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In a frenzied media cycle, Identity/Crisis creates better conversations about the issues facing contemporary Jewish life. Host Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, talks with leading thinkers to unpack current events affecting Jewish communities in North America, Israel, and around the world, revealing the core Jewish values underlying the issues that matter most to you.

Liberal Democracy as a Matter of National Security Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Yehuda: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Identity/Crisis, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute creating better conversations about the essential questions facing Jewish life. I’m Yehuda Kurtzer and we’re recording on Monday, December 30th, 2024.

I’m coming to you this morning from South Jerusalem where I am one among many thousands here that are reeling from the news yesterday of the killing of Staff Sergeant Yuval Shoham in northern Gaza. Yuval was a big person in heart and body and in spirit, and he comes from a great family, friends of ours. The parlance for people like the Shohams is Yakirei Yerushalayim, the precious people of Jerusalem. His parents are community leaders and social activists. Yuval’s father, Effie, appeared on this podcast on October 18th, 2023, speaking about how he and others had transformed the infrastructure that they had built to lead the protests against the judicial reform here in Israel into a system to now support the home front of the war.

Yuval’s parents have managed throughout this awful war to continue to speak out against the failures of leadership in this country, to hold their synagogue community through unspeakable tragedies, and to advocate for the hostages, and to do so all the while three of their sons have been fighting on the front lines of the war.

Today, the Shohams bury their middle son Yuval on Har Herzl at Israel’s military cemetery, and they begin the unspeakable process of public and private mourning for this young and special man gone too soon. It’s unbearable.

There’s something very broken here in Israel. And saying so, I think, is not a statement of disloyalty; it’s a statement of love. It’s hard to imagine the war can go on much longer, even though it might. Yuval is, I believe, the 394th soldier to fall in battle. Sirens continue to blare every night somewhere in Israel, whether because of rare rockets coming from parts of Gaza, which happened towards Jerusalem on Shabbat, or now more commonly, long range rockets fired by the Houthis from Yemen.

It was reported last night that yet another infant died in Gaza from the cold, joining now thousands upon thousands of innocents who have been killed in Gaza in this conflict. I don’t get to see a lot of Palestinian faces up close, but I do see the faces of Israelis, and they’re worn down, tired, and worried, and sad, and angry, or some combination of all of these, sometimes all at the same time.

But on top of all the sorrow is a lingering set of questions. What exactly happens next? I don’t mean in the war. I mean for a society and state that has a lot of uncertainty in its future. Who leads the country in facing that future on the basis of what principles and what ultimately is Israeli society about?

I’m not a political scientist. I’m not a pollster. But I can see two powerful political camps in this country, not political parties, but better described as on one side, the committed, those voters who will stick with Prime Minister Netanyahu or the ultra-nationalist parties to his right, regardless of what happens in the country, and maybe that includes also a much smaller percentage of dyed in the wool, lefty voters who are going to vote for the left regardless of how futile that vote sometimes feels.

That’s the committed side, and there’s an equally large, maybe even larger set of voters who are the disaffected, so frustrated by the failures of leadership that they want an alternative that they oftentimes seem to become equally disaffected from in time. There’s a big block of people who claimed in the last several elections, “Anyone but Bibi,” unsurprisingly, that sentiment was ineffective in actually marshalling enough support behind an alternative candidate to lead this country.

But rather than speculating about any of this further by myself, I’m honored today to be joined in conversation by Yair Golan, the political leader of the party called the Democrats here in Israel, which absorbed the Labor Party and now represents the political leadership of the Zionist left.

Yair Golan is a reserve major general in the Israeli Defense Forces. During his highly decorated military service, he served, among other roles, as the IDF Deputy Chief of Staff, the Commander of the Home Front Command, and Commander of the Northern Command. He also played an essential role on October 7th itself by running directly into the line of fire in the Gaza envelope and saving an untold number of lives.

