The following is a transcript of Episode 104 of the For Heaven’s Sake Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Donniel: Hi, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast For Heaven’s Sake — Israel at War. And today is day 75. And our theme for today is when the guns are silenced. And it is such a roller coaster. 

This war is a roller coaster. Israel is a roller coaster. Just a few days ago, we were mourning the death of the hostages. Today, we’re Israel’s negotiating a new hostage deal. We don’t know how many hostages are alive. The Israeli army is for, I think for the 30th day now, finishing to capture Northern Gaza. Shuja’iyya is now under control, but we’re still bombing in Shuja’iyya. 

It’s just this ongoing roller coaster, and in the midst of all of this, there is a new conversation emerging, emerging in Israel. It was advocated by international forces and countries. But people are beginning to realize that we’re moving to the next stage of the war, that the mass operation is coming to an end. Doesn’t mean that the war is ending and troops will still be going in and out, but the hundreds of thousands of troops in Gaza, that scenario and that existence, that emotional, political reality is shifting to the next stage.

And you see in Israel now multiple conversations beginning to emerge about, so what’s going to be? When the guns are silenced, what are we going to do? You see political debates emerging, people posturing politically more. One of the craziest things about Israel is how quickly things switch. You’re in one mode one day, in the morning you’re in one mode, and the next day you’re in another mode. And just you have to buckle your seat belt. 

But part of, Yossi, what you and I wanted to start doing, and it might take a number of episodes, is we have to start talking about when the guns are silenced. We took upon ourselves a certain ethos while the war was being conducted. Tomorrow is coming. What do we see as emerging? And if we don’t think about it, as a society, we’re not going to be prepared. And in Israel, we’re starting to talk about it.

And we wanted to share with you our thoughts about, what do we understand and see unfolding in Israel, the relationship between Israel and the world, Israel and world Jewry, as the guns are silenced, what’s happening in Gaza, what’s going to happen in Israel? And today we want to focus on Gaza itself. 

And Yossi, it’s almost strange to even talk about when the guns are silenced. In the past, you weren’t even emotionally prepared to even think about it. It was, don’t talk about that, that’s not where I am now. But obviously as we pick this theme, you’re there now. So what do you begin to think about when you think about the day when the guns are silenced?

Yossi: So Donniel, what I would love to see happen the morning after is for the countries of the Abraham Accords, the Gulf States, Bahrain, Israel, along with Egypt and the Saudis, to come together and adopt Gaza as the first regional project of the alternative Middle East, because the Abraham Accords were a very profound move. And what our Arab partners were telling us was, there were basically two Middle Easts. There’s the dysfunctional Middle East of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen. And that’s the Middle East that’s stuck. They can’t conceive of the future.

We want to create an alternative Middle East of successful countries. And that was the appeal of Peace with Egypt for the Abraham Accord countries. They were looking toward us as a partner for an alternative Middle East. And so Gaza, in my fantasies, Gaza would be the first test case of that new Middle East.

Donniel: So I wanna push you on this a little bit. It’s Gaza as Singapore.

Yossi: Well, let’s, you know, I can’t go there really.

Donniel: And you? Is it? Not go so far. Doesn’t have to be so much, but…

Yossi: Gaza, Gaza is beginning to rebuild. 

Donniel: To rebuild, fair enough. But isn’t the thinking itself based on a certain intellectual flaw? You know, it’s a fantasy, so you could fantasize anything you want. So that’s, it’s kosher. I can’t tell you don’t fantasize because by definition you said my fantasy. 

But you define this as your fantasy. And fantasies aren’t open to critiques of realpolitik. By definition, it’s a fantasy. And I love the vision. But I think there’s something, at least from my perspective, that I see challenging or flawed in it. 

And that is the notion that you’re talking about Gaza as an entity unto itself. And the Gulf states, a joint Abraham project with Gaza, as if they’re gonna be the funders and we’re gonna silence them. Similar, here, Saudi Arabia, I want you to be like America. I want you to support Israel, but your job, it’s like the classic line, support me, but don’t tell me what to do. So here it is, Saudi Arabia.

Yossi: The American uncle, right?

Donniel: The American uncle, yeah, we would like, so again, in a fantasy, Yossi, it’s beautiful. Why not? I can’t critique it. You want more American uncles? I’m all with you. But a little bit of reality. We know that they’re talking about it. Saudi Arabia is talking about it. The Gulf states are talking about it. They’re linking Gaza with the West Bank, with Judea and Samaria. And so when you mentioned your fantasy, it was telling. You spoke about Gaza and there’s something that I think you left out and don’t you have to give an accounting for that too?

