PART 1: What Will Be Israel's Next Big Story? - with Donniel Hartman & Yossi Klein Halevi

Speaker 1 You are listening to an art media podcast.

Speaker 2 For a generation, Israelis have functioned under the narrative we offered and they said no, and we don't have a peace partner.

Speaker 2 So, you now have a whole generation of Israelis who, if you talk to them, what's your position on the two-state solution? Don't even know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 The whole political map has moved rightward. The fault line that I I think will determine the future of our ability to remain a reasonably cohesive society now runs through the right.

Speaker 2 There is the democratic right and there's the anti-democratic right. And the Likud is wavering.
The Likud is no longer firmly in the camp of the democratic right as it was until a few years ago.

Speaker 1 It's 10 a.m. on Wednesday, November 12th here in New York City.
It's 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12th in Israel, where Israelis are winding down their day.

Speaker 1 Today, Wednesday, President Trump sent an official letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, asking him to pardon Netanyahu, who continues to be on trial for a series of corruption charges.

Speaker 1 President Trump called the trial a, quote, political, political, unjustified prosecution. President Herzog issued a response saying he holds Mr.

Speaker 1 Trump in, quote, the highest regard and continues to express his deep appreciation for President Trump's unwavering support for Israel.

Speaker 1 Alongside and notwithstanding this, President Herzog goes on, anyone seeking a presidential pardon must submit a formal request in accordance with the established procedures, close quote.

Speaker 1 In another political development, on Tuesday, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Prime Minister Netanyahu's closest advisor, formally submitted his letter of resignation, which we had understood would be coming over recent weeks, and stepped down from his post from the Israeli government, citing family obligations.

Speaker 1 In his resignation letter, Ron Dermer wrote, When I was sworn in as a minister in the government, I promised my family that I would serve only two years in the position.

Speaker 1 I extended my tenure twice, with their blessing. The first time was to work together with you to remove the existential threat posed by Iran's military nuclear capabilities.

Speaker 1 And the second time was to end the war in Gaza on Israel's terms and bring our hostages home. He goes on to chronicle a series of lessons and accomplishments of the government.

Speaker 1 And I think in one key paragraph in his letter, which I think will be the subject for analysis in the months and years ahead, both by us and others, Ron writes, this government will be remembered both for the October 7th attack and for managing the two-year seven front war that followed.

Speaker 2 Close quote.

Speaker 1 Also on Tuesday, Israeli State Comptroller Metanyahu Engelman published his seventh report on the catastrophe of October 7th, in which he blamed Israel's failure on a lack of an officially approved binding national security policy for decades.

Speaker 1 This absence, according to Engelmann, led to a pattern of what he called institutional autonomy that allowed for a disconnect between military policy development and political policy.

Speaker 1 In some other news, on Tuesday, dozens of extremist Israeli settlers launched an arson attack against factories and farmland between the cities of Nablus and Tukarim in the West Bank.

Speaker 1 The IDF said it had detained several of the arsonists, following which Israeli troops were targeted by some of these radical settlers.

Speaker 1 And since then, the IDF chief of staff has issued a statement saying there would be zero tolerance for this kind of crime and violence. Now on to today's episode.

Speaker 1 For years, we've been hearing non-stop about deep-seated division within Israel.

Speaker 1 From the government's pre-October 7th attempted judicial reform to its decision-making during the war, to debate over Haredi enlistment in the IDF, there are many issues that divide Israelis intensely.

Speaker 1 Our guests today are ARC ARC Media contributors Daniil Hartman and Yossi Klein-Halevi, who argue that at this moment, what Israeli society needs is a new unifying story.

Speaker 1 And in our conversation today, they will make that case. Daniil and Yossi are the co-hosts of For Heaven's Sake, a podcast by Arc Media in collaboration with the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Speaker 1 Daniil is a rabbi, author, and president of the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Speaker 1 Yossi is a journalist, author, and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the co-director of Duke University's Muslim Leadership Initiative. Both Daniel and Yossi are prolific writers.

Speaker 1 Yossi has published a number of books, some of which we have had on this podcast to discuss. Daniil Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi on what is Israel's next big story.
This is Call Me Back.

Speaker 1 And I'm pleased to welcome Daniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi, who join us from Jerusalem. Gentlemen, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 It's great to be with you. Nice to be with you.

Speaker 1 As I mentioned in the introduction, I'm a huge fan of your guys' podcast and your bantering and your debating, even though I don't always agree with you guys, but I'm always, I listen to every episode, which I guess is a good sign that even when I disagree, I'm listening.

Speaker 1 And we've got a lot to get into here. And we've just been, you know, thrilled with this collaboration with you guys, this Archimedia Hartman collaboration.

