A few weeks ago, I had occasion to hear two Shalem College students, one a graduate and one still in school, in conversation with some very thoughtful American Jews. One of the participants asked these two people whether they thought that the toxicity of what we call “October 6 discourse,” ie, Israeli public discourse before October 7, is likely to return.
Noam, who had returned to school from battle just a couple of months ago, said no—he thinks we’ve opened a new chapter. Sapir, also drafted and the mother of a new baby with her husband gone to war for months, said she didn’t agree. She fears that we’ve already begun to return to that toxicity.
I wanted to agree with Noam, but couldn’t help but feeling that Sapir might well be right. I invited them to join me to continue that conversation, which we did just a few days ago. Since our conversation meandered from the issue of judicial reform, toxicity and the war to questions about Israel’s future, and given that their generation is the one that is soon going to take the reins of this country, their conversation seemed like a perfect way to mark Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel Independence Day.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, available specially for paid subscribers to Israel from the Inside.
Before we get to Sapir and Noam, though, we’ve linked one again a video we posted a long time ago—a public singing session that took place on Israel’s 70th Independence Day, just six years ago.
Six years ago, but a world ago.
That event would be impossible to hold today, on Independence Day. That’s not where this country is. But we post it both as a reminder of what was, and as a prayer that some day, perhaps sooner than we might now imagine, we can return to that joy, that confidence and that boundless pride.
Now for today’s podcast, an excerpt of which is available to everyone, with the full conversation and transcript available to paid subscribers.
Noam Orion is currently a junior at Shalem College majoring in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.
In addition to his studies, Orion works on the side as a research assistant at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, where he analyzes social and cultural trends among East Jerusalem’s Palestinian population. He is an active volunteer and former director for Shiputz Shalem, a Shalem College initiative that renovates the homes of disadvantaged families in Jerusalem, and previously worked as a counselor at a pre-military leadership academy for juvenile delinquents in Beit Yanai. After high school, Orion volunteered for a year as a mentor to at-risk youth in Yavne, a town in Israel’s socio-economic periphery, and was selected for the elite sniper course as part of his IDF service in the Nahal brigade. He was discharged after four years with the rank of officer, and now serves as a platoon commander with the rank of captain in the reserves.
Sapir Bluzer is leading a new initiative to broaden consensus within the Zionist public in Israel and create a broad government.
She was recently elected to her village’s regional council and is the Co-founder and Chairperson of the Female Reservists Forum, who won the Rappaport prize for groundbreaking female innovation.
Previously, she was a senior consultant to the Ministry of Economy and Industry for the planning and implementation of large-scale economic reforms. She has consulted for organizations and CEOs in the midst of strategic-change processes.
She is the former CEO of Israel’s National Student Association; the co-founder of Israel 2050, a grassroots student movement that seeks to solve structural problems in the Israeli economy; and the co-founder of Israel’s National Teacher Day, among other national initiatives.
Having served in the IDF’s Air Force, first in the pilot training course and then as a distinguished officer in Air Force Intelligence, Bluzer was selected as one of Globes’ “30 Leading Women in Israel” in 2018 and The Marker’s 100 most influential people in the country.
Bluzer graduated from Shalem College in 2018 and is currently pursuing a master’s in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She lives with her husband and daughter in Nataf, a village in the Judean Hills.
Due to the news cycle, the song we were going to introduce today (Sunday) and the interview about the army unit Netzach Yehuda will follow soon.
WEDNESDAY (05/15): - In this week of remembering, we turn to a project that has committed itself to remembering Israel’s founding generation. We will share a conversation with the founder of Toldot Yisrael, Aryeh Halivni.
THURSDAY (05/16): In 1982, a few Israeli soldiers went missing in a battle called Sultan Yakub. They were never heard from again, until decades later, Vladimir Putin helped get one of their bodies returned. The shadow of Sultan Yakub is growing darker in today’s Israel, for reasons we’ll explain.
FRIDAY (05/17): An interview this week with a legendary pilot from ‘73, and the subject of a popular Israeli TV series speaks about the malaise in which Israel currently finds itself.
Obviously, our schedule is subject to the news cycle and anything could change, but for right now these are the plans.
A few weeks ago, I had occasion to be involved in a conversation that included a fairly large number of people, two of whom were Shalem students, past and present: Sapir Bluzer, who was part of Shalem's second cohort that began in 2014, and Noam Orion, who is currently a third-year student at Shalem College. Both of them served in the army. Both of them have served in the army since the October war began. And both of them, as you can see in their extraordinary bios that we've attached to this post, have been accomplished in a whole array of ways and are clearly part of that generation that is going to take the reins of the state of Israel not too far into the future.
During the course of this conversation, someone asked them whether they thought we had moved beyond what is called in Israel the conversation or the discourse of October 6th i.e., the toxicity that had taken over Israeli political conversations between the beginning of 2023 and the judicial reform and October 6th until the outbreak of the war. One of them said, yes, they thought we had actually transcended that, and Israel was not going to go back to that, while the other was much more worried that not only could we go back to that but felt that we already are.
I invited them to join me to continue that conversation, to speak about the toxicity in the discourse of October 6th and whether or not it is going to return. But more largely, what is it going to take to change the nature of politics in Israel? And what do they, as members of that generation that is about to take over this country, we hope, what do they think this country is going to be like in the next few years? What is it going to be like for their children? And is there going to be a Jewish and democratic state for their grandchildren to live in, should those grandchildren wish to. Please do read their bios on this post. You'll see that they are really incredibly accomplished people. And I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast of Israel from the Inside, Sapir Bluzer and Noam Orion.
