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.

Prime Minister Trump 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. And this is our podcast, and our lifeline, of For Heaven’s Sake, the new sub-serieb, Israel in Ceasefire. And it’s 480 days for the hostages.

And, Yossi, you and I agreed that we would almost never pick the subjects. That we would let reality pick them for us. That was the sense of the immediacy since October 7th. Like what is the most important critical thing happening in Israeli society now, to the best of our understanding? Sometimes we have to pick between two or three, cause Israel’s… the intensity of Israel is so great. It’s not a boring place at all. It’s always picking between what is the most central issue, and that we would just put it on the table and talk about it.

And today’s topic is almost the only thing that could be talked about right now in Israel. And that is that, unbeknownst to all of you, we effectively have a new prime minister. And I know I’m, again, I’m indebted to my dear friend, Gil Troy. But we have a new prime minister and the prime minister is now Prime Minister Trump. And that’s our, that’s our title for today. And, you know, we, both you and I, incessantly follow the press and the articles and the headlines and, of numerous news sites.

I have read, over the last few days, dozens of articles about Israel’s reality now and where we’re going and understanding on a whole spectrum of issues, whether it is the hostage deal, ceasefire, will it be, will it continue the day after in Gaza, the Abraham Accords, Iran. Nobody in Israel is presenting a strategy. Nobody in Israel is…

Yossi: On anything.

Donniel: On any of these, and on each one of them, as the analysts try to figure out what’s happening, there’s just one answer: we’re going to see what Prime Minister Trump wants. It’s this… it’s a bizarre, strange, you know, Israel used to show we become the 51st state. We came up with a new system. We’re not joining America, just, Donald Trump is going to become the Prime Minister of Israel, because effectively, the only one making… it seems the only one who’s going to be impacted… is what Donald Trump wants.

And I appreciate, and we’re, we’re, you know, we’ve done this before and I appreciate the complexity of this. We’re not going to be talking at all, and I, and listen, both Yossi and I, we, we follow the news around the world and we recognize the absolute chaos and profound uncertainty and fear that many of our dear friends are experiencing in North America. But we’re not, we apologize, but we’re not going to talk about that.

We’re talking about the Trump effect, because in fact, it seems that our leadership has just ceded, you know, the decisions and it all comes is — when is Netanyahu going to Washington? Is it next week or in two weeks? And then we’ll know. Like, then we’ll find out,we know now, in fact, this has been reported all over that the only reason why the hostage deal was signed, and I’m not arguing whether, I’m not getting into the Netanyahu wanted or not wanted, but it’s very clear that Witkoff squeezed and the deal went through. If it’s going to go from stage one to stage two, well, it depends on what, what did Donald Trump say? Oh, he said he wants it. Okay, so the stage two is going to be. What’s going to be in the day after in Gaza? Something that we’ve never talked about.

Minister Ron Dermer floated an idea and it was picked up by one or two news sites and then it sort of dissipated that the day after in Gaza, since it won’t be Hamas and it can’t be the Palestinian Authority, the Emiratis are going to run, only if they’re invited by the Palestinian Authority. So it was like a trial balloon, but in essence, every newspaper in Israel is all talking about the Trump plan for the day after in Gaza, which involves the voluntary expulsion of Gazans to multiple places around the world. From Egypt, to Jordan, to Albania, to Indonesia, and that, by the way, is shaking Israeli society and we have to talk about that.

Does Trump want a Saudi deal? Is Trump going to bring a Saudi deal? Is that going to be critical to him? How’s that going? What does he want? Where’s his first trip going to be? How is that? And Iran. You know, sometimes everybody on the right loves Trump and the next morning they wake up and say, oy, what’s Trump? And like, they don’t know what to do because in Iran, you know, I would rather if we didn’t use military means and Israel’s deep fantasy is that the United States will somehow have to do an operation and take out Iran.

Yossi: Send in the cavalry.

