Yossi Klein Halevi: ‘Anti-Zionism is an existential threat to the Jewish People’

Transcripts are lightly edited. Please excuse any imperfections.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Anti-Zionism is an existential threat, a multiple existential threat to the Jewish people, physically by endangering 7 million Jews, and conceptually. And so I don’t care if it’s antisemitic or not, and I think we ask the wrong question when we try to define anti-Zionism as antisemitism. And if it isn’t technically antisemitism, does that make it any less of a threat to Jewish well-being?

Hi, my name is Yossi Klein Halevi. I’m a writer and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. And this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers for 18Forty.

Sruli Fruchter:
From 18Forty, this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers. And I’m your host, Sruli Fruchter. 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers is a new podcast that interviews Israel’s leading voices to explore those critical questions people are having today on Zionism, Israel-Hamas War, democracy, morality, Judaism, peace, Israel’s future, and so much more. Every week, we introduce you to fresh perspectives and to challenging ideas about Israel from across the political spectrum that you won’t find anywhere else. So if you’re the kind of person who wants to learn, understand, and to dive deeper into Israel, then join us on our journey as we pose 18 pressing questions to the 40 Israeli journalists, scholars, and religious thinkers you need to hear from today.

Today’s guest may be one of our more popular and well-known guests, Yossi Klein Halevi. And I know that we just had on Rabbanit Rachelle Fraenkel who was on the 18Forty Podcast a few years ago. And Yossi was on the 18Forty Podcast earlier in the year, I believe around December, to discuss the future of liberal Zionism, but that is not why we chose him obviously. He is a journalist, an author, a thinker for those who don’t know. But more formally, he is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and he co-directs the Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative. But outside of that role, he is a prolific author and writer who has a long career in journalism. His book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor was a New York Times bestseller, very popular. You can find him talking about that on tons of podcasts and interviews everywhere online.
And he currently is also co-host with Donniel Hartman of Hartman’s award-winning podcast, For Heaven’s Sake. Aside from that, you may know him from his other book, I believe this may be his most famous book, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation. As with a lot of the people who we interview, sometimes these bios just fail to capture the gravity and the force of who they are as people, as thinkers, and as individuals who have so deeply immersed themselves in Israeli society and in Israeli thoughts. This was the longest interview that we’ve done this far, and I’m very hesitant to even talk further on this intro, although my intros are not so long, I will say. So I’m not so hesitant on that front, but it was long in large part because of my follow-up questions. So point for myself on that, but also in large part because there was just so much to say.

I kept trying to hold myself back from follow-ups because every single answer that Yossi was giving just had little breadcrumbs that led to 50 other topics that we could have spent an episode on just to focus in on one of them. But I know that this is not a several hours long podcast, so I had to desist. But nonetheless, it was a fascinating interview with tons of insights and questions and things for everybody to be thinking about and considering. And in many ways, it was very interesting for me because I think that I came into this interview especially… I had known about Yossi Klein Halevi, I think many people are familiar with him who are engaged with Israel in some degree, but most recently was when he was on the 18Forty Podcast. And I think him speaking about liberal Zionism definitely in my mind shifted him or placed him in the camp of this is going to be an interview with someone who is more liberal or left-wing.

And I think that as you’ll see in the interview, he avoids easy categorization and the complexity and nuance of his political, religious, personal beliefs as they relate to Israel in a practical sense, in many ways echoes his background. He’s the child of a Holocaust survivor. He was formerly a Kahanist, in the band in Brooklyn, I believe, with Meir Kahane back in the day. He also went to YU for a year, which was a surprise to me. We spoke about that after the interview. He even voted for Netanyahu at one point, and his characterization was a staunch supporter of him or defender of him for certain things that he proposed and put forth for Israel. But at the same time, Yossi is also a liberal Zionist who has written about what he calls the occupation of another people, the Palestinian people, and grappled with the complex tensions between security and self-determination, never quite finding an answer that satisfied the reality he was faced at before him.

That in many ways, that tension is very much the focus and the central theme of his book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. And as you’ll hear in the interview, he is also a fierce critic of Netanyahu and the current government in Israel. But I think that anyone who’s going to try to box him in to a certain camp, at the end he says, spoiler alert, he’s a centrist. So that’s his own self-identification. But I think anyone who’s trying to box him in will find that he doesn’t neatly fit into anything, which I think made this interview particularly interesting and thought-provoking. So I hope you enjoy. It is one of our longest and I think one of our most interesting.

So before we get into it, you already know what’s coming. If you have questions you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, shoot us an email at info@18forty.org, and be sure to subscribe so that we can reach new listeners. And rate, subscribe and rate on Apple and Spotify. Yossi is the 11th thinker, so he’s the first who is going to lead us into the next round of our 10 thinkers of the total of our 40 thinkers. We are over 25% of the way done interviewing Israel’s leading thinkers. So please send in your recommendations. We are always looking for new people and new faces to discover. So without further ado, here is 18 Questions with Yossi Klein Halevi.

We’ll begin where we always do. As an Israeli and as a Jew, how are you feeling at this moment in Israeli history?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Unmoored. Many of the basic assumptions that I think most Israelis had about Israeli society, security, our place in the region, a relationship with each other in Israeli society have been upended over the last two years. The year before preceding October 7th was in some ways the second-hardest year in Israeli history. That was the year when many of us felt that the ground under our feet, which was the foundation of Israeliness, which was the shared consensus around Israel as a Jewish and democratic society, was being pulled apart. And for the first time in the 40-plus years that I’ve lived in Israel, I felt I couldn’t trust my government for the most basic assumptions, that it would uphold the shared Israeli identity of Jewish and Democratic, which carried us from left-wing governments to right-wing governments, to centrist governments. Suddenly we were in a totally new and uncharted area, and I felt assaulted simultaneously by this coalition of ultras, a coalition of ultra-nationalists, ultra-Orthodox and ultra-corrupt. And that’s before October 7th.