Speaker 1 and this will be perhaps hopefully one of the first of one of these joint conversations we have between the two podcasts so i want to get into this yossi i want to start with you how would you define the sequence of narratives that served as unifying stories throughout israel's history so dan first of all wonderful to be back with you And Daniel and I are thrilled with the partnership with ARC.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it's interesting that you say that you're a devoted listener, even though you sometimes, perhaps often agree with one or the other of us. That actually makes me even happier.

Speaker 2 Because what we try to do in For Heaven's Sake is model a respectful disagreement.

Speaker 2 And I love it when Daniel and I agree with each other, especially when Daniil agrees with me. But the truth is that the times when we disagree are even more precious.

Speaker 2 And that's the feedback we get from our listeners.

Speaker 2 They listen to us because we were able to model a warm and passionate disagreement and how rare that is in the current culture, both in Israel and the U.S.

Speaker 1 I'll just say, Yossi, just on that point, what we've been struck by with Call Me Back is how many Israeli listeners we have who comment that they like listening to, say, Nadav and Amit Segel debating and discussing in English on our podcast much more than watching them or their peers debating in Hebrew in Israel.

Speaker 2 And you know why, Dan? They're more civil on your show. Right.
They're on their best behavior when they're speaking in English. They're not speaking to their tribes.

Speaker 2 When I listen to you all the time and I listen to their analysis, it's deep. It doesn't have all of the certainty.
It doesn't have the arrogance and there's no insulting.

Speaker 2 They're speaking to a larger audience, not echoing a tribal conversation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'll say something. Amit, Sega, we did an Inside Call Me Back, which is our subscriber feed.
We did an Inside Call me back with Amit. And we got a question, this exact question of Amit.

Speaker 1 Who's the real Amit? Would the real Amit Sego please stand up? So we put it to him and he said two things that were interesting. He says, one, English is not my native tongue.
It slows me down.

Speaker 1 I'm not in like rapid fire mode. It forces me to kind of catch my breath.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's probably better.

Speaker 1 The other point he made, which I think is true, and I sense this with Nadav as well, although he hasn't articulated it.

Speaker 1 He says, when you're debating inside Israel, it's like there's some score settling going on within the intra-Israel political debate.

Speaker 2 You know, who was responsible for Qatar funding Hamas? Well, was it this? Was that, you know, it's all this intra. Who killed Chaimar Lazarov in 1933?

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 But when they're communicating outside of Israel, They feel like they have a higher responsibility, that it's not just about the intra, you know, debates and score settling, that they're now speaking to the world on behalf of Israel.

Speaker 1 So it's a different different level of conversation.

Speaker 2 Okay, Yossi. So to segue back to the question of

Speaker 2 what pulled us together all those years, there were two basic commitments that shaped a mainstream Israeli-Jewish narrative.

Speaker 2 And I'm emphasizing Israeli-Jewish narrative because obviously the 20% of the population that's Arab is not part of this consensus.

Speaker 2 And the Israeli-Jewish consensus was really based on two commitments.

Speaker 2 The first was ingathering, what we call in Israel the ingathering of the exiles, which is that Israel's historic role is to reverse the dispersion and bring back to our point of origin, whichever parts of the Jewish people want to come home.

Speaker 2 The ingathering of the exiles has brought Jews back to Israel from literally 100 countries. That's the soul of Israeli

Speaker 2 and more than that. It's the soul of Zionism.

Speaker 2 The second commitment is the very practical realization that we need to defend ourselves and we need to solidify the physical existence of Israel.

Speaker 2 And so these were the two pillars, defense and in-gathering, that most Israeli Jews were committed to. And certainly the ultra-Orthodox exempted themselves really from both of those visions.

Speaker 2 But 80% of Jewish Israel or more bought into these two commitments. And that still remains, I'd say, the shared pillars of Israeliness.

Speaker 2 In addition to that, if you apply a finer resolution to the Israeli story, you'll see a succession of attempts by highly ideological groups to define what is a real Israeli and what is the essence of Israeliness.

Speaker 2 So it began, even before the state, with labor Zionism. And of course, the symbol, the crown jewel of labor Zionism was the kibbutz.

Speaker 2 And the kibbutz presented itself as the embodiment of authentic Israelis. This is the highest expression of what the Israeli project is about.

Speaker 2 And if you were not a secular socialist and implicitly Ashkenazi, then you weren't quite a real Israeli. That was the undertone of this message.

Speaker 2 And so our first, and look, you know, we owe a tremendous amount to that flawed and ultimately failed vision.

Speaker 2 But that's the vision that impelled in large part the creation and the early building of the state. After the Yom Kippur War, the kibbutz vision and labor Zionism generally began to falter.

Speaker 2 And a new elite arose, a new Zionist elite, and said, now it's our turn to lead the country and to redefine the essence of Israeliness. And that was the religious Zionist camp.

Speaker 2 And the religious Zionists came along and said, we are the inheritors of pioneering Zionism, whose expression, the old expression, was the kibbutz. The new expression is the settlement movement.