More importantly, at least for our purposes is in the private meaning that we’ve had, I found yet you’re to be a surprisingly straight shooter as a moral voice, as a moral speaker, and as someone who is operating out of a place of patriotism and love to try to fix all that is broken here. Thank you for coming on the podcast this complicated morning.

Yair: Thank you. Yeah.

Yehuda: So let’s start with the war itself. I said in my opening that it doesn’t seem it can last any longer, but it’s hard to know when it’s going to end. This is a hard question, maybe an unfair one, but what should happen with this war in Gaza?

Yair: Well, it’s not so complicated. First and foremost, we need to free all the hostages as soon as possible. And it’s absolutely clear that by having a hostages deal, we will end the war in the Gaza Strip, and we will be able to start thinking about the recovery process of the enveloping area around the Gaza Strip.

And at the same time, what is the destiny of the Gazans? It’s not some sort of a negligible, you know, question. It’s a very important one. Because if we want something different from Hamas or other Muslim extremist elements in the Gaza Strip, we need to participate in the process of building an alternative. It could be, you know, a huge mistake for Israel to be the entity that tries to build this alternative. We need to do it with others. We need to do it with the Saudi Arabians, with the United Emirates, with Jordan, with Morocco, with Egypt. And I cannot see any, you know, possibility to start this process with others without promising them some sort of a presence of the Palestinian Authority. So it’s good for Israel to create some sort of a regional vision for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And that’s includes also a role for the Palestinian Authority. No doubt.

Unfortunately, this current government has no intention to deal with the future of the Gaza Strip. And the meaning of that is we are not going to free the hostages. We are not going to take responsibility for the security of the people who live around the Gaza Strip, our citizens that were so badly hit on October 7th. And since then, we have no intention to build for them a better security.

Yehuda: And you think that the most likely theory is that Is that because of the political considerations that the Netanyahu administration has vis a vis its right wing flank, you know, Ben Gvir has said we want a permanent war in Gaza, or is it actually native to Netanyahu himself in terms of his own political calculus? What is, what’s at stake here, politically?

Yair: I think it’s not so important. We tend to think that Netanyahu’s major concern, you know, the first and foremost one, is, you know, to be in power, but maybe it’s also his ideology. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. No, it doesn’t matter. The fact that he’s willing to cooperate with the most extremist element in the Israeli society, in the Israeli political system, the fact that he took a criminal, a criminal, a true criminal, and put him as the minister of internal security, or once we called it, you know, the Minister of Police.

This is outrageous. This is no, totally unacceptable. And this person is a supporter of Rabbi Kahane. And Kahanism is about a kind of racist theory, nationalistic element in the Israeli society, which is totally unacceptable. We are the people who suffer so much from extreme nationalism. How could we even imagine that we are going to adopt the same ideology?

Yehuda: No, it’s incredible, actually. It’s kind of evidence to how democracies fail, which is, it’s not over. It doesn’t happen overnight. What happens is the erosion of norms. And when you look back at the eighties and nineties, when Kahanism was banned in this country and even the right participated in banning Kahanism because the right was much more interested in things like civil liberties than it is today. It just, over time, you gradually normalize radical ideas. And then you look around and wonder about what happened to democracy.

Yair: Exactly. And this reflects the fact that we forget what Ben Gurion used to say over and over again, that our existence, is totally dependant on two main values: our intellectual capabilities at the same time on our moral capabilities. So it’s about mind and heart. Mind and heart, this is the issue of you know our existence here. The minute we take out of this equation the moral perspective, the meaning of that…we become animals. We obey to the rules of this region, of this violent region. And by doing that, we promise nothing to our young people, to our, you know, boys and girls that grew up here with no optimistic, positive prospects for their own lives.

It’s hard to live in Israel. We need to understand that it’s hard to live here. And the only reason to remain here is the fact that living here has some sort of a vision. Some sort of meaning, and without it, there is no, no reason to be here. I think that extreme nationalism, it’s totally against Zionism. If Zionism is about, you know, how to be here and to live here a positive life, extreme nationalism erodes this basic understanding that we are doing something positive for us, for the region, for the world.

