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Touro Talks are timely conversations engaging college students, thought leaders and experts from around the world on academic and contemporary issues. Hosted by Touro University president, Dr. Alan Kadish.
Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg. If you would like to sponsor, please email tourotalks@touro.edu
[SUMMARY] In this episode of Touro Talks, Dr. Alan Kadish, President of Touro University, hosts a discussion with best-selling author Yossi Klein Halevi. They talk about what it means to be a people that has regained power but is still under existential threat.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Good morning. I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, president of Touro University. And welcome to Touro Talks, a series of conversations about issues that are important in 2024. Today's topic is Jewish vulnerability and resilience after October 7.
It's been a complicated week, and few weeks, in the world. And although we hadn't, fortunately, planned on some of these events when we invited Yossi Klein Halevi to join us, his perspectives on life in Israel and what's going on in the Middle East are unique and timely.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Institute's Muslim Leadership Institute, which teaches emerging young Muslim leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity, and Israel.
His 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish book council's Everett Book of the Year Award. And his latest book, Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller. He writes for leading op-ed pages around the world, including The Times and Wall Street Journal.
His first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, tells the story of his teenage years as a follower of the militant right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane, and his subsequent disillusionment with radicalism. In 2013, he was a visiting professor of visual studies at JTS, and serves as a writer in residence at the University of Illinois.
He was born in Brooklyn, but moved to Israel in 1982. He's married to Sarah and has three children. And as someone who's been in Israel for a long time but grew up in the United States, Yossi has a unique perspective to share with us. Welcome to Yossi Klein Halevi.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Thank you, Alan. It's a pleasure to be with you.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So I thought we'd before beginning to talk about what's going on these days, I thought we'd start with the aftermath of October 7. And perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what the atmosphere in Israel was like and where you saw resilience and where unfortunately, there was also a good deal of vulnerability.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] So the immediate aftermath of October 7 was an intensely paradoxical time. It was really-- it was, on the one hand, we really saw the best of Israel emerging in our ability to instantly pivot from the lowest point in our schism, in the history of Israel.
The year leading up to October 7 was arguably the most divisive in Israel's history. We were tearing each other apart over the future of democracy in the Jewish state. And we instantly shifted from that low point of divisiveness to one of the peak moments in Israel's cohesiveness.
Everyone laid aside, temporarily, the deep divisions. My-- I'll call it my camp, the camp that was out in the streets, demonstrating on a regular basis against the government's judicial plans, forgot, temporarily, our deep mistrust for the prime minister, for the government, and immediately joined the war effort.
The leading organization that had really galvanized the demonstrations was
[SPEAKING HEBREW], brothers and sisters in arms. And they used their formidable list of contacts to organize massive assistance for the people in the South.
The government social agencies basically collapsed in the aftermath of October 7. And that was really an expression of the profound incompetence of this government, which wasn't an accident. It happened because there was a systematic assault on the professionalism of the civil service.
And the government ministers filled the civil service with their own appointees. And we saw the result on October 8, which was a virtual standstill in the ability, the effectiveness of our social agencies to meet this overwhelming crisis.
The people who stepped into the breach were the leaders of the protest movement. They went down South. They actually evacuated people from their homes. There were people in Sderot and Ofakim who were too afraid to leave their homes. They weren't sure if the terrorists were still prowling in the streets.
And so you had leaders, activists of the protest movement going down South and doing the job that the government should have done. They organized a massive outpouring of clothing and food. They helped relocate people. It was the kind of instant effort that, again, should have been undertaken by the government, but instead, fell into the hands of the government's opponents.
So we also saw a tremendous mobilization of volunteerism. There was an estimate that something like 50% of the Israeli public participated in some form of volunteer act in the immediate aftermath of October 7.
And if you think about that, I don't know that there's another society in the world that could boast of that level of participation. Now, it's true, we were in a state of existential crisis. But the society rose to the moment.