Speaker 2 And each of these movements, labor Zionism and religious Zionism, presumed to refashion Israeliness in their image and to create a unifying narrative.

Speaker 2 But both of those attempts failed because they spoke only to half the country and they alienated the other half of the country.

Speaker 2 And that is the sub-story of Israeli identity are the successive attempts, very powerful and very moving attempts to create a unifying narrative, and both really failed miserably.

Speaker 1 Okay, Daniel, like many other societies these days, Israeli society is clearly divided and polarized. We are living in an age of incredible political polarization.

Speaker 1 Basically, every Western democratic, quasi-democratic society you visit, the theme of the politics in that place is polarization.

Speaker 1 So my argument is I'm not saying Israel is wrapping itself in glory during this moment. I'm just saying it's not an outlier.
This is the new normal globally. But we'll focus on Israel.

Speaker 1 Each camp in Israel has coalesced around around its own core story. How would you define these disparate stories in Israel?

Speaker 2 Maybe the unique part of Israel is that polarization assumes that there are two polarities. In Israel, we try to outdo ourselves, and they're five.
We don't, two is like too small in us.

Speaker 2 So there are actually five core stories playing out at the same time. The first one is a story of Israel as a liberal Jewish democracy.

Speaker 2 Now, liberal, not in the political sense, but liberal in the sense of a country that concerns itself with basic human rights and liberties. The Declaration of Independence is critical.

Speaker 2 And this is a story that was critical at the founding of the state. Ben-Gurion cared about it.
Then it sort of went to sleep until judicial reform. People said, are you touching my democracy?

Speaker 2 So one core story is Israel has to be a liberal Jewish democracy.

Speaker 2 The second core story, and unfortunately, I didn't grow up in this, but this is a recent phenomenon in which the liberal democratic story is juxtaposed and the polar opposite is the security story.

Speaker 2 And that lands in the just Netanyahu camp because he gives Israelis a sense, I'm safe, I trust my life, my children's lives in your hands.

Speaker 2 The key defining story of Israel is a story of a country at war, which has to take its security, not just seriously, that has to trump all others. So those are the first two.

Speaker 2 The third, very briefly, is a messianic story. It's a story which sees Israel as the unfolding and the ushering in of a messianic era.
And as a result, Israel's not really a real country.

Speaker 2 Israel has to follow certain ideological patterns which fit into God's plan for history. The fourth is the ultra-Orthodox story.

Speaker 2 Now, initially, they didn't have a story of Israel, but they become Zionists. They care about Israel.
You know, Yossi said beforehand that ultra-Orthodox aren't involved in the security narrative.

Speaker 2 Now, quite to the contrary, they claim they're the key to the security narrative. Haredi now narratives say that when I study in yeshiva, I'm the one protecting Israel.

Speaker 2 You think Israel's security is being handled by tankists and special forces and air force and infantry paratroopers? No, Israel's security is in the hands of the yeshiva boy.

Speaker 2 And their narrative of Israel is also, it's not messianic, but it is deeply theological and intertwined with their own religious ideology.

Speaker 2 And the fifth story, which is unfolding, is the 20% story of Israeli Arab Palestinians who don't want Israel as a Jewish state. They want to live in Israel.
They don't want to live in Judean Samaria.

Speaker 2 They don't want to live in a future Palestinian state. 85% say, if I had a choice, I want to stay in Israel instead of going elsewhere.

Speaker 2 But they are in the midst now of articulating, what does Israel mean for me? Israel as a secular, democratic United States, almost like get rid of the ethnic identities.

Speaker 2 Let's just have a different Israel, a liberal democracy in the Middle East.

Speaker 2 These five stories, the first story has about 30%, the second story has 30%, and then the remaining 40% are divided between these other three.

Speaker 2 There is another third, which is Smotrich and a little bit of Bengvir. They're called in Hebrew, Chardal, Kharidila'Umi, which is ultra-Orthodox nationalists.

Speaker 2 They are very much in a messianic perspective. So when our minister of finance is actually motivated by profoundly messianic policies, Houston, we have a problem.
Interesting. Okay.

Speaker 1 USC, I mentioned Naftali Bennett, who is the last Israeli prime minister before this Netanyahu term, who's national religious.

Speaker 1 Bennett says something along the lines of 80% of Israelis agree on 80% of the issues. This has been his point for a long time.

Speaker 1 And based on what Danielle and I were just discussing, it sounds like there's very little to no overlap between these various camps. How do you reconcile that?

Speaker 2 So, Dan, before I answer your question, I'd like to go back to something you said a little earlier, which is

Speaker 2 noting that there's schism in Western societies and the schism is by no means confined to Israel. And that's certainly true.

Speaker 2 The difference, though, is that we have a much smaller margin for error because we're more precarious, because we're under siege, because our legitimacy is being questioned.

Speaker 2 When we tear ourselves apart, let's say over the judicial reform, as we did the year leading up to October 7th, the consequences are immediate.

