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.

The Wars of Gaza 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, For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at Ceasefire, day 508.

With 63 hostages still remaining in the tunnels of Gaza, four dead hostages should be returned this week, leaving 59 for stage two, or an extended stage one. We don’t really know what’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen. Today, just, just a little short while ago, Witkoff, who was supposed to negotiate stage two, announced that he’s delaying his arrival. And in order to frame where we are at this difficult, complicated time, our theme for today, we decided, is going to be the “Wars of Gaza,” in the plural. Because there really isn’t one war.

Over the last 508 days, we’ve seen multiple wars emerging. There was a war of self-defense after October 7, which included deterrence. And we spoke a lot about that over the last year. There’s a war of rage especially at the beginning in response to the massacre and the pogroms of October 7. And there was a deep feeling of rage. There was a war, Smotrich’s war, part of the war of a small segment of Israeli society where the goal of the war was to reoccupy Gaza and remove the stain of the unilateral withdrawal and dismantlement of settlements in 2005. We also spoke a lot during the year about the war of, the political war, the war that we were fighting without necessarily a clear agenda, but because the government and its survival required it.

And this week, as the first hostage stage is coming to a close, the return of very deeply weakened and starved hostages and the murder of the Bibas family, the murder the of the children, the murder of Shiri, and then the inexcusable return of the wrong body. So you could say they didn’t know, if then how did they have it available to return the next day? Something else is beginning to emerge. I want to call it the war of anger and I want to talk about that.

But before we get there, we’re on the verge of moving to another stage right now. And all these different wars, it’s part of the confusion that we’re experiencing. Part of the challenge we face and part of trying to understand where we go, what should we do the day after, is that we’re not always clear which war we’re fighting. We know in a ceasefire all the wars have stopped, but it looks like we’re on the verge of returning, that connected to the second hostage deal either before or after, is going to be some resumption of fighting and it’s not clear which war are we resuming again. Is it the war of self-defense? Is it a war of rage? Is it a war of occupation? Is it for simple political reasons? Or are we entering into a new stage of this war?

That’s what Yossi and I want to talk about together. And because which war we’re about to fight is going to make all the difference. And it’s critical that we both understand it. Each one has a different strategy. Each one has a different exit or lack of exit. And each one is going to affect the future of Israel, the hostage deal, and everything that’s going to come afterwards. So Yossi, what war do you feel we’re fighting right now?

Yossi: Right now we are poised to fight a war of rage. And you mentioned the fate of the Bibas family, that’s a very useful framing for the war of rage, because what I felt and I think almost every Israeli Jew and Jews around the world felt, seeing the deranged ceremony that Hamas put on where the coffins of two children and their mother was displayed and there’s festive music and thousands of Gazans show up with their children to see the coffins of children.
And I felt so profoundly sickened by this pathological culture that’s taken hold of the Palestinian National Movement, the sense of also being shocked, which shocked me—really, after October 7th? How can you possibly be shocked?

And yet, I found it very touching that Israelis were shocked by this deranged ceremony. And at this point, you would think that we know that our enemies are capable of absolutely any abomination and yet, we were shocked. And I found that somehow reassuring about Israelis that we’re still not quite capable of imagining ultimate evil.

You and I have talked about this, Donniel, in the past about how there’s something in the experience of October 7th of confronting absolute evil that violates the soul. You feel, one feels violated just by knowing that this has happened. And that’s how I felt seeing this ceremony.
And so, I like your categories and I think they’re really useful and smart. That’s a very good way of mapping out where we are now. So I’m not quite sure where to fit this. I mean, it is rage, but it’s also something else. It’s like we were right back in the morning of October 7th and saying, this can’t be happening. I can’t possibly be seeing what’s before my eyes.

Donniel: You know, it’s interesting what, know, why this hit me more than other things. I don’t know. I expect… the show they put on, I took care not to watch it, not to expose myself. And Israeli television didn’t show it either. And so you needed to be on a social media that I’m not. But they wanted to protect us too. But for me, the murder of the family happened a year ago. I’m not outraged. It’s like that’s unfortunate we got used to it. The fact that they didn’t give Shiri’s body back, and they knew it.

Yossi: That’s interesting. I caught that when you were talking about that. Somehow that hit you more.

Donniel: That hit me like, for what? Like, for what? Like, you knew we’re going to do the DNA test. So maybe you could say, you know, in the mess of Gaza, we lost the body. OK, but if you lost the body, how was it available the next day? Right? So what did you do? These deranged people are just like one last chance to do what? Like, there’s a deal on the table and you just want to torture the family and Israelis more?