When I look back-- and I'm still on the positive side of the ledger. When I look back on the immediate aftermath of October 7, what I sense is that this was the moment when Israeli society came of age. It was the maturation of Israeli society.
And the reason that I say that is because in every previous war, we were led by a government, by a prime minister whom most of the country respected. Whether one agreed or not, with Menachem Begin in the first Lebanon war, with Golda Meir in Yom Kippur, with Levi Eshkol in the Six Day War, everyone knew that these were leaders who cared deeply about the country, who placed the country's best interests ahead of their own narrow concerns, especially during war.
This was the first time in Israel's history where we went to war and polls showed that a majority of Israelis, a large majority, believed that our prime minister prioritizes his own personal and political needs over the needs of the country, even during the war. And yet, despite that, despite the profound mistrust that so many of us have in this particular prime minister and in this government, we went to war anyway.
And I'm not sure that in the past, Israeli society would have been able to go to war being led by someone who so many of us regard as fundamentally untrustworthy, as a scoundrel. And yet, when it came to a life and death matter, we overcame that. And we mobilized ourselves.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So taking a step back, for those who might not be so familiar with the history, you talked about, quote, "your camp." So tell us a little bit about that. And tell us a little bit about, both then and now, how large you think the group that you say has a profound distrust of the prime minister is because I've seen polls that seem somewhat contradictory.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Yeah. Yeah. There are contradictory results, depending on when they're taken. The most recent that I saw, after Netanyahu's appearance on TV, promoting the Philadelphi Corridor as the most important strategic goal for Israel, I saw something like 51% of Israelis believed that Netanyahu's motive was sincere on Philadelphi.
Now, that still leaves an enormous amount of Israelis who disagree. Nevertheless, the balance seems to be-- I would say, if it's 50/50, that, in itself, should send alarm bells ringing for anyone who is worried about the future of Israel and especially our ability to maintain basic unity during war.
So my camp is for-- I identify as a centrist. And the center ranges from center left to center right. And I would say that what really unites the broad center-- and here, I do think the center left to center right is a majority of the country. What unites us is a commitment to maintaining Israel's identity as a Jewish and democratic state. And this government is the first in our history that really declared war on the delicate balance between these two identities.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So let's explore that for a moment. You talked a little bit about the protests that you participated in against judicial reform. Some Americans have some difficulty understanding some of the points of view on this, particularly since we're used to a Supreme Court that operates within a Constitution, although admittedly, the court interprets that Constitution differently.
But in Israel, in the absence of a Constitution, some suggest that some judicial reform is needed because the court has outsized power in its ability to create laws and to some extent, policies without any guiding document that restrains it.
Yeah, but the way we do--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
--about judicial reform. And is it not needed? Or was it just unknown?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] No, I think judicial reform is needed. And there is a very wide consensus in Israel that some kind of judicial reform is necessary. But it certainly was not that judicial reform. And it certainly was not in the hands of a prime minister who was on trial for three charges of corruption to dare to tamper with the judiciary, when clearly, he was, as we say in Hebrew, [SPEAKING HEBREW]. He had a direct self-interest in the outcome.
So on that ground alone, the process was invalid. But if you look at what the results of the judicial reform that the government was proposing would have been, it would have concentrated virtually unlimited power into the hands of the prime minister. Because this is a parliamentary system, the prime minister controls the Parliament.
And if there is no balance by the Court, then we are really in uncharted territories. Then we are looking at power in the hands, not just of any prime minister, but a prime minister who is at war with the Supreme Court. So this was, I believe, a moment of truth for Israeli society.
And God forbid, we came very close to destroying the foundations and yes, the shaky foundations, foundations that very much need repair. But we came very close to losing the whole structure. And it was the protest movement, I believe, that really saved Israeli democracy.
Now, Netanyahu tried to portray that this movement as left wing. And of course, he characterizes all of his opponents as left wing. But if you look at who the leading figures are in the political system opposing it, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman, and Gideon Sa'ar, these are all former close associates of Netanyahu, who became profoundly disillusioned. Basically, the opposition, the political opposition to Netanyahu, is led by his own former associates, people who ran his office, who were his closest advisors.
