Dr. Yaacov Lozowick was a guest on our podcast not long ago, when he spoke about his work as the head of Israel’s State Archive, which is now closed, for reasons he addressed. I certainly hadn’t expected to have him back on this soon.
When Yaacov and I had a subsequent exchange, though, he told me that he’s begun asking himself very painful questions about Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. As much as I like and admire Yaacov (and yes, I admit, as much as I also like talking to him in shul), my initial (unspoken) reaction was “I don’t want to hear this. I’m too upset about too much, already. I don’t have emotional bandwidth for this.”
But that, I then told myself, is exactly the reason that I should hear him out. If we’re not going to hear things that we don’t want to hear, if we’re not willing to know things that we don’t already know, none of us is going to grow, or broaden, or deepen.
Furthermore, don’t we want people who don’t agree with us to hear us out? I do.
So if I do, I’m going to need to listen, too, I told myself.
Today we’re posting this very recent conversation with Yaacov. He said important things, things that caused me pain and more than a bit of anguish, and I had questions that he admitted he didn’t have great answers to. In other words, this is very complex, and we’ll all trying to figure this out. But we can’t figure it out if we’re not willing to hear those who have things to say that we might not want to hear.
Doing just that has always been the purpose of Israel from the Inside. Zionism never spoke with a single unified voice, and neither has Israel. If anything, the cacophony of voices that is Israel has made it stronger— we need more debate and deliberation, not less.
It is in that spirit that we share with you Yaacov Lozowick’s reflections on Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.
One point for those who disagree:
When I posted last week that we’d be hearing from someone who has grave concerns about Israel’s conduct of the war, another former guest of our podcast, Dr. Shlomo Brody, author of a book on Judaism’s ethics of war, wrote to ask if he, too, could return to our podcast, to make a case for why Israel needs to continue to use massive power in Gaza.
Since debate of this sort is precisely the point of Israel from the Inside, I readily agreed, and we’ve already recorded that conversation. We’ll post it in a few days.
Yaacov Lozowick, a historian, archivist, and writer, has impressive Zionist credentials. From 1993 - 2007, he served as the Director of the Yad Vashem Archives, and from 2011 - 2018 he served as the Director of Israel’s State Archives.
Yaacov is the author of Hitler’s Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil and Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars.
He is currently writing a history of Israel’s settlement project, based on newly declassified archival files.
The link above will take you to a brief excerpt of our conversation; the full conversation, along with a transcript for those who prefer to read, is being made available to paid subscribers to Israel from the Inside.
Among others, we have the following podcasts planned for the relatively near future:
Dr. Shlomo Brody on why Israel is ethically required to continue the war in Gaza, with perhaps even greater force.
Professor Hanni Lerner of Tel Aviv University, an expert on creating constitutions in highly divided societies
An American who came to Israel as an immigrant and ended up founding one of Israel’s most influential presses
Rotem Selah, the head of Selah Meir, Israel’s most important conservative press, on the press and on the state of conservatism in Israel.
Aryeh Halivni on his project to record the stories of thousands of veterans the Zionist military underground and Israel’s (first?) War of Independence.
And more … we hope you’ll join us for those.
Music credits: Medieval poem by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gvirol. Melody and performance by Shaked Jehuda and Eyal Gesundheit. Production by Eyal Gesundheit. To view a video of their performance, see this YouTube:
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