Sapir and Noam, thank you very much for joining. We're having this conversation on Yom HaShoah ve HaGvorah, Holocaust Memorial Day, which is already a pretty hard day. It's a hard day every year. I found it last night harder than usual in kind of a strange way, because so much of what was seems like then merged into now. And I went to see a movie with my wife, friends of ours helped produce this movie, and it's about families that were ripped apart, of course. And you don't need to go back 75, 80 years to talk about families that are ripped apart. In any event, it's a hard day, and our hope is to post this around Yom Haatzmaut, maybe on Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, if everything stays more or less the way it is now.
So, we'll talk about a lot of things, mostly, where are you two as a young generation, as leadership of the younger generation, I have personally no doubt that people are going to hear about you both down the road a lot. But before we get to that, tell us a little bit about yourselves up until October 7, where you're from, what did you do and all of that. Sapir, we'll start with you, and then we’ll go on to Noam.
SB: Hi, my name is Sapir Bluzer. I'm 33 years old. I'm married to Yair and our daughter Yaara. She's nine months old, so she was born two months before October 7. My background, I'm an activist since I was very young, since I was 15 years old. I promote policy. Sometimes I do it out of the government, sometimes with the government. And since October 7th, as you understand, I was in a maternity leave. My husband was called 08:00 a.m. in the morning of this horrible Shabbat. And I found myself alone. And after a few weeks, I realized it's not only me, it's 100,000 families in Israel, reserve families in Israel. And I did what I know. I started a movement. It's a forum of those families. We succeed, amazingly in promoting policy…
To help families where the men were called away and the women were left alone and often couldn't work or couldn't take shifts that paid as much money.
Exactly. And also, you know, the emotional part…
How long has your husband gone for?
For four months. Actually, he was more away like, he knew Yaara when she was six months old, and he wasn't…
But he'd been gone for four months.
Yeah.
So, when she was six months old, he'd only been with her for two months.
Yes.
Okay. So, we're going to come back to after October 7, but going back before, I should have mentioned before that I know both of you because you were Shalem students. Noam is still a student. And you're a graduate. Second cohort. What did you do in the army? Not the army post 7th, but what did you do in the army?
I'm in the negotiation unit, and specifically today I'm in the hostage unit.
What did you do when you were in the regular army?
So, I was the commander of the intelligence department in the negotiation unit of the IDF.
Okay. You were also in the pilots program for a while, right?
SB: Yeah.
I always thought that was so cool when I heard that.
I did 15 flights and that's it.
NO: That is 15 more than me.
That's 15 more than me, too. Exactly. So, I think it's pretty cool. Okay, so we're going to come back to that in a second. Okay, Noam, let's go to you.
NO: Thank you for having me. My name is Noam Orion. I'm 28 years old. I grew up in Jerusalem. Pretty standard, sort of coming up in Israel. Not as impressive as Sapir’s. In the army, I was an officer in the Nahal Brigade, so that's pretty standard infantry. I worked in education for a few years and I'm currently pursuing my degree in Islam and Middle East in Shalem college.
And what, since Sapir already crossed the October 7th line, what would happen with you after October 7th or on October 7th?
NO: So, on October 7, we were obviously called up, me and my guys, and we were sent north, which is the less talked about front of the war, but I think is quite important and should be, should have some more thought.
And the truth of the matter is it may become the headlines very soon.
NO: And we were on our way north by that evening, and we were there for the next five months.
Five months you were there. And so, when did you got out?
NO: I got out early March.
So, you missed the first couple months of school?
NO: Yeah, yeah. A month and a half. Yeah.
Right. So, even though we started our fall semester a month later than the Ministry of Education said we could, they said the end of December. We waited till the end of January to allow as many reservists to come back as possible. Still, you missed another month and a half and you're getting called up again soon, right?
NO: I'm going back in three weeks.
For six weeks or something like that?
NO: Yeah.
So, you'll miss the beginning of the second semester also.
NO: Yeah.
Okay. So much for a relaxing academic year. Okay, so, Sapir, you're doing, you really did two things during the war. I mean, one of them is you had your army role, which was working with the army unit that is dealing with the hostage families and so forth. And then you were also working with the Women's Forum, which we actually did an interview about the Women's Forum. We've already had it on the podcast, and we'll link to it with this podcast of people that want to see it, can see it, and hear it.
The reason I thought of having you both today is because we were all at a meeting together a few weeks ago. Noam and I were together in New York, and you were on Zoom from wherever you were, somewhere in Israel, and somebody asked something about where we were as an Israeli society. And there's this huge conversation, which we've actually pointed to a lot in the columns and in the podcast, which is, are we going back to what's called “hasicha shel shishi b’October”? Are we going back to October 6th discourse, or are we somehow, have we entered a new phase where all of the toxicity of, let's say, January ‘23 till October 6, ‘23, which was ripping this country to shreds, and some people think we were actually on the verge of a civil war. So, now there's a whole debate, are we able to somehow transcend that and build something new?