And so I felt the ground under me really opening in a way that I’ve never felt before. And when you live here long enough, you’ve been through a lot of things. But for me, this was the worst, until October 7th, which of course was even worse. And today, like many Israelis, I have very basic questions about Israeli deterrence, about our ability to convey to the region that it doesn’t pay to test us. I think we’ve lost a tremendous amount in our deterrence. And there are many ways of expressing this. There’s also the sense that despite October 7th, despite the ongoing war, we are still such a deeply divided society and the schisms are multiple. There’s the basic ongoing schism of those who trust this government and those who don’t, those who don’t trust this government to lead us in a time of war, let alone through the worst crisis we’ve ever been in.

There’s the schism between those who believe that the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, should be not only allowed to maintain a separatist society within a society, but that the rest of us should have the privilege of funding their separatism. And then there are those of us who believe, and we are the majority, that this relationship is untenable and is an existential threat to Israel. So there are so many layers of divisiveness within the society, which the temporary unity around October 7th did not dispel. And so what it means to be an Israeli, it depends where you sit on the spectrums, depends who you ask. But I think there’s so much anger in this country today, and the anger is directed from all parts of the society.

And for me, it’s not a question of left versus right. I personally sit in the center and I’ve almost always voted center. And there were times where I have voted for Labor. There are times where I voted for Likud and I can live with those divisions. I can live with ideological divisions. What I can’t live with is the feeling that the basic decency of Israeli society, of Israeli governance has been erased by our leadership. That’s a blow that’s very hard to absorb. Israelis can put up with a lot. We do put up with an enormous amount of tensions and pressures, and we are expected to contribute to the society far more than citizens in any Western country do. And I think that that’s a natural consequence of our circumstances. But many Israelis need to know that this is still a society that upholds basic decency. And that’s an open question for us.

Sruli Fruchter:
What has been Israel’s greatest success and greatest mistake in the current war against Hamas?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I think the greatest success is that the IDF is still the IDF. I think the soldiers on the whole have fought extraordinarily well. The camaraderie at the front has been awe-inspiring. The capacity of Israeli intelligence to surprise the enemy. For example, the back-to-back assassinations or the Israeli Air Force’s preemptive strike on the missile launchers has gone some way in restoring our faith in our capacity to defend ourselves. And I think our greatest failure has been conceptual. I don’t think we should have attacked Hamas on October 8th. I think we should have gone straight to Iran because we keep finding ourselves in this loop where we fight the proxies of Iran instead of going to the head of the snake. And sooner or later, we are going to have to go to war directly with Iran. We will have to preempt their nuclear capacity.

And I understand obviously why we went to war against Hamas, but we ended up expending an enormous amount of our moral capital abroad on what is essentially a side issue of the main war. This is not the Israeli-Hamas war. It isn’t even the Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah war. What began on October 7th is the Iranian-Israeli war, and we’re not fighting this war on our terms. We’re fighting this war on Iran’s terms. They’re depleting us. They’ve depleted much of our military energy. We have reservists who have been fighting since October 8th and they’ve been in uniform since October 8th. And this is, I believe that when we look back on this era, we will realize that the war with Hamas was only stage one and not even the main stage. So for me, that was the main mistake.

Sruli Fruchter:
So just a question on that. I’m curious, framing this as the Israel-Iran war and October 7th as a function or as almost a proxy in some sense of that, does that lens change how you view this in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Look, this has never been only the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This has always been a regional war. And for most of Israel’s existence, that has been the Sunni-Israeli war. With the Abraham Accords, the Sunni-Israeli war is beginning to end. And if the Saudis coming to the peace process, then we’re really looking at a historic Israeli victory in the Sunni-Israeli war. The regional aspect of this war is being replaced by a Shiite-Israeli conflict, and our war with Hamas is a part of that war. But I think we make a very serious mistake, and this is certainly true for much of the West. The West really sees us as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not primarily that.

And so the way that I see this war is the same way that I see what I hope will be an eventual peace. We’re in a regional war and regional wars needed to be treated through a regional solution. There is no Palestinian-Israeli solution. It will either happen in a regional context with the Abraham Accord countries, with the Saudis, or it won’t happen at all. There is no solution to be had in a bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreement. We know every position on the Palestinian side. They know every position on our side. The two sides are unbridgeable. But if you bring in the Sunni world, then I think things might begin to look different.

Sruli Fruchter:
We’re going to come back to this. We have some more questions later on for that.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I’m trying to answer as many of these 18 questions as possible-

Sruli Fruchter:
No, that’s great.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Before we even get to them.

Sruli Fruchter:
You’re doing great. Do you think Western media covers the Israel-Hamas war fairly?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Of course not. Of course not. The other day I was reading the Times and I noticed that there was an article, I even forget what it was about. It almost doesn’t matter, but the Hamas massacre was described without adjectives. It was, “The Hamas attack of October 7th.” It wasn’t even called a massacre. And the Israeli response was called… It wasn’t horrific, but it was a word like that. And suddenly the adjectives come out to describe Israel’s response. And so very often it’s through these subtleties. Now, I worked as a journalist for many years, so I look for those subtleties. Or another example, which for me is really the telltale way in which a journalist betrays one’s political leanings, and that is who do you give the last word to? You’re quoting any number of people. You’re quoting Palestinians, you’re quoting Israelis. Who gets the last word? And that’s the way a journalist betrays their own inclinations because what you want to do is leave… And I’ve done that too. Any journalist will do that.

