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Why Are Young Jews Turning Against Israel? Transcript

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

Yossi: I have this terrible feeling that the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism is the punishment for our having lost sight of our own moral commitments. There’s a certain obtuseness that’s set in to the Israeli discourse, or absence of discourse, on morality, and something has changed and we all feel it. 

 

Sara: I’m just thinking about a young man I met in one of the Hartman regions who said, “I’m queer. I’m on the left. I’m proudly Jewish. I’m a professional, and I want to defend Israel to my peers, to my communities, but Israel makes it just so damn hard to do that.”

 

Yossi: The anti-Zionist assault is exactly focusing on the healing process of the Jewish people beginning in 1945. And that process involved the reclaiming of power—military power, sovereignty in Israel—and soft power, political power, philanthropic power in the diaspora. And that’s exactly what the anti-Zionists and the progressive left are targeting now. And that’s the story we have to start figuring out how to defend.

 

Sara: Hi everybody. It is so great to be here with you. We’re so thrilled to welcome you to the Machon, and I’m so honored and gratified to be in conversation with Yossi Klein Halevi tonight.

 

I just wanted to open up by recalling a metaphor that one of my former supervisors used to describe the work of education and of educators. They had said that educators, are bridges between the older generation and the newer generation. But unlike bridges that just transport things back and forth, educators also have to mediate and have to translate the ideas and the scholarship and the values of the past and of the present to the future, to those who will be inheriting this world and shaping this world.

 

So I think this is an amazing opportunity from both sides, both for you to bring back some of Yossi’s perspectives and insights, and what will come out of this conversation, to translate that to your students and to your educational contexts, but also for you to represent the voices and perspectives and dilemmas and challenges of your students to this arena and to bring those voices into the arena. So, like I said, it’s incredible that you’re here and we’re excited to get started.

 

So in that vein, Yossi, I wanted to start us off with Jewish anti-Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionists, which is of course a prevalent, or is becoming a more prevalent, phenomenon, especially in the younger generation, whether in high schools or on university campuses. And I wanted to ask you how you understand this phenomenon. What are the motives, or what are the contributing factors that are propelling this movement? And what can maybe the North American Jewish mainstream, or the establishment, learn from this movement?

 

Yossi: So, first of all, hi Sara. It’s wonderful to be with you, and good evening everyone. Really, as Sara said, we’re thrilled to have you here at the Machon, and bruchim haba’im.

 

So if you’re asking about the reasons for what’s happening, I think that there is a reason that we can attribute to Israel, there’s a reason we can attribute to diaspora Jews, and then there’s a broader civilizational crisis that’s happening in the West.

 

In terms of Israel, our share of responsibility is that in some ways, I have this terrible feeling that the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism is the punishment for our having lost sight of our own moral commitments, our own, the standards that we set for ourselves. And it’s there in the Declaration of Independence. It’s not a left-wing or right-wing divide. 

 

So when I see the alienation, I feel that there’s something at play here that in part—and I’m going to emphasize in part—that we’ve helped bring on ourselves. There’s a certain obtuseness that’s set into the Israeli discourse—or absence of discourse—on morality, and something has changed and we all feel it.

 

The diaspora side of this is—when I listen to the kids who are turning against Israel, what I hear—and this is if I’m generous, when I’m in a generous mood, and to really find the kaf zchut, the measure of justness in what they’re saying— there’s this cry in the diaspora soul, if I may put it that way, of this loss of innocence. And the loss of innocence—and we need to unpack that, because I think it’s more complicated—but the loss of who we saw ourselves as being as a people.

 

And think about the encounter in the Kuzari by Yehuda Halevi, the medieval Jewish philosopher, where the king of the Kuzari turns to the rabbi. It’s a disputation among the three monotheistic faiths, and the rabbi proclaims that we are the best faith because we don’t harm anyone. And the Kuzari king essentially laughs and he says, “Well, of course you don’t, because you can’t. You don’t have the power. What happens when you will have the power?” And I think that’s really, in some ways, one of the most important questions of our time.

 

But the Jewish self-definition through 2,000 years of powerlessness, enforced powerlessness, was as a tender people. And one of the most cherished ways in which Jews described themselves was as rachmanim b’nei rachmanim, merciful children of merciful parents. And inevitably, something of that has been lost in the transition to power.