And Noam said in this meeting he really felt we're actually in a new place, that Israelis are not going back so quickly, if at all, to October 6th, and we really are, we sort of hit control alt delete. Mac users won't know what that means, but, you know, they're starting the computer over. And you said, Sapir, I’m not so sure. I actually think we've already headed back to the discourse of October 6th, the old toxicity.
And that was the moment that I said to myself, I want to hear these two people. It was a very quick interchange. It was like 20 seconds in this meeting, but it was when I really wanted to hear you both talk about at a greater length, because it's probably one of the key issues to the future of this country, which makes it, I think, a perfectly appropriate and necessary thing to talk about for a podcast that we're going to put up in Yom Haatzmaut.
First of all, let's, before we even get to October 6th or 7th, let's just talk about last year. Regardless of where you stood on the judicial stuff, let's not even go there right now. But how did you feel about where this country was? Were you, did you think it was a lot of hype, this possibility of going to civil war? Were you really worried about the society pulling itself apart? Where did you think, let's say, if I had spoken to you on September 1, 2023, and I'd said, how do you think we're doing, I mean, obviously we're not doing well, that was clear. But are you worried about the society your children are going to grow up in, or are you pretty confident that this is a passing phase? How were you feeling through most of 2023?
NO: I was quite anxious. But I have to say, I only hear the phrase Israeli civil war spoken in English. I only hear it from American…
Well, the president of the country used it a lot. Herzog said it a lot.
NO: Okay. I stand corrected.
No, no…
NO: I mean, I have to say, like…
You think it's mostly an outside thing…
NO: The true sense of on the brink of real civil violence. I don't think we were there.
Okay.
NO: There were altercations. There was the ugly Yom Kippur partition thing, and much, much more frequent and much less talked about instances of right-wing anti protesters attacking and assaulting anti judiciary reform protesters. But again, I think the discourse was violent, was ugly, but I don't think it would have gone to real fighting. That I don't believe.
What do you think would have happened if the war hadn't broken out? What do you think would have happened with judicial reform? What do you think would have happened politically, socially? I mean, obviously, nobody knows. But what was your guess? What were you thinking on October 5th that we were headed to?
NO: I had the sense that they were looking for a ladder down from the tree. I don't know how exactly this would have looked like, but there was a sense that, like, enough is enough and we need a way out of it. I don't think they were done with judicial reform. I'll come out and say I was against the plan. Broadly. I don't think they were done. I think it would have come back in a different way. But I do think that at base they understood that the political climate or the atmosphere was just not ready, and they were looking for a way out.
I think the main problem wasn't so much what's going on in the Knesset and whether the judicial reform will be rammed forward or not, the real sense in the streets and in the market and on the train was much further along. And to come back from that, I think, would have been much harder. So even had they frozen or canceled, whatever the spin would be about the reform, the distance between the citizens was very, very great and wouldn't have come back easily without the war. And that's, that's a different component, which I think should be seen in a different way…
So, the government, ironically, was looking to come down from the tree. But the public was actually all worked up, and it would have been very hard to kind of take the air out of that balloon, the steam out of that boiler or whatever.
Okay, Sapir, in the middle of 2023, May, June, July, August, 2023, you're pregnant, and then you're a mom with your first kid. What are you thinking about the country that your daughter's going to grow up in?
NO: Civil war with her husband, not even with the country.
SB: I felt that it's going to be very hard for her to find her place here because of this dividing into two groups that Noam spoke about, which for me is a greater problem than the parties who sat in the president's house trying to find a way to sign on something, some agreement. The problem, I feel, which is, again, is coming back, but it was very, very strong back then, is that we live in a perception that we're dividing into two groups, and there's no way we can agree, there's no way we can speak. There's not a common language and common values and our identities are different. And every week that passed during those…
39 weeks of protests, right.
SB: Yes. And tens of thousands of people, you know, going out every motzash (Saturday evening) to the streets. And it felt more and more that we cannot agree, and basically what it says, we won't be able to live here together, and there is no solution, like deep solution. I'm not speaking again about the reform. And also, maybe what we couldn't see is all this disagreement about the reform is actually showing something much, is actually showing that it's not about how we divide the power between the Knesset and the government. It's not that. It’s can we trust each other? Can we find an identity and a feeling that we're part of the same group, that we have the same goals, the same vision to this place? So, for me, that was what was very, very hard to feel every week.
Were you sad or were you despondent? In other words, despondent meaning sort of like, okay, this is, it's all falling apart. I mean, there’s I’m sad. I'm worried. And there's sad, I know this is going down the drain.
SB: I'm an optimistic person. I'm very optimistic. So, I felt that we will find a way or something will give us, you know, an anchor to hold and to find a way to somehow… But it's very hard to feel as a citizen. And I'm sure people who live in the US might feel the same, that there are some division between two groups and we don't have a clue how we start over or how we start to speak or how we start to build this agreement, this civil agreement, this, you know, discussion again.
Right. It's kind of a social contract.
SB: Yes.
NO: There was an analogy that really stuck in my mind during this period, which I heard from Professor Yedidia Stern, who was a significant player in the whole reform compromise thing. And he said, we need to think of this as a body that's in shock and is currently in the operating room. And only later can we think about doing physical therapy. Like right now we just need to finish the operation, close the body back up, and later we'll do rehabilitation and physical therapy. And I have to say I'm sort of still feeling that way in a different sense, like there's a different threat to the body.
