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.

They’re Returning, Where Are We Going? 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 the Institute’s podcast, For Heaven’s Sake.

Today’s episode is sponsored by our—collectively—and my personal dear friend and member of our giving society, Nancy Connor. And in her words, she says, “I want to sponsor this because I’m grateful for the way the Shalom Hartman Institute continues to provide us with the tools we need to comprehend these challenging times.” And Nancy, thank you for listening. Thank you for the feedback, and I hope we’re worthy. This is what we have to keep on trying to do. And so thank you for sponsoring this, this episode.

And now we have been Israel at war for 470 something days. And Yossi, you and I, we decided that it’s time to change the heading. That we have to move from “Israel at War.” And now we’re entering a space which we chose to call “Israel in Ceasefire.” And that’s going to be with us for 42 days, maybe two, three, four months,, as this evolves and as reality changes.

And there is a space between Israel at war… and it’s not Israel not at war. This “Israel in ceasefire” is a limbo reality that we want to watch, understand, explain to you, our audiences, but also as you know, understand our feelings because it is a, it’s a different space. It’s not Israel at war, but it’s not Israel back into whatever normal space we’re in. It’s a period that needs a lot of watching and understanding, which is what we’re going to do today.

And today, we’re going to keep the count. Today’s 473 days. Not necessarily since the war started, but 473 days that most of our hostages, that of the 97, 3 came back, so it’s now 94. We have to keep the proper count. 94 still aren’t home. And, Yossi and I, we picked our theme for today. We’re calling it, They’re Returning—Where Are We Going?

Yossi: That sounds good.

Donniel: You like that title? Good. And it really is an interesting juxtaposition, because something changed. Three young women came back. There was like a break. It was clear. Every Saturday, another three, another three, another three are going to come, until we get to 30, hopefully 33, we don’t know how many alive, how many are dead.

But this status quo of war is changing. And when things change, it’s a time to ask, where are we going? Because there’s a certain inertia to war. There was an inertia before the war, which was called the conception, the status quo.

But the reality is, for 471 days, there was also another inertia. It was a different inertia. We knew what, every day, there was a, it was a different reality. It was a similar reality. Now, it’s not clear where we’re going. The return was a remarkable moment. It was also a strange moment, how a whole country just sort of stopped. In Jerusalem, I barely saw a car and everybody, Adina even asked me, Daniel, can I go out? Is it okay if I stop watching this for a few minutes? Because I have to go to the store, like, well, like, what was the problem?

Yossi: I did something that I never did before. I had to be on the train and I was watching the TV on my phone.

Donniel: That was the ritual. That was the ritual. And the whole country did it. Even those against the deal. And in one of the more beautiful, I felt it was beautiful, where Minister Smotrich, who’s against the deal, wrote, in whatever social media he’s in, I’m so happy, welcome home.

Yossi: You’re a better person than I am, I felt—shut up. If it was up to you, they would never have come home. I hear what you’re saying, I appreciate what you’re saying. But I couldn’t feel it.

Donniel: I know, but what he’s saying. No, it was beautiful. Because the thing I deal with, there was, there were all of us. Oh, at that moment, we weren’t doing an analysis of the deal, and we’re not going to do an analysis of the deal today. We did that, we’re not doing, is it a good deal, is it a bad deal, maybe one day we’re going to have to do a serious analysis, or maybe we’ll do some of that today, we’ll see where we’re going to go.

But for a few hours, everybody, or most people left their politics behind, and everybody just wanted to see their faces. We wanted to see them as they’re coming out, are they standing? What’s their weight? Because that’s the big issue. Like, how much weight did they lose? Do they look healthy? You know, they walked from one Jeep to the next Jeep. Like, there was this micro analysis of every step of theirs. And then when they met the doctor for the first time, were they sitting? Were they lying? Were they standing? What happens when they saw their mother?

And it was such a beautiful thing, they saw their, Israel says, you see your mother first. I, you know, I feel like if I was their father, I would be a little upset there, because I’m a very maternal father, but, but I, but it was, it was just, it was this surreal moment where we sort of left all the politics aside, the war aside, whether we think it’s good or bad, stage one, stage two, stage three of the deal, the country was together. In a very beautiful way that a family is. It was just, we all just wanted to see our kids. For hours, for hours. And they didn’t show us a lot of pictures. And they said, we’re not going to show you a lot because we want to respect their privacy. Oh, of course. We’re a part of family.