Speaker 2 We end up in a war because our enemies perceive weakness. And so this idea that, well, we're just, you know, part of this kind of global pattern of schism, on the one hand, it's true.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, the consequences are so much more immediate and severe for Israel. We can't afford to be tearing ourselves apart.

Speaker 1 Ron Dermer, when he was last on Call Me Back, he said what was so chilling about October 7th, among the many things, is it was a reminder for Israeli military planners that Israel has no strategic depth.

Speaker 1 We're not surrounded by two oceans like in the United States. As you're speaking, I'm thinking about what Ron said because you're describing the societal version of what he was describing.

Speaker 2 We have no social depth, no schismatic depth. Right.

Speaker 1 You have no strategic depth from a security standpoint, and you have no strategic depth from a societal standpoint.

Speaker 2 Exactly. From the perspective of history, the consequences are instant.

Speaker 2 But to to get to your question about 80% agreeing on 80% of the issues, you know, 80% of Israelis, maybe more, agree about the need to draft the Haredim.

Speaker 2 Probably 60% to 70% of Israelis agreed. on the need to prioritize the release of hostages, even if that meant not defeating the Hamas regime.

Speaker 2 And so you can choose certain issues and see, yeah, Bennett is right. 70%, 80%, maybe even more of a consensus.

Speaker 2 But generally, on the fundamental issues that divide us, war, peace, territories, religion, and state, I would say that there is a 60%

Speaker 2 majority for the positions that Bennett is articulating. center, right of center, and left of center.
That's 60%.

Speaker 2 And that 60%

Speaker 2 excludes the 20% of Israel that's Arab Israeli. It excludes the 15% of Israel that's ultra-Orthodox, Haredi.
So do the math, what are we up to? 35%?

Speaker 2 Yeah, about a third of the country. And at least 5%,

Speaker 2 maybe more, that I would call hard right, which is not part of this consensus. Now, when I speak about the mainstream, let's take one issue.

Speaker 2 The place of Kahanism, of extreme extreme racist nationalism in Israeli politics. Yitzchak Shamir, who, to the best of my recollection, was not left-wing.

Speaker 1 For our listeners, you know, Yitzhak Shamir, he was the Likud prime minister that followed Begin, and he had roots that were deep in the, shall we say, the very hard-right founding generation. Yes.

Speaker 2 And this same Yitzchak Shamir, when he was prime minister, Meir Kahana, Rabbi Meir Kahana, was the founder and spiritual leader and at one point political leader of the Israeli far-right and had a frankly racist platform.

Speaker 2 Whenever Kahana rose to the podium in the Knesset, Shamir would lead the entire Likud faction out of the hall in protest. Kahana would speak to an empty hall.

Speaker 2 He was a faction of one that was treated as an outcast. And finally, the Knesset banned Kahana altogether from the next elections.

Speaker 2 Now you have Kahana's political and spiritual descendants sitting at the heart of governments.

Speaker 2 So what the government has done is undermine what was once considered a normative expression of the Israeli political mainstream. And that's the tragedy now.

Speaker 2 So we still have a 60% of the Israeli Jewish public, which in principle agrees on the basics, security, a society that respects democratic norms. We still have that.

Speaker 2 But I would say that that 60%

Speaker 2 itself

Speaker 2 is on much shakier ground after the last three years.

Speaker 2 What you're saying, Yossi, is that the Likud used to be the foundation of this core 60%.

Speaker 2 Yes, the Likud, together with labor, formed the mainstream. Exactly.

Speaker 2 And all the extremes, if they wanted to join, knew that there were rules and that only part of their ideology would enter into the running of the government.

Speaker 2 What has changed is that right now there isn't a 60%.

Speaker 2 It's cut in half. And Bennett aspires to reclaim this 60%.
And we have to remember, 60% is 70 seats in the Knesset.

Speaker 2 So you're talking about a very strong, stable coalition, but it will require the Likud re-entering into its traditional classic role as the protector of liberal democracy and security.

Speaker 2 It almost has to reimagine itself as distinct from the party, some of our most extreme ideologies, all the while that it is the adult in the room when it comes to issues of security.

Speaker 2 So this is some of the shifts that are happening.

Speaker 2 What's happened is that the Likud, ironically under Netanyahu, who at one point was very much a part of this mainstream consensus of Israel as a liberal Jewish democratic state.

Speaker 2 The Tanyahu was a stalwart champion of this. And then when he got into trouble legally, he began to shift.

Speaker 2 And the biggest tragedy that I think that's happened to the Israeli political system in the last three years is what Daniel was talking about.

Speaker 2 Even more than bringing Ben-Kvir into government, it is the erosion of the Likud as a liberal nationalist mainstream party. And Betty Begins, Menachem Begin's son, said this not long ago.

Speaker 2 He said that under my father, the Likud was a liberal national party. And now the Likud has become an illiberal nationalist party.