 

Now, what I would argue in response—I think there’s much that we need to say in response—but first of all, we didn’t lose our innocence by regaining power. We lost our innocence in the most extreme experience of powerlessness that the Jews, or any other people, ever experienced. That, of course, was the Shoah. That’s when we lost our innocence.

 

And so this longing for—I understand the cry of pain of losing something essential that defined us. But if we had not regained power, if we had remained this beaten people in 1945, without any prospect of reconstituting ourselves as a nation, being able to adequately defend ourselves, I think we would have faded away in despair. And so power actually, I believe, saved the vitality of the Jewish people and made it possible for us to question the abuses of power.

 

If my father, who was a survivor, if my father had been able to eavesdrop on a Hartman conversation about power in 1945, he simply wouldn’t have understood. What’s the angst? What’s the problem here? How could Jews ever, how could there ever be a situation where Jews have too much power coming out of 1945?

 

And so I think that what we’re seeing in the outbreak of diaspora anti-Zionism. And by the way, it’s not really accurate to speak about a diaspora-Israel crisis. It’s an American Jewish-Israeli crisis, because in the rest of the diaspora, no matter how uneasy Jews are about Israeli policies, there is not a fundamental alienation from Israel. And I think that that’s really an important question that American Jews need to ask themselves: what’s gone wrong in America? Why have understandable feelings of anger and alienation translated into organized forms of alienation? And that’s something, again, that’s happened very minimally elsewhere.

 

And the final piece of this: so we’re looking at a failure of American Jewry. There’s the Israeli failure here, there’s an American Jewish failure at the same time. And I would just expand that, I would say that part of the American Jewish failure is an educational failure, a failure to inculcate young American Jews with the thrill and the responsibility of being born with a Jewish state as a reality, and what that means in the context of 2,000 years of Jewish history. Something has not been transmitted.

 

And the final piece of this is the civilizational crisis in the West, where you have a generation, not only in the US, throughout, obviously, Western Europe as well. Western Europe, not Eastern Europe, interestingly, where young people aren’t sure that the West is worth defending. They’re not sure that the West deserves to survive, that the West stands for anything. And I think this is a civilizational collapse. And young American Jews, certainly young liberal, progressive American Jews, live in that environment, and they are bringing that civilizational crisis into an arena where it does not belong, because in Israel we have many crises here, but we are not having a crisis of the fundamental legitimacy of our being here and of the need to defend this place. And so there, again, I worry about the growing disconnect.

 

Sara: Okay. So I heard three factors that are contributing to this movement. I want to hold on to the first two. And I guess there is the loss of innocence, and maybe the lack of appreciation for the ways in which the state of Israel and Zionism saved the Jewish people in many ways. 

 

But then there’s also—I don’t know what the opposite of a loss of innocence is—there is getting sullied, or getting dirty, with power, where, if we think about things like the occupation or the war in Gaza, I think that American Jews might feel implicated both by their Americanness. In other words, it is their taxpayer dollars and political will that is supporting this war, and then it’s also they feel implicated by their Jewishness, by their Jewish identity, by their Jewish upbringing, by their Jewish communities, where I think they’ve seen an uncompromising support of Israel and no mention of, or very little mention of, some of the systemic ills that are besetting Israeli society and Israeli politics.

 

Yossi: So Israel is in a, I would say a near-impossible situation, where we have no choice, I believe, and I think most Israelis believe this today, given the reality on the ground, given the nature of the Palestinian National Movement, the refusal of any part of the Palestinian National Movement to come to terms with our indigenousness, given the security risks of transferring the reality of Gaza to Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, the territories, however one wants to call it—that we have no choice but to pursue a policy that is inherently immoral.

 

The tragedy is that—and I believe this—our survival depends on pursuing policies that are immoral. And my understanding of morality is that there is a hierarchy. And the first responsibility that I have, as someone who is trying to live a moral life, is to protect myself, my family, my community, my country from existential threat.

 

And I see the war in Gaza in similar ways. I see the war in Gaza as a just war, as an unavoidable war, a war that we had to fight. That raises some very difficult questions. But those are questions not about the war fundamentally, but about certain ways in which the war was fought.