And so really, I see the debate over judicial reform as a struggle between the democratic wing of the Israeli right and the anti-democratic wing. And here's an additional irony. Netanyahu was once a stalwart of the democratic wing of the Likud.
In fact, under Netanyahu-- and it was the same under Shamir and under Begin-- there was no argument about the importance of preserving the authority of the court. In fact, the court that we know today developed its power under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. That's forgotten.
That's not to say, again, that there didn't need to be adjustments, but those adjustments needed to take place within a context of other changes. You mentioned the absence of a constitution. How do you defang the Supreme Court without creating a constitution to compensate for the loss of balance against the prime minister?
So there the premise, the notion that we need reform, was not the issue. It was not what was being debated. What was instead being debated was whether it was this government that had the moral, and for that matter, the legal authority to do this, and the kind of judicial reform that this government was trying to push through.
And one last point, Alan, if I may, Netanyahu did not run in this last election on a platform of judicial reform. He did not lay out Yariv Levin, the justice minister's program. In fact, Likud ministers were taken by surprise when Yariv Levin unveiled his plan.
The strong majority of Likud voters, who were polled and asked, did you know that this was happening? Did you know that this was going to be the plan? said, no, we didn't because it barely came up. When Netanyahu was asked about what his plans would be for judicial reform, he was always very reassuring during the election campaign. It will be done judiciously. It will be done with as much consensus as possible. And of course, the moment he won the election, he tried to ram through a plan that was not reform. It was revolution.
[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish joins again with his video appearing on the left of Yossi Klein Halevi. Yossi Klein Halevi's video stops displaying. Touro University logo is at the bottom right.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] I appreciate your comments on that. Let's try to turn to the war and what's happening right now. It's been almost a year since October 7. Has the course of the war and Israel's response to it surprised you? Is this what you expected? Where would you have seen this going?
And how have people-- as you pointed out, there was a lot of resilience in the people coming together to fight for Israel. How has it progressed over the past year, before we get to the current-day issues?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Well, just as an aside, I think we made a strategic mistake in going after Hamas. And I felt this and said it in the immediate aftermath of October 7, which is, we should go after Iran. I felt we should stop playing Iran's game of getting entangled in endless wars with Iran's proxies on our borders, and go right to what Naftali Bennett calls the head of the snake.
And what began on October 7 is the Iranian-Israeli war. Wasn't Hamas-Israeli war. That's only one front, and not even the main front in this war.
So I felt, from the beginning, that we were going-- obviously, I understand why we went after Hamas. And it was certainly emotionally gratifying. And yes, we can't leave Hamas, in the long-term, on our borders. But I do believe we have more urgent strategic matters to deal with, and especially the Iranian nuclear program.
But in terms of your question on Israeli society, in the immediate aftermath of October 7, there was widespread concern here about the army's capabilities. The army failed disastrously on October 7 in two ways, first of all, in failing to defend the border and secondly, in responding chaotically in those first crucial hours. It took the army way too long to regroup, to define the threat, and to begin to effectively push back the invasion.
So there were very serious questions on October 7 that I think most of us had, which is, do we still have it? Are we still capable? Are we still Israel? Is this still the IDF? And I think that these last 10 months have gone a long way to resolving that question, affirmatively. The army has fought well.
The soldiers have been extraordinary. We've seen more motivation in this war than, I would argue, we've seen since Yom Kippur, 1973. There's been such an eagerness to engage the enemy. There's been so much initiative at the front.
That said, there are deep questions about the strategy here. And those are questions that I have to the upper echelons of the army and certainly, to the government. Where's the endpoint? I have political questions for the government. I have military and strategic questions for the general staff. And the army has fought well, but to a large extent, predictably. And there have been very few surprises.