Speaker 2 For the Israeli mainstream to be reconstituted, the Likud has to recommit itself. to Israel as a liberal Jewish and democratic state.
And by liberal, we mean in the classical sense.

Speaker 2 Liberal is normative conservatism and moderate political liberalism.

Speaker 1 I want to think more about it, but I'm not sure I agree with you about the test of what you're getting at being where the Likud party lands.

Speaker 1 As one advisor, a political advisor to Netanyahu put it to me a few days ago, thinking through to the next election, this person said, the reality is the next Knesset, the next Knesset, not necessarily the next government, the next Knesset will be more right-wing than anything we've ever seen before.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't because of the Ben Geers and the Smoltriches, or it wasn't because of what you guys are talking about, sort of the growing radicalization within the Likud.

Speaker 1 He was saying the Likud will still have a solid base. Okay.

Speaker 1 Then he said Bennett, whether he's in the government or not, is going to be a force in the next Knesset. So there's going to be the Bennett Party, which is more right-wing.

Speaker 1 He argued that he thought Avidor Lieberman's party will have a real presence in the next Knesset.

Speaker 1 So he said, right there, you take Likud, Lieberman, and Bennett alone, and that's a solid right block before you even get to the national religious.

Speaker 1 And then you look at the opposition, if they're in the opposition, Yer Lapid's party has moved to the right.

Speaker 1 Meaning when there was a vote in the Knesset on something like whether or not there should be a Palestinian state, even the opposition, the Yer Lapid party voted against the Palestinian state.

Speaker 1 That's correct. So this person, if you say you just take all those parties and you add them up, that's going to be a big chunk of the next Knesset.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but then there's one fatal flaw in that analysis.

Speaker 2 And that is, yes, of course, the whole country has shifted rightward since October 7th. Look, the left is now headed by a general, a retired general, Yair Golan.

Speaker 2 The Meretz Party rejected Yair Golan in its primaries before October 7th.

Speaker 1 He's a former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff. For our listeners, I don't even know who he is.

Speaker 2 Yes, and now he's heading the Democratic Party, which is a unification of Labor and the old left-wing Meretz. So yes, the whole political map has moved rightward.

Speaker 2 But what that analysis misses is that the fault line that I think will determine the future of our ability to remain a reasonably cohesive society now runs through the right.

Speaker 2 There is the democratic right and there's the anti-democratic right. And the Likud is wavering.
The Likud is no longer firmly in the camp of the democratic right as it was until a few years ago.

Speaker 2 And if you look at the new, the young Knesset members that Netanyahu has brought into the Likud, many of them would fit just as comfortably in Ben Greer's party than in the traditional Likud for sure.

Speaker 2 And what makes it even more complicated is that Bennett, a vast majority of his supporters, see themselves not as center-right. They see themselves as center.

Speaker 2 And they vote for him because he's the best hope for a just not Netanyahu ideology. So So you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2 But the fault line between right and left in Israel is no longer around Palestinian statehood.

Speaker 1 This is a key point because I was watching yesterday this event at the International Affairs School at the Club University where Hillary Clinton teaches.

Speaker 1 There was a 30 years of after Rabin's assassination event. Bill Clinton spoke at it.

Speaker 1 Then there was a panel with Nadavael and Hillary Clinton and Jack Liu and Dennis Ross, all looking back at 30 years since Rabin's assassination.

Speaker 1 And I don't say this critically, it's just an observation. It was like a time capsule.

Speaker 2 That's correct.

Speaker 1 The whole discussion was about Oslo, why Oslo failed, Oslo as a model, what the implications were of Rabin's assassination for Oslo, Oslo, Oslo, Oslo, Oslo.

Speaker 2 That does not happen in Israel today. You can't have a conversation like that.
But because it doesn't reflect reality. That's right.

Speaker 2 For a generation, Israelis have functioned under the narrative we offered and they said no, and we don't have a peace partner.

Speaker 2 So you now have a whole generation of Israelis who if you talk to them, what's your position on the two-state solution? Don't even know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 So when you make a fault line, paradoxically, the party that is most open to a serious move in Judea and Samaria, That was Netanyahu, who went with Trump on the Trump peace plan, not a Bennett.

Speaker 2 So everything is sort of upside down when realpolitik, when a move in a larger Middle East comes to play. But Israeli society is completely unprepared for this conversation.

Speaker 2 And all of its politicians don't talk about it because they know, even if they think about it, no one in Israel thinks about it, how we will adapt if Donald Trump decides that there is a move to be made.

Speaker 2 Israel is actually going to be in a very serious predicament because the society hasn't thought about

Speaker 2 this for almost 25 years.

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Speaker 1 Okay, Daniel, I want to ask you about identities here.

Speaker 1 Over the past few decades, I guess, I mean, a couple decades at least, one of the core issues at the heart of Israeli political discourse has been this battle between Jewish identity and Israeli identity.