Donniel: Send in the cavalry, and it doesn’t seem that that’s what he wants to do. And some of the people he’s hiring in the Pentagon are more isolationists. And so it’s like we’re sitting here and, you know, in many ways I can understand and empathize with how our colleagues in North America are feeling, but here, effectively, he’s the prime minister. The most central issues that we’re facing now aren’t being decided by our elected officials.

And we’re just sort of picking up. What did he say? Did he say it a second time? Was it just once? Because nobody has to listen to something he says once. He said it a second time, a third time we’re trying to figure out. And so you have the opposition, the far right, you know, they’re, they’re getting dizzy. One day, they don’t know if it’s good for the Jews, bad for the Jews, like what is the story here?

But this reality in which effectively without an election, we have a new prime minister in Israel is unsettling, it’s confusing, and we want to talk about that. So we’re talking about that and we want to talk about both how Israelis feel and then look at some of the key issues that the balloons that that Trump is floating. And what do we think they might mean? Nobody knows, of course, but what does this mean for Israeli society to have ceded completely its future? And what are the consequences that’s going to have on some of the central issues that we’re facing?

So let’s start with—how comfortable are you with Prime Minister Trump?

Yossi: You know, it’s interesting, Donniel, because over the last year, Netanyahu has repeatedly made a show of reaffirming Israeli independence against the very mild pressure, if one can even call it pressure, of former President Biden. We’re not a banana republic. He didn’t quite use those words, but that was the implicit message. And suddenly Trump comes along and Netanyahu is behaving, as we say in Yiddish, like a tatala, you know, just a good little boy. And he’s trotting off to Washington, seemingly to get his instructions. And suddenly, you know, where is our independence?

It seems as if we’re ceding our sovereignty of thought. We’re not, as you, as you note, we don’t seem capable of having a conversation, a national conversation that’s worthy of a sovereign nation. And so Trump comes into this vacuum, and this vacuum has been true in Israel, certainly since October 7th, but in some ways, in relation to the future of the Palestinians, other crucial areas, there’s been a vacuum for a long time.

And Trump comes, comes along and he’s venting. And we don’t know what’s stream of consciousness and what is actually deliberate policy. Is he serious about Gaza? When you put all of what he’s saying together in the last, the last days, it seems as if the Trump plan is to empty Gaza of Palestinians and cede Gaza to Israel and create a Palestinian state in the West Bank. So, you know, and as you said before, the Israeli right is so disoriented. They don’t know what to do.

Now, with all of that, I feel a deep sense of gratitude and most Israelis do, and it’s been expressed by the families of the released hostages, this sense of appreciation to Trump for pressuring Netanyahu into accepting the hostage deal. And my strong sense is, Donniel, I don’t know where you are on this, but I feel that Netanyahu would have continued dragging on a hostage deal if Trump hadn’t put the squeeze on him.

So, in one sense, I’m glad to see Trump stepping into the void. And throwing his weight around, for a good cause, as they say. But there are consequences. There are implications beyond the hostage deal. And you mentioned some of the issues that he’s already thrown into the void and there’s this deep sense of unease. So along with gratitude, unease.

Donniel: It’s a strange place to be in. You know, he’s a strange man and it’s just a strange, like, what does it mean to live in such a chaotic universe? But to live in a world where, in essence, it’s not about our interests. See, with democracy, it’s when you’re elected and officials are supposed to, their job is to serve the people and reflect their interests and to engage in a public discourse as to what our interests are. It’s not just every four years when you vote or whatever. It’s a process in which the people and the leadership speak and we articulate what are our national interests and you make those decisions.

But here, there isn’t an Israeli society that has a clear idea of our interests, with the exception of hostages. And so there, it was relatively easy.

Yossi: Right, in other words, Trump stepped into a situation where he was able to express the will of the Israeli public.