Yossi: The whole, the whole country is, is, is watching, but we’re respecting their privacy.

Donniel: No, but, and they cut out. It’s like we all wanted to go into the bathroom and, no, no, no, we have to respect the family’s privacy. And we’re not, and please don’t like, all this, it was just these hours of strangers and it’s still continuing in many ways.

But with this powerful togetherness, which also reminded me of the beginning of the war, you know, at these horrific moments and sometimes there’s a beautiful moment where we could just leave everything aside and there weren’t left and right and center when the war started. We were just a people who wanted to live and who said, we’re all going to join together to enable our people to live and together we’re going to win. And there was that togetherness again.

But now… I have feelings; I want to hear yours. Is that togetherness going to remain? Is this, you know, we’re, we’re going to have these every seven day rituals of release. We know that not all of them are going to be as uplifting as this one. And it’s, we’re, we’re in a very hard time. Where are we going? If you, and again, let’s speak with, we’re not prophets. We’re not doing a prophetic analysis of certainty at your gut. Where do you feel Israel’s going now that they’re starting to come home?

Yossi: So, there were actually two scenes that united the whole country. The first scene was what you really beautifully described, that moment when we’re all watching the three young women get out of Hamas captivity and being handed over to the Red Cross, and you felt the whole country weeping, weeping with relief. Holding our breath. Holding our breath.

But there was another scene that also united the whole country, seeing Hamas gunmen celebrating in the streets, marching in a victory parade, firing their guns. Mobbing these three women, being surrounded by hundreds of Hamas terrorists, and the rage that I felt, and I knew every, every Israeli Jew was feeling this as well. It can’t be that this war ends with their victory.

And I’m mentioning these two scenes because for that moment when they were playing out, they united us. The first scene united us in tenderness, in family warmth. The second scene united us in revulsion and rage.

There’s one other moment, you know, that when the three young women are getting out of the car, and a terrorist puts his hand on one of the hostages. And I felt I wanted to reach into the screen and grab him. And I felt every parent, every Israeli parent watching that scene had that same visceral reaction.

So there was this sense on the one hand of elation and relief, and the other hand of rage. And I’m mentioning these two scenes because I believe that these two Images, and what they represent, are actually going to tear this country apart.

On the one hand, you will have the camp, which is the majority of Israelis, maybe even the strong majority, that wants those scenes of family reunion to continue, even at the price of seeing Hamas celebrating. But there’s another camp. That’s going to be more and more vocal and insistent and saying, that price is too high. And so these are the two images that united us that day, and that I think are going to tear us apart.

Donniel: Let’s play with them a little bit, because I, first off, thank you. I’m also feeling that we’re on the verge of being torn apart. But your framing is very, very helpful to me. Just for the record, I didn’t feel the rage you felt.

Yossi: And you know, it’s funny, I was thinking of you at that moment and saying, Donniel’s going to say, it’s worth it, and I don’t care, let them celebrate, I don’t care what they do. But you know that, that your average Israeli was feeling what I was feeling.

Donniel: I will officially concede that for one of the few rare moments, my feelings are not typical. Because usually I, I know that if I feel something, you know, that’s what the average Joe Schmoe, Sarah will feel in Israel. Because I’m so, I’m so connected to the core base of Israeli society.

Yossi: You’re just a populist at heart.

Donniel: I’m just a populist at heart. I’m a populist at heart. Yes, I appreciate that. I didn’t feel the rage. And when he put his hand, I didn’t see him grabbing her. He was guiding her.

Yossi: Hands off my daughter. That was my daughter.

Donniel: Those Hamas people around were protecting him. They were protecting them to get them from one car to… So I, again, you know, Rashomon, you know, we all, what is it, what happened and what do we see? But we’ll leave that aside for now.

But I share very much a sense that right now, we’re a train wreck about to happen. And your articulation of those two is very powerful. And I think part of that train wreck grows out of the fact that something that I’ve been talking about now for not 473 days, but easily 360 days. And that is coming to terms with what is it that we’re going to achieve? You used the term “we lost.” Or what was, there was a term used, I think it was, we lost, or to see them victorious that way.

Yossi: To see them victorious.