Speaker 1 So can you explain this debate to our audience? And then I want to get into how or why you see these identities at odds with each other.

Speaker 2 The distinction or the polarity between an Israeli identity and a Jewish identity was founded in the early Zionist disdain for the diasporic Jew and the desire to create a new Jew who would be free from the shackles of passivity grounded in Jewish tradition, who would be free from the minutia of Jewish ritual and would begin to embrace a new identity grounded in land, nature, power, the world.

Speaker 2 Zionism, some of it looked at the diaspora Jew and said, ugh, that's a technical term. That's not me.
And so when they had to articulate who they wanted to be, they used terms of, I'm an Israeli.

Speaker 2 Now, Israeli-ness was supposed to be always an integration of an Israeli and a Jewish identity, at least from the Jewish part. We'll leave the Israeli-Arab Palestinian aside for a moment.

Speaker 2 So the dichotomy was founded in the founding of the country. And as a result, it also created different agendas.

Speaker 2 The religious Zionist party or the ultra-Orthodox took responsibility for Israel's Jewish identity. And the rest of Israel took responsibility for Israel's Israeli identity.

Speaker 2 Jewish education was primarily in religious Zionist schools.

Speaker 2 And a secular Israeli basically was one of the only Jews in the world who couldn't even get a basic Jewish education other than Hebrew and a little smattering of Bible.

Speaker 2 So these two categories were at the founding. Is Israel, are we Jewish? Jewish more in a ritualistic religious sense? Or are we Israeli as the category for the national sovereign enterprise?

Speaker 2 And the two formed opposite camps with the religious Zionist and the ultra-Orthodox, that 20% being the religious identity, and the other ones are the secular.

Speaker 2 But since the 90s, and it really starts with Menachem Begin and the rise of traditional Israelis, the resurgence of Sephardic culture and its role in Israeli politics, Ashkenazim as well, who were much more traditional in their observances.

Speaker 2 You remember the Menachem Begin walking to the White House, insisting that there should be kosher food. Like

Speaker 2 Robin is like, and Paris, what do you mean? I don't want kosher food. I want White White House stuff.

Speaker 1 But it was revolutionary in the Prime Minister's office.

Speaker 2 That's correct. And it was revolutionary in a lot of Ashkenazi society.
But Sfarta culture never accepted the dichotomy between Israeli and religious.

Speaker 2 And in addition, about over a billion, a billion and a half dollars of North American philanthropic investment in Israeli society to say, I will have no relationship within Israel that doesn't have a relationship with Judaism.

Speaker 2 And since then, there are hundreds and hundreds of institutions and programs, educational of all types, which brought Israelis very close back to their Jewish identity.

Speaker 2 Today, there is no functional distinction between an Israeli identity and a Jewish identity amongst Jews.

Speaker 2 The average Israeli, and I've heard you talk about this as well, you know, when you experience it, the average Israeli, you know, my secular daughter in Yaffo, she has a regular Friday night dinner with all of her friends.

Speaker 2 You know, the restaurants, Tel Aviv's, whatever it was, all the restaurants only open after everybody finishes their Shabbos dinners.

Speaker 2 So everybody has a Shabbos dinner, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukah.

Speaker 1 I often find this hard to explain to diaspora, to American Jews, because they say all these Israelis they know are so secular. They're not serious Jews.

Speaker 1 And my response to that is like, okay, so let's go through this. They live on the Hebrew calendar.
All their big holidays are Jewish holidays.

Speaker 1 Like their Christmas and Thanksgiving is, you know, Sukkot and Shavuot. And then Shabbat is to your point, like the most of the country slows down every week for Shabbat.

Speaker 2 And they even say Kiddish. They buy chala.
They bring flowers to their homes. Now, they're not doing it just in a civic way.
It's part of their Jewish identity.

Speaker 2 If there is a dichotomy between an Israeli and a Jewish identity, it's when Judaism means orthodoxy. Israelis don't want to be orthodox.
They don't want to be compelled to go to shul, synagogue.

Speaker 2 They don't want a theological faith-based identity, but they have a profoundly Jewish identity, and it permeates now all of the country.

Speaker 2 Now, what's interesting, and this goes to the fault line between them, is that Israel is more Jewish today than it ever was.

Speaker 2 If you want to say I'm an Israeli and not a Jew, you're maybe 10% of the country, even non-Jewish citizens from the former Soviet Union who technically aren't Jewish, they give their children a cirque bris, they celebrate the holidays.

Speaker 2 So the country is profoundly Jewish.

Speaker 2 But where there is a fault line is that secular Jewish Israelis, while they are profoundly empowered to live a Jewish life, don't express that in the political domain. They don't have a rabbinate.

Speaker 2 Their schools don't have hours for Jewish education. They don't have curriculum.
They don't have a Jewish leadership.

