← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
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Foreign.
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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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It's 9pm on Thursday, October 2nd here in New York City. It's 4am on Friday, October 3rd in Israel as Jews in New York City and across the Diaspora and in Israel are all coming out of Yom Kippur and I'm hoping everyone had a meaningful fast. This year's Yom Kippur landed right on our production schedule, so we did not tape a Call Me Back episode. This is a good opportunity to share with you the most recent episode of For Heaven's Sake, an ARC Media podcast we produce with our partners at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Yossi Klein Halevi and Danielle Hartman. I found their episode from Wednesday about President Trump's plan, which we published just before Yom Kippur, to be extremely thoughtful and also hopeful. I strongly recommend listening to their conversation and of course, subscribing to this ARC Media podcast. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. And please don't forget to follow the link in the show notes and subscribe to For Heaven's Sake.
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Hi friends, this is Daniil Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Sholem Hartman Institute and this is our podcast For Heaven's Sake, Israel at War in collaboration with ARC Media. Today is day 725 and maybe you hear it in my voice. There might be a little smile in my voice. While I'm always an optimist, it's a little easier for me to be an optimist today. And it is the source of the optimism that we want to talk about today. And we're calling today's podcast a New Era with a question mark. All of Israel and I think, a large part of the world, or at least we hope, we think so often that we're the center of the world. As we listen to this remarkable press conference and the now 20 point peace plan, Gaza Peace Plan. Now the media is filled with discourse, analyzing each one of the points. Where are the flaws? What are the omissions? What are the political ramifications? Nations for Israel, for Netanyahu, for this person, for that person, Principally as they analyze and dissect the document they're asking and looking for. What's the what, the how and the when of each one of these principles? Are they implementable? Are they not implementable? Where will they fail? Where could they succeed? What's missing in Israel? The internal discourse from the minute it actually even started before the press conference, it started to talk about who won in a country divided by just Netanyahu and just not Netanyahu, that's the ideological divide. Is this great? Is this exactly the fulfillment of Netanyahu's goals? As he said himself, I'm going to achieve everything I wanted, but the easier way, without war. But I'm still going to achieve the aims of the war. I'm going to get my complete victory through the plan. Others, just not Netanyahu, are gleefully pointing to every single moment where it's contradicting what he said beforehand. He capitulated to the pressure of Trump. This is going to bring down the government. This won't bring down the government. All of that, that's not our agenda. And for heaven's sake, we're going to try to understand what does this mean for us? What does it mean for Israeli society? What are the issues that this plan, whether it's implementable or not? Yossi, you and I, that's not our expertise per se. What will happen? We're not prophetic. But now, just at this moment, what are you thinking about?
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So, first of all, Daniil, you're absolutely right. Something momentous happened. Whatever the outcome of the plan, Trump has forced Netanyahu to commit to a credible, a morally credible vision of the morning after the war. First time.
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Could I stop you there a second? Because that's a big sentence.
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Yeah.
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Like, let's just, you know, the Dayenu.
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World, you and I have spent a good part of the last year, maybe more, complaining bitterly about Netanyahu's refusal to commit to a morning after. And instead, in that void, what we heard were monstrous plans from the far right. We're going to clean Gaza out of the Palestinians. We're going to rebuild the settlements. And now, for me, what's so important about this plan is what's not in it. First of all, the far right's vision is not part of the 21 points.
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It's explicitly contradicted. Yes, yes, there's no occupation. Gazans could leave and come back, and they're encouraged to return.
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So what this does, I think, for Israel, for this war, is restore the moral legitimacy of the fighting. And I want to just play that out for a moment. For me, there are two moral imperatives that need to govern our behavior in this war. The first is obvious, and that's to do everything possible to protect innocent lives. And that's the moral position that the world has adopted vociferously. But there's a second moral imperative, which is not to grant evil the last word, to do everything you can to defeat evil within the limitations of the first. Moral imperative. What this does, by committing to a morning after that gives the Palestinians some way out, is it restores the legitimacy and the urgency of defeating evil. And one of the questions before you.
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Go on, could you explain that a little more?
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Yeah.
