war? There’s another option.

Yossi: I’m waiting for the ambivalence.

Donniel: Yes. That’s part of the first part. It takes, the ambivalence, I need two sides. So take one more minute. But please free to come in. Interrupt me. The other side, though, is like all of us, we saw Hamas coming back. We had to confront the fact that we really didn’t win the war. Hamas is there. Gadi Eisenkot, who’s slowly emerging more and more as a major political figure, says, they’re back.

Yossi: He said they have 30,000 gunmen.

Donniel: They’re back. So, like, what did we do for 500 and Not 29, 500… I don’t know how many days when we went to the ceasefire, 480 or something. And so, part of me is also frustrated. Like when you gave voice to the anger that you had towards Hamas and seeing them and they’re touching your hostages and they’re starving them and they murdered the Bibas kids and the family and like all of the above, they’re there.

Like, you know, a ceasefire was acceptable because I felt in May we won. I kept on saying we won, and now the failure is just sitting straight in my face, and the ambivalence? I don’t know if it’s my evil inclination, I wonder. You know, power is sometimes part of the solution here in the Middle East. It is part of it, and like, I can understand, like all of us Israelis agree, more or less. Most Israeli Jews agree. That we can’t have a Gaza in which Hamas is in power. Hamas still has control. Even if they don’t have military for power, they have 30,000 gunmen, could terrorize Israel and terrorize Gaza.

I want a political solution. But, like, you know, you have this fantasy, maybe if we do just a little bit more…

Yossi: So interesting to me, Donniel, because you and I have been doing this dance on this question for at least a year. What is victory? Do we continue? Do we stop? And I’ve been the hardliner. And you’ve been conciliatory, or, you know, you’ve been, you’ve been saying, not, not conciliatory, that’s not quite the right word, but more saying, you know, we’ve done enough, we’ve already restored our deterrence, and now we’re almost switching roles, because I don’t believe that under these circumstances, with this leadership, this government, we should be continuing in Gaza.

I have a different take, and this is something I’ve been saying from the beginning, which is, Iran needs to be front and center. I think we should leave Gaza alone, get the hostages out, and attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, because the countdown is on. We destroyed their air defense system. They are wide open, and the clock is ticking. Those air defenses are going to be rebuilt. Russia, China, and Iran are in active negotiations. So I want to shift the military focus on Gaza. My feeling is enough. Enough.

Donniel: Essentially, I don’t, again, I never feel a need to justify my inconsistencies, but when they’re so glaring, I just want to comment.

Yossi: But I think it shows, sorry, just one point. I think that the inconsistencies that you and I both reveal from, from time to time are an essential part of the Israeli experience.

Donniel: That’s correct, because the reality is such. You know, I wanted a ceasefire and I thought we won. And then I wanted us to go to a political solution. But the presence and arrogance of Hamas make, like I have a yetzer harah, an evil inclination. Is there like, if we just do a little bit…

Yossi: It’s not an evil inclination.

Donniel: I don’t know what it is, but like, but again, it’s, you know, and so we start with the air.

Yossi: You know what it is, Donniel, you know what it is. It’s this profound sense. We all feel violated and, and we feel you can’t get away with October 7th. You can’t get away with starving our hostages and humiliating them. And I hear you. And so that it’s coming from a very deep Israeli place. It’s true.

Donniel: And there’s another part to it is that I think we let victory evaporate. We were at a point where we were at a point where politics comes in and we let it evaporate. And as a result, the victory is no longer there. And so with Hamas so powerful there, is there any notion of a political solution in which Hamas will be disarmed and be removed? Like, part of my political plan had to change in light of the reality which this government created, because there were other options.

So here, like, I feel like we’re back at this war. As a war of self defense, but war of self defense is only self defense if you’re, if you don’t have another option. And so I don’t know if something limited. So it’s like I’m ambivalent because you know that the status quo in Gaza right now is not going to allow for the type of political horizon that I’m looking for. So is there other ways to do it? I don’t know. But so this is some of my ambivalence and I’m angry because we had other options. We had other options. And we let victory dissipate. So I’m not sure. I’m not sure.

Now, by the way, one last thing. I never used the word of—the deterrence was your thing. So I don’t think deterrence has dissipated. But Hamas is right now too strong in Gaza, and it turns out we did much less.

Yossi: I’m going to pull a Donniel here, I’m going to argue from your place in the past, which is, we don’t know. We might have done such profound damage to Hamas’s ability to govern. What are we leaving Hamas? Gaza is wreckage. They’re going to be the king of what, exactly? And again, yes, for me, deterrence is what this war has been about from October 8th. The need to restore the credibility of our military deterrence, I think to a large extent we’ve done it. Not completely. And maybe there is no complete deterrence. And I’m not at all sure that we, we haven’t defeated Hamas. We don’t know. That’s the truth.