Speaker 2 And so when they want to do formal Jewish stuff, they have to leave their camp and go into someone else's camp.

Speaker 2 And that's when you have a lot of these frictions, which, for example, of Igder Lieberman, who represents individuals, Jews from the former Soviet Union, he says, like, I want to have a Shabbos where stores are open.

Speaker 2 Stop this religious coercion. Israelis don't want religious coercion, but they're not interested in an Israeli identity as distinct from a Jewish identity.
You

Speaker 1 the national story, if there is a national story that could unify Israeli society, who could narrate and inspire it, this national project? Is there anyone on the horizon?

Speaker 2 I think the political figure that comes closest to that is Bennett. He sits on multiple fault lines of Israeli society.

Speaker 2 He's religious, he wears a kippah, and yet his wife doesn't come from the Orthodox world, and he is very comfortable in the secular Jewish identity that Daniel was speaking about.

Speaker 2 He also, his kippah is about the size of a nickel.

Speaker 2 One of the miracles of modern Israel is how does that kippah stay on? Think about what that kippah really represents. On the one hand, he's saying, I'm part of the Orthodox world.

Speaker 2 On the other part, he's saying, you know what, don't pigeonhole me. And when you see his face, you don't see his kippah.
You can't tell.

Speaker 1 Right, you can't tell, right.

Speaker 2 Then you mentioned the fact that Bennett is right-wing. Yes, he is.
And yet, this is the same prime minister who was the first leader to bring an Arab party into government. That's right.

Speaker 2 So, yes, Bennett is quite hard line on the future of the territories. But within a domestic context, he's one of the most liberal leaders we have.

Speaker 2 And his position on the Haredi draft, he is one of the most uncompromising. And that comes in part from his own military background.
Bennett comes from the elite of the IDF.

Speaker 2 He spoke about merits, about labor. He says, I've learned that you love Israel just as much as you're as good a Zionist as I have.

Speaker 2 So he could do it because he wants to embrace in his new identity a larger collective, which includes profoundly diverse positions.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I, yeah, and I also think that's connecting to what we were saying earlier about the need to renew a liberal Israeli right, Bennett is the political leader, I think, who comes closest to that.

Speaker 2 Victor Lieberman as well. But Bennett has far more popularity, as all the polls show.

Speaker 2 If Bennett forms a party, and especially if he forms a party together with former IDF commander-in-chief Eisencott, they will be by far the largest party.

Speaker 2 So, look, it's all relative, but he represents the best hope that we have.

Speaker 2 I'll say two things.

Speaker 1 One, to the extent that the startup nation demographic, if you will, I mean, it does represent, you know, 12 to 14 percent of Israel's labor force, the tech economy, he also is in touch with that segment.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he comes from there.

Speaker 1 He comes from it.

Speaker 1 And the other thing I'd say is on the one hand, I agree with you, Yossi, that he's, I think his position on the Haredim, not serving in the IDF, wanting putting an end to that in some way, while that is a principled position of his, I also think he understands there's tremendous political purchase in that position.

Speaker 1 That is, that he thinks he can break the Likud on that issue.

Speaker 1 Because one thing that over the last two years, many have learned is that many Likud members serve in a government that is serving alongside the Haredi parties that are fighting for this continued exemption.

Speaker 1 And many of these Likud members of Knesset, their loved ones have been fighting and dying in Gaza.

Speaker 1 And so for them, this is like why are we serving alongside these parties that are putting all the burden on our families?

Speaker 2 I think, oh, absolutely. And look, you you know, Netanyahu tried to ram through the Likud

Speaker 2 a blanket exemption of Haredi young men. And this is the only issue that the Likud revolted against Netanyahu's authority.
He couldn't do it.

Speaker 2 So now they're trying to create some form of compromise, which will be categorically rejected by the overwhelming majority of Israelis. But Netanyahu hopes he can at least get through the Likud.

Speaker 1 And what's the national story? Like, I understand you're saying he could narrate it, and this is all very sort of theoretical, but what is the story?

Speaker 2 I think the next big story is reconstructing the Ingathering. The last few years, we've been seeing the unraveling of the society created by the ingathering.

Speaker 2 And here, Dan, I'd like to take us briefly back to the post-Yom Kippur War era, 1973.

Speaker 2 And in many ways, there are parallels between this time and 1973. We were caught in a surprise attack in 1973, as we were on October 7th.

Speaker 2 The political and military echelons lost the trust of the public, and that happened again in October 7th. There was the sense of growing isolation of Israel after the Yom Kippur War.

Speaker 2 Of course, we're experiencing that again today. But there's one crucial difference in terms of the reaction of especially young Israelis, those who fought this war and those who fought in Yom Kippur.

Speaker 2 When the soldiers began returning, the reservists began returning home after the Yom Kippur War, their takeaway was that we need to sharpen the ideological distinctions in Israel.