Yossi: So I think, Donniel, if I could try to read your response, it’s like really we’re facing enemies that are capable of doing any and every act of gratuitous cruelty, just, and the hatred is so profound that they’ll do anything to hurt us.

Donniel: Anything and you’re right, I was shocked too.

Now, I also, I want to disagree with one thing. You know, the shows, they bring out people and, you know, they tell families and people come out, this is what you’re supposed to do. Who’s electing… I’m a little more careful.

Yossi: Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Donniel: Again, I don’t believe there’s any Zionists in Gaza, nor are there people who love the Jewish people. But this is such a staged event. And I think part of the goal is to impact people in Israel. And you gave a very accurate depiction of it, that there is no hope. Hamas aren’t two status. They want from the river to the sea Israel will be free of Jews. And they know that the more Israel fights, they’re banking on world opinion and delegitimization of Israel. So they have a long 50-year play. But I can’t debate the anger that you’re giving evidence to.

Yossi: But you know, Donniel, but, okay, but there’s this, but you know, the derangement, the derangement that we saw on display there, maybe these people were forced to come, maybe they were told, bring your children.

But the pathology has affected the whole pro-Palestinian movement around the world. I saw a clip the other day of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Toronto laughing and holding up stuffed animals to torment Jewish demonstrators with the murder of children. Now there’s something that’s been unleashed. And look, they tore down posters of the Bibus children all around the world, for months. What was that about?

Donniel: Yeah, that I know. I know. Again, I don’t want to be in the position of claiming that there’s some great moral core to Gazan Palestinian society yearning for peace and coexistence. I just always am frightened of overgeneralizations. I just find they don’t let me go anywhere.

Yossi: Right, I agree.

Donniel: Not that I know where I want to go, but I know that I don’t want to be in a place that I can’t go anywhere by definition. I think that’s what Hamas, I think Hamas’s strategy is to do precisely that. They win because they believe that if Israel returns, they are dying for Israel to fight again in Gaza. And the more that Israel fights, the whole delegitimization campaign that’s sort of quieted down a little bit in certain circles, it’s just going to emerge again.

Yossi: I agree, Donniel, I agree with you about the need to be very careful about generalizations. But one generalization I think we really do need to make, which is that the culture that Hamas has embedded into an entire society in Gaza is deranged.

Donniel: I agree and there’s no future to any Gaza day after plan which doesn’t deal with this cultural threat. It’s not just about disarming and it’s not just about rebuilding. There is a cultural threat that needs to be engaged with.

You know, that was one of the reasons for, you know, who’s gonna take over Gaza tomorrow? Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates. Ron Dermer, when he floated the Emirates for just a few hours, part of the Emirate identity is the idea of a different Sunni Islam, a more moderate Islam. And their plan was built on instituting a new educational policy and direction for Gaza.

I’m less confident that the Egyptians, the Egyptians could manage, you know, this is the new plan now being put forth. Also, Yair Lapid’s plan. I’m less confident as to who’s gonna be a technocrat and who’s just gonna take care of managing and maybe disarming and who’s gonna deal with some of the serious questions of what society we’re dealing with.

But if I can, I wanna shift back to the rage that you mentioned. Like you, I agree that the murder of the Bibas family and the way it was returned and the scenes, there is something changing and I believe there is paradoxically a greater willingness in Israel to resume the war in Gaza. There’s also a sense of it being inevitable.

But I don’t believe this is a war of rage. You feel we’re back on October 7th. I don’t think we are. I think we’re hardened. October 7th there was rage and the first stage of the war and the bombing campaign, you and I spoke about this. It’s on record, I don’t remember much. But I remember us talking about it and having a conversation, which I said to you, the truth is for the first few weeks, none of us were bothered by Gazan civilian casualties. We just weren’t.

There was a rage, a plague on all your houses. Rage doesn’t need a strategy. Rage doesn’t need an exit. Rage is not planned. Rage has to be executed, but its goal is to kill. There’s somehow blood, you know, it goes back to the Bible’s blood, eye for eye, know, blood for blood. There’s something raw in the human condition that sometimes you reach moments like this. And in our society, we don’t do eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood. You know, we accept the judicial system, but there are moments where that rage, that primal reality emerges.

I don’t think the Bibas family is going into the direction of rage. I want to make the distinction, I wonder how would you feel about this, between rage and anger, what I call the war of anger. Anger is thought through. Rage is like, is vomiting. Rage is just acting without a plan. Anger is calculated.

I feel Israeli society is now entering a calculated place, that we are angry and we want to go back to war again. But what do you want to achieve in the war of rage? I just want to kill and then there’s a moment that it stops. A war of anger now has tones of justice to it. It’s not the same as the war of self-defense because everybody knows that as a military force, Hamas is not endangering us, and there might be better ways to achieve self-defense. The war of occupation to resettle Gaza, that’s just not part of the conversation. But this war of anger…

Yossi: It is, of course, it is on the far right, but certainly not at the mainstream, no.