Those two back-to-back assassinations a few weeks ago, [SPEAKING HEBREW] in Tehran and the Hezbollah commander, the chief of staff of Hezbollah, in Beirut, were extraordinary and reassuring in that it was a reminder of the old Israel. But we haven't seen that much creativity in this war. And so there really there are questions.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So you talked about how-- Yossi, you talked about how the army, by and large, has fought well, if predictably. What's the mood on the street been like among Israeli citizens? This has been a very, very tough time, particularly the last week, with the murder of six hostages. What's the mood on the street been like? How have people responded? Has it been monolithic? Or have there been different reactions? What's your sense of how people are dealing with this?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] The one monolithic response is a deep sense of gloom. I think that emotionally, as a society, we touched that abyss of October 7. The murder of the six hostages, who were within reach of an IDF rescue team, was so profoundly depressing.
And we've been following the fate of these six people. Several of the six were particularly well known, Hersh, Carmel. In some ways, they were the main faces of the hostages for many Israelis. And so it was a profound blow.
Beyond that, people have taken this to different conclusions. And the bitterness of the growing divide among Israelis has really opened up again in the last week, in a way that we haven't experienced since October 7. When the war began, I stopped demonstrating.
I didn't go into the streets. I didn't join the demonstrations, demanding new elections, even though I desperately want new elections. And I also didn't join the hostage demonstrations because on this point, I agreed with the government, that I felt that the more we were divided on this, the more we were sending a signal to Hamas to dig in its heels and toughen its demands.
What changed for me over the last week were two things. One was the realization that a very large percentage of Israeli society can't bear this anymore. And by this, I don't mean the war. I mean the perception that the government is abandoning the hostages for political reasons, not for strategic reasons, because Netanyahu is afraid of losing his far-right coalition partners and afraid of losing his government as a consequence of that.
And so the tremendous demoralization among Israelis is the fear of losing the hostages for illegitimate reasons. So i felt this perception among Israelis.
And the second reason that finally did bring me into the streets was Netanyahu's press conference on the Philadelphi Corridor. The Philadelphi Corridor is the 16-kilometer stretch between Gaza and Egypt. And Netanyahu made the case that this is an existential issue, and in other words, it takes priority over rescuing the hostages. He didn't have the courage to say those words. But that's certainly what he meant.
And I did not believe it. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it for several reasons. One is because if Philadelphi was so essential, why did it take him six months or more to order the army to seize the corridor? Why didn't we do it the first week of the war? The first month of the war? Why did he suddenly wake up to the Philadelphi Corridor?
And it so happened that Netanyahu's embrace of the Philadelphi doctrine coincided, coincidentally or not-- I don't believe it was a coincidence-- with Orit Strook, one of the far-right government ministers, and others in the government, saying that if Netanyahu abandons Philadelphi, the government will fall. Now suddenly, Philadelphi's [SPEAKING HEBREW]. Its Holy of Holies. I don't buy it. And a very large number of the public doesn't buy it, including the entire Israeli security establishment.
I saw an interview just the other day with Nadav Argaman, the former head of the Shabak, the Shin Bet, who said that in fact, most of the weapons that were smuggled from Egypt into Gaza did not go through the Philadelphi Corridor.
And so I'm just an ordinary citizen. I don't have inside military information. Who am I to believe a desperate prime minister who has all the political motives to prioritize his own survival over the hostages, who has a track record of treating the families of the hostages with such callousness and contempt, with showing almost no empathy for the fate of the hostages? Or do I trust the entire strategic echelon?
Now, since October 7, I, like many Israelis, have profound questions about the security apparatus. I don't have blind trust in their judgment. But if you're asking me to weigh the security establishment against this prime minister and who is more trustworthy on this issue, I have no doubt that it's--
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So let's take a step back. Let's take a step back for a second, Yossi. Forgetting about the issues of the prime minister and his motivations, really, since the hostages were taken, Israel has had to make a decision about whether to negotiate the release of the hostages at all costs or attempt to oppose Hamas.
Should we have known that Hamas would start murdering hostages if we got close to them? Perhaps given everything else they've done, we shouldn't have been surprised.