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How does it do that? I think I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure. How does this restore the credibility of the battle against he. But what was it about this plan that does this? Because it's not the war. This plan is about the end of the war. It's not using fighting as a means. But. So how does it do that for you?
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It's about two endings, Daniil. It's about the end of the war and the end of Hamas's regime. Now, we knew the regime could not be completely destroyed militarily. There had to be a political component.
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You and I knew that.
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You and I knew it. And I saw a few other people.
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And I got a couple of others in the world.
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And so this plan places the defeat of the Hamas regime, the removal of the Hamas regime at the center. And the beauty of this plan is it signs on the whole Arab world and presumably Turkey as well. We haven't heard from Turkey, but this is Trump's bullying authority, and it's working in our favor here.
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B
If I understand what you're saying, could.
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I just please, Could I just articulate and tell me, help me understand what.
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I'm saying, because I'm trying, too, as I'm listening to you.
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It's because really, I don't know if I'm making it clear. It's an intuition that I have.
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So let me. This plan puts the focus again on Hamas's evil and on the necessity to remove their ability to determine the future of Gaza.
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Yes.
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That's what it's about.
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Yes. And that focus, that's a prerequisite for everything else.
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Essence of what this is what President Trump. This is what the deal, in essence, is about. All the rest is peripheral and in many ways. And maybe this is what you're responding to. Israel's greatest failure, possibly as a result of the way it conducted the war, and maybe as a result of antisemitism or anti Israel sentiment, whatever it might be, is that very quickly this war shifted from focusing on the evil of Hamas to focusing on Israel's evil or unjust actions. October 7th.
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Can we put evil in quotation marks?
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What does that mean?
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That it's not really evil, but.
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Oh, I know. I'm talking. Okay. Yes, thank you. That's their perception. No problem. But There was a shift, much to Israel's frustration. And every time we spoke about October 7th, it wasn't just about our victimhood. That was one dimension. There was an evil that we wanted to point to. And over the 700, now and 25 days, over time, the focus on Hamas evil has been removed or diminished, and it's Israel's actions that have been the focus of moral criticism. This peace plan, which actually aims to bring an end to the war, actually refocuses back to October 7th.
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Exactly.
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Not as our victimhood, is that what you're saying?
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Yes, yes, that's what I'm trying to say. And there's an open question about this war, which is both strategic and moral. And that question, and we've talked about this in the past, that question is, is it possible in the 21st century, in the age of social media, in the age where any military action is under a microscope, is it really possible to defeat terrorism? That's a question that doesn't only apply to us, it applies to the world, whether the world recognizes it or not. That's partly what's at stake in this war.
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And maybe, though, you're able to focus again on terrorism and on defeating terrorism when you're willing to integrate politics into your strategy.
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Beautiful, beautiful insight. The moment you free yourself from the pathological fantasies of the far right and you start dealing with the real world, which by necessity requires you to have a credible moral position on the future of the Palestinians. Otherwise, there's no negotiations.
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Otherwise there's no distinction, ultimately, in the eyes of many, between you and the evil that you're trying to defeat. So it's only when you stop that.
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Exactly. It's when you commit yourself to a credible political, moral position. That's when you really have the chance to achieve your goal of containing and uprooting evil.
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It's interesting that the coalition of Arab countries that joined with Trump, they also, whether they wanted to or they didn't want to, whether they were bullied or not, they can't join in a battle against terror in which the tools are perceived by many to be the same as or worse than the terrorists themselves. You need a narrative if you want to defeat terror. It's not just done through narratives, it's done through power. And here the plan, whether realistic or not, puts in place a system, a mechanism, whether it is another pan Arab force, locally trained people, a process of rebuilding which will be completely independent of Hamas and therefore their primary source of power, which is the financial control they have over Gazan society, will be removed, whether it will create over time the process of the disarming of Hamas, because they're not going to do it on their own, they're not going to do it voluntarily. There is a process. People could say maybe it's not enough. People could say it's not realistic. People are going to say, who's going to do it. Do you think Arab countries, there aren't armies are going to fight Hamas? Everybody has a reason. But your point, which is the point that there is a reclaiming of a certain moral clarity that you felt and that required though, another conversation. And it's interesting, Trump himself, President Trump himself said, if Hamas says no, then we will support Israel reverting back to the use of military force. Now, there, I'm always concerned because I don't believe military force alone could serve as a solution or a way to defeat a terrorist organization. There's inherent limitations. There's like this inherent frustration. Just because you have a right to do so, it doesn't mean it's going to succeed. It doesn't mean it's going to succeed.