Yossi: Absolutely, absolutely, Donniel. And what you’re picking up on is a reflection of a general Israeli blind spot, which I share. And it’s not going to work without confronting the totality of the problem. And that has several expressions. The most practical expression is, will the Palestinian authority be allowed, be enabled to play a role? 

Now, it’s true that the Palestinian authority is fundamentally corrupt, that it lacks the trust of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians. And the Americans are trying to get Mahmoud Abbas to reform the authority, and you know, good luck with that.

But there is something here that you’re pointing to, which we’re going to have to confront the morning after, which is the internal Israeli conversation is totally different from the conversation that’s happening not only in the West, but among our Arab peace partners. And right now the conversation that interests me the most is not what’s happening on campuses, and it’s, I’m interested in the conversation that’s happening in Riyadh and in Abu Dhabi, and this is the conversation, because these are our potential partners, and they are going to need some indication from us that we’re taking the totality of the Palestinian tragedy seriously. And so, yes, I appreciate your pushing me on that, because that’s exactly where we as a society need to be pushed.

Donniel: See, if we’re fantasizing now, and my fantasies are usually in the domain of moral enlightenment. And listen, I’ve now defended myself. 

Yossi: It’s a fantasy. Go for it. Go for it. It’s a fantasy.

Donniel: I’ve immunized myself, don’t tell me. It’s my fantasy. My fantasy when the guns are silenced, that we’re gonna start seeing Gazans civilians.

While the guns were firing, we couldn’t see them. And it wasn’t just because of the emotional trauma of October 7th. I think a very serious conceptual discussion has to be had about the unique nature of war in Gaza. I think it is an unparalleled war. And I think the categories of just war that apply almost to every other combat zone just don’t apply in Gaza. I think the reality of Gaza is a unique phenomena. But for us to move forward…

Yossi: Wait, wait, say more about that, Donniel.

Donniel: We’ve spoken briefly about it, but the nature of a 400-kilometer area filled with two million civilians enmeshed and turned into a military encampment where hospitals are military sites. Everything is a military site. It’s, the ability to make distinctions when it comes to Gaza is just not available to you. And I know that Israel, because of October 7th, had vengeance. There were a lot of things going on. 

But I think there is a core reality of Gaza with its tunnels and with its infrastructures where hospital directors are working for the terrorist organization. The whole nature of Gaza makes the discourse around how you fight a just war — completely irrelevant. You need a different type of conversation. And I think some of the challenges facing Israel and the delegitimizers of Israel is that they’re treating Gaza as if it was Baghdad or it’s another country. 

It’s just not. I think there’s a whole conversation that has yet to be had, a serious moral conversation, and it’s not one that necessarily is going to cause us to justify everything that Israel has done. But there are things or ways in which you fight in Gaza which require a completely different set of categories, and I think that’s part of the problem. 

But part of my fantasy when the guns are silenced, I don’t think we could even begin to think about, Yossi, a new joint project with the Abraham Accords nations if we don’t start by saying, yes, we care about Gaza and life. You don’t resurrect Gaza without caring about Palestinians. You don’t resurrect Gaza as a Saudi project. 

You spoke very beautifully as a joint project. Now that joint project means that Israelis are going to have to now start talking about, what are our responsibilities? Do you know what so many people said to me after they heard Israelis, not people in North America, at the idea that I posited about building hospitals? You know what the response was? Why should we do it? Let them so it’s like, why should we do it? It’s like, let somebody else do it. What, we have to do it? Which country has to

Yossi: Oh, I got an even more vicious response. Somebody accused me of wanting to kill Israeli soldiers by placing them in harm’s way. 

Donniel: And you were accused of that just because you didn’t disagree with me. It wasn’t even just so like, just like that alone, just, just by association somehow, you’re now in the killing of, of Israeli soldier camp. 

What do you mean why should we? We destroyed the hospitals. That’s Gaza. We had to. You couldn’t, you couldn’t fight in Gaza without treating almost every building as a tunnel pier. Now I know it caused horrific death, but and I’m not just, I’m just saying there’s a, something happened. 

This, I think, a serious intellectual discussion about this has yet to be had, but we don’t start this process of rebuilding, Yossi, unless as a society we go back and say, yeah, we fought this war because that was the way it had to be fought, but as the chief of staff said after we killed accidentally those three hostages, he said, and if they were Gazan civilians, we don’t fire at people who are surrendering. 