Donniel: Victorious. There was a, I didn’t see them victorious. But we haven’t talked about it, under this cloud of total victory, which we were yearning for, we had no accounting, a serious national accounting for the limitation of power, none. I actually believe we’re far more successful than we were ever even hoped. We did destroy Hamas’s military capabilities. We did not destroy their policing capabilities.

And after 473 days, part of what I just, is to understand, yeah, that’s what it was. If anybody, we wanted more, we deserved more, but we were never going to get more. But because we never talked honestly about what was achievable or not, October 7th defined what we’re going to do, and I have a right. Because I do. I have a right for every single Hamas SOB to be dead. I have that right. But because you have that right, it doesn’t mean that that’s what’s going to happen or achieving it is the right thing for you or even manageable or possible.

And so, from the beginning, I had a much more moderate understanding of this, but in Israeli society here, you’re right, and I had this experience as I was talking about the deal with a bunch of high school students and I asked them, you know, they wanted to know my opinion. I said, I don’t want to tell you my opinion. I want to hear your opinion. Who here is for the deal? I want you to explain to me why. Who here is against the deal? I want you to explain to me why. And at the Hartman Institute, these and these are the words of the living God. Let’s have, explain, we’re talking.

Yossi: These are, these are students in the Hartman High School.

Donniel: In the Hartman High School, in this case, yes. And, and a bunch of students, most of them were for the deal. And everybody started the conversation of why they’re for the deal with, you know, Hamas is still in power, and what does that mean to the Israeli soldiers who died? And they started with all the reasons, like how could we have left Hamas, but still, so it was always a “but still,” we have to let them home, get them home because we couldn’t get them out using military force. But there’s this deep ambivalence, and the two pictures you’re presenting, we haven’t talked it through.

So when people are going to start feeling ambivalent, what they’re going to do is they’re going to look for something to blame. So, Betzalel Smotrich, the one who I was kind to beforehand, the same minister, he says, oh, it was all the chief of staff who today just announced that he’s going to resign in another month and a half. It’s his fault. If I, Betzalel Smotrich, who I think wore a uniform for three days, if I, Betzalel Smotrich, was there, I would have returned the hostages after three months, and would, like, as if… So now we’re looking, who is it that we could blame for our fantasies, for the unfulfilled fantasies that we have.

And because of that, I, I agree with you. These two are going to be at war and we have no resolution, like there’s no way to balance which one you pick or which, it’s just a decision. And when there’s a decision, it’s two different worlds. And those two different worlds, the only way to resolve are going to be with constant conflict. And we’re going to see this, I believe, starting with stage two in 42 days after these 33 are let out. We have to now, after day 16, negotiate with Hamas stage two, which is going to involve more of a ceasefire, more withdrawal. They were going to see, we’re at a boiling point right now. It’s just like, when the hostages came home, the fire started.

Yossi: Right. The irony for Israel, of the entire hostage tragedy, is that in the past, hostages brought us together, and this is tearing us apart, and that’s just going to intensify in the coming weeks. I think there are going to be very hard and bitter demonstrations on both sides. And then factor in the blame that many Israelis attribute to the government, and without going into the question, it’s not our purview right now to unpack whether Netanyahu could have made a deal six months ago or couldn’t have made a deal, the fact is a very large proportion of Israelis believe that the same deal was attainable six months ago, and Netanyahu, for political reasons, didn’t go for it. And in these last months, several dozen hostages either died in captivity or were murdered.

If you believe that, then you have lost all trust in your government, and you regard your government as no less to blame for what happens to the hostages as Hamas. That creates tremendous bitterness. And then on the other side, you have voices, certainly many of the families who’ve lost sons in combat are saying, our kids died for nothing. Everybody’s going to be blaming the government, one side or the other. You promised, you, Netanyahu, promised us total victory, and what you’re giving us is total capitulation. And many of the families are victims of terrorism, to see your loved ones murderers being released from prison. So this is what, what worries me.

Donniel: What worries you. I don’t see it as a government focused. What makes me so worried is the government doesn’t exist. They don’t take responsibility for anything. They’re not even taking responsibility for signing this deal.

Yossi: It’s astonishing that Netanyahu hasn’t tried to claim credit for it.

Donniel: He did a… he gave a pretty good speech. But the conversation, you know what the conversation is now, you know, my good friend, my close friend, Gil Troy, he gave me, he, he, he called it Prime Minister Trump And it’s real. We have a Prime Minister Netanyahu. We, we, we have Prime Minister Trump, like we’re also watching every single thing he says.