But this does, I do agree about the optimism because it gives me a sense that, like, it's still open, there's still room on the page to write new things down, and we still have an opportunity and a chance to affect this. So, it's not so much like, was the situation dire? Very much so. But I didn't feel like there was nothing to do about it. And on the contrary, I felt like the next year, two years, would be very significant in Israeli history. And the ability to be part of it was real. So, in that sense, it filled me with a sense of purpose and not despondency, which is like raising your hands and saying, I give up.
SB: Even though most of the messages, the way people spoke back then, and as I see it also right now, is that the very, very right wing and the very, very left wing, they were the ones to put the tone.
So, they set the tone.
SB: Yeah, set the tone. And for me, I felt that they taking us like, they just taking us so, so strong that we don't understand who we are and how can we do exactly what you said, like to sit and talk and write something new together.
Okay. Now, October 7 comes, Noam you get called up, Sapir, you are without your husband for four months, and you're working on this women's forum, and you also have army responsibilities and a job and whatever, which is not whatever. It's huge. Now, here we are a week before Yom Haatzmaut. We're six, seven months into the war, which shows no sign of stopping. I mean, at the moment that we're speaking, at least it looks like we're going into Rafah. It's not clear, but it looks like we are. The north looks like it's waiting to blow up. It's hard to know where any of this is going, so I don't want to talk about that so much, but I do just want to give context for people who are listening, sort of what's going on as we're having this conversation.
Noam, you said in that meeting we were in, I don't know, three-ish weeks ago, whatever it was, that you don't think we're going back to the discourse of October 6th, and you hear tons and tons of soldiers especially, coming out of Gaza and the north, who said, I was in a tank. You know, during the protests, I was on one side and the other guy was on the other side, and this guy was on the third side. But we were all in a tank for months on end. And first of all, we recognize we're really all in this together, and we disagree about certain things, but there's much more that binds us together than separates us. And we're never going back to the toxicity of that discourse. We're just never going back to that poison. And you said in that meeting, you really think we're going to be able to kind of, I mean, as horrible as this is, and it's horrible in ways that we can't, I don't think, even figure out yet how horrible it is. If there's any silver lining to this horrible cloud, it is that it has boosted us out of that toxicity, and we're creating a new kind of discourse. You still think that?
NO: Yes.
Okay. And say more. I mean, the war is going to end one day. Let's just say, you know, in six months, the war ends. We manage to do it, whatever it is, I can't even figure it out. But the war ends, politics comes back. And you see us going back to politics without the ugliness of 2023 politics?
NO: Look, I'm going to cheat and say that there are very few factual arguments for what I'm stating in reality as it is right now, as it stands. However, everybody who's currently holding office or holding a high position was holding it before the war broke out. So, I think we're seeing like a snapshot of the world of yesterday. And this doesn't necessarily carry on to Israel moving forward. And I think, and here, maybe I'll turn this a bit political, but I think the reason that so many politicians are doing what they can to avoid an election is sort of conceding that the public has moved to a different place and that their significance or their importance in the day after, in an Israeli day after isn't as assured as it is right now.
You touched on this, and I would like to elaborate a bit. The coming together of soldiers who were stuck for months on end in a place they've never been before, from very different parts of Israeli society, geographically, economically, culturally, religiously, extremely, extremely powerful experience, and much more so now as a reservist than it was the first time around. When you go into the army and you're 18,19, you're all kind of kids. And who you are, where you come from, it's significant, but it isn't as clear. And nowadays, when I have one soldier who is a computer engineer for a very major firm, another guy who's a shoe salesman, and you've got the whole story of Israeli sort of fighting and who, you're Ashkenazi, you're Mizrahi, you're from the center of the country. You're from the periphery. And the depth of identity and the depth of, like the potency of identity politics in that atmosphere is much, much larger. And when these two people sit down and they say, yes, I was at Kaplan, but here I am with you. Do you agree with me that I'm not a traitor, that I do love this country, that I care about this flag, that I care about these people? I think that's immense.
Did those conversations actually happen?
NO: Yes. Yes. And they were significantly nonpolitical conversations. It wasn't, let's hammer out this is the reform that should be done, or whatever. It was, do you see me? Do you see me seeing you? Are we here one next to the other? And this I don't think was a special experience. And there were 400,00….
SB: Yeah, 200,000, even more. But you were speaking about, you know, being in as a combat soldier.
NO: Okay, so tens and hundreds of thousands of people who went through this experience. And these are the people who are committed to this country enough to come, who are coming back for a second round or, like, it's going to be very hard and very challenging, but in my unit, they're all coming back, each one. These are the people who are going to get the wagon out of the mud. And this could be wishful thinking. And I don't have, like the politician might say, this is the person who's going to do it, or this is the camp, or this is the party. I don't have that yet. But I look at the group that's in power right now, and both the left and the right, religious, non-religious, I’m not going into that. I don't see anyone who's very pleased with them, people who voted for them, people were very violently against them and sort of drew back once the war started, everybody's kind of displeased, not necessarily angry, and in the streets with their torches, displeased. And the beauty of the democratic system, which we aren't seeing right now, but we will see soon, is that in a cycle or two, and it'll be like Golda and Mapai after ‘73, it'll take two, four years, there will be a significant shift, and we will move from this place. This is what I believe.