 

Now, I understand that what I’ve just said now, both about the occupation and about the war in Gaza, places me at odds with a very large number of American Jewry. And that’s one way of defining the divide between Israelis and American Jews. And I struggle with that. I agonize over it. And that’s where I do have a shared language, to some extent, with Israel’s American Jewish critics, in that I share the angst, but I don’t share their conclusions. And that’s very different. And so I’m not sure where to take that. And I say that as somebody who’s been engaged in the Israeli-American Jewish conversation for well, most of my life, really, and certainly over the last 40 years, as that’s been the core of my professional life, this relationship. And I’ve come to a point where I just feel this impasse and I don’t know where to take this.

 

So, from an Israeli perspective, we have long memories about this conflict, and for me, the Second Intifada, or more to the point, what preceded the Second Intifada, is still in some ways an active part of how I see this conflict. But of course that has not translated for most of American Jewry. That’s history. And so I don’t—Sara, I don’t know what to do.

 

Sara: I mean, I’m just thinking about a young man I met in one of the Hartman regions, who said, “I’m queer. I’m on the left. I’m proudly Jewish. I’m a professional. And I want to defend Israel to my peers, to my communities, but Israel makes it just so damn hard to do that.” And I think, what you’re saying in response to him, I’m wondering what you could respond to him. In other words, I think he’s right. 

 

And I was even, I was thinking about him a lot when I went with one of the tiyulim to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And I think that was it. Everybody who got up, the diplomats who were involved in defending Israel at the Hague, or representing Israel to Congress, whatever it was, there was no appreciation or no understanding that what is happening here. It’s not just fueling anti-Zionism, Jewish anti-Zionism, but it’s also just fueling that angst. And it just feels like an impossible situation to be in as a North American Jew. What do we say? What do we point to?

 

Yossi: So, I think part of the problem in the American Jewish-Israeli conversation is that for Israelis, Israel isn’t just an idea. Israel is a lived reality. And so, yes, I can abhor this government, and I could be out on the streets demonstrating against this government, and I have been, on and off, for the last years. But I have a wider context in which to absorb the tragedy of this government, and that is that my Israel is not just confined to what I read about Israel. It’s a lived experience. 

 

And the challenge that I think all of you have is: how do you take some of that commitment that we here take for granted, because it’s our life, and how do you make that less abstract for young American Jews? I think that’s really what you’re asking. And so I think that there are certain ideas that I would like to see being part of a curriculum, being part of an American Jewish education, the conversation on Israel. 

 

And the first is really what I touched on earlier, which is that we are part of a generation that is living after the fulfillment of the Jewish people’s worst nightmare and greatest dreams. And it all happened just before I was born. But in terms of Jewish history, it has just happened.

 

And there also, by the way, I think there’s also a crisis of memory that’s implicit here, which is that if your memory span is shaped by American culture, then you measure time in a few hundred years. If your memory span is shaped by Jewish culture, then your memory is defined by 4,000 years. 

 

And when I speak to young American Jews and they’ll say, very understandably, “You know, your Israel was the Six Day War and Yom Kippur and Entebbe, and my Israel is occupation and Netanyahu and this government,” I’ll say, “Okay, do you go to a seder, and what do you do at the seder?” You don’t just tell the story of what happened 3,500 years ago. We read the passage in the Haggadah that you need to experience the Exodus as if you yourself were there.

 

Now, a people that has that kind of relationship to memory, that has a tactile experience of centuries and millennia, how is it that we’re producing a generation now that looks at events that happened 80 years ago and says, “Well, what does that have to do with me?” There’s been a breakdown in our ability to transmit Jewish memory, and the mechanics of Jewish memory. 

 

And if you remember as a Jew, then the Six Day War and Entebbe aren’t just my experiences, in the same way that my father’s experiences weren’t just his, and the same way that Egypt’s experiences didn’t just happen thousands of years ago. 

 

So there’s something here that we’re not succeeding in conveying, and this idea of the privilege of being a Jew in this time—the burden, certainly the burden, but also the privilege—of carrying this story at a moment when, in a sense, 4,000 years of Jewish history is hanging in the balance.

 

Now, if God forbid this place fails, in whatever way and for whatever reason, the judgment, the retroactive judgment on Jewish history will be devastating. Jews waited thousands of years to come back here, and then in the span of a century, we blew it. And how does a people recover from that? I don’t believe that we would recover. And so there’s something about the privilege of being born at a time when the great nightmares and dreams of Jewish history have all already happened. 

 

And we are the generation that needs to start thinking about: What does that mean? What does our story mean, the story of the last hundred years? Because as a people, we haven’t begun to ask those questions. We’ve dealt with the last hundred years politically. We have not dealt with them spiritually. We haven’t dealt with the basic questions of: What does our story mean? So that’s one piece of it.