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But the moment you have the Arab world in principle on the side of this plan, it changes the dynamic, changes everything. There's a related point I'd like to make here. You mentioned the media analysis and some of the criticism of the plan. There's a new criticism that's emerging in liberal media around the world, and that is that the Trump Netanyahu plan, as it's being phrased, and I don't think it's a Trump Netanyahu plan. This is a Trump plan that was forced on Netanyahu. But let's leave that aside with Netanyahu's.
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Edits, with the Netanyahu dermer edits. And it's clear that there were.
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And I'm, and I'm ready to give. The devil is do you couldn't stop. You know, I said, I said, should I say that phrase? Go ahead.
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You see, I gave you the credit that you didn't even think about it. It just came out. No, but you're saying you. I did, I did think about it.
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Okay, but, but the, the criticism that we're hearing now in liberal circles is that this is a Trump ultimatum. And look at the, the headline in the Times was, Trump and Netanyahu unveil their plan and tell Hamas take it or else. Or else. And I read that. I said, wait a minute. Are you saying that the only moral path is to treat Hamas as a serious negotiating partner? Should we be treating Hamas as if It's a member of the eu. What about trying to corner Hamas? And you get the whole Arab world on board for a plan, including Qatar and including maybe Turkey, and these are the two Muslim countries that are the strongest supporters of Hamas. You get them on board for a peace plan that forces Hamas to give up power. And your objection is that it's not sensitive. It's not cricket. You know, we're not playing fair. Right? It's not sensitive. There's.
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And that connects to your first point.
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About that not understanding how to deal.
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With evil or that they are evil.
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That they are evil.
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That's the essence of your point.
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Yes.
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So you feel, as you were listening to this and as you wake up today, that there's a certain order has been reinstituted.
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I so much appreciate. I mean, this. This is going to sound ironic, but it's not. I so much appreciate your helping me understand what I really meant to say, because that's exactly it.
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And I hear that. I hear. It's not what I was thinking about at all, but I hear it. And I don't just value it, I feel its importance. It's like maybe that's a hope. You know, we're always hoping. So we were hoping for the hostage return, we're hoping for the end of the war, we're hoping for the end of suffering. And part of what you're saying is that there was another hope that we didn't know how to articulate, a hope.
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For restoring the context of this war as a struggle against evil.
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There's a certain moral clarity.
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Yes. You feel a moral clarity, and there's tremendous relief.
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Relief. And it's interesting if it was in the hands of President Trump alone, since he's not necessarily your moral guide in life, fair to say it would be problematic, but it was. But he articulated together there's a world, all the European Union, all the greatest critics, by buying into the plan, they're not just buying into a ceasefire.
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Yes.
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This plan states very clearly and the.
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Entire Israeli opposition and the entire everybody.
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This is not just about a ceasefire. Bring the killing to an end. This is about creating a new order in Gaza in which Hamas has absolutely no role in government, no role in the future. Their choice is to accept coexistence. I don't know what that means in the plan, how we're going to have a coexistence test, that a Hamas who passes a coexistence test will be given immunity. Those who aren't will be invited to leave. All the hows, the what's the where's aren't important. There's at least a moral clarity and.
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That aren't important at this moment.