But at the end of the day, the dilemma of the last almost year has been, do we prioritize a long-term solution which prevents October 7 from happening again? Or do we prioritize the fate, the terrible fate, of the hostages who were taken?
And if one takes a step back and removes the skepticism you've expressed about the prime minister from the conversation for a moment, it still remains a potential point to suggest that any deal which allows Hamas to repeat October 7, which they've said many times they plan to do, doesn't make sense.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] So one of the reasons--
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Is divisiveness and demonstration at this time really productive for the future of Israel?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Objectively, no. And if we had a government in place that the people could trust-- and here the question of the trustworthiness of the government has strategic implications, because if the hostages are allowed to die-- and let's assume that the strategic reason-- and you've just made a very good case.
And the reason that did not go out and demonstrate all these months for the hostages is because I believed exactly that. We need to prioritize victory over Hamas, even at the expense of rescuing hostages.
The reason that I don't feel that way today is because I see that the failure to save the hostages will have strategic consequences on Israeli society. And I'm speaking specifically of the basic faith that Israelis have in a covenant of trust that really is what defines Israeli society, which is, we take care of each other. Now, I can understand, though. And you're making a very good case for changing the ground rules.
Over the last decades, we have had-- the policy was never explicitly stated. But it was, in fact, the policy, that we prioritize the rescue, the freeing of hostages, even over strategic considerations. We will pay an exorbitant price for freeing the hostages. Should October 7 change the ground rules?
I believe that it should, but on one condition, that we have a government that has the moral authority and the trust of the strong majority of Israelis to make that decision because if this government tries to implement that decision, half the country, at least, is going to say, this isn't the same Israel that I signed up for.
This is an Israel now that allowed a ruthless and cynical prime minister to preside over the murder, the deaths of Israeli hostages for his own political reasons, not for strategic reasons, even if there is a compelling strategic argument to be made. That's the tragedy of Israel's dilemma right now. That's the price we're paying for having a prime minister who more than half the country fundamentally mistrusts.
You can't make that kind of a strategic change in policy, a moral policy, without having the moral authority of the person on top. And we don't have that today. And that's why I believe we have no choice but to cut a terrible deal, go to new elections, have a government of national unity that the country will trust. And that government needs to then make the change in policy. We're not paying blackmail anymore. But that can't happen now. It can only happen post Netanyahu.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So in a sense, what you're saying, is that Israeli society has fractured to the point where we really can't do what's in the best long-term interests of the country.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Absolutely. Absolutely. I was at a demonstration in Jerusalem last night. And I've been to lots of demonstrations in my life. I have rarely seen such raw emotion and rage. People feel that the hostages are dying because as one of the hostage families, one of the relatives who spoke at the demonstration said, this isn't the Philadelphi Corridor.
It's the Ben-Gvir-Smotrich corridor. You can't change-- you can't make such a far reaching change in policy when you have so much mistrust toward the government. It's not going to work. People are going to lose their minds here. People are going to opt out. They're going to give up on Israel. That's what worries me.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So in a sense, coming back to the question we started with, vulnerability versus resistance, what you're suggesting actually, that right now-- versus resilience-- what you're suggesting right now is that these 11 terrible months have eroded our resistance to the point where we're too vulnerable, and we have to make a deal, which as you said, is a horrible deal. And I'm playing the devil's advocate, by the way. I'm not expressing really, my own opinions. I'm playing the devil's advocate.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Alan, I would just make one change in what you were saying. It's not just the 11 months. It's the last 2 years. You can't understand this moment without understanding the year that led up to October 7 and the profound shattering of the most basic trust in our institutions.
And then October 7 coming on the heels of that year-- and we papered over it those first few months. We all made the decision as a society, we have to go to war and we have to leave our disagreements aside.
