Anshel Pfeffer: ‘The idea that you’ll obliterate Hamas is as realistic as wanting to obliterate Chabad’

Transcripts are lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections.

Anshel Pfeffer: In wartime, there will be mistakes, and there will be crimes carried out as well. We need to be addressing that. And to create this myth of, we are the most moral army in the world, is just to run away from addressing those things. I am Anshel Pfeffer.

I’m a journalist and writer. I live in Jerusalem. And this is 18 Questions from 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 podcast that interviews Israel’s leading voices to explore those critical questions people are having today on Zionism, the Israel-Hamas war, democracy, morality, Judaism, peace, Israel’s future, and so much more. Every week, we introduce you to fresh perspectives and 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 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 interview is with Anshel Pfeffer, one of Israel’s most insightful and incredible journalists.

Anshel has been a journalist for almost the last three decades and has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times, and has been a longtime columnist and correspondent for Israel’s liberal newspaper Haaretz and is now the Israel correspondent for The Economist. His 2018 book on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, won widespread acclaim and praise. He has spent so many years chronicling the country’s wars, political power struggles, evolving society surrounding religion, social dynamics, and the like, from the halls of Knesset to the active questions of Haredi enlistment in the army. Anshel is deeply invested in the stories that he reports on.

There were many things about this interview that really piqued my interest, specifically his views on the efficiency of hasbara, coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, and where he believes Israel ought to be giving its attention in the realm of domestic politics. There’s so much more to say, but I’ll let the interview do the rest. So before we get into it, if you have questions that you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, please shoot us an email at info18Forty.org and be sure to join our newsletter for all things 18Forty, 18forty.org/join. And make sure to subscribe, rate, and share with friends so that this podcast can reach new listeners.

This is going to be our last episode before a short break, returning to you sometime soon. So without further ado, here is 18 Questions with Anshel Pfeffer.

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

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, we’re obviously at a low point in the history of the State of Israel, both because of the tragedies that have happened over the last year and a half and because there is no strategy, there is no real government.

There’s just a group of agents of chaos, each looking out for their own narrow interests and for political survival. So if you go back to Sefer Shoftim, to the Book of Judges, there’s a pasuk that appears twice towards the end of Sefer Shoftim. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Each man did as he saw fit.

That’s the situation we are now in, in the State of Israel. And it’s sort of a managed chaos, and that’s not a good thing for a state.

Sruli Fruchter: Why do you say a managed chaos? 

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, because you’re sitting in my house, it’s calm, the traffic is more or less flowing on the street outside, obviously there’s a bit of a traffic jam. So things are sort of working, but it’s a very hollow facade of a functioning state.

We don’t have a state in the sense that there are people in government actually thinking how to run the country in a better way, or even in a decent way. I mean, every system of the Israeli government, of Israeli life that you look at, the education system, the health system, the transport, I’m not even going to the more obvious of security and diplomacy. There isn’t any coherent plan. There’s someone in each of these things, actually some of these things, there aren’t even ministers right now, because the fascist Ben-Gvir resigned and his sort of weak prime minister hasn’t even appointed someone.

There isn’t even someone running the police in Israel. I mean, just to kind of understand how hollow our lives are right now, our government, our public life is. And even where there are ministers, it’s like, what can I grab for my tiny, small, narrow interest group? And how do I ensure my political survival? It’s not like you went and asked the education minister, what’s your plan to alleviate the teacher shortage or the plummeting in the national testing? There is no plan. It’s just like, how do I pass this budget? And how do I make sure my political allies and political supporters are happy for as long as I can do it? And it’s the same, really, with any of the systems all the way up to issues of national security and diplomacy.

But what is Israel going to be doing in the next years to come? There’s no planning here. There’s no thinking. It’s all about how do the people who are currently notionally in power keep their grasp on power. 

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

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, I assume you’re talking about post-October 7.

Sruli Fruchter: Yeah, correct.

Anshel Pfeffer: The massive failures of containing Hamas and allowing them to have many millions and build up, which is the biggest failure of the prime minister who’s been in power for so long, and that was his strategy. But putting that massive strategic failure aside, the biggest failure is the lack of a strategy. Israel did not have to rush into the war post-October 8.

There was a pause there. It’s not like the Yom Kippur War. The Yom Kippur War, Syria and Egypt attacked, and they continued to move into Sinai and into the Golan on those fronts. Israel had to react very quickly, and there was a war where you couldn’t think, hold on, what do we want to achieve? The October 7 attack, after a few hours of the terrible things that happened on October 7, Hamas retreated back into Gaza.

Now, at that point, Israel had an opportunity to think, hold on, how do we respond? Obviously, there has to be a massive response. Obviously, war has began, but it’s a war where you had a moment, and it took them almost three weeks to begin the ground offensive, which began on October 27, to try and work out what the plan is going to be. One of the priorities, Israel is at war, but how does it want this war to end? What’s the strategic objective of this war? The biggest failure is that we are now 16 months after that, and nobody can really say what the strategic objective is, because there isn’t. The strategic objective of this government doesn’t exist.

There’s an objective to remain in power. That’s the war. The war, as far as those in government, is how do we remain in power, and how do we avoid accountability? That’s the biggest failure. The biggest failure that we’ve been for all these months now under a government which has not delivered any type of strategic vision or idea.

Obviously, if you speak to those who are supposed to be executing the plans, namely the IDF, the senior officers will say, but we’re still waiting for the government to tell us really what the plan is, because these slogans of total victory and obliterating Hamas are not real plans. It’s a slogan. It’s not a plan. It’s not a strategy, and especially when some of the other things that are being said, returning the hostages, for example, are almost in contradiction, because the type of military operation you need to obliterate something like Hamas is not the type of military operation you need to rescue hostages.

How do you balance these contradicting missions? That, without question, is the biggest failure, the lack of any strategy. The biggest success is the success of Israeli society, the fact that Israeli society have kept up pressure on the government, mainly on the issue of the hostages. We would not have seen hostages coming home alive if it wasn’t for the public who were saying, yes, we understand we’re at war. We understand that this is something that we have to be part of, of this war effort.

And you’ve seen how the Israeli public, well, parts of the Israeli public, not including the Haredi public who have totally disregarded the fact that we’re at war, but 60-70% of the Israeli public have totally given up themselves in this war. They’ve done so while keeping a very healthy measure of skepticism and mistrust of the government. You see this in all the polls that Israelis are in favor, well, not so much anymore, because now they’re in favor of bringing up the hostages, but certainly in the first months of the war was 100% behind the war effort, but also 70-80% said this government is a total failure and we don’t trust it, which is a very interesting thing in history of public opinion. There’s something called the rallying around the flag effect, that societies, nations which go to war, there’s also a rallying around the flag, an outbreak of patriotism and people are very supportive of the country and of the leadership.