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At this moment, they are important, but there's a moral clarity. So I was feeling something very different. If I could shift. I was going through a process. As I'm sitting and listening, I was asking myself, daniil, do you dare to hope? Again, I'm listening and I don't hear all the problems. You know, legal scholars, they'll have to analyze whether this was a well crafted document, you know, and I printed it out and read it very carefully. And there's things in there that are beyond bizarre, that this is an agreement, there's lines there that how they even could be put in there seemed strange to me. But I'll leave that aside. That's not my field. I'm just listening because at the end of the day, societal transformation doesn't happen through precise legal articulations. There's a certain process of a movement amongst people, the tipping points of people's awareness and of public conversation that are much more attuned to than the fine legal language that so many people now are analyzing and critiquing or struggling about. But I'm listening to Trump's excitement. He couldn't hold himself back because he knows he's the greatest person to have ever lived. And he knows that he does the greatest things bigger and better than anybody at any time. And he tells you about it regularly. And here he was sitting there and saying, I'm going to bring in. And no one else could have done this. No one else could have thought about it. And I'm seeing all of it and you're smiling and you're wondering, why is he talking this way about a 2000 year conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? I didn't get exactly how that was. That was more a conflict. We're going back 2,000 years. It's a conflict between Islam and Christianity. I don't know who, but whatever it.
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Might be, or the Jews and the.
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Romans, the Jews and the Romans. But whatever it was, leaving that aside, you saw his excitement and you saw his commitment. And we spoke about this very often when instead of calling him President Trump, we call him Prime Minister Trump because we knew that the only way that we might have an end to the war and some horizon which might be positive would be dependent on him and his interests. And he was genuinely excited. And he's putting all of his credibility, you know, he is going to be the chairperson of the. What did he call it? The peace board or something. He's now chair of the peace board. And even though he's very busy, he's agreed to do it because everybody loves me, everybody asked me to do it, all of the above. It, it just doesn't matter. At the end, the most powerful political figure in the world is excited and committing personally about saying, I want to try to change what's going on here.
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And what we've said before, Daniil, many times is that maybe it takes a Trump to deal with this crazy region.
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With this crazy region. First of all, it seems quite clearly, because I can't imagine, and I'm listen, we're not into attacking former President Biden, who we thought was a great friend of isra. And I'm not saying who's the best friend or not. Netanyahu has to say whatever he has to say for Trump. The bottom line, to put together that Arab coalition. I don't know anybody who could have done that to articulate the plan, maybe to get Israel to agree, maybe to bring this whole community of the Arab world to stand with him. This is a major move. So I'm sitting there and wondering, Daniel, could you hope again just a few weeks ago? Yeah. As I was entering into modality of the New Year, it was a modality of what do you do when you're living in a broken time? Before Rosh Hashanah, all the faculty and fellows and workers at the Hartman Institute come together. And I gave my Rosh Hashanah blessing or remarks, and I said, we have to ask ourselves, what's our role in a broken world? What do we do? And I was thinking, maybe it's not broken. Maybe in a period of three weeks, is there a possibility to hope for something else? And what I've been noticing is as I talk about this to Israelis and I'm analyzing the public discourse, both in social media, news media, and personally, everybody almost is talking about how this won't work, won't work. The who's, what's, where's aren't clear. Don't worry. It's like you could literally go to open Israeli news and you'll hear pundit after pundit after pundit, politician after politician, say, you don't have to worry, don't worry. Hamas will never agree. They might not agree initially. Or you know what, they'll probably agree initially because they can't withstand the pressure of the countries.
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And they'll destroy it, but they'll destroy it with all their amendments.
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Exactly. Or even if they don't, don't worry the great innovative changes in the document put forth by Dermer is that all of Israel's withdrawals and whatever we have to do are contingent on stages and reciprocal actions on the part of hamas. They'll agree 72 hours will get all of our hostages alive and dead back. And then just wait. Don't worry, Hamas is not going to live up to the conditions, and therefore, mazel tov will still be able to fight. Mazel tov will still be able to resort to the tool that we know and that we've got accustomed to. And so I see two things, and these are they're saddening, but they're also challenging. On the one hand, I feel like Israelis feel so abused that they can't even embrace the possibility of something positive. And I know we could list now from now for the next four years all the things that could go wr, but there's also a possibility that something could go right. There's something possible, and they don't know how to even embrace it.
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A
Yossi, I think what you're pointing out, and I believe you're right, is one of the consequences of October 7th. October 7th restored a deep pessimism to the Israeli psyche. We were a very optimistic people. I think that's one of the reasons why we always scored so high on that ridiculous UN survey of the happiness index of countries. Israelis were content with their lives.