Donniel: Here, again, we disagree. It’s legitimate because it’s, who knows? We don’t, none of us really know. But I can tell you. Reading those five names this morning did nothing. He’s like, like those names, like give me names. Every name is replaceable, so now they’re Sinwar’s brother. And once we kill Sinwar’s brother, they’ll be Sinwar’s third cousin through his mother in law, by marriage, like, they’ll always be the next figure. Like at what point are we going to learn? That Hamas without we, we did so much, but deterrence, I think we have the truth is we don’t know. I’m looking and I’m wondering, you know, we, we rejected politics. And as a result, we forced us back ourselves back.

Yossi: We rejected a political possibility.

Donniel: We reject not just stage two, even a political path early. We never wanted to, but this government couldn’t afford it. And so that’s right. Because they wouldn’t empower the Palestinian Authority and they wouldn’t survive. And so they went back to the path of war. And Itamar Ben Gvir and all his ministers are back. And last week I celebrated the fact that I could breathe without him , and now there’s gonna be less oxygen and we’re back at war.

And I think most Israelis feel bad for all the reasons that we spoke about. And some of them are still saying, you know, maybe. But unfortunately, when we do this, maybe, just like we did, you know, we’re gonna bomb and those five people were killed and 340 others, some of them Hamas, some of them civilians, air campaigns, are horrifically inaccurate and, you know, there’s collateral damage, that disgusting term, as if you’re, like, damage is a toilet paper, it’s like tissues, you know, there was some damage, you know, to the, to the car and, you know. So, yeah. People, people are getting killed. And so like we’re back into this, is this a war of self defense? Is it a war of politics? Is it an unjust war? And it’s just, anyway, so we’re back there. That’s my thoughts about war.

Yossi: Let’s talk about what is happening with the head of the Shin Bet, with Ronen Bar.

Donniel: Take it. What’s your, what’s your core feeling about that?

Yossi: Two things. One is that Netanyahu knew that he’s going back to war before he fired or tried to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and I say tried to fire because this still is a country of the rule of law and there is due process and he hasn’t yet been able to fire him.

Donniel: And what’s the issue? Explain to our audience what the issue is.

Yossi: Well, Netanyahu has framed it as he doesn’t trust the head of the Shin Bet. Now, he actually is not the commander in chief of the Shin Bet. The Shin Bet is its own institution, and it has its own internal laws. And you can’t just arbitrarily fire the head of the Shin Bet.

Donniel: The government can’t.

Yossi: The government can’t. It can, but it has to show good cause.

Donniel: Has to show cause. By this commission has to say there were grounds for it.

Yossi: Yes, there has to be grounds. And to say, I don’t like him, I don’t trust him. Why don’t you trust him? He hasn’t given a reason.

Donniel: Quite to the contrary. He’s said over and again that he’s done a great job and he won’t fire him because of his criminal incompetence from October 7th because it can’t be that he’s criminally incompetent and Netanyahu’s not. So October 7th is not the grounds for firing him. The chief of staff resigned because of his taking responsibility. Gallant was fired because he’s too divisive. Former defense he’s being, Bar is being fired, cause I don’t trust you.

Yossi: So one by one, the guy who was Prime Minister on October 7th, who refuses to take any responsibility for it, is firing everyone in the security establishment. And whether he has the right to do that or not in principle, in practice, you know what? They all need to go. They all need to go, and, and, and, and we all know that.

Donniel: Including Bar, including the head of Shin Bet himself.

Yossi: They all, yes, they all need to go, provided that the political echelon takes full responsibility and resigns as well. We need a total house cleaning here of the security establishment and the political establishment. Netanyahu will not get away with blaming October 7th exclusively on the military. So that’s one piece of this.

I mentioned a moment ago that he knew before he announced his intention to fire Bar that he was planning to take us back to war. Last night, Bar was sitting in the IDF headquarters together with the idea of Commander in Chief overseeing the operation to assassinate these five Hamas leaders.

Donniel: And to relaunch the war. It’s much more than these five. To relaunch—it killed 340 people. It was a massive bombing.

Yossi: And to relaunch the war. How do you, Prime Minister, take us to war while making this move that you know is going to tear the country apart? That’s one part of it. Now…

Donniel: Can we stop with that? Because you have to let that breathe. It’s unbelievable. Now, you have to let it breathe because your point is so powerful.

Yossi: You know, I’m really glad you said that because actually, I was starting not to breathe. Physically. Starting not to breathe.

Donniel: Because listening to you, you fire for the first time in the history of the state of Israel ahead of the Shin Bet because so called you don’t have confidence. And throughout this war he was responsible for some of the most remarkable things, including the beepers and all of the above.