Speaker 2 We need to go back to the pure ideology that once vitalized Israel, that the labor governments have become ideologically lazy and and corrupt.

Speaker 2 And so you had two movements emerging after the Yom Kippur War, both highly ideological. Gusha Munim, the religious Zionist settlement movement, and a few years later, Peace Now on the left.

Speaker 2 And for many years, these two movements defined the Israeli debate. certainly over the territories.

Speaker 2 What I sense happening now among the young Israelis coming back from the front is rather than sharpening the ideological distinctions that divide Israelis, they're looking to blur those distinctions because they understand that the war that they fought was in large part a result of our divisiveness.

Speaker 2 And they are desperate, many of them, to look for ways to soften the ideological edges of Israeli society. And that for me gives me tremendous hope.

Speaker 2 And where that ties in to revitalizing the momentum of ingathering is that ingathering is not just a technical process.

Speaker 2 It's bringing together the very, very different ideas that Jews came back home with. about what this country is, what is Jewish identity, what is a Jewish state.

Speaker 2 The ingathering imported the contradictions of the Jewish people. And Israeli society, in some sense, is the story of Jewish history arguing with itself.
Who are we? What is this place?

Speaker 2 And that partly explains the edginess of the Israeli debate.

Speaker 2 And the next phase of in-gathering needs to be, I believe, needs to be not only figuring out ways of technically managing our differences, finding the technical compromises, which is how the political system has approached these questions from the beginning, but embracing the the contradictions of the Jewish people, this is who we are.

Speaker 2 After 2,000 years of wandering the world, we came back with the world's ideas.

Speaker 2 We are a world people. And I think that

Speaker 2 that can either undo us or it can really take us to the next level of what this place is actually about.

Speaker 1 I want to ask a question of each of you, which is, what do you recognize in Israelis that gives you hope for the country?

Speaker 2 I, as I teach and work here in Israel, I have never met a society with the density of talent that Israeli society has.

Speaker 2 There's this spirit, thoughtfulness, depth of character. There's not a lot of mediocrity going on here.
You meet a kid here, you meet high school students.

Speaker 2 The level of conversation that you could have with them, the level of their engagement, is very, very deep and profound.

Speaker 2 October 7th, if it did anything, it made Israelis realize that our existence is not self-evident and that we have to work on it and that we have to show up.

Speaker 2 And what type of country we're going to have is going to be in our hands. There isn't a sense of powerlessness amongst the Israeli.

Speaker 2 Now, one of the challenges is how does this density of talent then translate itself on the political realm and demanding of our politicians, you know, as as that general said at the beginning of the war in Gaza, you have to be worthy of these soldiers.

Speaker 2 And I think the parties that will put something worthy are the parties that will emerge and will be victorious. So that gives me profound hope.
Yossi? I would add two words, resilience and love.

Speaker 2 This is by far the most resilient society that I've ever encountered. And I'll give you one example.

Speaker 2 On October 6th, the day before the massacre, we were a society that was tearing itself apart.

Speaker 2 We had never reached that level of contempt for each other as we did in the year leading up to the massacre.

Speaker 2 We instantly pivoted from October 6th, from the lowest point of our divisiveness, to October 8th, one of the peak moments of Israeli cohesiveness in the face of existential threat.

Speaker 2 That's the first thing. In terms of love, Israelis love this country.

Speaker 2 There is no more patriotic citizenry in the West for certain than Israelis.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 in one sense, the fact that we have such a passionately engaged citizenry where Israelis feel that there's no filter between the national and the personal here.

Speaker 2 That's part of our problem because

Speaker 2 that creates this tremendous tension within the society because we all care so much much and we all have such different ideas about how to get Israel through its problems.

Speaker 2 But if we could figure out how to shift that energy so that we all, first of all, learn to respect each other's love for this country.

Speaker 2 One of the things that really was so personally wounding to me about how Netanyahu reacted to the protests was to try to impugn their patriotism.

Speaker 2 And there is no more patriotic opposition in the sense of loving their country than you have here. And what an unbelievable treasure that is.
What a resource for Israeli society.

Speaker 1 Okay, now this conversation ended up taking a turn into a conversation about the aftermath of Zoran Mamdani's election, both how it is viewed here and how it is viewed in Israel.

Speaker 1 And we decided rather than just keeping it stapled on to this conversation, we're going to treat it as a standalone episode.

Speaker 1 So please go to part two of this conversation for my conversation with Daniel and Yossi on what we can learn from the Mamdani election and from New York Jewish voters that voted for Mamdani.

Speaker 1 That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members-only show, Inside Call Me Back.

Speaker 1 Inside Call Me Back is where Nadaviyal, Amit, Segel, and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling.

Speaker 1 To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes, or you can go to arcmedia.org. That's A-R-K-Media.org.
Call Me Back is produced and edited by Elon Benatar.

Speaker 1 Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Marianne Khalis Burgos.
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Speaker 1 Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.