Donniel: It turned out that way. It could be, you know, a lot of people say that it was Miriam Edelson and then so we all owe her a great debt of gratitude, but because the, I don’t know if our, if our listeners are as familiar with the actual statistics that have been released over the last number of days, including by the right wing newspaper, Israel Today, which, by the way, is funded by the Edelson family, even though they have editorial independence.

But 76% of Israelis who can’t agree that today is Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, 76% of Israelis are not just for stage one of the deal, they’re for stage two of the deal. Now today, all the Haredi parties came out like, deal two.

Yossi: And the poll that was in Israel today, the extraordinary detail there was that 59 percent of voters for the far right party, headed by Smotrich.

Donniel: Those who vote for the religious Zionist party want the deal to the end.

Yossi: To the end. Yes. The same number of people in the Likud party want the second… it’s 58, 59 to 30, and then there’s like 10% who don’t know. You know? There’s always some who just don’t know or like whatever. So you have like two to one of voters for the Religious Zionist community. Two to one in on the right. Overall, it’s, it’s overwhelming.

Donniel: Oh, amongst the, those who support the Democratic, the new, the new Democratic Party, it’s 100%, and literally, and those it’s 98%. So you have two thirds of those of the Likud and two thirds of the Religious Zionist are for the deal. The only singular group, which it’s in the reverse, and it’s two thirds who are against it are those who vote for Itamar Ben Gvir. So he’s representing his voters to, to his credit, to his credit.

So here it just turned out that when Prime Minister Trump pushed through the deal, there wasn’t a pushback, and it didn’t create an angst. There was an angst that our leadership was disconnected from its people because of various political considerations. So there it worked out.

But on the other issues, there’s something profoundly unsettling and deeply problematic. And I want to pick the first one, which is, is for me, and Israelis are trying to get their heads and hands around this, this idea of emptying out Gaza. And let’s talk about it, because on the one hand, it’s like a fantasy. You know, it’s like, here you had a problem, you press a button, the problem’s gone. And from 6,000 miles away, or 7,000 in Washington, oh, it’s just such a mess, it’s always been bad, boop, let’s press a button and let it go away.

The people on the right, far-right, you know, is this my fantasy? You know, I love your articulation, we’re gonna re… we’re gonna Empty Gaza and have a two state solution. Maybe all the settlements will move to Gaza, but like, in some, but, you know, when you look at it, you know, I felt this very deeply. This affected me very deeply. I don’t know if you, if you saw the columns of Gazans moving north. Masses, you see a million people on the road. Like, there’s people, things have numbers, but then you see, like, these people, they’re moving back and 90% of the buildings in the north don’t exist. They don’t exist.

And like, what do you, it’s like, it’s like the exodus from Egypt, but it’s not freedom. Like this mass march, and what you’re just gonna, there’s something morally depraved about an idea to say to a group of people, I’m just going to move you, you know, and I read in…

Yossi: They’re objects and not people. That’s how you’re treating them.

Donniel: You know, and you know, Immanuel Kant’s famous categorical imperative, there’s different definitions. One of them is—never treat a human being as a means. Human beings are ends. And besides, act in such a way that your behavior should be universalizable. In other words, treat other people the way you would want to be treated. But, it’s just, there’s something profoundly unsettling, and seeing Israelis, they’re trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do with this. It’s the front Item on every news site, every major article is talking about it. And so what do you, I want to delve into it, but first I want to hear what, what’s your take on it?

Yossi: My first feeling seeing the columns of people moving north back to whatever homes they, they, they have left there was, frankly, a kind of relief because it meant that all of the accusations that Israel is planning a mass ethnic cleansing, clear out northern Gaza to make room for rebuilding the settlements, is just not true. And some of those accusations came from Israelis, and they were irresponsible.

And then Trump’s plan comes along, and it hit me in the gut because what he’s doing is opening the door to the temptation of ethnic cleansing. And it’s not going to happen. It’s a fantasy. The Arab countries, let alone Indonesia, are going to be as excited about letting in hundreds of thousands of Gazans as the Trump administration is to open wide the door to Mexico. It’s just, it’s a fantasy. And that’s part of Trump’s impulsiveness, part of his recklessness.