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B
We were Scandinavians in the Middle East.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Really imagine that. And October 7th brought back the. Not just vulnerability, because we've always lived with vulnerability. It gave us a glimpse of. Into the end. That's what the end of this country would look like. And we're all carrying that now. We have this template now of we know exactly what the end will look like.
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B
It'll be some. Was the term marauding terrorists penetrating from Jordan, going in, attacking cities and et cetera, et cetera. And it's interesting how Netanyahu shifted from being the prime minister of economic stability and strength to be the perfect prime minister for our nightmares, and he played on them.
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And for the prime minister of, as he called it, super Sparta of doom.
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It's the prime minister of doom. And so I sense that difficulty of, like, could we just allow the possibility that there is a possibility of something new and just don't attack it right away? So as I was listening, that was one thing that I was thinking about, and the second thing that I was thinking about and it's connected, is that as a result of October 7, the only language that we knew was the Language of complete victory. And there were two alternate visions of complete victory. One was a military complete victory over Hamas, that if we just fight one more day, if we just capture one more neighborhood of Gaza, if we just kill one more Hamas leader, that will be the complete victory. And its competitor was the complete victory is the return of the hostages. This was the political discourse in Israel. It was this complete victory. And it had no horizon beyond the next day, beyond the return of the hostages, beyond capturing one more city. Here it is. This plan is giving us a day after, not just for Gaza. It's asking us to think about days after. It's giving us a horizon. How do we. And this is one of my challenges as a teacher. How do I speak and help Israelis begin to dare just to think about a horizon and to get out of this shrinking trauma, not just a victimhood of what you called, like what the. This is. We're concentrating on what the end could look like and how to defend against it, instead of asking ourselves, is there another end that we could even talk about?
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A
We've become a society that perceives its future in terms of diminishing options.
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B
Right?
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And you have to hold on. You have to hold on to whatever you have, because it's going to be worse. So I love the way you've put it. My only caveat is that I think we're still broken. I think our world is broken, Israel is broken, and there's going to be a tremendous salvaging effort that will be necessary and this period will leave lasting scars. There's no way around that.
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B
I appreciate that. And I know that even though, as an educator, the most important book for anybody who's in education is the Tipping Point because it allows for the possibility of radical change, that there is a moment everything progresses, but there is a moment where things tip and they accelerate and change, which you thought was impossible, becomes inevitable. And I'm wondering whether this conversation or whether we'll Even allow this 20 point plan to serve as a tipping point. And it's interesting how Netanyahu is going to talk about it. You know, Tom Friedman wrote today that in the Middle east, you lie in private and speak the truth in public, as distinct from in the west, where you lie in public and speak the truth in private. So Netanyahu could agree to whatever he wants to agree to, but in public, hear what he's going to say. And much of the public discourse now is, don't worry, I haven't changed, don't worry, it's okay. And I'm Frightened, that don't worry, it's not. Just, don't worry, we can fight again. Don't worry. You don't have to dream. You don't need that uncertainty.
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A
I really hesitate to say what I'm about to say because I'm so with you on that. And it's such a beautiful way, really, to end. But my second thought, my default thought is Israeli. And that is, what do we do if it fails? And so I'm already asking that question. And I so much appreciate the educational move. And it's more than educational to me. It's spiritual. It's a spiritual move that you're really asking us to do, to own hope. So apologies for deflecting that. Don't intend to deflect it, but this.
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B
Is the part of your soul that you want to breathe out of.
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A
It is. And let's say it's not intended to undermine that, but it coexists with that.
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B
Fair enough.
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A
And that is if this fails, if Hamas won't budge, Islamic Jihad will put a veto, whatever it is. And Qatar and the other countries don't have the clout that they thought they had or they're not willing to sufficiently pressure Hamas, whatever. And we resumed the war. For me, we now have not just the moral legitimacy to resume the war, but the imperative, because now military pressure has a moral political goal, which is this plan. And I wanted to ask you how that plays out for you.