Just to remind our listeners for whom, you know, Israeli history may not be quite as clear as to. Golda was the prime minister in ‘73 during the Yom Kippur War, which until this year was considered Israel's greatest military failing. And while her party wasn't pushed completely out of power right away, by 1977, which was only four years later, Menachem Begin, who was from the, what had been the opposition for the 29 years that the country had existed, was in power. And to a greater or lesser extent, the right has almost exclusively been in power since then. Not entirely. We've had a few people from the middle, but there was a huge “maapach”, as they called it, there was a huge overthrowing of the old system. And you're arguing that we may not see this in the immediate first election or the second election, but that the country is ready for a change.
Okay, Sapir, when we went to that, when we were in that conversation, Noam said, not at great length, because it was a different kind of setting, but he said, basically, we're not going back to the October 6th toxicity. And I saw you on the big screen from Nataf. We were in New York City, and you shook your head and you said, I think we're already going back to the October 6th toxicity. So, my question to you is, do you still feel that we're going back there? Do you share Noam’s optimism that we're not going back to the depths of that pool of whatever you want to call it, and where do you see that whole issue unfolding in the next few years?
SB: On one hand, I agree with Noam. I think that the miluim citizens, the reserves they have a very important role in allowing us to lead and to see this society, the Israeli society, more united or united. Point. But the reason I said that I feel that we do going back is for two reasons. First, look on our politicians. And even not only the politicians, but the map, the electoral map hasn't changed. If you look on the polls, of course, Gantz was, you know, got some points and lost some points. But basically, if you look, we felt after October 7th that the government is going back, they're going home, and we're going to feel like tectonic changes. Nothing changed. Okay. It's true that the election is not here yet. Maybe it's going to be September, January or 2026. But look, also, about what people say, who are they going to vote to? We're still in the same place now why is it a thing? Because our leaders or our politicians, they went back to a very toxic, they went back to the same words, same ideas that was here on October 6th. It's the same. You look on what they say on the Knesset and what they say on the TV channels and how they speak and all the messages. If we had, like, two or three months when they were, when they spoke about unity, or some of them, the extreme of them, they didn't speak. They were just disappearing from the screens, but now I feel that they went back to those messages, and we still vote the same.
Now, why I'm still with Noam and optimistic, because I feel that there's two things that can lead us to the right path, to the path where I feel most of us want to live in. First, in the political arena, if there's going to be a party, a right, liberal, very strong party, it can change in the short term the way that the next government is going to be built. And it might be wide government that it's not going to be…
You mean a broad coalition.
SB: Yeah, broad coalition. And the Likud can sit there and Gantz can sit and maybe Yesh Atid can sit there, but it's going to be based on much stronger right wing liberal party.
Well, what do you mean by right wing and liberal at the same time?
SB: That's the thing. Which is going to be right and liberal. It's going to be Bennett…
So, it'll be right wing in terms of foreign policy, you think, or when you say it's right wing...
SB: Yeah. Specifically, I think that most of the Israeli society went to the right, that's for sure.
But liberal in the sense that?
NO: Economically.
SB: Yeah, economically. And also, in values, they believe in…
The values of the individual.
Yes, exactly.
And freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
SB: Everything you could find in the Likud's old party.
The party of Menachem Begin that we were mentioning before, which bears no resemblance whatsoever, to Likud today.
SB: But that’s a very, it's a move that can be very strong in the short term, but it's not the, it's not going to change the depth streams because that's the real question that I feel that we're facing. The miluim is a very important player in this discussion or this understanding of the reality in Israel. Today, we still see the Israeli political social map or architecture the same as we saw it after Yom Kippur, that there's two groups, right and left. Before Yom Kippur, it wasn't the discussion. No one in Israel will say there's right and left. It's just after Yom Kippur. That's the big change that happened after ‘77. The question is, what's going to happen now? Are we going to still see our society divided into two and led by the extremes? Because today, the left group, okay, or the liberal, if you want to call it that way, the democratic liberal group is led by the extremes. And it's the same on the right.
Well, on the right, we know who the extremes are. You know, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and Bibi participating a little bit. Who's the extreme on the left?
SB: The extreme on the left are the post Zionists.
Do you still think they matter at all?
SB: I think that many of the voices we saw, we see on the streets and the people, some of the people who now going back to the same messages, that we cannot live together, which there's no unity, it's not as important. I feel that what's really changed is that most of the citizens in Israel understands now that unity is not a value or something that we wish to have. It's the basic. We have to…
It's got to be the foundation.
SB: It’s the foundations. And for having that unity, I'm willing to negotiate or I'm willing to put some of my values in a lower place.
So, you're willing to sacrifice or compromise on some of your other values, on policies, whether it's judicial or economic or whatever, for the sake of a larger unity?
SB: Yes. And the question is, is that group, the majority, the Zionist majority in Israel, which is the Likud and the right liberal party, that's going to run soon, and until Yesh Atid and maybe even to the left, are they going see themselves as the new group, as the new architecture in Israel? And are they holding, they have very, very close ideology and values in the end. That's what Noam said. We sat in the same tank.
Right. 80% of the people agree with about 80% of things.
SB: Yeah. And now I know it's like the numbers we always say, but if you sit with someone and we don't, you don't ask him, are you a lefty or are you right wing? What do you believe in? What's your ideology? Which today it's hard because we used to, we used to speak in like, you know, those…
NO: Labels.