And since I think that the Jewish people has a role in history, and since the Jewish people need to take responsibility for others, not just for the Jewish people, this is our role in the world. So therefore we need to think what is the meaning, what are the moral and the intellectual qualities of being here. We have a mission.

Yehuda: So I’m very compelled by the language of mind and heart, right, the moral and intellectual project of Zionism. We teach it about a lot here at the Hartman Institute. It’s a big core of what we do, asking the question of not just what is the Israel that is, but what’s the Israel that we imagine?

And that Zionism, somewhere along the way, stopped being a project of imagination and became a project of loyalty. One of the problems we face, though, is that for many Zionists and anti-Zionists, it’s not just mind and heart, it’s also body—physical security. And it seems to me that the reason the right keeps winning is because they’ve somehow convinced everybody that they are the people who will keep us safe. And the ultra-nationalism and fascism, which is oftentimes premised on Jewish supremacy, will say we’re going to protect Jewish lives even at the cost of killing everywhere else.

Meanwhile, on the left, the far left, the anti-Zionist left talks a language of mind and heart, but it can’t actually come up with a language of Jewish safety.

Now you have an incredible military background. Why is it that you feel that it’s harder for the left in this country to convince people that it will keep them as safe as others and then gets portrayed as, you know, Yifei Nefesh, speaking beautifully about the moral aspirations but incapable of speaking a language of security?

Yair: Well, it’s also, it always, it’s, it’s not, you know, a Jewish phenomenon, you know, the blunt speaking of extreme nationalism is very tempting, you know, all over the globe. Politicians understand it, you know, for centuries. This is not new. It’s not new. And I think that, yes, it’s much harder to speak to the minds, not just, you know, to the stomach, and I try to convince people here in Israel that without rational thinking, we won’t be able to survive. It’s not a matter of left or right. It’s about the basic qualities of Zionism. And what is Zionism all about?

It’s on the one hand to have a state of our own, and at the same time, keeping this state free, egalitarian, and democratic, liberal democracy. This is the issue, because without these qualities, we won’t be able to survive without, you know, this, common, public lives. We won’t be able to survive because in authoritarian regime, only the incapable will remain here in Israel, and we won’t be able to survive here without the most capable people young people of the Jewish people here in Israel. We won’t be able to survive.

This is the most violent part of the globe. We need to understand that. Right now, wars are here and in Ukraine. And let’s admit that Ukraine is quite an exceptional example concerning the last 80 years of, in Europe. So we are in the middle of the most conflicting area. And therefore, we need to think in terms of how to survive in this region and keeping our miracle of having a Jewish state. And the only way is by liberal democracy. No other way.

So it’s a matter of national security more than anything else. I think that this, you know, common speaking, political speaking about right and left is kind of an illusion and it serves only the right, not the left. So we need to talk in terms of what is the meaning of being true patriotic person here in Israel. And in my mind, it’s really based on two pillars.

The pillar of, you know, having our own Jewish state, which is tempting and welcoming any Jew around the globe, no matter whether Reform or Conservative or Modern Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, doesn’t matter. And at the same time, free, egalitarian, democratic state.

Yehuda: Where in the picture of this story, it’s very interesting because this vision of a free egalitarian democratic state in your framing is deeply connected to Israel’s long term survival and security as a Jewish state, right? The two are intertwined. It’s not like I have these two things in tension, Jewish and democratic, which, as you say, all that does is reinforce the binary. It’s deeply intertwined.

Where does the altruistic or compassionate voice for the Palestinian people feature into this? Because a person could come to the same conclusions, not because they’re interested in building a Jewish state, but because they’re looking at what they see as a democratic crisis for the Palestinian people and humanitarian crisis for the Palestinian people. Where does that fit into the story of centering this as primarily about building a stronger Jewish state?