And what worries me is that, you know, Trump giveth, Trump taketh away. So on the one hand, he’s seemingly offering us this temptation. This is the far right’s fantasy. And okay, I, Trump, I’m adopting your most radical, what you, what the far-right regards as a pro-Israel position. For me, it’s an anti-Israel position. But fine, pro-Israel position. There’s always a price. Where are we going to pay that price? With Iran? This is what worries me about this moment that we’re in.

And we seemingly have a government that’s firm, that’s strong. You know, yamin malei malei, as we say in Hebrew. A full, full right-wing government. And yet they’re just adrift. And they can’t stand up to Trump. They could have stood up to Biden. They can’t stand up to him.

And so here, there’s really a convergence of Trump exposing our vulnerability both politically and morally. We don’t have a national conversation about our political interests, that’s coherent. The far right does, but the rest of Israel doesn’t. And we don’t have a conversation. That’s coherent morally. When I hear you talking about what’s so unsettling to you, that’s, that’s what I feel.

Donniel: You know, I, our colleague, I spoke with Rana Fahoum, our colleague here at the Institute and a Palestinian citizen of Israel who runs our shared society programs. Do you know the fear that American Jews expressed with the rise of the far right? And whether Trump is that or not…

Yossi: With the rise of the American far right.

Donniel: Of the American far right. Where people who are less committed to liberal democracy or to freedoms and protections, which Jews benefited from. And I saw the same fear that many Jews in America articulated about Trump, those on the liberal side, I saw that in her eyes. There’s no protection anymore. If you want to talk about, what are the founding memories of each people, we’re the sum of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

And we Jews are, are experts at our story. This notion of being uprooted, this notion of not counting, this notion of being sent wherever anybody tells you. That is such an essential part of Palestinian self-understanding, and that the President of the United States could just, by the way, without even, as you said, even having a plan, like that that’s even on the table, the fear, the sense of my what, what, what protections do I have anymore?

And what makes it even scarier for her is, now, look at the way Israelis are reporting it, but nobody’s condemning it. No one’s condemning it on, on the far right channel 14, who I recently added them to my, now I’m up to 15 or 16 news sites.

Yossi: Good luck with that.

Donniel: I know. You know, one of their leading commentators, just did a careful analysis says, you know, what’s a million and a half people? It’s done all the time. It’s happened often in Africa and five million people left Syria. It’s just normal. He said, the notion that we wouldn’t do that is almost abnormal. And so, like, hearing that, and then everybody else is just saying, like, is Trump serious about that? Is this really a solution? Could we even dare?

And that’s when I saw, like, watching the people. It’s like, the thing that we Israelis, Jews, haven’t often seen in the last 480 days, is we don’t see the people. And when I saw them marching, and I knew they were marching, where they’re marching to, and they’re marching to nowhere. They’re marching to destruction and, but they’re people, just, oh, let’s just move them. And like, Albania? Like, you know, oh, let’s try Albania. Why? Because Albania doesn’t have a functioning economy. It would be great for them. It’ll be great for Albania and will help them. What about them? Where do you want to live? Where do you want to be? What does it mean to go to, like you think about it, go to another country? What are you going to do? Where are you going to live? What’s your job? What’s your career? What are your roots? What’s your identity? And just that that conversation is just thrown out like that. There’s something so morally bankrupt.

Yossi: You know what the far right does in its relationship to people generally, but especially the Palestinians? First of all, it subsumes the individual into the collective. The individual has no intrinsic value. You are the sum total of the group you belong to. There are no individual Palestinians; they are a collective. But then the right doesn’t treat the Palestinians as a collective that has the rights of other national collectives, right? And so, where are they? You don’t see them as individuals and you don’t see them as a collective.