SB: But if you look on the ideology, ideology, we're very close people in the Likud, most of them, I think they're more close to the Yesh Atid people than to the Ben-Gvirs on any question even about what's going to be in Judea and Samaria, what's going to be in Gaza, it's a good question where we need to find out how we can agree on that. But I think that's the thing. And if we'll be able to see the architecture of the Israeli political, social, how we identify ourselves as the major, as the 70% that it's in this agreement area. And we're putting away the extremes that they're not part of the decision making, they're not part of the vision. If they want to be part and to be productive and able to speak about different ideas than theirs, great. I think that's the question that I'm facing. That's why I'm optimistic because I think the miluim can be very, very strong leader of that idea or ideas and the reason.
So, are you guys disagreeing, really?
NO: Yes.
You are disagreeing.
SB: Noam is disagreeing. And I just want to say a last thing. It's a question of how are we willing to change, because it's not a question that October 7th changed something in most Israelis. As we said, they're more willing to unity than other values. But are we going to stick with the old politics, the old messages, the old, it's very easy to stay like to hate, right? It's very easy to say, I'm not going to sit with him. But I think that once you sit together again in the tank or in any area in Lebanon or Gaza, you rethink about who you wanted to sit with and who are coming with you to the combat.
So how are you disagreeing now?
NO: So, I think we end up in a pretty similar place. I do disagree with Sapir's analysis. I don't think it's a question of left and right. I think those terms are very potent as political brands but have very little relation to proper policies and decisions that are made. There's the American expression of the uni-party, and I think we do have some version of that, from the more moderate Likud to the more moderate Yesh Atid people, you could pretty much interchange the names and they, it makes sense.
I do think, and this is a counterpoint to Sapir's argument for like, look what they're saying in the Knesset or on TV. Yes, exactly, because these are the people who were elected in a political atmosphere that rewarded divisiveness, rewarded my sector or my camp over the other, a very zero-sum sort of view of Israeli society. And if you look at the governing, the government and it's the people who are its like proper constituents or the famous base, it's the religious right, the ultra-orthodox and the Likud coalition, which is generally the sort of lower or working class components of Israeli society and the belief that we can succeed and these other people will wait their turn or will succeed and take from them. That view, I think, is gone. I think it's dead. I don't think it'll be politically viable. And I think a good example of this is the law of exemption…
Exempting the ultra- Orthodox from serving in the army.
NO: Yes. That was like the hot political issue on the table on October 6th, more so than the judicial reform, it was much more close, much more immediate and much, much more sort of incendiary. And it's gone.
It’s gone, but the policy hasn't changed.
NO: True, no, but if we're going from a place that me as a politician, as the government body, I've got 64 fingers in the Knesset out of 120, so, I can do whatever I like. And if I want to give a law that will allow you to really not only perpetrate a policy, which I think is unconscionable, but do it in as formal and as really rash a manner as I can…
There's no stomach for that anymore.
NO: No, and I do believe, and this is, I think, where we end up in a similar place but from different directions. Identity as a political factor is much weaker. I think people are hungry for politicians who are willing to take responsibility to do what needs to be done. And if that means raising taxes and having reservists go for more days a year and bringing the ultra-orthodox into the army, this whole idea that I can give to my sector and starve the others, and as long as we have enough sectors to have a governing coalition, it doesn't matter that the big picture, nobody's taking care of it. Israelis are sick of that. We need someone to look at the big picture, make sure that everybody gets enough. And I think that's where we are.
SB: Ultimately, I agree with you. But the reason I'm speaking about what the MK's and what the politicians and the government says is because they're not in a vacuum. When on the first few months after October 7th they changed the language, and there's a reason why they're going back to some messages. They do it because they see what their public is saying, what their public feels. They have surveys that that's how it works. It's not, and also I don't agree with you that the people who are the representatives today in the government and the coalition, that they don't have very clear ideology. I think that the people who vote Likud have very clear ideology. There's a reason why they vote for some, again, I'm putting, I don't think that the politicians are going to be the one to give us this new path. Okay. They're not going to be, unfortunately, we saw it. They didn't give, during all this time, they didn't give us solutions, they didn't give us unity. They didn't give us hope. And I think we all needed it more than ever. So that's why I don't trust them that they will be the one to do it now. I do think that the civil society, I do think the miluim, I do think that every person in Israel that now see unity as more important than other values or the values of my group, he's going to be part of this change. So, in this area, we agree.
I do want to add one thing about the Haredim. For me, if I'm looking, everything that happened in this six month, almost seven months since October 7th, one of the moments that I'm going to remember my whole life, going to be the morning when I heard the Rav HaRashi Yisrael [the Chief Rabbi of Israel] saying, or mayem…
Yeah. Threatening that if they draft them, they're going to leave.
SB: Yeah. I think he threatened Netanyahu, you know, electorally. But threatening that, they're going away. And what I'm going to remember that the authentic feeling of every person I met and every person I read, Hanouch Daum, like people from all the political scale, was thank you and goodbye, or “tzetchem b’shalom.”
Have a good trip.
NO: Godspeed.