But you have to have, I think, been a journalist to understand the ways in which one tries to very subtly manipulate a reader’s inclinations. Now, those are little examples. For me, the defining media moment of this war was the hospital. And by the hospital, I mean the supposed Israeli missile strike against the Gaza hospital way at the beginning of the war. And most of the world’s media immediately came out with, “Israeli missile attack, 500 dead.” Now, I had two very obvious questions as a former journalist. First of all, how do you know it was an Israeli missile attack? And of course, as it turned out, it was not. And secondly, how do you go with 500 dead? If there was a missile attack on a building, it will take days before the rubble is cleared and you can do an accurate body count. But within two hours, The New York Times and AP and all the rest were running with a 500 body count.

Now, you don’t have to be a journalist to understand the problematics of how that was covered, and that became the template of how most of the media has covered this war. And I’ll give you one other example, which drives me mad. The casualty count. Now it’s 40,000 dead, 40,000 Palestinian dead. 40,000 who? Are they all civilians? Our account is 17,000 Hamas terrorists. Are you including that in your 40,000? Obviously you are, but you’re subsuming that number in this general body count that implies that Israel has killed 40,000 civilians. Now, once you incorporate 17,000 Hamas terrorists, the ratio of civilian to terrorist begins to look very differently. And we are well within the norm of asymmetrical wars of the 21st century. But that of course, is not what’s being conveyed. And I haven’t seen any mainstream media qualify that number by saying, “Well, this also includes, according to Israel, X number of Hamas fighters.” Don’t call them terrorists, call them Hamas fighters, fine, but at least include them in the body count.

So before we even get into the specifics of how this is playing out, for me, the media, most of the media, I want to be careful here, I want to say the media, but most of the media has not played fair in covering this war.

Sruli Fruchter:
What do you look for in deciding which Knesset party to vote for?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I look for parties that don’t lean too right or too left, that are able to convey nuance in the ways that they approach our major divide. So for example, on the Palestinian question, I look for a party that recognizes that the right is correct, that we have no chance of reaching a peace agreement with this Palestinian national movement because no part of the Palestinian national movement accepts our legitimacy, our right to exist in any borders. And at the same time, a party that will say that just as the right is correct about the peace process, the left has been correct about the dangers of occupying another people and what that does to Israel, what it does to our place in the world, what it means for Israel to be a long-term occupier of another people that does not want to be part of our society and whom we don’t want as part of our society.

Now, if you can’t make peace with the Palestinians and you can’t occupy them, what do you do? I don’t have an answer, but I’m looking for a political party that is approaching this issue with its eyes wide open. Now, one of these days we’re going to have to make a decision. Do we continue to remain occupiers or do we try… And again, for me, it’s only within a regional context. Do we try to figure out a way of extricating ourselves from this impossible situation? And how do we do it without fatally endangering ourselves? So I’m looking for a party that is open to solutions that come either from the moderate left or the moderate right? I don’t care. I’m not looking for an ideological solution. The same goes for our religious secular divide. I’m looking for a party that upholds Israel as a Jewish state, which means that we are committed to the Law of Return. It means that we are committed to… Which is prioritizing Jewish immigration. That is our number one commitment is a Jewish state.

It means that we are a society that lives by the Hebrew calendar, that Shabbat is some form of a day of rest. What that means can only be achieved through consensus, not one side or another, imposing its will. And so that’s what I look for. I look for parties that are committed to compromise, that recognize that the gathering of the exiles has brought a situation where we have Jews from all over the world, from every conceivable point of the ideological spectrum. We all came back to this country with very different ideas of what a Jewish state is supposed to be. And somehow we all have to live with each other in this two by four pressure cooker, and we’re either going to figure that out through compromise or we’re going to devour each other. So that’s what I look for in a party.

Sruli Fruchter:
Which is more important for Israel, Judaism or democracy?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
The question itself is not valid, and the reason-

Sruli Fruchter:
That’s our favorite response.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
And the reason it’s not valid is because you’re immediately positing a… It’s almost an either/or. And look, when I say that the Law of Return is the most important law in this country, I’m already saying that our commitment to the Jewish people is the foundation. But when ask the question, “Which is more important, Judaism or democracy?” You are then saying, “Okay, well, what next?” And what’s next for me after the Law of Return, after we’ve established the principle that the foundation of Israel is that we are a safe refuge for the Jewish People, and this state has been established as a refuge for the Jewish People. Beyond that, everything else is up for grabs. How we navigate the tensions between democracy and Jewishness will depend on the compromises that we come to. But those compromises will not be determined by one side or the other, establishing the principle that we are a Jewish state and therefore we have to have Shabbat kmo shrtzarich or we are a democratic state. And if we don’t uphold democracy, then this country is not legitimate. I’m not going to play that game.

And so I’ve given you one answer, which is that the foundation is the safety and well-being of the Jewish people. That is the basis. Beyond that, how we resolve our cultural, religious identity issues, let democracy and Jewishness struggle for compromises on each particular issue as it comes up.

Sruli Fruchter:
I’ll take that answer, not that I have a choice. What role should the Israeli government have in religious matters?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
As minimal role as possible. So what that means to me is, look, I personally am in favor of abolishing the Chief Rabbinate. I think it’s become a disgrace. And even if somehow the Religious Zionist community can regain control of the Chief Rabbinate, and it’s not a Haredi Chief Rabbinate anymore, and it becomes more of a reflection of a larger number of Israelis. Look, the country that was founded in 1948 is very different demographically than what Israel is today. We have 1,000,000 plus immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of whom, maybe a majority of whom are not halachically Jewish. They came here under the Law of Return. They are part of Israeli-Jewish society. Our kids marry each other. We’re in the Army with them. And if you look at the latest poll that I just saw, something like 65% of Israelis want the option of civil marriage.