To really think again about the Trump dilemma: It’s very complicated, because it’s by no means totally negative for Israel, as we see with the hostages. And Trump is capable of pulling out of his hat some extraordinary acts that would support Israel, and if you think about what’s happening in his administration in these last days, it’s clear that there’s a struggle going on between two camps. There’s the isolationists and there are the interventionists who believe that America—making America great again on the world stage, requires more activist posture.

And we are, in a certain way, the test case. We’re the laboratory for how this is going to play out. And given the sense of drift—of Israeli society, of this government, we’re vulnerable to being experimented with.

Donniel: It’s, and it, that is also interesting to, like, we’re such a powerful country, but when it comes to the United States, and in particular, a Republican president who doesn’t have a Congress reining him in, which is what a democratic president had. It’s, we’re easy. We’re just so dependent. We need your 2,000 pound bombs. We need your veto. You know, like, I felt like, you know, you read the article about the president of Colombia. You know, like, okay, I’m not going to take the planes? Okay. 25% tariff. By next week, 50%. Okay. We’ll take the planes. Like, Oh God, look at Colombia. What’s the difference? What’s, like here, it’ll just be done maybe a little more subtly.

But who do we want to be? And it’s part of the fact that we haven’t taken a leadership position on what Gaza should be tomorrow. A Gaza which talks about rights of Palestinians, but also talks, you know, as Yair Golan, he spoke about this also on our colleague Yehuda’s podcast, Identity/Crisis, where he says like, what is our strategic vision of ourselves and how does our moral principles define our strategic vision?

All of a sudden, someone can come up with this solution and Israelis don’t know what to do. It’s, okay, we haven’t offered a solution. And because where we are now, we have allowed ourselves to descend into a reality which is unresolvable, because Gaza is unresolvable if you have no replacement for Hamas. It’s unresolvable if you want to get your hostages back in, as all the articles have been speaking about today, the minute a million people go back to the north, it’s over. It’s over. Whether you like it or not, it’s just, it’s over. But we, the war is over.

So now what we have to do is we have to just basically, as Netanyahu said, it’s still a complete victory, we just have to redefine what was our complete victory. And we’re playing around and where you want to go, and then we have no idea, because as we see, this was your notion last week, as we saw the Hamas returning as the policing force, we’re sort of stuck and then, wow, isn’t that an interesting idea, and then we have a prime minister who just wants to solve a problem, I mean Prime Minister Trump, who just wants to solve—what is his vision of the Jewish people? What is his vision for Israel? What is his sense of the rights of Palestinians?

The whole moral ethos, the vision of Israel, who we want to be, what, it’s just, that’s not even, it’s just, the problem is solved and we’re just sitting and watching it and who knows. And my fear is that once Trump says it, then the right says, okay, now Trump is the more, it’s not just the, it’s not president of the United States. He’s not just prime minister of Israel. He’s now the barometer for morality. And once Trump says it’s okay, then we could say it’s okay too.

Yossi: Right. You know, the fatal flaw in the logic of the government in relation to Gaza is that on the one hand, the policy is we will not, and justifiably, we will not tolerate a return of Hamas to power. On the other hand, the only way to preclude that is by bringing in an alternative. Palestinian force.

And the reason for that is not because that Palestinian force will be effective. Everything that the right says about the Palestinian Authority is true. It’s corrupt. It’s ineffective. It doesn’t have the support of the Palestinian people. It supports terrorism. All of the above is true. But that’s the fig leaf we need in order to bring in the wider Arab world into helping govern Gaza.

But the right is now caught in, is trapped in its own rhetoric, and will not allow the fig leaf of a Palestinian authority presence in Gaza, with which to invite the Arab world in. And so, no, we won’t bring in Hamas to power. That’s unthinkable. But we also don’t have an alternative. And now with the return, the mass return of Palestinians to the north, the far right doesn’t have an alternative either. Rebuilding the settlements, it’s over. It’s over. It’s an extraordinary moment.