SB: It was so authentic, and it was so, so sad for me to feel that. That we're not, we’re not in the same group. Once you said in the most, like the hardest time of this nation, of this country, for sure, that first, you're not going to join the army, you're not going to be part of this, you know, fighting for this place in a physical way, and second, that you're leaving? How can we have a shared destiny? I'm not speaking about creating a vision together. And it was very, very hard moment for me. I feel that it's not only, like, personal thing. If you look, many right wing people today, they don't look on the Haredim anymore as, you know, as a coalition member or as someone they can trust. And this is a very important point that you raise this. It's going to be part of the change that allows a wide coalition, as we said, because today, most Israelis understand that in the moment we needed them the most, they decided to “lehotzi et atzmam min haklal.”
To extricate themselves from the collective.
SB: Yes.
NO: I don't think that the Likud doesn't have an ideology. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that if you go up to a person on the street and say such and such a policy is proposed, most people, if it's a reasonable and well thought out policy, will agree with it. If you say to them, Bibi is saying this or Lapid is saying this, it'll be a very, very divisive and different answer.
SB: We agree. But it's the same on the people who vote to Yesh Atid.
NO: I agree, but I'm saying.
SB: You're saying the identities…
NO: The identity and the political brand.
SB: Yeah. The brands are much more controlling our politics and the decision, the strategic decision making in Israel than the values and the pragmatic side of what we really want.
NO: That's number one.
SB: I agree.
NO: Number two, I think the main shift, again, maybe this is wishful thinking, but I think the main shift is that the problem with 2023 was that both sides were motivated and fueled by grievance. Both sides felt that they were the ones being screwed. And this was very dangerous. Nobody was trying to be the responsible adult. We are acting out of you know, the phrase on the left was, or on the anti-reform side was “ganvu lanu et hamedina” or our country has been stolen.
SB: Yes. Something in the past that we had, now you're taking.
NO: And the pro-reform people were saying, like, where were you in the hitnadkut [Gaza disengagement 2005]? And where were you? And bringing up historical stuff like the Yemenite kidnapping, stuff from the 40s, which was still very, very potent. And I think right now everybody is looking for someone who, you know, as Teddy Kolek would say, get the garbage thrown out on time. Like, it's got nothing to do with flags, it's got nothing to do with symbolism. It's got to do with having the school year start September 1st for every kid in Israel and having the people who are outside of their homes, back in their homes safely, and they can sleep at night okay. These are much more basic things, and people need to step up.
SB: But can we step up from our identities?
NO: Yes.
SB: As long as we don't have a new identity? I don’t think so…
NO: That's where we're going with that I agree.
SB: Because pragmatic is not an identity. You can be the best manager. You can be a prime minister that gives. You just manage it amazingly. But still, you don't touch people's hearts. You don't give them their identity to be represented. It's missing.
NO: The way you shape this question I kind of disagree with, because it's still inside the structural mindset of identity politics. And I think that Israel is shifting away from that. I think that the amount of Haredi people who came to our encampments when we were, like, in more accessible areas with chunt [a type of stew] and, like, stuff from the Torah, which personally, like, you're young, you're healthy, why aren't you here with me? I found it irritating. But just the level of exposure and people coming out and feeling sort of solidarity, even though the chief rabbi said what he said, and I disagree with that, this will affect what exactly you touched on. The deep currents of society and where we're going.
I believe this will take time, but that's where we're going. People want a safe country. They want a prosperous country. They want a country where they aren't feeling like they're the ones who are carrying it all alone. And they want a country where they don't want to be seen as parasitic or, like, inequal.
SB: I agree. But again, my understanding is first that they need to see their values, at least, if not identity. If we can step up, it's going to be voting by values, which today mostly, it's not what happens. And also, we need to allow the political map to be a mirror of a society that see herself itself as a major. We need to have a majority of enough people who share values, who see themselves in a common area of agreement area, as you said. And today, I don't feel that this is a sentiment. I feel that we're going back to allow the extremes to shout louder, to lead the policy and to lead the streets, and we don't bring something else. And for me, I'm optimistic because I know it can happen, but I'm worried. And that's what you saw me on that meeting, that for now, so many millions of people, reserve citizens went back, still didn't give a new ideas. So many organizations and movements are working hard, still we don't feel it. It doesn't feel that we have it yet. I really hope that in the coming months, we will feel it.
NO: We are seeing a political machine which is fighting for its life. And this is from the left and the right. You say extremes. I don't think it's extremists. I think it's populists. I think there are people who are being rewarded for saying divisive things and inflammatory things and speaking very loudly. A character like Tali Gotliev, she's not very extreme. She's just very in your face and that's why we're talking about her right now. I think that political order is phasing out. This is true in the army, this is true in the government, this is true and like many, many places in Israeli society where it's just not going to sell anymore. They're not going to take it lying down. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who owe not just their political identity and whatever, who owe their livelihood to this political machine running, and they're not going to take it quietly.
SB: So that's the question…
NO: But I think we're stronger.
SB: How is this majority stronger when he doesn't have common values and common identity? And also, even if you're closing your eyes and structuring, you know, the political map, he doesn't find himself because today still we see it as right and left or like two groups, even on the media, when they show the surveys numbers, they show it in two groups. Right. So, if left and right. So, if I'm not in those extremes or if I'm not in this populism, if it's not represents me, who does? What does? Where's my group?