Now, I’m all for having a Chief Rabbinate for those who want it, but many Israelis don’t want a Chief Rabbinate. For me, and I’m speaking as a religious Jew, the Chief Rabbinate does not represent me. I have no Chief Rabbinate. So that’s one example. I don’t want the government imposing religion. Now, the irony here is that Israelis, by and large want some measure of Judaism in their lives. This is also very different from what Israel was like in 1948. Israelis are much more religion friendly, but many Israelis hate having religion shoved down their throats. As soon as you stop the coercion, you will have a flowering of Judaism in this country, but it can’t be on the terms of a state-supported Orthodox establishment determining what religion will be here. That’s not going to work in Israel in the 21st century anymore, and that’s going to lead to a cultural struggle.

And here again is the paradox that the less coercion, the more Judaism will thrive in the State of Israel. But the challenge for the Orthodox community is will the Orthodox be able to accept non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, and I don’t know what those will be. It’s not going to be Reform and Conservative Judaism. It will be indigenous forms of Israeli expression, which don’t yet exist. And I think the question for Orthodox Jews is what do you prefer, religious forms of Judaism that are not necessarily halachic, or secularism that has no interest in religion, but essentially defers, concedes Judaism to the Orthodox? That’s what we had here in the 50s and 60s and 70s. It was very comfortable for the Orthodox community because secularists weren’t interested in religion at all, but what I’m seeing is much more of an interest by former secular Israelis. I wouldn’t call them secular anymore. They really want forms of religion in their life, but not necessarily Orthodoxy. So how will the Orthodox community relate to that?

Sruli Fruchter:
Should Israel treat its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens the same?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Look, in terms of the draft, we don’t treat Muslim Israelis the same. We treat Druze the same, and I think we’re going to need to extend the draft perhaps to Bedouin, and especially after October 7th when the Bedouin really felt a part of the national mourning. Bedouin lost I think two dozen people.

Sruli Fruchter:
In your view, why is the draft not extended to them now? The reason I ask that is because of the way you’re answering, it sounds as if you see the draft as something that is earned.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
No, I don’t see it as something that’s earned, but as something that needs to be… We need to take into consideration the fact that we are at war with parts of the Arab and Muslim world, and there’s the question of can we trust Arab Israelis to be loyal soldiers? And so there needs to be a mutual consensus. And I don’t want to draft Arabs into the Army who don’t want to be part of the Army. I can’t trust them, which is a very different move than with the Haredim. I can trust Haredim in the Army. Whether they want to be there or not, I can trust them. I can’t say the same for Arab Israelis, and we have to take into consideration the very complicated situation that we’re in.

So when we talk about equality, we have to factor in the very complicated issue that our kids do three years of service and most of their kids don’t. I believe that those who serve in the Army should have benefits that those who don’t serve should not have, and I would extend that to the Haredim. Absolutely. And so for example, scholarships for university, I think that demobilized soldiers should have an advantage there. So the question of equality, that for me is the exception, along with the question of return, of who gets priority for immigration? And I have friends in the Arab-Israeli community who say, “Look, my family are refugees in Lebanon, and why can you as an American-born Jew come to Israel and claim citizenship and my family that were refugees from here can’t?” I say, “Because it’s not about me personally, and it’s not about your family personally. It’s about the Jewish people.” So we have very specific circumstances that are built in to the question you’re asking about. But we need to keep the different ways in which Jews are treated, are given preferential treatment to a minimum, to a minimum.

And for me, the minimum are basically the two issues that I just described. Now, again, I wouldn’t frame the question of the Army to be a Jewish, non-Jewish issue. It’s those who serve. The Druze serve, therefore they should be getting full equality and they don’t always get full equality. So my real answer to you is that aside from determining who is eligible for immigration, Jews and non-Jews need to be treated with full equality, provided that there is equality of fulfilling basic responsibilities of Israeli citizenship, which includes the Army. And then I would extend that principle to the Haredim.

Sruli Fruchter:
So very briefly, before we go onto the next question, when you bring up the question of distrust or the inability to fully trust Arab Israelis in joining the Army, why then do you draw the line at just the Army? Meaning if there’s a sense of unease or a discomfort and that responsibility being shared, even if not yourself, would you understand other people who would want to limit that further in terms of other areas of Israeli life?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Look, I live in a building here in French Hill, which in the last few years has become half Arab families, half Jewish. And this is a neighborhood that until the last few years was almost completely Jewish, and that’s okay with me. My next door neighbor is an Arab Israeli, and I didn’t look for this, but that’s okay. And I think that if we are serious about being a democracy, that has consequences. And yes, I understand that sometimes it’s uncomfortable, especially a country that’s at war with parts of the Arab world, and those are our circumstances. But just as being a Jewish state obligates us to rescue Jewish communities, to hold our doors open to Jewish communities, we are a very strange country. We sent our Air Force to rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jews who were not citizens of Israel. There’s no country in the world that would send its Air Force to rescue citizens of another country, but they were fellow Jews. And so we have a responsibility as a Jewish state, and that’s a consensus that almost all Jewish Israelis share. That same consensus breaks down on almost every other issue.

And so that’s why I believe that that is the foundation and every other issue needs to be negotiated and reached through compromise. But getting back to your question about Arab Israelis, if we’re really going to create, to have any chance of creating a viable Israeli society, we have to figure out ways of even minimally integrating 20% of that society that’s Arab. And so we’re not going to reach a point of full integration. I don’t believe we’re going to reach that as long as the war continues, but we can certainly create conditions where Arab Israelis feel more a part of the society. And look what just happened here when we rescued a Bedouin hostage. I am just paying attention to the tone among Arab Israelis and among Muslims who are not Israeli that I see on Twitter. And so much of it is this sense of appreciation that here Israel sent its Army, risked its soldiers for a Bedouin hostage because he’s an Israeli citizen.