And in Israel, we’ve seen a unique phenomena, which I think is a huge success story of Israelis. We’ve seen Israelis coming together to be part of the war effort, not in support of the government. And I think that’s a sign of health of Israeli society. And the fact that there was enough people in public, in private lobbying, in the medias who kept the issue of the hostages at the front of public agenda, that forced the government to add that to the war priorities, even though the government tried as much as it could to sort of push the issue of the hostages off the agenda.

They failed and Israeli society by and large kept that on. And, you know, you can go out the streets just here in this neighborhood and see so many signs, both for the hostages in general and for specific people, also people who lived near here, sadly, those hostages who didn’t make it. But the fact that those who came out alive, that is thanks to the pressure of Israeli society, holding the government to account, not trusting the government slogans. So that’s the biggest success and Israelis saved lives of their compatriots thanks to that pressure.

Sruli Fruchter: Many against the type, I guess, the success or the failure as you’re depicting it, would similarly argue that kind of as you mentioned before, one of the greatest failures that Israel had done, let’s say pre-October 7th, was arming or disregarding Hamas and allowing Hamas to expand its military capabilities and its strength as much as it did. And they see now as essentially Israel having to right that wrong and not being able to, almost kind of in like a Sophie’s Choice situation in which either they need to fully obliterate Hamas or pursue that goal of obliteration of Hamas in whatever form that means, which again we’ve noted hasn’t been defined, getting rid of certain of their ranks, of wiping out their leadership, not actually obliterating every single terrorist, and then at the same time rescuing back the hostages. How do you see those two aims working together and Israel having to navigate them? Isn’t the lack of a clear plan more indicative of the fact that there isn’t really a great way to do both of them, and Israel’s trying to straddle? 

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, if there were textbook solutions here, then it would be much easier. But obviously it’s not, there aren’t simple solutions how to dealing with Hamas and how to dealing with hostage situations.

And Hamas is the problem that we have here. But how do sovereign governments and nations deal with hostages? It’s a dilemma. Do you deal with terror organizations? Do you say, no, we’re not going to negotiate with you? We’re seeing just now with the United States how policies have been flipped over and suddenly you have American diplomats talking directly to terror organizations and making type of concessions that previous administration wouldn’t have made. And who are we to say which one is right or wrong? We had in Israel something called the Shamgar Commission about 15 years ago, which said in the future we will never have lopsided exchanges of 1,000 or how m any Palestinian prisoners in return for one of our prisoners.

That’s a thing you can say when there isn’t actually a case happening. But then, when there is a case happening and you can see a family who are waiting for their loved one, and there are people. In this case, we were, now it’s the numbers, it’s still high. I mean, if someone had told you October 6th we’d have 59 hostages and that would be the smaller number, then it would have been unimaginable.

So, none of these cases have textbook solutions, and certainly with Hamas, which is an organization that Israel has never fully understood how to deal with from the very origins of before Hamas was officially founded in 1987. But before that, Israel thought that this was a benign religious party that Israel could deal with, and by dealing with it, Israel would somehow weaken other parts of the Palestinian movement. In the 70s, Israel was financing the building of mosques in Gaza in cooperation with those very people who would go on to become the founders of Hamas. So, there’s the idea of how to deal with Hamas, and to deal with Hamas in the broader context of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, there has never been a simple idea.

And even today, you’ll sit down with the various experts, and they’ll say this is the way to deal with Hamas. The idea that you’ll obliterate Hamas is as realistic as saying I’m going to obliterate Chabad. It’s probably easier to obliterate Chabad because they’re better defined. To obliterate an organization based on ground roots faith and activism, and that’s not saying that Hamas is not a terror organization, it is.

But it’s based on something very organic to Palestinian society. There is a way of doing that because even if Israel, along with other actors, would tomorrow kill every single registered Hamas member, non-registered because there’s not really that much registered members, but every single member. So, the day after, there’d be another 10,000 young men or teenagers in Gaza taking up Kalashnikovs and becoming Hamas again. So, there is no easy way of dealing with that.

We’re already seeing now how Hamas in Gaza has been rebuilding itself in what is by now just a seven-week period of ceasefire. So, you want to deal with Hamas, you want to make sure that Hamas is not a threat to Israel, come up with a better, more sophisticated solution rather than slogans of we’re going to obliterate Hamas and then just start steamrolling through Gaza. And the same is true of the hostages. We have this beautiful myth based on something that happened in 1976 that Israel had this capability to just swoop in and save 100 hostages.

Yes, that did happen in 1976 with the operation in Entebbe. There was an opportunity then, perhaps, not perhaps, those who were holding them captive didn’t dream that Israelis would suddenly swoop in and carry out this operation. It was possible. That’s not the situation right now in Gaza.

There isn’t some, I mean, Israelis kind of were hoping for months and months that our brilliant special forces and intelligence will somehow find the way to go into Gaza, into the tunnel, and bring everybody out safely. That was never going to be the case. So, once again, also there you need a much more sophisticated solution. And none of these solutions, as we said here, but none of them are just wham, bam, and it’s all done.

And some of them will take uncomfortable compromises, and some of them could take 10 or 20 years. Israel’s been dealing with Hamas since 1987. The idea that now we’ll finally solve this problem, Hamas will never be a threat, will never be something that we need to deal with, was always naive amongst those who believed it and those who tried to make people believe it, even though they knew that wasn’t the case. I think just an act of charlatans of trying to say, this is the total victory and it’s in reach.

That was always a myth, and that is why not stopping to think on October 8th and also telling the public this is not going to be a simple thing. Because simply saying we’re at war, there’s going to be sacrifice, that’s easy. But actually saying there are going to be difficult choices, and Israel will have to make compromises, and Israel will have to defer some of the things that it would like to achieve because there will be priorities, and we’ll have to weigh up saving hostages and allowing people to rebuild their lives against this total victory that was always a pipe dream. The fact that there wasn’t a leadership capable of doing that, I think, was a big tragedy, and it’s an ongoing tragedy because we’re still dealing with those myths right now.

Sruli Fruchter: Before we move on to the next question, I know that you wrote a book about Bibi in 2018, which received a lot of praise and notoriety. What about Bibi has surprised you over the course of this war? 