Yossi: And it’s really true because those who support the deal are hoping Trump is going to continue pressure.

Donniel: Did you see what he just said? He said this… is he for stage two?

So it’s almost as if it’s not going to be against the government. What makes me more worried is it’s going to be against each other. There’s this, these two, the first stage was manageable. Like I said, okay, and, and in fact he promises, you know, this government, which takes no responsibility for anything says, you know, yes, we’re signing a deal, a complete total deal for the release of all the hostages. And at the same time, at least in theory, Betzalel Smotrich says, Prime Minister Netanyahu told me that I’m committed to returning to battle after stage one, after these 33.

Yossi: Which means there will be no stage two.

Donniel: So I don’t know. And did he say it? Did he not say it? And I think part of what Netanyahu is figuring is, it’s not up to me. It’s like, I, we all know that I went into deal stage one because former President Biden was pushing and pushing, but it was Trump who really shook everything up and Netanyahu had to say yes. So, Netanyahu’s sort of figuring, what am I going to do in stage two? Oh, oh. President Trump, what do you want me to do? That’s going to make people here insane. This is democracy. Decisions are being made. Talk to me. Let’s look at the plusses. Let’s look at the minuses.

Yossi: Now, there’s no national conversation, certainly not on the level of leadership.

Donniel: That’s why I don’t think it’s even blaming. There’s such a deep, as you said, the two stories. What story do you see? What’s the story? Is it them coming home or is it the remarkable… the remarkable resurrection of Hamas as a police force overnight after 473 days.

Yossi: And you know, I want to go back to the story that the right is telling and to your very important point about the limits of power. And you know, we’ve argued now over the last 470 plus days about the question of the limits of power for many months. I felt we need to go for broke. And at this point, I’m ready to emotionally concede that to some extent we lost on October 7th. And I don’t mean the massacre; I mean the hostages.

The fact that 250 Israeli hostages have been in captivity for most of this period is a defeat. We lost. We were not able to protect.

Donniel: Why do you say that? Why are you using those terms? I’m going to let you finish.

Yossi: I want to qualify.

Donniel: Like why are you taking, you’re painting yourself in a corner, which I don’t understand why you’re doing it.

Yossi: Because, because winning is so important for me. And because I do believe we’ve gone a long way toward restoring our deterrence, which, paradoxically, has allowed us to capitulate on this. But there’s something. That, when I hear the right say, we’re surrendering to terrorism, we’re taking on defeat, they’re right about that. They’re partially right. Partially right. Okay?

And the reason that I believe that we had no choice is because we betrayed these people. The state, the army, we betrayed these people. These people were dragged out of their homes. They did not fall into captivity the way some other previous Israeli hostages were taken prisoner because of negligence, because of recklessness—these people were dragged out of their homes.

And what this deal really means is that the government of Israel, whether they acknowledge it or not, is taking responsibility for that failure.

Donniel: So where are we going as a result of this?

Yossi: Where we’re going is the question of how far we go with accepting this failure. So Trump apparently twisted Netanyahu’s arm. The government reluctantly…

Donniel: Let’s get used to the name of his new, of his Middle Eastern advisor. Is it Witkoff?

Yossi: Witkoff.

Donniel: Witkoff seems to be…

Yossi: Witkoff took the gloves off and who knows what he said to Netanyahu. It worked. And the question is, will it work for the next stage? And you believe that it will. I’m very skeptical. I think that when it will come down to it, if Netanyahu knows his government is going down, I think he’s going to dig in his heels. And what that really means in terms of the internal Israeli conversation is that the government will not ultimately admit that something fundamental broke on October 7th. And at the very least, we have a responsibility to bring these people home.

Donniel: So you see us, when the question is where are we going, you see us as going back to war.

Yossi: I, I, yes, but ineffectually, because for most of the country, this war is already over, psychologically. Most of the country, and every poll bears that out, wants the hostages back, even at the price of ending the war.

Donniel: But then those pictures, go back to your pictures, they’re going to see, do you think those pictures, seeing Hamas in political control over Gaza, their policemen are now on every corner, their people, you think that’s enough to go back to war? In Israeli society, I mean.

Yossi: No, it is enough for the right.

Donniel: For this government.