Now, that for me is the template. And so if we don’t make those distinctions in matters of life and death, in matters of existence, I think we need to try to apply that same principle to how we live together, how we live together in hospitals. Go into any hospital in Israel. And I am not saying that it’s idyllic. There are tensions. I was a patient at Hadassah a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t all coexistence and joy, but we still manage a basic level of decency here, and that needs to be… For me, the ground is decency. What question are we on?

Sruli Fruchter:
Oh, that’s my favorite question, but I asked that in two questions. So we’re up to… This is the eighth question.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Just the eighth?

Sruli Fruchter:
The eighth.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
We have another 10 to go?

Sruli Fruchter:
Another 10 to go. Now, that Israel already exists, what’s the purpose of Zionism? You wanted an easy question.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Yeah, for me, Zionism today has nothing to do with statehood. State exists. We won, and the ideology of Zionism that seems to me most relevant today is that Zionism is the ideology of Jewish peoplehood. That until the 19th century, we were a people that was united around a shared religious practice and belief. And ask a Jew anywhere in the world just about what does it mean to be a Jew? And you would’ve gotten a pretty similar answer. That broke down irretrievably in the 19th century, and religion today doesn’t unite us. It divides us. And in Hebrew we have this saying of, “You preempt the illness with the cure.” Well, in the 19th century, the cure for keeping the Jewish people minimally together emerged, which was Zionism. And the Zionist argument is that in this era of Jewish history, what unites the Jews is a shared sense of peoplehood, of history. And then we can argue about everything else. And so the state that we created needs to reflect the irreconcilable diversity of the Jewish people.

Now, that’s not something that I’m happy about, but that’s what it is. And Zionism is the only ideological tool that we have to keep the Jewish people from disintegrating and becoming rival sects, which is where we were on our way to becoming in the 19th century. The State of Israel saved us and gave us some shared ground, some shared identity.

Sruli Fruchter:
Is opposing Zionism inherently antisemitic?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I don’t care if it is or not. It is inherently an existential threat to the Jewish people. God forbid, the destruction of Israel, in whatever form, Jewish anti-Zionists will say, “Of course, we’re not for the destruction of Israel, just to change the regime.” Leaving 7 million Jews without Jewish sovereignty and without a Jewish army in the Middle East is a death sentence. It means leaving us vulnerable to endless October 7s. And so to call for the dismantling of the Jewish state is to call for, God forbid, the destruction of 7 million Jews. So that’s just on the most basic level.
On another more abstract, but no less, I believe, no less threat to Jewish well-being is that we were sustained for 2,000 years by a dream that one day we would return, we would return home. And the dream was ridiculous because we were the most powerless people, dispersed all over the world. And how are we going to do it? And then under the most improbable circumstances, under circumstances that are really literally unbelievable, we succeeded in doing it. If you come home, if you succeed in fulfilling a 2,000-year old fantasy, and then the fulfillment of that dream unravels, how do you sustain yourself after that? Now, we went into exile 2,000 years ago, but we were a different people then. We were a people that was united by faith. That’s no longer the case in the Jewish people. What will we have to sustain us if God forbid, the dream that held us together falls apart? And so anti-Zionism is an existential threat, a multiple existential threat to the Jewish people, physically by endangering 7 million Jews, and conceptually.

And so I don’t care if it’s antisemitic or not, and I think we ask the wrong question when we try to define anti-Zionism as antisemitism. And if it isn’t technically antisemitism, does that make it any less of a threat to Jewish well-being?

Sruli Fruchter:
Is the IDF the world’s most moral army?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
There again, I don’t care. The ways in which we try to frame our Jewish conversations seem to me really beside the point. And if Finland has a more moral army, if we’re the second most moral army… Look, there are almost no armies in the world that face the kind of dilemmas that we face. Maybe Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army. And so there’s no objective measure for answering that question. The German Army doesn’t face battle conditions. So maybe the German Army is the most moral Army in the world. I’ll give that to them if you want it, but you judge the morality of an army in the context and the circumstances that it has to fight. And we are fighting against a genocidal regime that is completely entwined within its civilian population, that bases itself in mosques and schools and hospitals. So how we fight this war, you can’t judge us by the standards that countries that don’t have these circumstances are judged by.

And so what do I care if I’m the most moral army in the world? We’re in this crazy loop where we say, “We’re the most moral army in the world,” and our enemies say, “You are the least moral army in the world.” And both of those categories are ludicrous. “We’re the least moral army in the world.” Do you know what Putin’s army would do to Gaza if they were in our situation? Do you know what Hamas would do to Gaza if they were in our situation? If we were them and they were us, if they had our power? So no, we’re not the least moral army in the world. Are we the most moral army in the world? Besides the question of how everything is relative?

When you send a people’s Army, which is to say a cross-section of society, into a very complicated situation like Gaza, the most complicated battleground imaginable, and you have all kinds of people in our army. You have very moral people, you have ordinary people. You have some people who I think back to some of the people I served with, I wouldn’t want to entrust them in very difficult moral situations. And so you’re going to get all kinds of responses. And then when you factor in the rage with which all of us, with which we went to war on October 8th, that also complicates how ordinary soldiers respond. Many Israelis, listen to Israelis talk about Gaza, and they’ll say, “There are no civilians in Gaza, they’re all Hamas, which is the exact opposite of the way in which much of the outside world speaks about Gaza. It’s as if they’re all innocent civilians. There’s no Hamas.

Well, the truth is there is Hamas in Gaza, and there are also innocent civilians. How does a moral army that’s in a state of rage and that contains the full range of its society, the full human range, deal with that kind of situation? As we say in Israel, it’s complicated.