Anshel Pfeffer: I don’t want this all to be about what I think about Netanyahu,andpeople who just go read my book or read stuff I’ve written over the years. I don’t think I was that surprised. There’s surprise and disappointment, and with disappointment, there’s always you wanted someone to be better, you wanted someone to do the right thing, and you were disappointed.

But I think that if you look at the way Netanyahu has always avoided responsibility, he has always sought to blame others, even when it was so clear to everyone that it was his failing, and this goes back throughout his public career. We now have over four decades to look at. It was typical Netanyahu. Nobody could have imagined, I think, what happened on October 7th, but the way in which on that very day he was already sitting with advisers and trying to work out a political course to avoid responsibility.

Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me. I would have hoped that he would have risen to the occasion. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. It hasn’t been the case, and if you just want one example, right now there’s this big issue of the National Commission of Inquiry, which 80% of the Israeli public in every poll are demanding, and it would have been a no-brainer, as you Americans say.

Obviously, you would have the biggest tragedy, calamity, failure in Israeli history. You would have to have National Commission of Inquiry. The way Netanyahu has been avoiding that is not new. The Knesset in 1968, so that’s 57 years ago, passed the National Commission of Inquiry law which allows the government or should in certain instances set up National Commission of Inquiry.

Israel’s had 20 of these commissions so far in 57 years. Netanyahu has been for 17 years in those 57 primaries so that’s almost a third of that time. None of those 20 commissions were set up under Netanyahu. Netanyahu does not like other people to start investigating the failures of his government.

That’s why after the Meron tragedy which until October 7th was arguably one of the biggest tragedies in Israeli history, a shocking failure of safety and police procedure which led to the crushing to death of 45 men and boys on Meron. And this wasn’t a case where it was somehow those who perhaps were supporters of the opposition. From the heart of the Netanyahu camp, the Haredi party which always supported him, he totally avoided having a commission of inquiry and it was only appointed, it was the first action by the Bennett-Lapid government. He does not accept scrutiny.

We see it in his dealings with his media, with his dealings with critics. He doesn’t apologize. So yes, he should have taken responsibility for October. He shouldn’t be prime minister right now.

But to say I’m surprised by it? No, this is his pattern.

Sruli Fruchter: Does Western media cover the Israel-Hamas war fairly? 

Anshel Pfeffer: As far as you can talk of fairness in media, the answer would have to be no.

Sruli Fruchter: Why do you say no? 

Anshel Pfeffer: You know, I’ll start with it from looking from the other side. The Palestinians don’t feel they’re being covered.

I gave a lecture to a group of senior officers a while ago in the IDF and one said to me, I heard the Palestinians also feel that they’re not being treated fairly in the media. And it was, it was, like he was totally mystified by that. I said, okay, we’re Israeli, we feel that we’re the ones being treated unfairly. And we have a long list of reasons why we think the Western media is treating us unfairly.

Looking from the Palestinian perspective, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. None of them have really achieved name recognition. But look at this, at the hostages and their names, how well they’re known right now. In the Western media, I brought, it was then shortly after the six hostages who had been killed in the tunnelin Khan Yunis.

I said, look, for example, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, look how he has become, his name and his family are so widely recognized in the West. From the Palestinian perspective, this is so unfair. We’ve lost so many more people and none of them get this, this name recognition. This is just one of many examples.

There is no way to cover this kind of conflict fairly. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Israeli or Palestinian. You will see every day reports that you say, this is not fair. So I think the idea of such a conflict being treated fairly, certainly from the perspective of either side, and I’m not saying that the sides are the same.

I’m Israeli, I’m on the Israeli side. But the idea that we’ll feel fairly treated in the media is, it’s an expectation which will always be disappointed. It’s not the kind of conflict that can be treated. You could argue that the idea of fairness in journalism in itself, something which is impossible to achieve because what’s fair for me is not fair for you.

Then if I try to be fair by both sides, perhaps I’ll totally lose the capability of covering a story with any kind of effectiveness. I don’t expect it to be fair. I expect to try and be as accurate as it possibly can be. We should try and be as accurate as possible.

As journalists, and hopefully the more accurate we get, the fairer we can be. But fairness is like perfection. It’s something that you can strive and aspire to, but you won’t ever. And like I said, those are in this war.

And it’s something that we’re experiencing every day, every minute of every day for the last 16 months. We’re not going to feel when someone comes in from whatever country and reports on this that we’re being treated fairly. 

Sruli Fruchter: Very briefly, I am curious, even for my own interest and I’m sure for our listeners. For the last decade or so, you’ve been the senior correspondent for Haaretz.

And as of this past August, you switched over to be full-time Israeli correspondent for The Economist. What’s been the difference reporting as a reporter and as a journalist for an Israeli publication versus a non-Israeli publication? 

Anshel Pfeffer: Things haven’t really changed for me because I was before that also as a freelance correspondent for The Economist and for other non-Israeli news organizations. And I’ve been writing for 15 or 20 years, both in Hebrew and in English. So I’m used to writing for different audiences and different news organizations.

So I think that it’s the same thing whether you’re writing in a specific country for that country, for that domestic audience or for an international audience. There are things that you need to explain to an international audience. There’s more of a context that you need to make for international audience. It’s like when you translate a book from Hebrew to English.

If it’s written by a Hebrew author, you’ll need to explain to the international English reader. When you’re writing about stuff that as Jews, for us, we don’t need to explain. I don’t need to explain what Pesach is. If I’m writing something and you’re my audience, I don’t need to explain to you what Pesach is.

If you’re writing it for a broader audience, then you do. These things are obviously hugely magnified at a time of war, a time when there’s so much emotion. And you need to control your emotion and try and explain things in a less emotional way. Also, I’m not on television.

When you’re on television, then more of your passion comes through, more of your feelings come through. When you write, there are various ways of conveying feelings. There’s a more analytical type of writing. There’s a more passionate, personal type of ways of writing.

The Economist is very analytical, from 36,000 feet in many ways. It does also try to become granular. It’s very much a professional thing more than how you feel. You’ve got to try and put your feelings aside when you’re writing for a bigger international audience and certainly when you’re writing for something like The Economist, where the value in what you’re doing is the ability to analyse.

It’s still, at the end of the day, a weekly newspaper. It’s not a daily paper where you’ll have 100 reports and everything that’s happening. There’ll be two or three reports maximum about a specific topic. Especially when it’s a war with so many moving parts, you’ve got to try and give as broad and as well-explained picture as possible.