Donniel: So the moment is I, I was, you know, I was speaking to a number of people and you know, our friend, I was also, Micah Goodman and, and, and, and also this remarkable article by Ehud Ya’ari, turns out that both Israel and Hamas are in a predicament that’s unresolvable.

Israel on the one hand, Netanyahu, is in a predicament that he’s gonna be, that there is a plan for Saudi Arabia, or as you said, a two state, whatever it is. Even the second, his predicament, is that the stage two of the hostage deal, which is now a fait accompli. He’s going to bring down his government. You know, he promises to Smotrich, I’m going to go back to war. He can’t go back to war. So, he’s in a place where his political career is over. Or, he makes a decision which will be against 76% of Israelis and also against Prime Minister Trump.

Yossi: You mean stop phase two of the hostages?

Donniel: To stop phase two. So he’s in a place where he can’t, what is he going to do right now? You do stage two, you don’t have a government. You don’t do stage two, you’re, you’re Prime Minister, the Prime Minister Trump is not going to accept it. And the consensus is not going to accept it. War against war, chaos. How does he get it? Reality number one.

Reality number two, Hamas is in a predicament. Now, Gazans want to go back. They need a future. They have no solution to solving the predicament that they brought upon two million people. They have nothing. The world is not going to start rebuilding Gaza under Hamas, with Hamas in power. But at the same time, they’re going through with a deal on condition that they could stay in power.

Yossi: They also won’t, won’t intervene so long as we’re still present in Gaza.

Donniel: So we don’t know what to do. Hamas, it’s like we’re at this place where there’s no step forward. And in that void.

The unelected Prime Minister of Israel says, you know, you’ve gotten yourself into a mess. And you know, it’s like, you feel, you know, we’re the center of the world. God’s chosen people, we’re America’s ally and all of the above. Let’s just solve the problem. And here, today, solving the problem is, let’s just move 2 million Palestinians. They’re not 2 million human beings. It’s 2 million Palestinians. And tomorrow, solve the problem is, like again, you know, I, I personally am all for the two state solution. But is Israeli society psychologically prepared for that? Is that where we want to go?

And so, you know, we had a lot of ambivalence, but we stayed out of the American election. I could say pretty unequivocally that I’m not interested in Trump being the Prime Minister of Israel. With all of, as you say, there’s blessings and curses. But right now, at this moment, I want a democratically elected Israel, which has to start talking about its vision and its plans. We need to take ownership of where we want to go. Last words, Yossi?

Yossi: There’s so much wishful thinking when it comes to this conflict and it’s expressed in different ways. In the international community it’s expressed in one way, within the Israeli right, it’s expressed in another. And there is not going to be a mass emptying out of Gaza. It’s not going to happen. And to be talking about a transfer of Gazans in the same day when hundreds of thousands are actually returning north is just ludicrous.

But what worries me, and this, and this very often happens here, is that the talk, the ugly talk, is so destructive, and so detrimental to the good name of Israel, that much of the world is, is, is not going to remember that it actually didn’t happen. But, and you just hear the condemnations coming in and all of this unnecessary conversation, for something that’s really not going to happen.

And so, this is part of the fantasy that we’re living in now. This is a moment of profound unreality. We are unmoored. We’re unmoored. We don’t know what to think. I don’t even know if coherently we know what to hope for. And so, and then into this void it steps Prime Minister Trump.

Donniel: Hi, Yossi. You know, part of it, words matter. And even if they don’t become policy, they matter. They shape what’s acceptable. They shape moral discourse. They shape expectations. Words matter. Even if we don’t have policy. We have to take ownership over our words.

It’s a pleasure being with you, Yossi. Thank you.

Yossi: Truly a pleasure.

Donniel: And this is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel in ceasefire. You said Israel adrift. And this week, seven hostages are going to come home. Three on Thursday and another four on Shabbat. But there’s still 480 days, and they’re not home yet, so, God willing, this should be a good week, and many more weeks to come. Thank you.