What Israelis Fear the World Does Not Understand

Earlier this week, we heard a Palestinian perspective on the conflict. Today, I wanted to have on an Israeli perspective.

In this episode, we discuss Halevi’s unusual education as an Israeli Defense Forces soldier in Gaza during the first intifada, the “seminal disconnect” between how Israel is viewed from the inside versus from the outside, Halevi’s view that a Palestinian state is both an “existential need” and an “existential threat” for Israel, the failures of the Oslo peace process and how the second intifada hardened Israeli attitudes toward peace, what Oct. 7 meant for the contract between the Israeli people and the state, the lessons and limitations of Sept. 11 analogies and much more.

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This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Engineering by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Jeff Geld and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

[marie-andreec]

I think there's also something that Israeli people do not understand about the members of the international community who are calling for an end to hostilities or say they are pro-Palestine: these people are not making an "either/or" choice. It's not that being for one group means that you're against the other (people who think that way exist, but it is the extreme minority). Most people are just seeing the violence and its consequences and asking for things to be more humane. Seen from the outside, Palestinians are sitting ducks and paying for crimes that the majority of them did not commit. The level of power that Israel has over Gaza also seems disproportionate, no water, no fuel, no electricity, no food, it looks cruel, it looks like a major power torturing a minority because it can. The situation is much more complex than that, granted, but it doesn't take away the fact that there is one side to this long-running conflict that seems to be suffering so much more. That's what people are reacting to. We're not asking for Israel to disappear or wishing any harms on Jewish people, we're just trying to make Israel take a step back and see the level of destruction and inhumanity that results from their current action. We're not arbitrating the past, who started it, who was more culpable at this point or that point, we're just calling for everyone's human rights to be respected in the present, and hopefully, that could eventually lead to peace down the line. Israel could be the hero in this story, but heroes aren't the ones who mercilessly crush their enemies, they're the ones who move things forward and find a better way. We believe in you, we know it can happen, but it will never happen until the fighting stops, you just have to decide if you're willing to be the leader in this or you'd rather perpetuate the cycle for decades to come because the "other guy" won't take the lead.

[thelongview]

"The deep love and attachment that we have for the land proves that we're an indigenous people." What kind of crazy reasoning is that?

[lastdonuts]

Props to the interviewer asking some great questions but man, if this is considered one of the reasonable Israelis then the state is done... If this is how they respond to what he just said it's the weakest of their enemies then there can be no future safety under these conditions.

[RichardLewisCaldwell]

30:39 "destruction of Israel"
You are ignoring psychology and sociology and politics all at once in order to draw a really bad conclusion.
People who are being ethnically cleansed and held in prison by you are going to hate you. Saying, "We'll stop beating you as soon as you love us" is insane.
Instead, treat them as equals. There are equal numbers of Palestinians and Jews, more or less. So divide up the Land equally. Or live together. You know in your soul that either path would work. Yet you want to negotiate how much stolen land you should be able to keep.
Sad

[ianrcopeland]

This is such a clarifying episode. Some big takeaways for me were (a) the guest, in a thick Brooklyn accent, insisting that Palestinians recognize the indigeneity of all Israeli Jews; (b) the guest speaking with clarity about the Right of Return (and in no way questioning its historical legitimacy) only to demand that it be abandoned in any Palestinian negotiation; and (c) the guest's out-in-the-open advocacy for what is essentially demographic hygiene: a Jewish state that is democratic insofar as it keeps Israeli Arabs electorally powerless. A succinct and unapologetic distillation of modern Zionism, annually backed by billions in U.S. aid.

[nicolaasmalgas]

How can you call the withdrawal from Gaza a withdrawal if you still control everything in and out of Gaza and the movement of people. You not in Gaza but control everything around Gaza (what goes in and what goes out) Gaza do not have control over their state.

[Alex-vouo]

I guess this does help me to understand the Israeli mindset a little better, but im still not very convinced that this mindset accords much with objective reality.
There just isnt going to be a second Holocaust, either within Israel or outside it. Hamas and Hezbollah are not going to destroy Israel.
Many Israelis have been killed, but the suffering of Israelis is trivial compaired to what the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Palestinians, etc have gone through in the past decades. You can say that the Arabs are partly to blame for their own misfortunes, but only partly. I just don't see how Israelis can fail to understand the responsibility that the US, the West, and they themselves have for this Middle East tragedy.
I just dont see how the Israelis, who have lived with the Arabs for almost a century, can just so completely fail to understand Arab grievences and just see Arabs as nothing but a mass of ravenous anti semites, with no motivations other than killing Jews and no grievences other than the existence of Jews.
I just dont understand why so many Israelis cannot look beyond their own anger and suffering and understand the anger and suffering of others.

[RichardLewisCaldwell]

29:00 "Acceptance of the Jewish people as indigenous"
Huh? What percentage of Israeli Jews' great-great-great grandparents lived in Palestine? I'll bet it's around 5%. That, sir, sounds colonial, not indigenous.
Demanding that others bleat falsehoods just because you want to be indigenous, too, is putrid. I was born in America. But I am NOT indigenous. I put on my big boy pants and deal with it. Why don't you?

And the two-state solution has been on the table for 75 years: the UN partition plan of 1947. Israel has already pretended to accept it, and I am 100% confident that Palestinians would accept it with dancing in the street and total commitment to stopping violent elements in their society.
See? Your problem is that you would NEVER consider a fair division. Or would you accept the 1947 partition plan, with negotiated alterations?
And your other problem is that you literally made protest illegal or fatal.