Sruli Fruchter:
If you were making the case for Israel, where would you begin?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Well, I do. That’s part of what I do as my… It’s not my day job, it’s my-

Sruli Fruchter:
Lifetime job.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
My evening job. It’s what I do. It’s just what I do. I make the case, first of all, with context. And the starting point, how much time do we have? The starting point, when I speak on campuses, and I recently came back from a campus tour, and what I say to them is that the Jewish story, the Jewish story of the return home is a really strange, even surreal story. There’s no story like this in history. And so there’s an understandable temptation for outsiders to try to fit this story into recognizable categories. So for example, many Evangelicals will say, “Oh, we know what this story is about. It’s about our story. This is about the second coming. The Jews have returned home. That means that Jesus is coming back.” And that’s on one side of the political spectrum. On the other side, the radical left says, “We know what this story is about. This is about 19th century European colonialism.”

And my response to both of them is actually, the story is not about the second coming. And it’s not about European colonialism. It’s about the Jewish People returning home. Now, you can judge that story any way you want, but don’t put us into your categories. Judge this story as you would any other story on its own terms. That’s my starting point. A ready acknowledgement of how bizarre the Jewish story is. There is no other people in history that lost its land, never forfeited its claim, and then even more bizarrely, managed 2,000 years later to retrieve its claim. So that’s the starting point, and then everything else is commentary.

Sruli Fruchter:
Can questioning the actions of Israel’s, governments and army, even in the context of this war, be considered a valid form of love and patriotism?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
It depends how far you go. It depends if your only relationship to Israel is criticism or as some diaspora Jews on the left, put it, “Tough love.” Okay, I get the tough, but as my friend, David Suissa in L.A. says, “I get the tough, where’s the love?” So give me a little love. Okay, I can take tough, but give me a little bit of love. Or as Rabbi David Hartman, one of my mentors put it, he said, “When you criticize us, criticize us like a mother and not a mother-in-law.” So yes, criticize, and I readily accept the right of diaspora Jews from the right, from the left, wherever you are, to criticize Israeli policy. Satmar, you want to demonstrate against autopsies, which is what Satmar used to demonstrate against, bevakasha, but don’t only have a relationship with Israel that’s based on criticism.

Sruli Fruchter:
What do you think is the most legitimate criticism leveled against Israel today?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
That we have a corrupt government that has distorted Zionism, distorted everything that’s decent about Israeli society, and that ultimately is the greatest distortion of Judaism itself.

Sruli Fruchter:
Can you say more about that?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
The highest level of-

Sruli Fruchter:
Well, actually, if I may actually rephrase my follow-up question. There are many people who say that, and then there are many people who vehemently oppose that framing. I’m curious how you respond to that?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
To those who support this government?

Sruli Fruchter:
Yeah.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I understand Israelis who believe that… Or I understood until October 7th, Israelis who said, “Look, I don’t like Netanyahu. He may not be the most trustworthy guy, but he’s the best leader we have.” And until a couple of years ago, I would’ve said the same thing. I voted for him in the past. I-

Sruli Fruchter:
Used to be a Netanyahu—

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Yeah. And even when I stopped voting for him, I defended him.

Sruli Fruchter:
Is that an exclusive for us? I wasn’t aware of that before.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I don’t know. I don’t know, but I supported Netanyahu, vehemently supported him on Iran. I was enormously grateful to him for leading the charge on Iran. That began to break down for me with his trial, and when it became increasingly clear that he was placing his own personal interests ahead of the interests of the nation.

Sruli Fruchter:
In what way?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Well, first of all, even before October 7, he sent us through a tailspin of three years of inconclusive elections, which nearly destroyed the stability of the electoral system here. People on the right forget that when Naftali Bennett in fact created the government that he did, it was after three years of one failed election, one deadlock after another, and Bennett was trying to save the political system. Now, and I understand the anger against Bennett on the right, but there was a context here.

And so for me, I look at this government, and this is just one thing, just one little small thing. This is the most nationalist, Jewish pride, Jewish in-your-face government we’ve had. This is our most security-minded government. And yet, if you tally up the years of military service of the ministers of this government, it is by far the lowest of any government in Israel’s history. So the most military, security-minded government has the least amount of actual military experience among its ministers. Now, that to me is a scandal. The fact that Ben-Gvir, who didn’t serve a day in the army, Smotrich, who lied and cheated his way to the most minimal service possible, the Haredim, needless to say. This is the government that is pushing this country to the brink after October 7th? If this was a Japanese government, they would’ve committed collective suicide.

I expect this government on October 8th to resign in disgrace. Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were forced from office in 1974, justifiably, for far less offense than this government. And yet for this government, everyone is to blame. The protest movement, Sharon for withdrawing from Gaza 20 years ago, Rabin for Oslo 30 years ago. Everyone is to blame, but Netanyahu, who’s been in power for almost 20 years. And so I listen to this government and their supporters. I say we’re living in two different countries. And I never felt that before. I never felt estranged from the right before. I always felt betoch ami ani yoshev , it didn’t matter what part of Israeli society.

And today, and again, it comes back to decency. Where’s the shame? And Netanyahu barely meets with the hostages’ families. Listen to the government media, listen to the contempt and the hatred with which they speak about the hostages’ families. The right always speaks about Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people, the solidarity of the Jewish people. And they brought us to the lowest point of social cohesiveness in Israel’s history. And so at the very least, in the Orthodox world, the Orthodox world produces a very high level of individuals who are capable of asking themselves hard questions about themselves, about their behavior, about their actions. But how is it that when you translate that high level of personal scrutiny and holding yourself up to a really high level of personal scrutiny, how is it that when you make the transition in the Orthodox community from the individual to the political collective, that sense of personal responsibility disappears. And suddenly it’s about everybody else. Everybody else is at fault. We are upholding the Torah community.