Yossi: Netanyahu ran to take credit for the beepers, but it was Ronan Bar and the head of the Mossad.

Donniel: October 7th, a black hole has to go since then overachieving now to create this divisive moment right when you’re bringing us back into war. It’s like, what do you want from our people? What do you want from our soldiers?

Yossi: How much abuse can this country take? And that’s your point. I think that’s what I feel today. It has to breathe. I have such a feeling of tenderness for this country right now. We are in the hands of the worst leadership at the most sensitive time.

Donniel: That’s the first point. There was another point that I stopped you from, I’m sorry.

Yossi: One more point, which is it, and it also concerns the timing of Ronen Bar’s firing, but in a different direction, Ronen Bar and the Shin Bet are overseeing an investigation into Netanyahu’s innermost circle to determine whether his closest aides were on the Qatari payroll.

Now, Qatar is one of our worst enemies. If they have succeeded in penetrating the innermost circle of Netanyahu’s governance during war, we’ve never experienced anything like it. I don’t want to use the word treason, but at the very least, this is a breach of security of historic proportions. At that moment, you’re being investigated by Ronen Bar—You dare to fire him?

And you know, Donniel, it’s the same pattern of going after the attorney general. She’s prosecuting your trial. Netanyahu’s on trial for active corruption. She’s prosecuting your trial. You dare to try to replace her while your trial is going on? If this happens, if he succeeds first with Ronen Bar while Qatar, what we call here Qatargate, is being investigated, and then he moves on as we know he intends to, he said so, to move on to the Attorney General while his trial is going on, then we are seeing the complete breakdown of the rule of law here.

Donniel: You know, and let me just give an American take on what you just said, because you know what Netanyahu and his, and those who are supporting him, but their story is that the attorney general convinced Ronan Bar to launch a false investigation against Netanyahu and therefore his getting rid of him and her has nothing to do with his trial and everything is fake. There’s no, everything is fake. The whole system is corrupt. Everybody’s corrupt. Everybody’s against me. And if you really care about the rule of law, you have to come to me. I

Yossi: My question to them is very simple. How do you know until an investigation has happened? Everything is corrupt. But you know what, Netanyahu’s supporters say is not corrupt? The police, the police are saying that the investigation into Qatargate is overblown. Now People like me respond by saying, Oh, you mean Ben Gvir’s police? So look at what’s happening to the country. Look at what’s happening. This government has succeeded in undermining the confidence of Israelis in our most basic institutions. You’re either for the Shin Bet or you’re for the police.

Donniel: Everybody has a narrative. And you know, like a democracy, the argument is democracy is the best form of government. If you have a government by the people, you’ll also have a government for the people. That at the end, as citizens, we have rights, and the best way to take care of us is not through some dictatorship or some oligarchy or monarchy. It’s by the people, it’ll be a government for the people.

And I think, listen, Israel, everybody knows this is a government by the people. The government won the election. No one accuses or says that because they didn’t like the results, it’s not, there were no results. There was, the election was false, even though they played that a little bit with Bennett. But the government is by the people. It doesn’t feel like it’s for the people. And there are no checks and balances and Netanyahu’s getting rid of every check and balance that could make outside of his group of loyalists believe that you’re doing this for us and to take us to war at this is very, is very, very upsetting.

Could I, I want to tell you a Talmudic story for a moment, because it also bears for me very much on this firing of Bar and the whole, of the head of the Shin Bet.

Yossi: Please, please, we need a break from politics.

Donniel: It’s going to go right back into politics. But there’s a great story about two of the great rabbis of the fourth century CE. One of them was named Reish Lakish and the other one was named Rabbi Yochanan. Reish Lakish was a thief and a criminal, and the other rabbi was some beautiful gourd, like, very handsome, and they met under very strange conditions, where it was this weird encounter with sexual connotations, and they bonded.

And Rabbi Yochanan convinces Reish Lakish to stop being, at the time he was a criminal, to stop being a criminal and to use all his energy and to become a student of Torah. He’s the great penitent of the Talmud. The great penitent. And he becomes one of the greatest rabbis. Rabbi Yochanan is his teacher. And he becomes one of the greatest rabbis and the two of them are partners.

But there’s always raw emotion and their whole relationship was a strange one. Like what was motivating them, desire and emotion. But they were steady partners. And at one point did they got into a debate over Jewish law, over a minor issue, and Rabbi Yochanan insulted Reish Lakish, and he says, what are you, you’re like the, you’re telling me? You’re the former criminal.