Yair: Let me start with something different, please.

Yehuda: Yes.

Yair: All my long years in the military. I found something very simple. If you want to fight effectively, you need to keep your moral compass. I never ever fought for revenge. I fought all over my life and quite effectively. And I’m very proud about it because my moral compass led my military activity with other principles of the military profession. That was the secret of being an effective military man. And I think this is also true concerning our national security.

This ability to choose the most moral, ethical route for the future, this is, really, the secret of our ability to exist here. We take, you know, young people here in Israel, boys and girls. We educate them to be, you know, positive persons with compassion, with care, with this ability to see the other. And that’s included Palestinians. And in most cases, what is good for them, it’s also good for us to keep this ability to distinguish between the most extreme violent elements in the Palestinian society and the vast majority who want to live their lives.

We want, you know, to fight the militant, and we want to live peacefully with the moderates. And this is, I believe, the question of the Middle East. What is the right way to take the Middle East in the root of moderate and nonviolent states that have this ability to fight the most extreme militant and fundamentalist elements in the region?

And, unfortunately, you know, when I was a young person, there was no extreme nationalistic element in the Israeli political system or in the Israeli society. Right now, we have a true ugly aspect in our society, and we need to cope with it, and we need to fight it, not in order to defeat them, but in order to fix our own society. This is a kind of a mission, this is a kind of a challenge we are facing.

And we need to understand this is a mission for the Jewish people. It’s not just about the Israelis. And we need to think in terms of, all right, in what way we will be able to take all the powers, the internal powers in the Jewish people in order to recreate this strong element of Zionists who have a strong Jewish identity, and at the same time, a strong humanistic identity, a strong universal identity, and this is, I think, the secret for a better future, for a better destiny for the Jewish people.

Yehuda: So just like the Jewish and Democratic are not in binary tension, we would talk about our own self actualization as a people as deeply intertwined with our commitments to the needs of the Palestinian people.

And I will say on a personal level, I found it very frustrating, especially where I work in North America, that the moral voice of speaking out on behalf of compassion, humanitarian objectives has been completely captured by the anti-Israel left, not just because they’re the ones using that language, but because oftentimes the Zionist establishment won’t talk in that language because it fears that it undermines the legitimacy of the Jewish national project.

Yair: The crisis of leadership here in Israel, my true original voice is to speak at the same time in a very nationalistic manner. And that with this, you know, strong humanistic moral compass, this is what we need to recreate. And I believe that young leaders who want to save Israel need to think this way. All right. How we take, you know, our Jewish compass and convince others to take this direction in order to save Israel, Israel without a strong moral compass won’t be able to survive. I’m totally sure. I’m totally convinced about it.

Yehuda: Your military career is A powerful testament to the positive relationship that can exist between leading with a conviction about ethics, how we fight a war to the ability to actually fight wars. Well, you said you were proud of that legacy. I’m worried—I’m curious if you’re worried—whether that ethic is still the dominant force in the Israeli military. And I want to give you a case.

Yair: No, no, I can tell you the following. It’s very simple. Everything you see in the Israeli society exists in the Israeli military. You cannot distinguish, not in, you know, in other countries, it’s, there is a possibility like that, you know, to distinguish between the military and the people. Here is the military of the people, the army of the people. So therefore, everything you see in the Israeli society truly exists in the Israeli army. And we need to understand that.

So when you see in the Israeli society negative, you know, phenomena, that’s really outrageous. Many of us also exist in the military, and this is very unfortunate, and again, it takes us, you know, to the very important question, who is leading Israel today, and why we need to fix our leadership. This is the most crucial issue concerning our destiny.

Yehuda: I’m sure you saw this story from a few days ago in the New York Times, which talked about how in the early minutes after the attacks on October 7th, Israel lifted its conventional ethics of war and changed the rules about the ability to target civilians. It’s a devastating story. It’s a well researched story.