This is the first government in Israel’s history that is a de facto Orthodox government, not officially, but a majority of the members of Knesset are Orthodox. This is for all practical purposes, an Orthodox agenda. And look at where this government in two years has brought this country. Have we ever been at a lower point in our history? No questions for yourself, no thought of, “Maybe we made some mistakes here.” And so when do you stop blaming Rabin and Sharon and the demonstrations and say, “Well, wait a minute. We’ve been in power not only the last two years, but pretty much for the last two decades?” When do we start taking responsibility? That’s the corruption. And before we even get to the actual examples of financial and political corruption, which this government has taken to levels we’ve never seen before, and we’ve seen lots of political corruption in this country, nothing like the last two years.

So that’s where I’m heartbroken over the Orthodox community and over the right. And look, I come from there. That’s the world that I grew up in. I love that world. That’s the world that educated me, that nurtured me. And I look at that world today as a collective expression, and I say I don’t belong there. And that’s devastating for me.

Sruli Fruchter:
Do you think peace between Israelis and Palestinians will happen within your lifetime?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Depends what we mean by peace? Coexistence? No. Some kind of arrangement, and it may not be two states. It may be some kind of arrangement in which we are gradually removing our control over their daily lives. I don’t know what that will look like, but it will need to be in conjunction with other Arab countries, maybe. And here for me, the Saudis are key. If the Saudis come in, and let’s not take peace with the Saudis for granted. Let’s appreciate what an enormous historical achievement that would be. The Saudis were our worst enemies, and the most anti-Semitic country in the world was Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis who are already in the process of changing their school textbooks on how they portray Jews, which is astonishing. If the Saudis come into the peace process, then we’re really in a totally different situation. And then we need to think of ways in which we can reduce our level of control over the Palestinians.

But the question for the right is even if some form of arrangement were possible that would ensure Israeli security, but would begin to seriously limit settlements, settlement expansion, would you accept that? I think a majority of Israelis would accept it. I don’t know if the majority of the religious right would accept it. I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t. So I think there are two kinds of right in this country. There’s the right-wingers who say, “Look, if we had an alternative, I would go forward,” but we don’t. And those who say, “It’s our land no matter what, and I’m not willing to give up any part of it.” Those are two very different forms of right. Today, the two are in alliance, but they haven’t always been in alliance. And it’s not a coincidence that all of the major withdrawals that have happened in Israeli history were done by the Likud, by Likud leaders. It was Begin and Sharon. The left actually did not uproot any settlements in this country, was always the Likud because there are two very different kinds of right.

Sruli Fruchter:
What should happen with Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the war?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I have no idea. I have no idea, but I do know that whatever it is that should happen needs to happen together with Arab countries. That could be the first test of the Abraham Accords. How do we begin to put Gaza back together? And what I certainly know should not happen is not let the settlers anywhere near Gaza.

Sruli Fruchter:
I’m curious for you, given you’ve written so much about the complexities. I’m thinking specifically of your book, Letters To My Palestinian Neighbor, and of all the years spent in journalism and leading up to October 7th. When you’re considering about the reality set before us today, what that’s like for you-

Yossi Klein Halevi:
The reality of?

Sruli Fruchter:
The reality set before us, even when I asked that question of what should happen with or do you think peace will happen between… I’m curious what that’s like for you to consider those possibilities?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I like your choice of words, “Set before us.” And I think of course, of the biblical verse, “I set before you the blessing and the curse, life or death, choose life.” So that, for me, I identify as a centrist, politically, religiously. And for me, a centrist is someone whose priority is life, not ideology. I will choose what works, what has the best guarantee of keeping Israel safe. Sometimes that puts me on the left. Sometimes it puts me on the right. Sometimes it puts me as a voter for the Likud, sometimes a voter for Labor. And so I don’t approach politics and the dilemmas facing Israeli society from an ideological perspective, and that means that I find myself often various points of the map, depending on the issue.

Sruli Fruchter:
Where do you read news about Israel?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Times of Israel, Ynet, Haaretz Weekend. It is still the smartest paper in Israel, even if they’re wrong about a lot of things. In the past, I would just find myself being unable to read Haaretz, and the last two years since this government, I appallingly find myself agreeing more and more with Haaretz. And yeah, that’s pretty much where I get my Israel fix.

Sruli Fruchter:
You’ve answered this other question a bunch, but I’m not going to add a different one and exchange it. Where do you identify on Israel’s political and religious spectrum? And do you have friends on the other side?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Yeah, yeah. I identify as a militant secularist, militant centrist, centrist.

Sruli Fruchter:
That’ll be the tagline.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Actually, politically, I am a militant secularist, politically. I would only vote for secular parties, but parties that have a respect for Judaism, but that are secular. I voted for a religious party once in the last 40 years, and I will never, God willing.

Sruli Fruchter:
Which party was that?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Meimad, which doesn’t exist anymore. It was a liberal religious party. It was headed by Rav Amital, Rav Amitalzal Z”L of the Gush, Yeshivat Har Etzion, and that was a one-off. And do I have friends on the other side? Yeah, yeah, sure, I do. Look, I know this is a big thing to say as a throwaway, but I grew up in the Kahanist movement. I know I’m giving you this at the very end.

Sruli Fruchter:
No, no. I was aware of this before. I guess-

Yossi Klein Halevi:
When I was a teenager, I was a follower of Meir Kahane in New York. It was different than Kahanism here, but nevertheless. And so I still have friends from those times.

Sruli Fruchter:
We actually have an article on our site from by our friend, Yehuda Fogel, an editor on our 18Forty, calls, “From Hawk to Dove.” And it’s about your-

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I saw it. I liked it.

Sruli Fruchter:
You did?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I liked it, except that I wouldn’t really call myself a dove. I wouldn’t say I went from hawk to dove.