It’s very different from when you’re writing for an Israeli newspaper. Certainly at a time of war, your passion isn’t even expected to be part of your report. 

Sruli Fruchter: What do you look for in deciding which Knesset party to vote for? Not who you vote for, but what are the things that you’re considering? 

Anshel Pfeffer: What do I look for? It’s a parliamentary election. First of all, I think you need to think who do you want to represent you in the Knesset? Even though we don’t vote for specific candidates, but for lists of candidates, I think the first thing is who is on the list of candidates of the parties which I’m considering and are these the people I want in the Knesset? These are the people who are going to be representing me and taking care of the things that are important to us.

One of the main things I look at is a list of candidates. Obviously, positions of the party, how close they are to my personal positions. That in itself is not the main thing or not the only thing because you also think tactically. It’s not just a vote for a party, it’s a vote for a party which may be part of a coalition or an opposition.

Which coalition would that party join? Who would it support as prime minister? There are other tactical considerations. Will that party even cross the threshold? I voted at least once in my life for a party which didn’t cross the threshold. My vote was wasted. Was it wasted? Should I still have voted according to my beliefs or should I have voted more with a more tactical thought? Obviously, voting in Israel is much more difficult than voting in countries where you have two-party systems.

Because of the way in which there is an election and then there’s an election after the election, I can’t control the way the parties are going to act after the election and who they’ll join in coalition. I need to think about that. That’s another consideration that I always have to think about. It’s not just who the party is, what its views are, but how can I expect them to maneuver post-election in the horse trading which leads to the coalition forming and government inauguration.

Sruli Fruchter: Continuing to shift more towards more general things in Israel and the state of Israel, which is more important for Israel, Judaism or democracy?

Anshel Pfeffer: When you use those two terms, when you say Judaism and democracy, you and I may not even be defining those things in the same way. So let’s start with Judaism. There are so many ways of defining what Judaism is. Is it a religion? Is it a nationality, an identity, a culture, a history? Is it a mixture of those things? And we’re three people sitting here in the room.

We probably each have a slightly different or perhaps even a radically different way of explaining what Judaism is. And the other thing we sort of agree is that we all identify as Jews. I think that Israel, to be what it is, which is the state of the Jews, we can’t even agree whether it’s the Jewish state or the state of the Jews. But to be that in a broader sense, it has to be a place where the largest number of Jews can live and have their own idea of what Judaism is and expressed as well as they can in Israel.

So if you and I have a very different idea of what Judaism is, and Israel allows only one of us to have our Judaism fully expressed, then A, that’s a failure of Israel, and B, perhaps one of us will decide that if this so-called Jewish state doesn’t allow me to express my idea of what Judaism is, what’s the point of me living here? So for Israel to be a success, we need democracy, first of all, because we need the freedom to express our Jewish identity. We need that freedom to be as complete as it could be, because many Jews won’t live here if they’re Judaism. And I don’t mean just like the formal denominations of Orthodox versus Reform, etc. I mean, the idea of what it means to be a Jew, if the way I believe it can’t be expressed here in Israel, then why should I be here? And therefore democracy is more important. We need that freedom to define our Judaism and to express it and to live it for there to be a Jewish state.

Sruli Fruchter: What role should the Israeli government have in religious matters?

Anshel Pfeffer: Zero. 

Sruli Fruchter: How do you see the relationship between religion and state operating?

Anshel Pfeffer: Zero.

Sruli Fruchter: Interesting. Any countries that you’re thinking of as a model? 

Anshel Pfeffer: You’re American, not me.

I’m British. I come from a country where there is an established religion, the Church of England. But obviously, to go back to your previous question, the Judaism of the ultra-Orthodoxy is not my Judaism. The idea that some type of limud Torah, which was defined in the late 19th century on the coast of the Baltic Sea, that is limud Torah.

That is the Torah world. That is Judaism. It’s a newer idea than Reform Judaism. So the fact that the government is sponsoring that, literally billions of shekels, is an abomination.

Sruli Fruchter: Well, religious matters extends beyond that. 

Anshel Pfeffer: That’s one manifestation of the relationship between the government. The government is now, literally these weeks of the budget, passing billions of shekels for a type of sort of pseudo-scholarship, which to my mind is a bogus type of Judaism. Now, it’s totally valid because everybody can come up with their Judaism.

But the idea of the Litvak … limud, which in itself was invented as a sort of intellectual challenge for young, clever Jews so they wouldn’t go to the universities, because the universities at the time were being opened up in the Russian Empire, slowly being opened up to a small number of Jews, that that has defined limud Torah. And now billions of Israeli taxpayers are going, that’s an abomination. And that’s just one of a thousand examples in which the connection between the state and Judaism has been totally perverted. And to me, it’s a perversion.

Maybe you think it’s a great thing. And there are people who think it’s a great thing. And there’s entire political parties for which hundreds of thousands of people have voted who are in favor of that. So I don’t expect you or your taxpayers, well you in a broader sense, to go and necessarily finance the types of Judaism I believe in.

But I don’t want to spend, so that’s just budget. But it manifests itself in so many different ways. If I want to get married, I got married twice in my life already. Why does the state of Israel expect me to do that with a cleric who I don’t agree with the way they see Judaism? Or maybe I do, but why have to be forced to do some of the most intimate things in my life? Marriage, chas v’shalom, the bad things that happen.

I want to decide who for me is the type of spiritual guide, or I want to decide I don’t need a spiritual guide. But to force that on me? These things are not, to my mind, these are not Yiddishkeit. I mean not my idea of what it is to be a Jew. So I don’t think a state which is run by a temporary government, which is replaced every so and so years, and it’s run according to political agreements and compromise, I don’t think that it should be involved in those things.

And I don’t think the Jewishness of Israel is expressed by those dirty political dealings, which force the majority of Jews and the majority of Israelis to be part of a type of Jewishness that they just don’t agree with. 

Sruli Fruchter: Now that Israel already exists, what’s the purpose of Zionism?

Anshel Pfeffer: Zionism is a plan. Oh sorry, was a plan. The idea of Zionism being an ideology just because the ism at the end, and because it came into the world around about the same time that communism and capitalism and socialism were talked about, it’s still not an ideology.

It was a plan, it was set forth in practical terms by Herzl and by other people, mainly Herzl was very good at PR, he wasn’t the first certainly. But the idea of a sovereign state for Jews in the biblical homeland was a plan. And if you read Altneuland, you read Judenstaat, the two books by Herzl, there’s a lot of romantic ideas there, but it’s also an idea, this is how it should look, this is the blueprint of a Jewish state. Obviously the Israel that came into being 50 years later is not exactly what Herzl set out, but it was done.