I felt for the first long stretch of the war, I remained committed and publicly spoke about how Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza was a just war in military ethics standards, and that we had to be conscious of the fact that we could not fully evaluate Israel’s conduct in the war because of the fog of war. You have the Hamas Ministry of Health reporting all sorts of casualty numbers, conflicting reports it was on the ground.

Reading that story, it was very, very hard to confront it. And I’m curious how you, as a military leader and as a political leader, read a story like that. What does it do to your own confidence, if any, in the fundamental legitimacy of the war itself or in how the war has been prosecuted?

Yair: Well, concerning the legitimacy, this is totally clear. We are not the one who launched this, you know, brutal raid on our civilians. So we need to remember 1200 Israelis were killed and butchered and raped and burned on October 7th. We need to remember that. At the same time, we need to concentrate all our mind on the future.

So now this, this is the time to recreate our moral compass and to think about the future. The recovery process of the Gaza Strip, this is something we need to take responsibility for. And we need to figure out what is the right way to do it and how to do it with others and how to gather the rest of the region and the rest of the world in order to be constructive elements in this process.

I think that if Israel take responsibility for that, we will gain much a better possibility to convince others that this war is truly complicated, that fighting in one of the most densest areas around the globe, that fighting, you know, on the terrain and in the subterranean at the same time, that fighting with so many hostages in the hands of Hamas, this is something really new in the history of warfare.

But without doing that, yes, we will deteriorate on a very dangerous slope of, all right, we are doing bad things and other bad things and other bad things. And it’s never nice to fight inside, you know, urban terrain with many civilians. It’s always complicated. It’s always, you know, takes the troops to a very delicate position of moral and immoral activity. We saw it in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and so this is not new.

So therefore we need to end the war as soon as possible, and we need to start the recovery process as soon as possible. And that has, you know, a significant internal consequences for the Israeli society, for the state of Israel, and at the same time, major influence on the public opinion around the globe.

So, again, if we talk in terms of national security, we need to think about the world and where the world is and where is the global Jewry, where they are. Will they be able to support the state of Israel tomorrow morning? This is a major question concerning the national security of Israel.

We today, I think more and more Israelis do understand the importance of Jews who live around the globe concerning our legitimacy, concerning our ability to observe external support, international support here in Israel during war. And this is so important. And if you look at the future of this region, the ongoing conflict between more extremist element and more moderate elements, this is not, you know, just between Israel and Iran, Israel and Turkey, Israel and Iraq or Yemen and so on. It’s about the globe, it’s a one system, and we need to understand that.

And again, I claim that if you think in terms of national security, your moral compass is a true element, maybe the most important element in your ability to survive.

Yehuda: So what for you was the turning point in this war? Because as a person who the war launches and you run to fight in it. Right. It’s a legitimate just war, and it needs a military response. I’m curious when the turning point took place for you to move to the place of saying it’s time to end the war. And I want to give you a little background because…

Yair: In March. In March.

Yehuda: In March? Very explicitly in March.

Yair: Yeah. In March, we have ended most of the military activity in the Gaza Strip. Until March, we were able to do whatever is needed in the North. We did nothing, basically. And, you know, we could end this war with a hostages deal in March, in March 24. And I’m totally convinced about it. And if it’s not March or, you know, maybe it’s May, all right, so what?

There is no reason, there is no true professional military reason to keep going with this war. And right now, it’s a war for eternity. There is no mechanism. We didn’t define, the Israeli government didn’t define up to now what is the mechanism to end this war. This is totally, totally unacceptable. In what way we are going to take a full advantage, full, political and regional and strategic advantage out of this military activity If you know the famous, saying of Clausewitzs, that the war is just the continuation of policy.

What is the policy? We have no policy. This is totally unacceptable. I claim we need a policy and the right policy is to consolidate a true, strong regional front with international backing against Iran, against the extreme Islam. And in order to do that, we need to mitigate the conflict with the Palestinians. And in order to mitigate the conflict with the Palestinians, we need to promise ourselves, we need to promise them, we need to promise the rest of the world that we are on the path, on the route to this two state solution. Not tomorrow morning. This is, you know, totally unacceptable. But this is the vision.