And what about the Trump plan, though? What about the Trump plan? Doesn’t that fit in to…

Donniel: I think the Trump plan is part of the war of anger, not of rage. It’s just like, again, we are so angry, but again, the Trump plan is not even a plan anymore, Yossi. No one is even, even Trump himself doesn’t take it seriously. So, but now I have a feeling that the war, the political war, the war to occupy is now going to be supported by a large segment of Israeli society who is comfortable with a war of anger. We are angry at Hamas. Let’s hit them again. Is there going to be a better result? I don’t know, but it’s a different war, Yossi, which I don’t understand completely because it’s supported. It’s Netanyahu’s dream. Here it is. He gets to keep on fighting. It’s a war without a goal. It’s a war that what? We’re going to fight for another 500 days. To what end? With some fantasy of some of resolving something? Anger is different from rage and in many ways it scares me more, Yossi.

Yossi: Well, it’s interesting. It’s an interesting distinction you’re making. I like it. And let’s go with that. I think that everyone has a different motive. Everyone who supports resuming the war has a different motive. And emotionally, I don’t know anyone here who doesn’t support resuming the war. Emotionally. Leaving the hostages aside. If the hostages weren’t there, I’m leaving you aside.

Donniel: And leaving me aside. And leaving me aside too.

Yossi: I’m leaving you aside. Otherwise, Donniel, everybody else I know would be in favor of resuming the war.

Donniel: You just by the way, I don’t want to interrupt you, but I think you need different friends… You need different friends because in my world, I meet thousands of people who don’t want to resume the war, but I’m with you, go.

Yossi: So, Donniel, that’s why I need you as a friend. You’re my connection to that other Israel.
Where it hit me in that place of, let’s call it calculated anger, was aha, they’re proclaiming victory. The Middle East is watching the reemergence of Hamas from the tunnels, which means that our deterrence has not yet been reestablished. Now, you and I have argued about this and what the measure of deterrence is and it’s a fair argument. But I’m speaking about really where this hit me and using your measure of anger, anger is the meeting point between emotion and reason. Or it is reason that emerges from the anger.

So the reason that emerged from my anger, seeing the Bibas spectacle was we can’t allow this regime to continue. And so it brought me back to those days after October 7th. That’s where I do think this is very strongly connected emotionally to that initial anger. And my takeaway is: the job isn’t finished. And I think that that’s the takeaway of most people here.

So for me, the anger leads back to the calculated question of deterrence. There are other motives. There are other ways in which the anger plays out in policy. So for example, many Israelis would say, wipe the smirk off their faces. Now, that wasn’t my primary need. I don’t really care about their smirks, but I do care about the perception of Israeli deterrence.

Donniel: See, I appreciate that. We disagree on many things, but I understand what you’re saying. And not only do I understand it, I respect the distinction and in many ways the moral foundation of the position that you’re articulating.

See, because what you’re saying is we’re still in the war of self-defense. That Bibas and the events of the hostage deal and the ceasefire and the reemergence of Hamas has reinforced the notion that while we might have thought, like I do, that the war of self-defense and deterrence was over in May, a long time ago, you’re saying that what I’m experiencing was, I might have felt that then, and then you thought we were moving into a war of politics, but after the ceasefire and the ease in which Hamas is returning, is validating for you that the first war of self-defense and deterrence, not of rage, but of deterrence, hasn’t been completed.

Yossi: In other words, the Bibas Festival has strategic implications.

Donniel: Implications. I understand it and I understand the moral argument and I understand the distinctions. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to offer these different categories because it’s really critical that we explain to ourselves which war we want to fight and then how do you justify it and then what are the goals and aims that you think you can achieve.

So like where I might disagree with you is I wonder whether another 500 days, if after what we’ve done, you’re going to achieve greater deterrence, or is there a deterrence, my argument with you, is deterrence some utopian idea that you’re looking for? But that’s a practical debate.

But I understand what you’re saying, and you’re right. I’m not saying how many Israelis or whatever, but that is strong there. I think, though, there is another side. And I think Netanyahu loves to speak the language of the war of self-defense. That’s the language that all the while he’s engaging in other wars, the war of politics and placating the war of occupation.

But I think right now there’s another stage that’s emerging. And you know, where you said that anger is where emotion meets reason. Rage, Palestinian life is transparent. I just don’t care. You murdered and massacred, I’m going to murder and massacre. And while I’m not proud of it, I recognize that that was also for a few weeks, even I, it just, were all in this, it’s not a fog of war in the moral vacuousness of that level of anger, of rage.