1948, Ben-Gurion stands up just before Shabbat begins in the Tel Aviv Opera House, and it’s done. And there is a state, and then there’s months of war to make sure that that state survives, and you could say there’s a period perhaps of months and years in which it may have been a bit of touch and go to make sure that really the state would remain in existence. But by and large, 77 years ago, it became a reality. So Zionism was a plan that succeeded.

So the talk about Zionism today is to sort of take an idea which nobody’s going to even agree what it is and fight for it for something that doesn’t exist rather than saying Israel is a fact. And now we need to have the argument over what kind of country Israel has to be and try and make it as best a country as it can be. But to talk about this sort of state ideology which doesn’t even exist and we don’t even have an idea because there never was an ideology, it was a plan. And it was a plan that succeeded.

Whether or not you think Zionism was a bad thing to believe in and to fight for before 1948, or it was the most just and well-informed idea, that’s an argument which is over. The Zionists won. The state of Israel came into being. Those who had reasons, good or bad, against Zionism, they lost because history proved that the Jews could build a state and we’re sitting and living in it today.

So it doesn’t have a purpose because it doesn’t exist. It’s like saying, tell me, what is the purpose of the fight for American independence? America got independence in 1776. Yes, historically it’s very interesting to talk about. And perhaps we can learn some things from history.

But it’s not a movement which exists anymore. There can’t be a purpose to something which doesn’t exist. I understand why people want to talk about Zionism and it serves a lot of purposes. Some of those very bad purposes, like perpetuating corrupt organizations like the World Zionist Organization, which has no purpose except for people to get salaries.

Sruli Fruchter: Well, I’m actually curious about that because given that there is an election coming up, I’m curious how you view the World Zionist Organization and the role that it should or shouldn’t be having today. 

Anshel Pfeffer: If you care about Israel, if you support Israel, if you believe Israel should be a strong and prosperous and successful country, you certainly shouldn’t vote for an organization which questions the existence of Israel. To say we need to be talking about Zionism, we need to be active in Zionism, is basically to say that the existence of Israel is still undetermined. So as I’ve said, I’ve been living here for more than 40 years.

This is a country which exists. We’re sitting in it. There’s a lot of problems here, but none of those problems should put Israel’s existence in question.

There are two reasons to be Zionist. A, because you make a living out of being some kind of function. It’s not funny, it’s a terrible thing. Your Jewish philanthropy and Israeli taxpayer money are going to pay for people who do not have a function and that’s corruption. And we accept that.

The World Zionist Organization, what function does it have? There are entire departments and people who make more money than all three of us do together, sitting there and doing basically nothing. The Israeli government, the Israeli government has a purpose. It doesn’t do it very well. It does it terribly right now, but we need to be improving the Israeli government.

This idea that we have sort of a shadow Jewish Israeli government, for what? So that’s one reason to be a Zionist, because you make money out of it. I think it’s wrong. I think it’s corrupt. But some people, you can believe in something if it’s paying you money.

The other reason is if you’re totally deluded about the situation that Israel is in. Israel is a strong, prosperous country, which obviously has a lot of things it needs to fix. Zionism is not the answer to those things. Zionism is what built Israel 77 years ago.

Now let’s deal with Israel, not with some idea. And it’s a way of running away from the real problems, because if we’re talking about this argument over what Zionism is, we’re not talking about the real problems of Israel. The problems of Israel are not a lack of Zionism. This is 100% Zionism.

From May 1948, we have 100% Zionism in the flesh, in the shape of a sovereign country. Now let’s deal with that country, not with some nebulous idea.

Sruli Fruchter: Is opposing Zionism inherently antisemitic? 

Anshel Pfeffer: No. In many cases, it’s a cover for antisemites.

But once again, because it’s not a real thing, it’s just a word that people … 

Sruli Fruchter: But then when you say it’s anti-Zionism, if Zionism isn’t a real thing, is anti-Zionism a real thing? 

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, that’s a great question. I think that ultimately, when we talk about anti-Semitism, is that a real thing? Yes, there are feelings of hatred, and there are manifestations of that. That could be what people are saying online or in person to you.

It could be acts of violence, and we have no lack of examples. Obviously, anti-Semitism is a real thing. Because we live in a world where, I don’t know how many decades, anti-Semitism is not so respectable, then there are lots of covers for it. And obviously, a cover for it, it would be hostility towards Israel.

And the hostility towards Israel has the label of anti-Zionism. The fact that there’s no such thing as Zionism doesn’t mean that there isn’t real hostility towards Israel. It doesn’t mean there’s hostility towards Israel. In many cases, and not in all cases, is also hatred of Jews, and it’s a convenient cover.

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

Anshel Pfeffer: No, the world’s most moral army is the army which never has to fight a war. So, look at the armies around the world, look which one hasn’t fought wars in the last century. They’ll find the most moral army in the world. The term, I was trying to find where that term came into use for the first time.

And it was used for what I managed to research. It was used first time in 1983, following the conclusions of the Kahan Commission, which looked into the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon. And the Kahan Commission had determined that while the massacre had been carried out by the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and some other senior figures had responsibility for not preventing it. And in the defense of Sharon, various people were saying, how could Sharon be blamed for something that was done by another group and not even Israeli? That was the first time where someone said, the IDF is the most moral army in the world.

How can you blame us for any kind of responsibility for what was being done in Sabra and Shatila? And the reason I’m bringing that up is that it’s always been used as a way to try and avoid difficult questions. If the IDF is the most moral army in the world, we don’t have to answer questions. It’s a shield from the things that we don’t want to talk about when we talk about the necessity of the use of military power. And the fact that we need to fight wars, and Israel does need to fight wars, you could argue how many of the wars Israel has fought or is currently fighting, it does need to, but no question Israel needs a strong army, it needs to be fighting, and in some instances needs to be fighting wars, means that we also have to deal with the difficult questions that arise of the use of military power, because with war, there come war crimes, and with lethal power, you can also have a lethal abuse of power.

I’m not saying for one moment that the IDF should have less lethal weapons. No, the point of having an army and having weapons is that they sometimes are used to kill, and sometimes used to kill a lot of people. But to say we are the most moral army in the world is a cop-out. You’re saying, okay, I’m not going to deal with the question marks that arise occasionally, and the more war you’re engaged in, the more these questions arise, because I’m the most moral army in the world, so how dare you ask these questions of me? The only way you can be a more moral person or nation or organization is by actually dealing with these questions, by asking yourself, and by looking at things that happen, saying, hold on, things happen, things are happening, which we should be addressing, we should be saying, and in some cases also prosecuting people who have done it.