I believe that we would still have been able to do that were it not for the lives of the hostages. It's the hostages that are hitting us at that most vulnerable place of the Israeli psyche. And the fact that the fate of the hostages are in the hands of a government that so many people here don't trust, that's the disastrous combination.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So listen, there's a long history of trying to address this dilemma, as I'm sure you know. The Talmud deals with, how far should we go to release hostages? And without going into the details, the answer is, pretty far, but not to an unlimited extent.
It seems that for whatever reason, what you're suggesting is, we can't get back to that idea at this point. And in your view, you blame the government's lack of trustworthiness for that point of view.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] I'm speaking personally. I'm speaking personally. I kept away for a year, from these demonstrations. I did not join the effort for the hostages. I felt very guilty about it. But I felt that, no, that's not where our strategic interest lies. After October 7, we have to defeat Hamas.
And I see what's happening to Israeli society. And I don't think that we'll be able to endure the mass deaths of these hostages. I think the price on Israeli society will be an historic breakdown of faith in the country. And that worries me profoundly.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So let me just back up with a couple of questions that have come in from the audience. I just want to reiterate an answer, which you already gave, about what the Philadelphi Corridor is, which is, it's a strip of land that separates, or is at the border of Gaza and Egypt.
And you correctly alluded before to the question of, we know that Hamas has accumulated a huge arsenal, much of who's been fired already, some of which has been captured, but certainly, some of which remains. And the question is, with Israel, in theory, controlling entry into Gaza, how did that happen? And the dilemma you raised is the question of, how much of that has come through Egypt, through tunnels, or directly across the border? And how much has come through other sources?
And I certainly don't argue with the security establishment. But I guess at the end of the day, we don't really know. Is that fair?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] We don't know. We don't know. And I have Netanyahu on the one hand, telling me, this is [SPEAKING HEBREW], a life and death line in the sand. If we don't hold on to Philadelphi, our long-term survival is in danger. And then I have the entire defense establishment, including from the defense minister on, saying, nonsense. Netanyahu knows it's not true, with the strong implication being, he's doing this for political reasons.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Well, let me ask you the following question. Is it possible that the government has simply made the decision that releasing thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including murderers, which appears to be part of the deal, is just not worth it, and Philadelphi is a proxy for saying, we've looked at this deal, we know what we agreed to, and we know why we agreed to it, but we just think the risks are too high in the long term, as terrible as it is to say that these hostages, who've been through absolutely the worst kind of experience-- we feel for them? But we just think that the long-term costs are too high. Is that possible?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] It is possible. I think it's a really important observation. Now, Netanyahu, of course, has never said that.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Well, strategically, it may not make sense for him to say that out loud, right?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Well, the people that I trust in the political system happen to be the people that I most deeply disagree with, which is Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. But I certainly trust that what they say is what they mean. They say that. They have a whole list of red lines, which includes release of terrorists. It includes Philadelphi. It includes the Netzarim line.
But we have a prime minister. And he has been-- from the very beginning, he's never told us the truth. And it's a little late now. If he were to call a press conference and level with us, at this point, who would even believe it? He's burned. He has no credibility anymore.
And so I can disagree with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. But that's a disagreement. I don't even have a disagreement with Netanyahu. I don't know what he believes and what he wants. And I certainly don't trust his motives.
So yeah, I think that the point you're raising is essential. But again, it comes down to the question of, how does Israel-- how do we reach these profound decisions? How do we make major changes? If we now change the ground rules, and we're saying, you know what?
All these years, you all had the assumption that we take care of each other, and if an Israeli falls into captivity, we will move heaven and Earth. We will pay virtually whatever price we have to pay. That has been axiomatic for at least a generation.
October 7 comes along. And yes, we need to change the ground-- I agree with that. We need to change the ground rules. But how do we do it? And who does it? Again, I come back to the question of trust. There needs to be some consensus in the society.
There needs to be a conversation about what the issues are. There are really important points that the camp articulating the position that you just mentioned really can raise. And that is, what's the arithmetic here? How many Israelis are going to have to die for the hostages that are released?
Look, we saw that with the Gilad Shalit release. And many of the people who participated in the October 7 massacre were released in the Gilad Shalit--
Including the leaders.