 

And again, Sara, I know it’s hard for me to have to formulate this in a clear way, because I think we’re all grappling right now. But my intuition is that there’s something in the story of the last hundred years, something of the thrill of being a Jew at this moment and carrying the story, the responsibility of carrying the story when so much is at stake. I would say that what’s at stake is actually everything, and to convey that to young Jews. And in Israel it’s much easier. In Israel it’s—you take it for granted. We’re defending our homes, and secular Israelis, young Israelis, understand that there’s a lot at stake here.

 

Sara: I mean, I think I’m thinking about something that Josh Ladon often says, which is that when North American Jews talk about Israel, they’re really talking about their Judaism, that Israel stands in for something. So you’re right, it’s definitely an abstraction in some ways, but it’s also… We’re using it as a way of thinking through some of the dilemmas of being a North American Jew.

 

And I think, you know, this is actually an incredible group to ask: How do we convey this memory? How do we convey the memory? Like what you’re really saying is, instead of saying that on the seder night that we should all see ourselves as though “ki’ilu yatza mi-Mitzrayim,” what we’re saying, provocatively, maybe, is we should be seeing ourselves as though we left Auschwitz, and as though we were—

 

Yossi: Absolutely. That’s exactly what the consciousness of being a survivor people is, and what it means to be a survivor people in terms of how we treat each other as Jews, how we relate to Jewish communities around the world, how we relate to Israel, how we relate to the other, how we relate to minorities in Israel, how we relate to ruling over another people. These are all questions of how we relate to power. A survivor people is not squeamish about reclaiming power. It celebrates the life force in its ability to reclaim power. But there’s also moral responsibilities that come with power. And so that’s exactly the way that I think we should frame it.

 

And what’s interesting is, if you think about it, we’re never actually commanded by the tradition to see ourselves as if we were slaves in Egypt. We’re told to remember the slavery in Egypt and draw conclusions from that, moral lessons, but we’re never told to empathize with that experience to the point where we are there. But we are told by the Haggadah to see yourself as if you left Egypt.

 

And I think that there’s something there that’s really essential in terms of how we need to teach the last 80 years of Jewish history, which is that I think the weight of Holocaust education, for example, needs to shift from focus on between 1933 and 1945. Obviously that period has to be taught, but I think the weight needs to gradually shift to the day after the Shoah. How did the Jews go from the lowest point in our history, which is 1945, to the peak in terms of our ability to defend ourselves, in terms of our centrality — for better and for worse — on the world stage, in terms of our ability to influence the world conversation? The Jewish people has not been this important to the world, again for better and for worse, for 2,000 years.

And so there’s something in that story of that transition. I think it’s the greatest moment of survival in the history of 4,000 years of Jewish survival. And we have never managed to not just survive, but in some deep sense reverse the destruction.

And so that, of course, is the story that’s now under assault. The anti-Zionist assault is exactly focusing on the healing process of the Jewish people beginning in 1945. And that process involved the reclaiming of power, military power, sovereignty in Israel, and soft power, political power, philanthropic power in the diaspora. And that’s exactly what the anti-Zionists and the progressive left are targeting now. And that’s the story we have to start figuring out how to defend.

 

Sara: I guess, I mean, a couple of things in response. I think that I would worry that leaning too heavily into those narratives, into the embrace and reclamation of power, leads not just to parochialism, but to an obsession with power and to the abuse of power. And I think we see that playing out here.

 

And, you know, I think, compounded with that, and I’m not sure what to do with this divide, but Jews have thrived in North America as minorities because of things like separation between church and state, and liberal democratic values and norms and institutions. And here, Jews have thrived because they’re the majority and because there is a Jewish public square and there is Jewish sovereignty.

 

And it’s an incredible laboratory: What does that look like, what does it mean, how does it play out? But I think it is hard for North American Jews to wrap their heads around that, right? And remember, why are we commanded to remember the Exodus? So that we treat others, the stranger, the other minorities, decently and with kindness and compassion and love.

 

So I think there, in some ways, is a fundamental divide that we would need to overcome. And I think that there are moral and educational risks when it comes to the narrative that you’re suggesting we lean into.