Now, the problem with prosecuting a soldier of your own country is that this is a young man who you have taught to fight, you’ve taught to kill, and you’ve sent him into a battlefield to both endanger himself and to kill. And then if that person did something wrong, committed a crime on the battlefield, which is a criminal act, you need to prosecute that person and if necessary, punish him. But at the same time, this is someone that you gave that gun to, you sent into the line of fire, you said, go and endanger your life and fight.

Sruli Fruchter: So is the issue of the government’s culpability or in terms of the morale towards others who may or may not feel encouraged to fight? 

Anshel Pfeffer: So you’re talking here about moral issues, you’re talking about criminal issues, and how do we deal? Yes, it’s very difficult to deal with questions of how your country’s soldiers have acted on the battlefield.

Because this is someone who was out there endangering their life on your behalf, you sent home safely, that person was out on the battlefield, and now how dare those lawyers go and say, well, we need to question this person and possibly even put him on trial and even send him to jail for what he did. So this is a huge moral dilemma and very few countries know how to deal with this and we don’t need to get into the water boundary of showing how many Western democracies have failed at dealing with war crimes committed by their own soldiers, certainly non-democratic countries have done that. And yet, we need to be addressing that. And until we address that, we can’t talk about being moral.

So yes, I can give you a whole lecture on how when Israel targets drone strikes, there will be an extra pair of eyes looking and trying to make sure that civilians and children, that is true, that exists. But it doesn’t matter in wartime, there will be mistakes and there will be crimes carried out as well. We need to be addressing that. And to create this myth of we are the most moral army in the world is just to run away from addressing those things.

Sruli Fruchter: So in that debate about war crimes and Israel’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war over the last 16 months or so, there’s people who vigorously indict Israel and vigorously defend Israel. I’m curious briefly how you assess.

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, it’s like what I said before about the way in which you write for an international audience. The most important thing are facts and accuracy.

And if I’m going into a report, if I’m working on a report, based on my natural assumption that Israel is always the most moral army, the IDF is the most moral army, that colors, that creates a certain perception and that affects the way that you report it. And vice versa, if I’m going into, if I’m reporting on something under the belief that Israelis are bloodthirsty tyrants who just want to kill Palestinian children, that’s kind of what I report. And I know that life is a lot more complicated than that. I know all that the IDF does to try and avoid certain types of collateral damage and so on.

And I know that there’s been many cases, including things that I’ve reported on and even things that I saw myself as a soldier and a reservist, where Israeli soldiers contravene that, whether on their own initiative or whether under order. So I need to be as professional, not in the sense that I can’t be on any side. I’m always going to be an Israeli. I can’t erase my Israeli identity.

I’ve been an Israeli since the age of nine and I will be for the rest of my life. But as a journalist, your duty is to come to every report with the knowledge that you have, obviously, with the idea that, okay, these are the precautions that they take, they should be taking. And these are the ways in which there have been infringements of these things. And try and work out what’s happened in every case and have a healthy degree of skepticism.

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

Anshel Pfeffer: The idea that, to quote your question, that you need to make the case for Israel is an obscene idea. I’m an Israeli. This country has been around for 77 years. I’m by now old enough to have lived here most of this country’s life.

I don’t need to make the case for Israel. Israel exists. Israel, by now, has been in existence for longer than most of the member states of the United Nations. It’s no longer even a young country.

You can’t even call it a young country anymore. It’s a reality. Walk out of the apartment, you’re in Israel. Carry on walking.

Is it you in Israel? There’s no… What do you need to make the case for? If I need to make the case for Israel, I’m somewhat accepting that there’s a question mark in Israel. Is there a question mark on 200 other member states of the United Nations? No. So, I mean, ask yourself why you even ask that question.

Why is… Am I the first person to say that we shouldn’t be even asking that? Oh, thanks. But the idea that we have to…

And to make it even worse, there’s a whole industry around. There are hasbara and advocacy all built around making the case. What a… So I’m not going to say that a dirty word I was going to make because this is for family listening.

What a waste. What an obscene waste of money. Now, beyond the fact that there is no reason whatsoever to make the case for Israel, there shouldn’t be no reason. And the fact that it’s organizations and figures and politicians who claim to be pro-Israel, who are trying to say we need to make the case for Israel.

Really? Why? But beyond that, look what it’s done to us. It’s done to us two massive… Us as Israelis. It’s created us two massive damages.

First, it’s created this entire idea that we need to do hasbara as some kind of strategic necessity. No, we need to fix the teachers shortage. We need to fix the housing crisis. We need to fix this whole massive issue that we have here with this conflict that isn’t ending.

We need to fix issues of state and religion. We need to work out how now a third of Israeli young people who aren’t studying the course subjects will be able to find their way one day into a modern workplace. We need to be making the case for Israel. It’s one of the strongest countries, most prosperous country.

It’s got a GDP the same as the United Kingdom. We need to make the case for that. So the effort, the resources that go into making the case into this fake industry of hasbara could all be used to try and make Israel a better place. Instead of…

This is not… It’s just trying to convince the convinced anyway. It’s just simply a waste of time. Nothing has ever come out of it.

And it’s a huge, huge waste of resources which could go into trying to make both resources and money and the resources of time and effort and focus and attention that should go into making Israel a better place. And also to the Jewish world. The time that is spent by the hasbara Jews in making the case for Israel, instead of Jewish education, trying to work out how your communities and families can have a better Jewish life, however you define having a Jewish life. It’s a displacement of effort.

It’s a distraction. It’s just a waste. And the other thing that it’s done is that it has defined a totally bogus idea of what a leader is, of what an Israeli leader or Jewish leader… How would you define an Israeli leader? Nowadays it’s being defined, oh, he makes good speeches in the UN or he gives good interviews on CNN or BBC making the case for Israel.

Really? Is that what I want from a leader? If I had to make a list of 30 things that I need the leader of my country to do, making the case for Israel wouldn’t be in the top 20 or 30. Maybe it’s creeping to the bottom of the top 30. But there’s so many things. But we have had, and we don’t have to say the name of that person because I’m fed up of saying his name.