Yossi: Right. Right. Right.

Donniel: But anger has a notion of justice to it. You’re saying it’s deterrence. There’s another sense. They deserve this. They’re not transparent. With anger, it’s retribution, in theories of punishment. They deserve this. There’s, you actually are, there is a side in which I am on the side of justice that I have to go back and do. But my problem, both with, I understand your deterrence, but I’m even more frightened now by the war of anger. Because what does it mean?

You know, okay, so the temptation of Trump that they should disappear, which is even now everybody knows is not happening, you know, because why is it legitimate? Because they have no rights anymore. Retribution justifies and legitimizes wiping them out. What are you going to do when you go back now? What are you going to do? Recapture the corridors? Go back in the cities? Try to find another 20 tunnels> At what point are you going to say that retribution has been paid and then they’re going to emerge again? At what point do we go to the next stage of this conversation?

But there is no doubt that we’re going to reemerge, I think, now in another war. And it has broad support, especially if the second stage of the deal of the hostage deal is implemented. And I have to tell you, Yossi, it concerns me, because it has no exit strategy. It’s like it’s in search of something that, at what point are we going to wake up and say we need to do something else? So I just, I want to name this new war, with all of the uncertainty and confusion and I believe danger that it’s going to entail.

Yossi: So I’ll give you one measure of where I would consider the deterrence restored. And that’s a statement that we just heard from Hamas’s foreign minister, Mousa Abu Marzouk, who said that had he known what we would do in Gaza, he would not have supported October 7th.

Now, the rest of Hamas repudiated the statement, saying he doesn’t speak for us. When Hamas comes out across the board and says, this is untenable, this is unsustainable, and even if they don’t say we regret October 7th, they may never say that. But the Middle East will know, the region will know, whether October 7th was worth it.

Donniel: You want the white flag. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

Yossi: Yes, yes I do.

Donniel: I know. It’s interesting. I get critiqued by being a utopian peacenik. I think you’re a utopian deterrence-nik. There’s something that you’re looking for. I appreciate it. But where, it’s interesting, another place where the war of self-defense and deterrence is meeting the war of Anger is today in the West Bank or Judea and Samaria in Jenin. There is no doubt Israeli society has understood that the same tolerance that we had for Hamas in Gaza has also led to the creation of a terrorist infrastructure in Tulkarem, in Jenin, in Hebron, in many places, which is also intolerable. And out of a war of self-defense, we’re trying to deal with it and to avoid another October 7th. The dangers there are even greater than they were in Gaza.

Yossi: Yeah, because we’re entwined. The settlements are vulnerable.

Donniel: We’re entwined. And with all the mistakes of October 7th, if we just listened to the soldiers who were watching the radar screens, we would have been prevented. Like we saw here, it’s almost unpreventable.

But when you look at the coverage of Israeli society of this war, like 40,000 refugees out of Jenin, we are so angry. It’s not rage, now in Judea and Samaria. I’s not rage, it’s not unchecked, it’s calculated execution of justice and it’s a different war. It’s not self-defense alone and when it’s self-defense, it’s morally motivated. When you are the judge and jury in anger, there’s no end to what you could do and I am deeply deeply concerned, especially by the coalition, of the messianic politics, the political war, and the war of anger. And where the three are going to lead us is going to be very, very challenging in the future. Yossi, last thoughts and words?
Yossi: Yeah, first that the issue you just brought up about what’s happening in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, is something we really will need to unpack at greater length.

So I’d like to just bring us back full circle to the hostages. And whatever I said about what I would like to see in terms of bringing down Hamas and continuing the war is entirely theoretical because in practice the presence of the hostages mitigates for me the ability, the moral right of this government to take us to the next phase of the war. Once the hostages are home then we need to look at this problem again. But for now, and here I do think a majority of Israelis agree with that, that the priority must be to save the remaining hostages and then we’ll deal with our anger.

Donniel: And whether we’ll deal with it, with going back to war, or whether we’ll be open to some political conversation, you know, at what point do we say we’ve achieved whatever a war can achieve? I don’t know. I appreciate now more than before your emphasis on deterrence as an aspect of self-defense. But we just have to make sure that we don’t have goals that by definition are never achievable and then give us license under the language of justice to fight and kill forever and ever and ever. Is there another stage?

Oy, I don’t think we’ve clarified, maybe we clarified a little bit. It’s such a fluid, complex, emotionally, intellectually, morally, politically.

This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at Ceasefire, on the verge of maybe going back to war, day 508. May this week more hostages come home. And whether it’s stage two or an extension of stage one, let them all come home. Yossi, thank you.

Yossi: Thank you, Donniel.