 

Yossi: So I think this is exactly the conversation that American Jews and Israelis need to have, because the morally positive side of owning power is that you have to take responsibility. And taking responsibility for power means that you can’t see yourself as a victim anymore.

 

Now, October 7th scrambled that narrative, because on October 7th we had a temporary relapse into powerlessness. The shock of October 7th was that the IDF disappeared for one day. But nevertheless, I think even more than the atrocities and the hostages, the trauma that’s going to linger, I think, for this generation, was the shock of seeing the return of defenselessness, of victimhood. 

 

And how do we frame October 7th? The language that we use for October 7th—we say the greatest number of Jews killed since the Holocaust—I personally don’t use that language. I think it is doing ourselves an injustice, because it reinforces this narrative of a return to powerlessness. And I prefer to use the language of the largest number of Jews killed in a century of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

 

Now, that is, given the nature of what this conflict has looked like, that is enough of a statement to convey the enormity of what happened on October 7th. I would also, by the way, say it wasn’t only the largest number of Jews killed in a hundred years of conflict — largest number of Israelis, because there were several dozen Arab Israelis who were killed as well.

 

But the language of using the Shoah for October 7th reinforces a dynamic in which we are either victims or victimizers. And I don’t think that either of those categories helps us understand Israel’s predicament. And you can’t look at the ruins of Gaza and see yourself as a victim. We have the power, and I’m glad we have the power. 

 

This is a terrible thing that I’ll say—I’m glad we have the power to devastate our enemies more than they were able to devastate us. That’s a very Israeli thing to say, but that’s owning the responsibility of power. And again, I’m not saying that as a blanket justification for everything that happened in Gaza, but as a principle, the fact that we were able to not just recover from October 7th, but inflict far greater devastation on the Islamist ring that was surrounding us, on most of our borders, that for me is a victory. But the responsibility of that power is, again, I can’t hide behind the comforting identity of victim.

 

And if I could just say one last thing about it: there are two camps within the Jewish people today whose starting point is the identity of victim. One is the far right and the other is the far left. What does the far right say? I’m thinking of the Ben Gvir world, the Kahanist world. And I know that world, I personally come from there. And what that world says is: look at what they did to us, and therefore we are absolved of the moral angst that’s binding to other peoples who didn’t suffer as we did. Suffering is the exemption card. And you’ll hear that from Palestinians all the time when there’s a justification for terror: well, look what was done to us. And so the Jewish far right uses victimhood to reinforce its need for a morally unrestrained use of power. 

 

The Jewish far left has the same starting point: we’re a victim people. But because we’re a victim people, for us to use power is to betray what is most noble about us. And therefore our victimhood requires of us to renounce power.

 

These are the two extremes. One, of course, is taking hold in Israel, and the other is taking hold in American Jewry. And I think that both of these responses to power, that are rooted in victimhood, lead to profoundly immature and immoral positions. I think the positions of both the far right and the far left are profoundly morally distorted and have actual real-life consequences.

 

Sara: So let me ask you something, going back to Jewish anti-Zionism and the extreme left. How do you think about engaging with that world, whether with the ideas, or with the people, or with the organizations?

 

Yossi: So I think that we need, as in all things Jewish, we need the consciousness of hamavdil, we need the consciousness of havdalah, making distinctions. And when you approach the question of Jewish anti-Zionism, there are different layers here. 

 

The first is a necessary distinction between someone who has made a professional career out of anti-Zionism, whose public Jewish identity is wrapped up in delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist, on the one hand, and a young person who’s been exposed to anti-Zionist ideas and is confused, or maybe now calls themselves an anti-Zionist. One has to really make a very careful distinction there.

 

The official face of Jewish anti-Zionism, whether it’s an organization or individuals, has no place in the mainstream Jewish community. Individual Jews who define themselves as anti-Zionist should be drawn closer. There should be more outreach. And we’re in a very painful and complicated moment, and no one should be ostracized from Jewish life—again, with the exception of those who are making a career out of reinforcing the movement to criminalize Israel and to criminalize the mainstream American Jewish community, to turn the American Jewish mainstream into accessories to genocide. And so those people have no place in organized Jewish life. They should not be invited to speak in synagogues, in Jewish schools.

 

There’s one other distinction that I would make, and that is something that I would borrow from the Charedi world, which is the distinction between Satmar and Neturei Karta. Theologically there’s no difference. They draw on the same texts, they both regard the creation of Israel as—the Satmar Rebbe wrote in one of his books—a satanic event. The difference is in how each group plays out its anti-Zionism.