Sruli Fruchter:
From “Hawk to Dove,” it’s called.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
I’m still a hawk, and I’m simultaneously a hawk and a dove. Look, I think we should go to war with Iran. I think we should initiate a war with Iran. So again, it depends on the issue. But to answer your question, I have friends who are still admirers of Kahane, friends from those years. I disagree with them. We argue. I don’t have friends today who are either active on the part of the Jewish anti-Zionist left or part of the fascist anti-democratic right, the far right. I don’t have friends on either of those-

Sruli Fruchter:
Intentionally or by chance?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
That’s the way it’s played out. I don’t think it would be really possible because I feel so strongly, I feel as strongly about their politics as they feel about my politics. And at a certain point, that just becomes, unfortunately, a non-starter.

Sruli Fruchter:
So this is our final question. This is number 18. Do you have more hope or fear for Israel and the Jewish people?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
So I’ll give you an answer that the other day, I met a friend of mine, Hadassah Froman. Hadassah Froman is the widow of Rabbi Menachem Froman Z”L.

Sruli Fruchter:
What’s the relationship, if I might ask?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
My relationship to him?

Sruli Fruchter:
Yeah, before you answer the question, just out of interest.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Friends. Friends. I was a student of Rabbi Menachem’s, and especially in the Muslim-Jewish outreach. We disagreed in certain ways, but I loved him and felt that he really was a visionary and that he understood that for our own self-interest, we need to actively reach out to Muslims who are ready to engage with us. And so I saw Hadassah the other day, and I said to her… And she’s continued his work. I said, “Is there any hope?” She said, “No … But there is faith.”

Sruli Fruchter:
It’s like a double slap.

Yossi Klein Halevi:
And so I said, “Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot.” Rationally, is there hope for our situation? First of all, it depends what you mean by hope. Are we going to survive? God willing, we’re going to survive. What kind of a country we’re going to look like if this government stays in power another few years? My deepest fear is for a mass emigration of young secular Israelis, those Israelis who are the backbone of the next generation of startup nation, of Israel as an economic success story. I’m terrified of that, and I see this government ultimately as a threat to the Israeli success story. That’s the greatest threat. For me, ultimately, that’s what it’s about. More than an ideological, far more than an ideological issue. And even more than a question of decency. It’s about maintaining Israel’s strength or power, which derives from startup nation in large part.

But I want to go back to Hadassah Froman’s formulation. I don’t know whether rationally, a Jewish state that’s so divided against itself, that has so many problems, so many inconsistencies, and that now has such terrible leadership. What is our future in the most dangerous region in the world?

It’s a big question. But … there’s faith. Now, there are different versions of faith. I had a friend who died recently. He died at the age of 90. His name was Arik Achmon, and I wrote a book called Like Dreamers about 15 years ago, and Arik was the hero of the book. It’s a book about a group paratroopers who fought in Jerusalem in 1967, and then it traces their lives, what happened to them. And Arik was a chief of intelligence for the paratroopers in 1967. He was the first one onto the Temple Mount with Motta Gur, the commander of the paratroopers. And then in the Yom Kippur War, he led the crossing of the Suez Canal, which is the battle that won the Yom Kippur War. So Arik was a legend, militantly secular, atheist. “Yossi, don’t talk to me about God.”

Every Friday, we spoke, every Friday before Shabbat, for years. That was our custom. I could not go into Shabbat without speaking to Arik. And in the last couple of years, especially since the rise of this government, which Arik was beside himself about, he felt that everything he fought for was coming apart. And I said to him, “Arik, is there hope?” He said, “There’s faith.” I said, “Faith? You have faith?” He said, “Of course, I have faith. I have faith in the eternity of the Jewish people.” Now, of course, Netzach Yisrael, for religious Jews means God, but he said, “No, Netzach Yisrael is the eternity of the Jewish people.” And every Friday, Friday afternoon, before I would get off, he would say, “Yossi, remember, Netzach Yisrael lo yishaker” the eternity, as he understood it, of the Jewish people, will not betray, will not betray us.

And so I’m a religious Jew. My hope really is in the classical understanding of Netzach Yisrael, but I’ll take that faith from any Jew in any direction. And so of course, there’s faith and that translates into hope. And look, I mentioned earlier that this is the most bizarre story in human history, the story of the Jews, and that means that the rules of reason don’t always apply to us. Now, that’s not a guarantee. We know that the worst things can happen in Jewish history. This is one of the things that drives me crazy about the religious right in this country, is that they think that, “It’s in the bag. We’re back. God has our back. And no matter what we do, we’re home free.” We’re not home free. It’s conditional. The Torah tells us that, our history tells us that, it’s conditional, conditional on all kinds of things, on our behavior. And God forbid, we can blow it. But I believe that we have enough going for us as a people, that we have a better than even chance of making it. And those odds in Jewish history are good enough for me.

Sruli Fruchter:
All right, we also got to levy. Thank you so much for answering our 18 questions. How was this for you?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
Good. Good.

Sruli Fruchter:
Any questions we didn’t ask that you think we should have?

Yossi Klein Halevi:
No, I think after 18 questions, I think we’re good.

Sruli Fruchter:
There’s a lot to unpack about that interview, a lot to unpack with Yossi about his views, about his beliefs, about his understanding of the problem facing Israel today. And I think we touched on a lot of it in the interview, but as always, there is so much more left unsaid and undiscovered. So what we’ve started doing, if you’re on our email list, great. If you’re not yet on our email list, you should definitely subscribe. We’re going to be sending out every single week a list of a couple of different resources where you can learn more about the guests that we are interviewing and some entry points to delve deeper into their thoughts on specific issues.

So thank you so much for tuning into another episode of 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers. If you have questions you want us to ask, guests you want us to feature, shoot us an email. And special thank you to our friends, Gilad Bronstein for editing this episode, and our friend Josh Weinberg for recording and editing the video of this episode. All of the video episodes or the video renditions of this podcast can be found on our YouTube channel, 18Forty, pretty distinctive name. You will not get other search results. So if you’d like to watch your podcast or listen to them or do both, find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. And in the meantime, keep questioning and keep thinking.