[philzmusic]

"We will not survive as a people without Israel." This is utter nonsense. Half the world's Jews live outside of Israel. And the Palestinian claim that Israel was built by grabbing land and ethnic cleansing is an historical fact. Every Israeli historian affirms this. That doesn't mean Israel should be destroyed, but it should be honest about its founding.

[roc]

the same Israelis ignore what the settlers are doing with impunity in West Bank.

[douglasgray]

i think that both the idea of a Jewish State of Israel, and a separate Palestinian one, will continue to provoke strife and conflict. What is needed is a secular Country where everyone has equal political rights. The notion of "Jewish Settlements" is a bad idea. Any person of whatever race, religion, and ethnicity should be able to live where he likes. 0:34

[iamthenews]

Yossi Klein Halevi seems like a very nice guy but I feel that he has truly and dangerously lost the plot.

[DunnoWhatHandleToUse]

I think Halevi is really interesting, but it troubles me how his argument against the right of return basically boils down to "Arabs will not replace us".

[qingzhou]

He is a great example of human tragedy in the sense he only sees his side of story. He is clearly wrong that Hamas thought this horrible attack would break Israel and not unite it. Hamas knew it would anger and unite Israel. But it expected Israel to react just like now and loss the moral high ground and support of the World with the continuing death of Palestinian children and women. Hamas has no illusion to defeat Israel militarily, but it wants to gain the support of Middle East, which it did, AND the whole world to fight Israel for long-term ( wearing it down for decades etc).

[KW-hkjd]

Not everything is anti-semitism. If that’s all you hear you are going to miss valuable criticism.

[qingzhou]

HE is a typical example of security dilemma: in pursuing of your own security, especially the absolute security, you step on everyone else nearby and cause them to view you as an existential threat!

[danguillou]

Great interview.
As a swede who grew with parents deeply involved in the pro-palestine cause, I am aware that I have much more immediate access to the palestinian perspective and palestinian narratives. This interview is extra valuable to somebody like me.

I get the point that it is hard to argue with people's subjective experiences. In some circumstances, in some ways, it may even be wrong to attempt it, to say in effect "your lived experience and your feelings are wrong and invalid". But there are still a point or two that I would like to push back against in Halevi's story. With all respect.

I don't agree with the way he conflates the state of Israel with "The Jewish People". I don't think that the fact that there was always people of jewish religion and ethnicity living in the region, is a meaningful argument for the idea that people with jewish religion or ethnicity from Poland or USA does have a right to "return" to Israel. I think that talking about The Jewish People as if it was a monad, a global collective thing, is in itself unhelpful. When he says that "Israel is the last, the best hope for the jewish people" I disagree on several levels. I don't believe that people who happen to be of jewish faith and/or background in Stockholm or Detroit are in any way dependent on the existance of Israel for their personal existance, either physically or philosophically. I don't believe that anybody should have to answer for the actions of the state of Israel who isn't a citizen of that state, anymore than I believe that they would need to concern themselves with whether Israel is a judaic ethnonationalist state or a secular citizenship republic.

That brings me to the second thing. I don't agree with the way Halavi equates the "existance of Israel" with the specific form of Israel as jewish majority state. I am against ethnonationalist states. I believe that a state should be founded on the principle of citizenship (like France or the USA), not as "national home of the [insert religion/ethnicity] people". There are ethnically swedish minorities in three countries that I know of, but I dont' want the swedish ethnic minority in Finland to move from there to their "true national home" of Sweden. I don't think it was a good idea to create a large state for the entirity of "The German People". I don't think it is a good idea, much less critically necessary one, to keep Israel as a state where jewish faith and/or ethnicity confers special legal status. I don't want to see Israel wiped from the map, nor it's people killed or evicted. I do want Israel to be a country where arabs has the exact same civil rights as jews. But Halavi talks about that possibility as if it would equal a giant mass murder of the jewish population. Not result in a mass murder: intrinsically equal to one. I can't accept that premise.

As a consequence I also don't believe in the palestinan "right to return". Sure, a diaspora that started 75 years ago and where people still have the keys to the houses where their great-grandparents lived, might be easier to argue for in court, than one which happened two millennia ago and where the claimants to the stolen estate use their religious faith as principal argument. But still. The houses the palestinians used to live in don't exist anymore. The people who live there now have lived there for three generations. We're past the statute of limitation. The ethnic cleansing and large scale theft of property that was a part of the foundation of Israel is a historic injustice, and there must be some kind of restitution. (And one could potentially be claimed, as some of the involved actors are still extant, or at least their successors. Unlike, you know, the Roman Empire.) But I don't think that it is meaningful to demand that person who lives in Beirut or New York shall have the right to "return" to land stolen from their long dead ancestors. Even if it is as recent as great-grandparents.

[Dualhammers]

Ezra asking the tough questions, such as "Won't anyone think of the people committing the genocide?"

[appropriatelyinappropriate]

I'd love to see a series of podcasts conducted between Palestinian and Israeli civilians geared towards the sharing and listening to one another's experiences. The answer to this challenge, I feel, will be a groundswell of new thought emerging from the citizenry. Leadership has clearly failed. Ezra--I appreciate the space you've created this week to help us unpack all of this from different perspectives on the ground. Allowing well meaning and informed people speak at length about their POV is where it's at. Keep up the good work.

[SteveBoyington-ie]

Listening to this more than a year later. Thank you, Ezra, for excellent discussions with first-hand folks from that area.