 

Satmar confines its anti-Zionism to within Charedi discourse. When they have an anti-Israel demonstration, they’ll rent a stadium and fill it with 40,000 people and demonstrate against autopsies in Israel, or whatever the issue of the day is, and they won’t invite the media. This is an internal Jewish conversation, and they certainly would never join with the BDS movement or march with flags. And Neturei Karta, of course, does exactly that. And in fact, Satmar regards Neturei Karta as beyond the pale. They see Neturei Karta as giving their anti-Zionism a bad name.

 

So there’s something in that dynamic that I think is very relevant. One can be a non-Zionist, one can be an anti-Zionist. The question is, what do you do with that? We’re not going to be policing what Jews believe or don’t believe, but we certainly have a right to defend ourselves against organized forms of assault against Israel and the mainstream Jewish community.

 

Sara: So I appreciate the distinctions, and yet I’m struggling a little bit with how you’re describing the younger Jewish anti-Zionists, who, I think you might have even used the word “confused.” And it reminds me, it’s reminiscent of how, for example, the Rambam describes the heretic as tinok she’nishba, or how Orthodox rabbis, a couple of hundred years ago, thought about Reform Jews and Reform Judaism, and they made a distinction between the leaders and the followers, and even using the term tinok she’nishba, baby, or a child who is in captivity. There’s something almost definitionally infantilizing about it.

 

And I think, number one, I would say, I think we have to do a better job of listening: what are their concerns? What are their perspectives? What is animating them? And not assume that it’s all bad faith. 

 

And the second piece is, I think, even with the institutions and even with the organizations and the leaders, I’m reminded of the episode, I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but when the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations did not give a literal and proverbial seat to J Street. And I think that was a mistake. They drew a very hard line, and it was a liberal Zionist organization. And looking back, J Street was the least of their problems, and if they had invited J Street into the conversation and into the establishment, maybe we wouldn’t be in a situation today where things have gotten so radical.

 

Yossi: So, I agree with you about J Street, even though I’m personally not a fan. And my frame of reference, post-October 7th, was actually the demonstration that you had in Washington in November, right after the massacre, and I took note of the organizations that were there. J Street was there, and I felt that any organization or Jew who felt the need to be there after October 7th, to stand publicly with the Jewish community, should have a place at the table. And again, I have very deep arguments with J Street, but I have a deep argument with them because we’re still speaking broadly the same language and hopefully have the same commitments.

 

I don’t speak the same language with Jewish Voice for Peace, and so I don’t have an argument with them. There’s no conversation, in the same way that I don’t have an argument with Jews for Jesus. It’s not part of my conversation.

 

And if anything—and I used this analogy to an American Jewish group once, and someone took great offense and said, “How dare you compare Jewish Voice for Peace to Jews for Jesus?” And I said, “You’re right, I think actually that Jewish Voice for Peace is far more dangerous.” And certainly at this moment in Jewish history, when we are under sustained assault, when the legitimacy of our story is under sustained assault, it’s not Jews for Jesus that’s threatening my story today, it’s Jewish Voice for Peace. And so, yes, I agree with you to a point, but I would not draw a line from J Street to Jewish Voice for Peace.

 

In terms of relating to young Jews who call themselves anti-Zionist, I understand there’s something patronizing in an attitude that says, “Well, you’re confused, you haven’t thought this through yet.” But if I’m going to be honest—and we need to be honest with each other at this point—the phenomenon of, or the return of, organized Jewish anti-Zionism strikes me as a profoundly immature expression. It is an expression of what the early Zionists discerned in the exilic Jewish personality as an inability to take responsibility for one’s fate.

 

Now, I respect the anger and the alienation, and that’s where I can have a conversation with them. What I don’t respect, and will not accept the legitimacy of, is turning that alienation into organized forms of Jewish alienation from Israel. That to me is not legitimate. And if we don’t have minimal red lines, then I think—we talk about a big tent, but tents have flaps. I’m sure that analogy has been used before. It sounds Hartmanesque. So, so, we need the expansiveness of the tent, and we need the flaps, especially at this moment. If we don’t lower the flaps, then we are going to be defenseless against this onslaught.

 

Sara: Yossi, thank you. Thank you and thank you all.

 

Yossi: Thank you very much. Thank you, Sara.