Yossi: For this government’s supporters, those scenes of Hamas celebration is all they need. But for a majority of the country, as powerful and as painful as those scenes are, it will not be enough to negate the scenes of homecoming. This is the government’s fatal flaw here.

We went to war against Hamas with wall to wall support, from left, center, right. The government no longer will have that support for the next phase of this war. If it tries to resume the war, you will see for the first time massive opposition to the war. We did not have a single anti-war demonstration here in the last year plus, which is astonishing. Israel’s most brutal and ugly war, no left-wing demonstrations. There were many demonstrations for the hostages, demonstrations to bring the government down. No one was demonstrating against the justness of this war.

If the government tries to go, to resume the war at the expense of phase two of the hostages, you will see an anti-war movement emerging here.

Donniel: And so that, this is really a spelling out of your analysis of this huge crisis that’s going to emerge. And this is a crisis that’s going to be activated in your mind by the government decision. I hear you. I’m frightened of that too. And it’s, it’s very possible. It’s very, very possible.

I want to add a different angle to this and it really explains for me why I believe the second stage of the hostage deal is going to happen. We might go back to war, but only after the hostage deal is complete. And as I was watching the hostages come home and watching and the first time they showed us this grainy picture of their face, like, oh, did you see their face? They’re in the jeep now, the Red Cross jeep. I felt a deep sense of gratitude to a segment of Israeli society who for 471 days refused to let the hostages be removed from the front page and from the center of Israeli discourse.

At different times, there were 100,000 people, 200, maybe 300 who came out, but the demonstration weren’t huge. They were in the tens of thousands most of the time, but there were about 10,000 people. And I know some of them, wasn’t me, wasn’t you. You know, we, we gave our opinions, initially we disagreed, I wrote, I taught, I did demonstrate but there’s people, not just the hostage families themselves, 10, 20,000 who have done nothing for 471 days, nothing. This was their miluim, their reserve duty, this was their service.

Yossi: One of our colleagues here at Hartman, Elliot Goldstein.

Donniel: He was one of them. I’m just seeing, some of them are strange. It’s extreme. They were loud. They were politically incorrect. They were banging up the street near my house at, at Ron Dermer’s house, even though I don’t, I never believed that you should make noise in front of someone’s house. I, that was not my, but I, they’re, they’re there, and every, the morning.

Yossi: Especially your house.

Donniel: You know, it was, it was up the block, but like, it’s, you know, like, I believe that a person’s allowed to be a politician and a private person, like these people with all their passion, what they did is they put forth an idea, a spirit. They said, we, as Jewish people, we don’t leave our family behind. It wasn’t even, your language of betrayal was a conceptualization of it, of why we need to bring them back. Their power, it was just simple. I don’t have to explain.

And in the midst of a war where everybody’s talking strategy and what should we do and where should the, when should we, when should we move from stage one of the war to stage two and what’s the difference and when we should fight in, in Rafah and the beepers and Syria. All the global strategic, all the, the, the talk, talk, talks and all the people on the news analyzing what we should do.

These people said it’s very clear. Said one thing: Jews, we are a family. There’s a sense that to be a Jew is to be responsible for our family. And they put forth a virtue, an idea, a cause. A noble one. They didn’t explain and say, yes, you know, like I did, we should stop the war because it’s no longer effective. We should stop the war because we won. We should stop the war because civilian casualties are undermining the justness of the war. It was, that wasn’t the story. They stayed away from all of that. And all they did was say, look at these faces. Look at these faces. It’s our family.

And they articulated the core ethos of Judaism, starting initially with the obligation to return prisoners, to return hostages, but it was just bigger than that. And one of my big takeaways from this hostage deal is the power of the spirit. You know, they had nobody in the government supporting them. They have no access. They didn’t come principally from the right. They came principally from the center-right, center, and a lot from the center-left, and maybe some the left. They just said, I’m not giving up. And it teaches you, you know, that it’s not about majority. We always, all our politicians are now doing, you know, censuses. What do people want? They’re counting. Where do I go? You know, where are my people? Therefore, I’ll follow them.

But these people said they ultimately got 80 percent of Israeli society to support them. 80 percent weren’t like them, but this 10, 20,000? Maybe it’s less, maybe it’s 10, maybe it’s 5. They put a vision of who we are. And they won. Because at the end, that spirit, the spirit of family, the spirit of responsibility, that we do not let our family die and the people on the right who did all their calculations and saying, oh, don’t release these terrorists, more people will be killed.