And now we are going to move on this path on this route. And I think that the first practical activity we need to do is to reach a situation of civil separation with security responsibility. I think this is the right equation for moving forward. Civil separation in order to lessen the friction between two hostile populations, in order to provide less and less opportunities for militants, for terrorists. And at the same time, keeping our responsibility for security in order to make sure that we provide our civilians the right level of security. We have no intention to compromise our security.

Yehuda: What happens to the criticism that says the Palestinian Authority has been unbelievably corrupt for decades, that the Saudis and the Europeans don’t want to reinvest billions of dollars into the reconstruction of Gaza because they’ve watched it essentially become the mechanism for Hamas to rebuild itself/ How do you—the vision—if it works—is an ideal vision. Autonomous Palestinian leadership working in security cooperation with Israel, enabling us to withstand the other pressures elsewhere in the region. In practice, the actors are so fickle and problematic. How do you actually build that up to change that narrative?

Yair: No doubt that we need a new Palestinian Authority. But we need to remember, Abu Mazen is 89. He won’t survive forever. So we need to think in terms of who are going to lead the Palestinian Authority tomorrow morning.

I think that the first measure in order to fix the Palestinian Authority, which is quite corrupted right now, is to take people like Salam Fayyad, to give them more and more responsibility and to work with them. I’m quite convinced of that. I think Salafiyah today is in Princeton. But I believe that we can bring him back and to create around him a professional government for the Palestinians that will be able to take more and more responsibility and to move forward with a well deliberated plan.

We should not give up, you know, thinking that, all right, there is nothing to do with him. This is totally unacceptable. There are people in the Palestinian people who want to fix, you know, the Palestinian Authority, who want to have a decent government, who want to live a decent life, who want to feel secure and safe. I think this is a, this is a, we need to work with these people.

Yehuda: What happens in Syria as well? I mean, I know, I know from your experience working on the northern front that you had a whole bunch of experiences cultivating relationships with Syrian people. This feels like a very plastic moment in Syria of—we have no idea which way it’s going to go. What would the policy look like on your front for dealing with it?

Yair: I think, again, you know, it’s the same policy, how to support the moderates. And there are three main moderate elements in Syria. The first one is the people I know, the people who live along our common border with Syria in the Golan Heights. Most of them, 90, 90 percent of them are moderates. We know the people, so we need to work with them. That will enable us to create a better security for Israel. We need to work with the Druze, we have such a good relationship with the Druze in Israel. Why won’t we create, you know, a very good relationship with the Druze in Syria? And the third element are the Kurds, and we need to work with them, because the Kurds are moderate, and they have a kind of a Western inclination, and so let’s work with them.

And I believe that we could find, you know, other positive elements, moderate elements in the Syrian society, and we need to work with this is, I think, you know, concerning the future of Syria. And at the same time, we need to keep our security because we don’t know who is going to take control of Syria. And we even don’t know what Julani brought with him. We don’t know yet.

So, it’s a matter of, you know, keeping our security, and be proactive in order to ensure our security and to create, you know, the best possible relationship with more and more Syrian settlements.

Yehuda: You know, I’m convinced that a general in the IDF has a good consciousness of what it means to look out for Israel’s security. I’m convinced. You told a story to me once about traveling around this country and having somebody say to you, I didn’t even realize you were a Zionist, which I found to be an amazing story, an amazing anecdote. Why—what is that narrative about? Like, what is holding the Israeli public back from seeing the possibility of the same kind of visionary leadership with military credibility and security that’s coming out of the left? What failed over the last 30 years that you’re trying to fix?

Yair: This is a combination of the three elements that are so well represented in this current government. The first element represented by Netanyahu himself is the well corrupted regime that truly cares about his ability to keep power, even against the interest of Israel. This is a very poor situation. And we need to face it.