But for the last 40 years, because we have had this template of a Jewish leader or an Israeli leader, how did he make his name? By making speeches in the UN. Then that is what an Israeli leader should be. Go back to Parshat Yitro and the blueprint of what a Jewish leader should be. And we have it throughout both the Torah and throughout all our history.

It was never, oh, here’s someone who can go make a good speech. Yes, there were times in which diplomacy is needed. There are times in which you do need to be able to make a case. But that should be defining what leadership is.

You know, I’ve heard of this Jewish leader. He had speech impediment and yet he became the greatest Jewish leader of history. Moshe Rabbeinu, k’vad peh, k’vad lashon. Really? Moshe Rabbeinu couldn’t go and talk to the United Nations in English.

He would have been terrible on CNN, the Fox … So the idea of making the case for Israel, I’m sorry, I didn’t even answer your question. You said, how would I start making a case for Israel? The answer is I would not.

So it’s a very long way of answering your question.

Sruli Fruchter: No, no, that’s a satisfactory answer. Do you think peace between Israelis and Palestinians will happen within your lifetime?

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, we have to be honest. It doesn’t look likely right now.

We’re at a low point of the terrible things that Israelis and Palestinians have done to each other for the last hundred years. So there’s a lot of terrible things we’ve done to each other, but we’ve kind of, the last 16 months, we’ve succeeded in doing quite a bit. Overcoming that, overcoming the actual damage, overcoming the lack of trust, the trauma on either side, is certainly something that it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll overcome in the near future. The question is how long we’ll live, but.

So on that. I may have assumed, but hold on. We also have to be open to history creating surprises or reality. Now we’re looking back at the reality that’s history.

I’ll give you three very, I think, very strong examples. 1945, the Second World War ended. There were two world wars in the first half of the 20th century between France and Germany, the two countries which were most in that fight and were most damaged. Six years later, they were already setting up the Coal and Steel pact, which became the basis for what the European Union is today, and it’s the most successful trading bloc and the most peaceful part of the world.

Who would have imagined at the end of the Second World War that France and Germany would be the founding members of what is still today the most successful, peaceful, international or regional bloc, the EU. And that happened within a few years. But okay, there’s a guy, we don’t think about them. Look at Am Yisrael.

1945 was also the end of the Shoah, the biggest tragedy over nearly half of our people were exterminated. Seven years later, the Jewish State of Israel was signing the reparations agreement with the Federal Republic of West Germany. Now, if I say to a Jew in 1945, seven years from now there’s going to be an Israeli Prime Minister signing deals with a new state of Germany, you’d think I’m crazy. And likewise, at the end of Yom Kippur, the end of the Yom Kippur War, 1973, who would have imagined that five years later, Anwar Sadat, the president of the country, which just had one of the most deadliest wars with Israel, would be in the Knesset making a speech which would lead to historic peace.

So I can’t give you now a scenario in which the same thing is going to happen between Israel and the Palestinians in five or six years. But the fact that it was unimaginable then, and all it took was five, six, seven years, and it happened, peace with Egypt, peace between Germany and France, Israel and Germany after the Shoah, entering into various agreements, shows the course of the affairs of nations that can sometimes surprise us. And sadly, we can’t see into the future and hopefully look at a time when we will have that, but I wouldn’t rule it out. 

Sruli Fruchter: So on that note, what should happen with Gaza and the conflict after the war? 

Anshel Pfeffer: Much cleverer and certainly much more powerful people than me have had so many bad ideas of what to do with Gaza.

And we’ve just seen what AI has created for future for Gaza, which is obviously very ridiculous. Gaza is not a natural place in the sense that Gaza is a city, a town, which existed for thousands of years. But the Gaza Strip is part of the coastal strip of this land. It was carved out in 1948 and 1949 by the Egyptian army as a result of where the ceasefire lines were between Israel and Egypt and where Palestinian refugees had fled to, a large number of the Palestinian refugees had fled to following the Nakba, their uprooting from their towns and villages.

And in that sense, it’s not a natural identity. It’s a holding area, which has remained a holding area for 76 years, cut off from its natural area, which is the rest of the coastal plain. You go down from Akko Haifa, Jaffa Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza. You know, it’s not, it was supposed to be always part of that.

And yes, there are borders. There are international borders or de facto borders, which split territories and countries apart, but there’s also life and there’s trade and there’s agriculture and climate. And these things, the only way of dealing with Gaza in the longterm is understanding how Gaza is part of this area and of the broader region. And currently we’re still looking at Gaza as this holding place for people.

And without going to question of the blame, and obviously Hamas is to blame for launching the massacres of October 7th. Honestly, there should be no question about that. But we also have to ask, can this situation where Gaza remains a holding area for people, I don’t want to use the words that some people use, because I think those words are used in an unfair and ahistorical way to sort of compare Gaza to things that were done to the Jews. Israel didn’t create Gaza, Egypt created Gaza as the Gaza Strip as a holding area.

But it doesn’t matter once again, the question of the blame of Hamas or Egypt and various Israelis as well, the things that have happened is not going to help me deal with, not going to help us, not going to help Israel, not going to help the Gazans and the Palestinians. And to deal with that, we need to start thinking about, okay, there are going to be too many people, they’re not going to go away. I’m sorry to disappoint anybody who believes in a Mara Gaza or Gaza Lago, or whatever they call those plans.

They they’re there. We’re here, they’re there. We’re neither of us are going to go away. And I’m sorry that it you have to kind of sound that kind of lefty and and and sort of … Not not even utopian.

You have to like sound sometimes it’s like sounds naive to say, well, we have to somehow deal with you know, give Gaza hope. There are two plus million people living there. It’s cramped. It’s cut off from the trading routes, from the from the farming and and other micro climates that are around there.

It’s never been a natural place, and therefore it’s always been a place of misery and always been a place from which attacks on Israel were launched. That does not excuse the attacks. It just says this is a situation which will continue. And we’re not going to get rid of them.

So we need to start changing the way we think about Gaza. Now, the immediate answer of an Israeli when you say this is, but did you not see what happened on October 7th? Did you not see how they came out of Gaza and murdered us and raped and and and and and burned and pillaged? Yes, I saw that. And we’ve certainly exacted quite a retribution for that. And we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But that doesn’t change the fact that there are still two million people there. So how can you trust them? And that’s a really good question. And it goes back to a question of, uh, will we see peace with the Palestinians in our lifetime? And I should have answered there, I should have answered there saying, we already have peace with the Palestinians. Yeah, but not with all the Palestinians.