And then he added, even if they were Hamas terrorists, we don’t shoot at them. But let’s, even, and now we know that the commander of the unit had given instructions to fire on anybody who was of combat age because there was all these issues coming. So the soldiers didn’t even decide. They were following orders, not with all the ominousness that comes with that. 

But we’re not talking about that today. But right now, when the guns are silenced, we have to give an accounting, not of our moral failures. And if there are, we have to do that too. But we have to give an accounting now of saying, okay, you had to fight the war in a certain way because that’s what Gaza forced you to do. 

But do you see Gazan life? There’s no life there now. There’s no viable existence there. You wanna rebuild? It only starts by you saying, yes, I see Palestinians. And then when you see Palestinians, you don’t stop by seeing Palestinians in Gaza and say, oh, yes, there’s the Gazan Palestinians. The connection to larger Palestinian society and life, connecting Judea and Samaria and Gaza has to emerge in our country. 

And I’m gonna now give you an easy one. Do you think our government is ready for that type of conversation, Yossi?

Yossi: Oh sure.

Donniel: I’m gonna, I’m just, I’m inviting you, Yossi. We’re, after last podcast, we’re, you know, welcome to Israel, we’re smiling a little bit in this podcast. You know, we’re crazy, I know that, but we’re smiling. 

So, in this fantasy of ours, of an Israeli society addressing something, we’re gonna have to confront the fact that our government, as it is currently constructed, is wired to make such a conversation impossible.

Yossi: Our government is not morally, psychologically capable of beginning to deal with either of our fantasies. First of all, they’re not a partner for the Saudis in the Gulf states in the sense that this government can’t offer the most minimal gestures to the Palestinians. And in terms of your beautiful vision, and there’s no one home. 

So, look, what we both know is that the morning after in Israel is not going to be about this conversation. It’s going to be about the future of the government. It’s going to be about massive demonstrations in the streets. People are not going to move until this government falls. The reserve is coming back from the front, the families of the hostages, the survivors of October 7th, there’s going to be such an outcry, the likes of which we’ve never seen in Israel’s history. 

The problem with that, Donniel, and you and I have talked about this, is that as we turn inward the day after and deal with our political mess. The rest of the world is not going to be waiting for us, and Gaza isn’t waiting for us to resolve our internal political problems. And so we are heading toward a major disconnect between Israeli society and our friends abroad. Never mind, never mind our enemies, our friends.

Donniel: Our friends. Our friends. Here, I’m always optimistic. I’m usually wrong, but I don’t stop being optimistic as a result of that.

Yossi: It’s one of the things I love about you, Donniel.

Donniel: It’s, you know, I just constantly readjust. I, I see something possible. That’s gonna be very challenging. But it’s possible. And I think we have to put it on the table as, as something to watch.

As you said, Israel and the world are going to be on two completely different, not planes, they’re in worlds of discourse. The world is going to be talking about resolving the Palestinian conflict and Israeli society is going to be talking about politics and the current government. They’re not even going to be talking about trauma anymore. The trauma of October 7th is going to be replaced by anger, political debate, political posturing. 

I already read this recent conversation and poll that there are 24 seats on the right wing that are open for movement. And so already now, Gideon Sa’ar is not talking with Benny Gantz, because he’s planning on leaving because he wants to compete for those. And the Likud, then Netanyahu is going to try to fight, all of those, they’re already there, it’s being talked about all the time. 

So Israeli society is going to be there, the world is going to be talking about tomorrow, Israeli society is going to be more and more engaged in naval gazing, we’re going to tell people, just give us a little time, just give us a little time, and maybe they will, because if there’s a million people marching, we might get more time. We might be able to pause it a little bit, but not by a lot. 

But eventually, the thing that gives me most hope are two things. The first is that Israel psychologically realizes that it is not a sole agent. This is not just Hamas, this is Iran. And in that context, we appreciate America. We need America’s support. It’s not just the financial support. And it’s not just the veto in the United Nations. It was the aircraft carriers. It’s what was necessary to keep Hezbollah quiet. It’s what’s necessary to continue to negotiate with them some form of conversation about Lebanon and as we move forward, as a society, not the politicians, are psychologically connected to a world in a way that we weren’t in the past. 

So when the world changes, you know, the old saying, you change the disk, you turn over the record or whatever it is that’s the analogy you use, I think Israel is attuned to a conversation that it wasn’t as attuned to before. 