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B
See, here we go back to our problem for 700 days. What happens that we now have the moral justification to resume military operations, but military operations just aren't going to be successful. So, okay, I now have the moral right, but I'm going to go back. And so we're going to capture. We're going to fight in Gaza, and there's maybe 2,000 Hamas people there. So you finish with Gaza, there's 30,000 Hamas terrorists, so you got another 2,000. So now you're going to go to the areas to the refugee camps to the south, and once you finish to the south, then they'll be in the north and you can go back to the north. Part of what this plan is so exciting for me is precisely because I don't think that that other alternative, which now we're morally allowed to resume, is going to be helpful for me, actually, here. One of my colleagues pointed to what he thought was the most hopeful part of this plan, and that is that there is a way to begin this plan, even if Hamas doesn't agree. And that is every single area that Israel militarily clears of Hamas is then turned over to this international pan Arab force and rebuilding begins there.
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A
And so very interesting.
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B
See, it's not an all or nothing. So if Hamas wants to continue to fight, it doesn't mean it's still war of all against all. It means let's start looking. Is there a humanitarian zone in the south? So I would rather go there and ask. And I appreciate. But the other difference between us is that I'm okay. Like it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It's better to have hope.
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A
I was wondering where's the analogy going?
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B
The analogy is it's better to hope and to be disappointed than never to hope at all.
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A
I thought you were going to say it's better to have fought a war against evil than not to have fought at all. But I just want to clarify what you were saying, Daniil, because your objection to continuing the war if Hamas rejects the agreement is not moral or not necessarily moral. There is a moral. That's correct.
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B
There is a moral dimension because there is a price. The minute civilians are killed to the extent that they will be killed without a credible claim that this could achieve a military victory or end undermines legitimacy of the world. But that's not the primary issue.
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A
No. And then we have a disagreement. I don't necessarily mean the two of us, maybe the two of us, but a disagreement generally of whether it will be effective or not. And that's a totally, totally different conversation.
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B
That's correct. Totally different conversation. This is a moment for final thoughts. As you think about this moment, you.
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A
Know you've won me over to some extent. I really am feeling going into the new year a real boost. And again for me, there are so many wins here. It's bringing Israel and the Arab world on the same page. And we haven't even talked about the long term vision here because there are really two components of this plan. There's the short term, ending the war, bringing the hostages back, exiling Hamas leaders and beginning the rehabilitation of Gaza. The longer term move is reviving at least the possibility of a two state solution. Getting the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords. And not just salvaging the Abraham Accords, but actually fulfilling them, bringing them to completion. And so there are so many tantalizing possibilities. The post 10-7-Israeli within me says so much can go wrong. Whatever can go wrong, it's the Middle east may very well go wrong. I don't want to go there just yet. I want to be with you. In this moment before Yom Kippur of hope and gratitude, gratitude for America, gratitude for Israeli fortitude, gratitude to the political system in this country, which has put aside partisan politics.
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B
For this moment.
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A
For this moment.
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B
It's an extraordinary moment, you know, for me, since we're on the eve of Yom Kippur, if Yom Kippur means anything, it is the belief of our tradition that people aren't determined and aren't stuck in who they were. The past doesn't determine us. And right now, that's perfect. We have a moment. We have a moment.
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A
You did it. You fulfilled your rabbinic duty here.
- [34:52]
B
We have a moment. So to all of us, enjoy. We'll have plenty of times. There'll be problems. I know there will be. And this one will do this and this one will do that, and there'll be so much time for the blame game for each one of them. But I think beyond that, I have also gratitude. I have a gratitude to President Trump and his team. I have a gratitude for reminding us that our world could be different and better and for bringing that back to our life and energizing our responsibility. Our responsibility now is to teach Israeli society. I would love to be able to do that for the Palestinians in Gaza, but they're not listening to my classes. I'm not there.
- [35:33]
A
Not yet.
- [35:34]
B
Not yet. But for Israeli society to begin a serious process, this is not just politics. This is not just technical points. This is a different vision about who we are and who we want to be. And now it's the job of educators to try to create a society that won't waste this opportunity. And quite to the contrary, we'll build on it, both for the short term games that you spoke to and maybe at another time. We have to make a distinction between the short term and the long term. Yossi, you should have a.
- [36:04]
A
That's why I love you, Danius.
- [36:05]
B
Yossi, you should have a good year.
- [36:07]
A
And you.
- [36:07]
B
And to all our audience, have a good year. Gemar Hatimat Tova. To all of us, Sam.