We have peace with two million Palestinian citizens of Israel. And if you, do you have kids? Okay, b’ezrat Hashem one day when if you if you will have kids, and they’ll be sick and you’ll and if you’ll still be living in Israel, you’ll go to the pharmacy to get some kind of medicine. Who’s going to mix the medicine? Who are the pharmacists in Israel? Every guy in Israel who says to me, I can’t trust Palestinians, I say, who, you know, last week when your when your little kid had had a virus, who mixed the antibiotics? A Palestinian pharmacist, probably a woman wearing a hijab actually, and you trusted her with the medicine for your child.

So, levels of trust fluctuate. And somehow, Israelis can trust the Palestinian pharmacist who’s mixing their kids’ medicine, but they can’t trust the person in Gaza. I understand in both cases why that is, but it also means that trust is something that can be earned, that can be built. And we have to try and do that.

Sruli Fruchter: Where do you read news about Israel?

Anshel Pfeffer: Uh, where do I read news? I mean, mainly on the screen of my smartphone, obviously.

Sruli Fruchter: Which publications?

Anshel Pfeffer: A huge range. Obviously, Haaretz is a source of the most reliable, up-to-date. I mean … there is nothing but Haaretz.

There are a few others, but obviously, you know, in Hebrew and in English, that’s the most authoritative. It’s the source that you can trust. There’s no question about it. I’m not going to give marks to other news organizations.

There are others. Some, some bad, some a bit less bad.

Sruli Fruchter: Where do you identify on Israel’s political and religious spectrum? And do you have any friends on the quote unquote other side?

Anshel Pfeffer: Well, I don’t see it as a thing of sides. It’s certainly much more like you said, a spectrum. Uh, I was born religious, and I was born, yeah, I grew I grew up in the in in you know, in the Dati Leumi community, and I lived as a young man also in a couple of settlements.

So, I’ve lived on all sides and and and and parts of the Israeli political spectrum. Now, you know, I’m I’m certainly not uh politically in that part in that place anymore, but most of my family and many of my friends still are. It’s not I don’t see it as a matter of sides, because I’ve also seen how Israelis, you know, quote unquote change sides or how sides change. I mean, the way in which It’s not just the way we move, it’s also the way the spectrum has changed in what are the main issues.

Who thought five years ago the biggest issue would be what are the powers of the Supreme Court and how how to balance them with the powers of the government. So the way in which we we change. And the same is true also about religion. You know, I am massively passionate about limud Torah.

And I’m massively passionate against the way a certain community thinks that limud Torah has to be. So what am I? I think I’m much more Jewish than a Litvak Rosh Yeshiva. You know, I’m not trying to perpetuate a certain type of petrified, irrelevant type of of learning Gemara. I want to learn Gemara in a much more open way.

I’m much better. I’m I’m the best Jew there is in Israel, if you want to like look at degrees of Yiddishkeit. But that’s ridiculous. There isn’t really a spectrum of what Yiddishkeit is.

There are different ways in which we look at how how it’s relevant in our lives and how it’s relevant to our families and communities and you know, we should just try and try and see the the best in all of these ways and and not try to force them on other people. So where does that put me in the spectrum?

Sruli Fruchter: In thebest place. I guess this leads us to our last question. Do you have more hope or fear for Israel and the Jewish People?

Anshel Pfeffer: Um, Inever forget where Am Yisrael was 80 years ago.

And it’s like Dayenu in the Haggadah that Illu hotzi’anu mimmitzrayim, if God hadn’t taken us out of Egypt, but he but that’s all he had done, that would have been enough. And then, you know, there’s a whole long list of things in the in in the legend of of Exodus. And that there’s it’s such a profound idea. Because on the one hand, all the things that that God did for us in the redemption from Egypt and the arrival in the promised land and and all the things that that that happened there, you can’t imagine Jewish history without any of those things.

How many there? 25 of them? I can’t remember the number of Dayenu, I think it’s 20. Do you remember? I have to count them. Anyway, yeah, it’s like a list. So how can you say Dayenu? How can you say that would have been enough? Well, could we have done without the one of them is the is Matan Torah.

Could we have could we imagine our lives without Torah? I can’t imagine my life without Torah. And could we imagine our lives without without our connection to this land? Of course I couldn’t. But the idea that we are constantly on this ladder of achievement, of hope and and of the you know … Is that that that those are that’s our life as Jews, that’s our history as Jews.

So how can I not be optimistic? I’m living in yes, things are terrible right now. We have the worst government in Jewish history, going back to the the Hasmonean kings who let the Romans in 2,000 years ago. Without a question, probably probably even worse than them. We are up a, let me say this in a in a kosher way, up a manure canal without a paddle.

We have no idea how we’re getting out of this. And yet, look look at all that’s been done here in 80 years. You know, we’re sitting here in in Jerusalem, it’s peaceful. Lots of things need to be fixed about Jerusalem.

This is a very screwed up city which has a it’s poor, it’s you know, it’s million residents don’t have a way of talking to each other. It’s dysfunctional. You’re going to try and get here from another neighborhood and you’ll be stuck for for for an hour. And the road in this is one of the one of the nicest neighborhoods in Jerusalem, the road out here is cracked and my daughter-in-law broke her ankle here on a tiny pothole.

In German colony, who would believe that kind of thing. But and yet, who would have dreamt of us living like this in Jerusalem? And yet we dreamt of it. We never believed it. So I’m full of optimism.

That none of that optimism will stop me from criticizing, saying, you know, trying to describe things as the way they are and criticizing the way they are. But if we managed in 80 years or our parents and grandparents, I mean, to be pessimistic is to deny all our parents and grandparents built since since the end of the Shoah. I mean, how could how can we even dare to be pessimistic? Look what they dealt with. Imagine the strength of young men and women leaving the camps with nothing and all they’ve built, the families, the communities, and this country.

So how could we be pessimistic? What kfuy tovah, what lack of gratitude to say, to say that I’m going to be pessimistic now. No, we’re going to persevere and we’re going to make this a better country.

Sruli Fruchter: All right. Anshel Pfeffer, thank you so much for answering our 18 questions.

Anshel Pfeffer: Hope that was of use.

Sruli Fruchter: This really was a lovely interview, and I think a great note for us to end for a short break before we return with the 33rd Israeli thinker. Thank you again to our friends Josh Weinberg and Gilad Brounstein for editing the video and audio of this podcast respectively. As always, if you have questions that you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, please shoot us an email info@18Forty.org.

Now is the time before we wrap up the series. Thank you again, and until next time, keep questioning and keep thinking.

This transcript was produced by Sofer.AI.