The second element are the ultra-Orthodox that… their politicians, it’s not, you know, like the ultra -Orthodox society, but their politicians and their leaders want to keep their own autonomy and their ability to gain more and more power concerning their own society. Since this society become bigger and bigger from year to year, they need more and more resources. And the only one who create the resources in Israel is the more constructive elements in the Israeli society who are not ultra-Orthodox.

And the third issue, and I think the most prominent one, are the extreme, nationalistic elements, unfortunately, religious elements that adopted a kind of a racist theory based on, you know, fundamental theories approach, that we need to revive the biblical Israel. We need to expand our borders. We can fight, you know, all the region, a war for eternity, and Messiah will come. You know, tomorrow morning, only if we will be able to force all Israelis to live in Medinat Halakha, in a extremely theocratic country, totally unacceptable, and very stupid, and very unrealistic. And this is a danger for our existence.

I believe this is the most dangerous element, because it’s so ideological. And people who believe in this ideology are willing to do everything in order to bring the light, you know, to the others. And if the meaning of that is to kill a, you know, a prime minister, it’s okay. It’s okay. And if the meaning of that is to conduct a massacre in a mosque, it’s okay. And if the meaning of that is to do immoral things from any human perspective, this is okay. This is a very dangerous element in the Israeli society today. A very small one, but still a very influential one.

I call many of my national religious friends, please open your eyes and you know, most of you are truly very good people, but in a way you support others that are a destructive element for the Israeli society and a destructive element concerning the national security of Israel.

Yehuda: Philosopher Hannah Arendt calls it “the perverse morality of believing that the ends justify the means.” And by the way, it’s the same logic—killing a prime minister, as blowing up a bus or attacking a music festival, which is, you believe so deeply in it that it doesn’t matter who you’re willing to sacrifice along the way.

I guess the last question I’ll ask you, you’ve been very generous with your time. You are trying to do something different than any of your predecessors on the Israeli left since basically Yitzhak Rabin, which is win. So it’s not just a question of what’s gone wrong on the right. It’s also a little bit of a question of what has to look different in terms of your leadership of the left that Israelis have not seen before.

What do you think is the different message that you’re bringing, whether it’s on security or regional cooperation or religion and state? What’s the story that you want people to hear that will not just be something that can win, but will represent a different voice from the left that people haven’t heard before?

Yair: I think it’s not so new. You have mentioned, you know, Rabin, but I can mention, you know, others like Ben Gurion and, you know, and, and many others. And I think that the secret here is very, very simple. It’s to readapt this Zionist-left approach. And the meaning of that is on the one hand, we are willing to fight for our security, for our destiny. We have no intention to give up and we know how to do it.

And at the same time, we keep our ability to think rationally about our destiny. And, you know, thinking about our destiny, it’s putting in the middle of our intentions, the Israeli civilian, the Israeli common people. This is, I think, the secret. We need to see people, not leaders, not rabbis, not Messiah, the people, the common people. And I think this humanistic and I think at the same time very Jewish approach, this is the secret of our existence here in the Middle East.

This is the meaning of Zionist left. The Zionist left in Israel, from my perspective, is this ability to take inspiration from our predecessors, the great Zionist, you know, figures like Herzl, like Ben Gurion, like Rabin, I think we need to follow their path in order to create something really fantastic in the Middle East and we can do it.

Yehuda: Thank you so much for being with me today. It was an honor.

Yair: Thank you so much.

Tessa: Thanks for listening to our show. And special thanks to our guest this week, Yair Golan. Identity/Crisis is produced by me, Tessa Zitter, and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was produced with assistance from Annie Beyer Chaffetz and edited by Gareth Hobbs at Silversound NYC.

Transcripts of our show are now available on our website typically a week after an episode airs. We’re always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes, so if you have a topic you’d like to hear about, or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us at [email protected].

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