--hostages. So the time to have had that conversation would have been in the immediate aftermath of the Shalit exchange. But we haven't had that conversation. And do you have it now, when half of this country believes that this government is illegitimate? And especially after October 7, when this is a government that has presided over the greatest failures in Israeli history, this is the government that we're going to trust to make this delicate and far-reaching change in policy?
It can't work this way. It won't be accepted by the public. We just had back to back, two weeks running, the largest demonstrations in Israel's history. And my prediction is, this is going to continue for weeks now. We're going to see not tens of thousands anymore, hundreds of thousands, every week.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] What's the goal of the demonstrations?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Say it again.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] What's the goal of the demonstrations?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] At this point--
[Dr. Alan Kadish] What's your goal?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] There were two streams of demonstrations for the last year. And as I mentioned before, I didn't participate in either of them. One was to bring down the government. And I agreed with that policy. And the other was to prioritize the hostages over defeating Hamas. And I didn't agree with it, with that goal, certainly not in the first months of the war.
Today, the two streams have basically united. And the families of the hostages are speaking in a way that we haven't heard over the last year. They're calling Netanyahu a murderer. They're saying he doesn't care about the lives of the hostages, and this government has to go. So the goals have changed in that the goals have merged.
The protest movement has adopted the hostage issue. The hostage families have adopted the protest goal of bringing down the government. And this is a very dangerous moment, certainly for Israeli society, but also for the government. I think this is the most formidable threat that the government has faced in the last two years.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Let me continue to go with some of the questions that have come from the audience. I'm going to paraphrase this one a bit, just as I did the last one. You said initially that you think Israel should have more directly engaged against Iran after the October 7 attack.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Yes.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Is there any part of that you think can still happen? Or do you think we just need to sign a deal with Hamas and forget about Iran, at least in the short term?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Look, another reason why I think, at this point, we need to cut our losses with Hamas and make a deal is because the real war is still waiting. And that's in the North. It's with Hezbollah, which is far more formidable than Hamas, and Iran.
And no one is going to take out Iran's nuclear facilities except us. It's not going to be the Americans. It won't be anyone else. Either we take them out or Iran is going to have a bomb. And for me, that is truly an existential threat.
So I think it's time for us to try to reunite Israeli society, bring the hostages home, regroup, have new elections, have a unity government, and then go to war with Iran and Hezbollah. And that's over the next year. And I see that as unavoidable.
Look, we have tens of thousands of internal refugees, of Israelis who can't go back to their homes in the North. And so long as Hezbollah is sitting on the border, they won't go back. I have friends who will not go back to their homes on the border for good reason, because we all know that Hezbollah has tunnels going into Israel. We don't know where the tunnels are. But Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas.
And so what we learned on October 7 is that for the last 20 years, since the second Lebanon War of 2006, we were living in an illusion there. And the illusion was that we could maintain daily life living next door to genocidal terror entities whose goal is our destruction, who tell us night and day that they're going to destroy us. And what we learned on October 7 is that one of these days, you're going to wake up and find them on your side of the border.
And so we can't live with Hezbollah on our border. And right now, I think that we have degraded Hamas to the point where we can turn our attention to Hezbollah and Iran.
Now, again, if Hamas were not holding our hostages and Israeli society wasn't so divided, I would say, no, let's finish the job with Hamas and then we'll turn our attention to Hezbollah and Iran. But that's not the case. And what we need to do is shore up the Israeli public. That's what we--
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Several questioners have suggested that Hamas won't follow through and release the hostages. Is that a concern of yours? Even if we sign a deal?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] It's not a concern of mine because if there's no deal to be had-- look, if they sign a deal, there will be mechanisms. We're not going to give them all the terrorists before we see who they're-- it's going to be phased. So they won't be able to renege on the deal if there are hostages who are still alive.
The concern, the more serious concern that I've heard raised, is that Hezbollah-- that Hamas doesn't want the deal. And my response to that is, that's not my concern. If they don't want a deal, then there's no deal to be had.