It just, you couldn’t compete because this noble moral high ground, this vision and that vision one and I don’t see any possibility of going back to war, nobody’s going to undermine, they’re not going to undermine that vision of Israel. That vision is powerful. It also teaches us for the future, how do you win? You know, the judicial reform also had a similar vision. It also had hundreds and maybe millions of people. This one didn’t, but you don’t need a majority. You need a vision. And Israeli society looked and said, yeah, that’s me. I’m not me if these people stay at home.

Yossi: It’s such an important insight, Donniel, because we owe these people a great debt of gratitude. I saw a poster today, a banner on the street, that said, “We must not get used to this.” And that’s all it said. It didn’t say what. You understood. You knew exactly what they were talking about. We cannot get used to the fact that our sisters and brothers are in captivity. But that’s all it said. We must not get used to this. And these are the people who made sure that we did not get used to it.

Donniel: And so we, like, so first, I want to, I want to thank them. They were there, like, we were tourists in the demonstrations. They were the ones in the trenches, and we all stood on their shoulders. And I think there’s a vision of also what really wins. And at the end, when we talk about where Israel’s going, what’s going to win is who has, I believe, a noble argument. Who has a vision of who we are that’s going to excite?

If you want to go against, I don’t think you can go against this as long as some of the people are there afterwards, you want to speak about and, you know, do some fear analysis that if we fight for another 473 days, we’re going to kill another 10,000 people of Hamas and forget that they’re going to recruit more and pretend, but that’s going to make the difference… You need something bigger. It can’t, you win with a vision and it’ll be interesting to see where Israel goes. What are the visions? Our government doesn’t give visions.

It’s interesting whether President Trump will be giving a vision of a new Middle East. But that’s why I’m certain to the extent that anybody could be certain. And since I’m never hesitant to say I was wrong, I don’t mind saying I’m certain, that where I’m sitting right now, the spirit is winning, and then we’ll have to see what is the conflict of spirit. Last words, Yossi?

Yossi: You know, my takeaway is that you can be right and it still doesn’t matter.

Donniel: Who me?

Yossi: And I’m speaking specifically, you too, but in this case, I’m speaking specifically about the opponents of the deal. Everything they say resonates with me. I agree with everything. And yet…

Donniel: See, I don’t agree with anything.

Yossi: Yeah. And yet, the other side has a more compelling argument. And it’s interesting, you can be right and the other side can be more right. You know, one of the things, also, that I’ve been thinking about these last few days is—we live in such a difficult country. Everything matters here. Every debate turns into life and death. It turns into something existential. I don’t think there are too many countries that live with this kind of intensity without let-up.

Donniel: Otherwise they would just move. People would move.

Yossi: Yeah, really, really. And so now we’re having an argument over hostages. Both sides are right, but it’s life and death and each side is so passionately committed to their position. And how do you, how do you navigate in that kind of society? And I think, for me, it’s recognizing that both sides—and it doesn’t matter what the sides are in a given issue, but we’re speaking about the hostages, so in this case, both sides have compelling arguments. But one side has the edge.

And you defined beautifully about what that edge is. That edge is a moral value. Now I agree, victory, you don’t surrender to terror, you don’t free murderers. Those are values too. But this other value is more compelling in this case.

Donniel: Right. And I don’t see it purely as a moral one, because I think actually there’s moral argument. There was, it’s a spiritual identity one. It’s a larger calling.

Yossi: It is, and it also has…

Donniel: It’s historical.

Yossi: No, but it also has a practical strategic values. Because the more we hold together as a society, the more we believe in ourselves, and the more we’ll fight. And this is something as well that the opponents of the deal haven’t quite internalized.

Donniel: It’s interesting. I’m going to let you end there, even though I would never go.

Yossi: I know you wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t.

Donniel: But I’m letting you because when you have something that is a virtue in it, you don’t need a utilitarian…

Yossi: But don’t ruin it. You just gave me the last word.

Donniel: I’m giving you the last word. So Yossi, as always. It’s just an absolute, it’s a pleasure and it’s really important, I, this is good for me.

Yossi: Very, very mutual.

Donniel: It’s very, it’s like this is, as we’re trying to figure out, you know, where are we going? Today is day 473 and we still have 94 family members alive and dead we have to bring home.

And this is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel in ceasefire. Be well everyone.