And Reish Lakish says to him, if you’re still remembering who I was, what have I done, and I’m like, what is this? They keep on fighting and they separate, and Reish Lakish gets very sick. And he’s married to Rabbi Yochanan’s sister, and she pleads with Rabbi Yochanan, please pray on his behalf so that he’ll be healed. And he, with all of his passion, won’t admit that he’s wrong, and he sticks to his guns, and Reish Lakish dies.

And Rabbi Yochanan is destroyed and all the rabbis around say, how do we help? Like this is our leader. We have to help him. And they say oh, we know another rabbi who’s unbelievably smart and thoughtful let’s let’s be he’ll be his chavruta, he’ll replace Reish Lakish. And then he tells the story of the two of them getting together and Rabbi Yohanan says a certain thing in Jewish law, and this new genius rabbi says, Oh, that’s a great point, this other rabbi from 200 years ago agreed to you, with you, so you’re, you’re on the right path.

And he looked at him and he says, you’re the replacement for Reish Lakish for me? What, do you think I need someone to tell me that I’m right? I knew I was right. He says, with Reish Lakish, every time I would say something, he’d give me 24 arguments about why I was wrong, and 24 arguments against the arguments, and he said precisely through that discussion, Torah grew, Torah expanded.

It’s so deep in our tradition, and our Talmud, and the way it’s written, is the belief that through argument, we further our knowledge, we approximate truth, we deepen our understanding. We don’t want a bunch of people who agree with each other. And our tradition says a disagreement for the sake of heaven will always last. If it’s not for your own self aggrandizement, for a search of truth and Torah and what, we don’t want to, we don’t get rid of disagreements.

My biggest problem right now is Netanyahu and the people around him and the ability to, with their 68 or 69 seats, there’s no boundaries. They don’t want anybody who disagrees. They don’t want any dissenting voices. And in a context of war, in a context of life and death, or in the context of any moment, when there aren’t dissenting voices, where are we going to go? Like, we need Reish Lakish and Rabbi Yochan. We need Rabin and Peres arguing with each other. We need Gallant, who would come to the public and present something, have a disagreement, I want to hear those—you’re taking me back to war, you’re endangering my children, you’re endangering possibly the morality of everything, you’re engaging hostages lives, talk, but you don’t want any dissent.

You just want, like as Amit Segal, one of Israel’s most premier news analysts says, Netanyahu is reshaping the military institutions in his image. He already did it with his party, but now the only checks and balances we have left.

And so, when I see this, for all the reasons that you said, I worry about our future. Because as we know around the world, elections matter and in Israel, we can’t count on the fact that we’re gonna have a new election every year and that we could correct. Here, we have a government for four years. Ben Gvir is back. Smotrich, they’re all happy. We’re killing again. Just where the Jews should be. Go back and kill. Power is the, is the first choice. Use your military force and all of the above.

And where are the voices? There are no voices in the and everybody else’s voice has no vote, and you at least hope that Bar, the chief of staff, an attorney general, you want the voices that aggravate you. You need your Reish Lakish. And when Rabbi Yochanan said, this is who, and you know what happens to Rabbi Yochanan when he loses Reish Lakish and they bring this new person he got so upset, he also dies. It’s, our survival requires this type of conversation. And this moment, you know, we called this war and corruption. They’re living together and it’s, they shouldn’t be. This is not the time. Last words, Yossi.

Yossi: Now that was, that was very powerful and I would take it in a different direction, a complementary direction that in our leadership, we need a tolerance for dissenting voices and we need most of all an ability to take responsibility, personal responsibility. And what this whole period reveals is that we have a leadership beginning with Netanyahu straight through this government that has refused to take the most basic responsibility for the worst failure in this country’s history for October 7th.

Everyone is to blame but Netanyahu, Netanyahu rushes to the microphones whenever there is a military success, and then he blames everyone else for October 7th. That’s the greatest corruption yet. So this is it. So there’s something, you know, in our tradition, and I think it would be worth exploring at some future point, Donniel, of, you know, this is a religious tradition that emphasizes responsibility on every level. Personal, collective, the Jewish people has to take responsibility. What does it mean to be a leader? We’ve developed teachings on this for thousands of years, and now we have a leadership?

Again, at our most desperate time, that rejects the most basic elements of responsibility. And so this for me, and this takes us full circle to where we began, why I feel that this is not the moment for us to be going back to war, not with a leadership that refuses to take responsibility.

Donniel: And all of this, when we’re not even at Israel, we’re not Israel at peace, we’re not Israel at ceasefire, we’re Israel at war. 529 days, 49 of our family is still there. And you know I wish, last week I tried to be uplifting, today’s a harder day. Yossi, thank you for walking through it with me. It’s a pleasure being with you and to all of our audience. We should be well, and Charlie—happy birthday.