What I'm concerned about is for the Israeli public to believe that the hostages were not being sacrificed for Netanyahu's political needs because that will have strategic consequences on our social solidarity, on our willingness to sacrifice for this country, on young people's willingness to go fight against Hezbollah. It will have strategic consequences.
So what we need to do is convince the Israeli public that everything was done by our government to save the hostages, and that Netanyahu's narrow political interests were not a factor. That's the issue I'm talking about.
And so if the government says, OK, we're willing to make a deal, and then Hamas says, no, then Hamas starts upping the ante to impossible conditions, then no, then there's no deal. And OK.
With all of the heartbreak, at least we're back in a normative Israel where people believe that the government doesn't sacrifice the lives of Israelis for the political interests of the prime minister. That's the catastrophe that I'm trying to address here.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] So what's an impossible deal?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] What is an impossible deal?
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Yeah, you said if Hamas--
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Immunity, permanent immunity for Hamas leaders.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Haven't they asked for--
[Yossi Klein Halevi] That's an impossible deal.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] Haven't they asked for that?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] They're not going to get it. Nobody's going to give that to them.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] OK .
[Yossi Klein Halevi] And they know that. They're not going to get that. And if they start handing in lists of more terrorists whose names haven't been submitted, there are all kinds of things they can do. Start making political demands about the Temple Mount or whatever it is.
And the deal is the deal. The deal is essentially what the Americans laid out, and what Netanyahu initially agreed to until he upped the ante with Philadelphi. That was not part of his initial preconditions. So to my mind, that's the deal.
[Dr. Alan Kadish] If there were a different government, do you think things would be different?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] [SIGH]
[Dr. Alan Kadish] That's another question from the audience.
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Look, I think that if there was a different government, no matter which government would be in power, we would have responded militarily. the same way that we did on October 8, although, I think if Naftali Bennett were prime minister, we may very well have gone straight to Iran's nuclear facilities.
I think that Bennett, in that sense, is a far stronger and more credible leader. Well, any of them are more credible leaders. But stronger militarily, in terms of his security doctrine, than Netanyahu, that's for sure.
People have this notion of Netanyahu, which is very outdated. It's the notion that I once had of Netanyahu, as well, which is, OK, like him or don't like him, he's still the smartest and strongest leader we have. That hasn't been true for a long time.
And so if we had a different government in place today, first of all, I don't think you would have the same extent of the demonstrations that you have today. People like me would not be out there, demonstrating against the government if I felt that the government's intentions were in Israel's best interests. I'm demonstrating today because I don't believe that. I'm putting Netanyahu on notice that he needs to prioritize Israel's interests. And we are not going to take any spin from it. So if we have different government--
[Dr. Alan Kadish] We're running out of time, Yossi. We're running out of time. Can you leave us with anything positive?
[Yossi Klein Halevi] Well look, it's a very grim moment. And it's hard to be artificial. On the other hand, we're going into Elul, the month of Elul. And this is a time of introspection. And all parts of the political spectrum need to examine themselves.
And I'll start with my camp. And my camp contributed to the breakdown of Israeli-- the Hebrew word is [SPEAKING HEBREW]-- of Israeli immunity, of the breakdown in our security immune system with the large numbers of reservist pilots who said they wouldn't serve under a dictatorship.
I certainly understood them at the time. We need to seriously rethink, when does a political movement pull out a weapon which really, should be a weapon of absolute last resort?
So my side has work to do in Elul. And I would say that the right wing has some serious introspection to do in this period. And that is to ask the question, how did we get to the point where the most right-wing government in Israel's history brought us the greatest security disaster in our history, and has led to the deepest divides we've ever experienced?
[Dr. Alan Kadish] OK, thank you very much for an interesting and provocative talk.
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[Dr. Alan Kadish] Look forward to seeing you at the next Touro Talks, when hopefully, things will have quieted down and we can have a more positive look to the future. Have a good day. Thanks for joining us.
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