But the real game changer are the million people who took control of Israel during the demonstrations, and to this very day, listen, just the other day, again, I got a call about a unit which didn’t have vests. Like, really? To this day, we’re still talking about vests? And talking about forces moving into Gaza or Judea and Samaria. 

The gap between the functioning of the government was picked up by an activist, activist civilian population. And that activist civilian population wants change, wants agency, wants liberal democracy. Now that group together might create the room for a conversation that we haven’t had before. 

Our politicians are gonna move us in another direction. They’re going to move us to the old categories of right and left and Smotrich is already posturing and Ben Gvir is posturing even more and the Likud is trying, the Likud can’t even say anything unless somebody accused them of not being full, full committed to some old October 6th right-wing agenda. 

Something might happen. And I think when the guns are silenced, reality is going to change here. And I think the serious question in Israel is whether civil society is going to shape a discourse that’s going to require of the politicians to speak differently. Some of them won’t. Some of them have their own constituents who want them to stay in their old ideological, call it bubble or commitment. 

But there is, we’re not the same country, Yossi. And when the guns are silenced, I wonder whether something can be unleashed.

Yossi: I think you’re right that there’s a potential opening here. What will be very interesting to watch is this emotional struggle within Israelis between two opposing tendencies. 

One will be to remain in October 7th to remain in our trauma. And the other will be to realize tha, we’re all waking up to the same Middle East, the Palestinians, Israelis, our, erstwhile allies in the Arab world. And you know, I sense that there’s a tremendous longing for stability among Israelis. We’ve just been through the worst year in this country’s history. And between the struggle, the schism over democracy, and then October 7th, and then the war, and you see it reflected in the polls. Even though Israelis are moving more right-wing, the irony is that it’s the center-right that’s being strengthened, because it’s the center-right that represents stability. 

And we’re going to slowly realize, or maybe not so slowly, that there will be no internal stability without some movement on the Palestinian front. Some movement towards stability. And if the center-right can lead on that issue, and we’re not talking about a two-state solution now, nobody is talking about that now, we’ll see what happens. But for now, what we need to be moving away from is this notion of a zero-sum game with the Palestinians, which is where we’re at right now.

And when we think about the morning after, how do we translate this Israeli longing for a different country? What I feel ended on October 7th was the old Israel. Everything is open now. And that’s very scary on the one hand. It’s also, as you say, it’s also very hopeful. 

And so I think it’s premature to imagine how this is going to play out, but it is not premature to begin pointing to these possible trends. And yeah, that gives me hope as well.

Donniel: You know, I don’t think stability as a goal unto itself, is gonna be achievable unless there isn’t some moral reflection, self-reflection, and self-correction. And one of the challenges that we’re gonna face, and you know, this word, challenges, I don’t know how many times we used it this time, but it’s going to be the word that’s gonna define us for the next number of years, there’s a very big difference between Israeli Jewry and world Jewry. 

Israeli Jewry are going to be looking for the same type of liberal Zionism that they saw last year. They’re gonna wanna see liberal Zionism and its moral agendas of human rights and equality.

Yossi: You’re talking about the diaspora. The diaspora, what? Right. Yes.

Donniel: The diaspora is gonna be looking, I call them world Jewry, that world Jewry is gonna be looking to the partners in Israel who are going to stand up and say at the end of the day, yes, we care about, we recognize our moral responsibilities to Gaza, to Palestinians. 

It’s when moral awareness connects with the desire for stability and security that we could get some of the type of changes that we’re looking for. Because together with the political divides, I don’t want us to return or beware of us returning to the old Israel world jewelry dichotomies of us living on different moral universes. 

On October 6, there was a convergence of Zionist visions and aspirations and we talked a similar talk. I think we have to think educationally, publicly in our writing, in our lectures, how when the guns are silenced, we make sure we’re not standing in the same place.

This was a little easier, Yossi, than the last time. 

Yossi: To quote a phrase, it’s still a challenge.

Donniel: It’s still a challenge. Yeah. People, welcome to our life. This is For Heaven’s Sake — Israel at War — Day 75, soon to be maybe when the guns are silenced. 

And given the holiday season of much of the world other than Israel, which includes Christmas and New Year’s. For the next two weeks, we’re only going to have one episode. And so we’ll see you next week and then the week after. And then by then who knows where we’ll be. We don’t want to plan. The pace of change is too crazy. But be well everybody. If you’re traveling, if you’re going on vacation, or if you’re here in Israel, that the next few weeks will give us a little more quiet and time to think about the serious issues that are confronting us.

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