NO: I don't want to get too deep into the weeds of internal Israeli politics here, but there is roughly a third of votes which parks every time in a new party or whatever the centrist, pragmatic, responsible thing is that time around Kahlon, Gimlaim, Yesh Atid, every time there's someone. This is a big group. I think that enough Likudnikim are sick of the party as it is. I think that the Meretz which elected Tamar Zandberg and is now looking at Yair Golan is moving to, people are shifting to the center. And the fact that our political structures or parties don't reflect the new landscape yet is because everybody who's currently in power is doing all they can to quench this flame. But it's there, and it'll take some time for it to come to fruition. But I have no doubt this is where it's going. Yes, Bennett, yes Yossi Cohen. There are all sorts of these people who are sitting on the sidelines. Everybody in power today or in the past decade has some sort of responsibility for the disaster of October 7th. So maybe we're even like discussing leadership that we don't even know who they are yet. But the public sentiment, and again, maybe I'm just delusional, but I think that's where it's going.
All right, let me… it's a fascinating conversation for me because in some ways you don't disagree, but you're worried about or you see very different things in the short run and maybe even the beginning of the medium run. And I'm asking myself maybe if part of it is because you Sapir your work in governmental settings.
SB: And civil society.
And civil society. So, you see it all the time. You live in a world in which these labels and these identities and these political phrases are the oxygen. And Noam, you're coming out of an experience where this was all irrelevant. It was about staying alive and defeating the enemy, and everybody was in it together. You're coming from very different places, even though you're obviously very similar in your views and you represent similar parts of Israel, your day-to-day sort of oxygen is coming from different places, and that might be reflecting this.
Just by way of wrapping up. I find it fascinating, both disagreement and conversions of ideas at exactly the same time. We're talking Yom Haatzmaut. So last year was the 75th Yom Haatzmaut, which for years we've been so excited about as a country. Certainly, my generation, you know, I wasn't alive when the country was founded, but I remember when I was very, very young and we were going to celebrate the 75th anniversary. And then we got to the 75th anniversary and it was, you know, I don't know, just how disappointing a Yom Haatzmaut it was last year. None of us could have imagined that the next Yom Haatzmaut would be even worse. And if I understand correctly, the national ceremony this year is not even having an audience. So, they're going to sort of perform it in front of no one, which is actually an amazing metaphor for a lot of things. Right? You have this government celebration of Israel's independence, and nobody present. There are all kinds of technical reasons for that and all that kind of stuff, but it just seems to be a very powerful metaphor. So just with the heaviness of Yom Haatzmaut, but the two of you believing deeply in this country and so deeply committed to this country, let me ask you a few very quick questions. How optimistic are you that your grandchildren, if they want to, will have a dynamic, flourishing Jewish, democratic state to live in?
SB: I'm saying nine out of ten.
Okay, that's pretty confident.
NO: Yeah, probably eight.
Okay, so you’re both very confident that when your grandchildren, I mean, you have a nine-month-old and you don't have children yet, but, so, you're away from grandchildren, but…
SB: But it’s because of the public sentiment, but it's true we don't agree where it's going right now.
But it's all dependent on that public sentiment coming together.
SB: Yes.
Okay. So, if we can get this public sentiment of unity and leaving behind some of these old labels and get rid of some of the populism, you're both very confident of that. How confident are either of you, not about your grandchildren, but about yourselves, that in your lifetime you're going to live to see peace with the Palestinians?
SB: I don't think so. I know that after Yom Kippur, you know, five years after we set the peace agreement with Egypt, but it's just not the same.
Okay, so you don't think you're going to live to see peace with the Palestinians?
NO: What's peace?
An absence of hostilities, just not killing each other anymore.
NO: No…
You don't think you're going to see that? Okay, so neither of you think we're going to live to see that.
NO: I do think we're going to see, or there is a potential to see an immensely less violent reality.
SB: I agree.
Okay, but the Israeli people and the Palestinian people will not be at war anymore.
NO: Maybe 4 out of 10….
SB: I don’t think it’s our generation….
So, you’re both very confident that your grandchildren will have a Jewish democratic state to live in if they want to live here…
NO: And to fight for.
And to fight for. Okay. And that's going to be the combination of Athens and Sparta, which we're not going to get to today. But my own view is we're kind of moving out of wishing we could be Athens to fearing we have to be Sparta, to trying to figure out if we can be both. And I kind of think that there's going to be some sort of, you know, meeting in the middle of Athens and Sparta. Not Athens or Sparta, but that's a separate conversation, so…
NO: Both.
Okay, so, fine.
SB: You remember you told me once when I was a student that Israel is not a democracy as the US is.
Right. It's not a liberal democracy.
SB: Yes. It's a west…
It's an ethnic democracy. Okay. All right. So, you are confident that if your grandchildren want to, there's going to be a Jewish democratic state living here, assuming that all the things come together, but you're pretty confident that they will. Neither of you have any real optimism that you're going to live in your own lifetime to see the Israeli people and the Palestinian people not be at war anymore. I just want to, again, I'm just going to take some quick tests here. We're in 2024, if you had a guess, in 2034, ten years from now, there is or there is not a Palestinian state?
SB: Yes.
Where?
SB: I don't know if it's going to be Judea and Samaria and Gaza, but if I look specifically on Gaza right now, I believe that it's going to be…
An independent entity of some sort.
SB: Yes.
And is that going to be because we as Israelis decided that we wanted it or because the international community is going to force it on us?
SB: Both reasons. The combination, of course. I don't see a situation where terrorist like a terror organization is leading this country or this state. But I'm sure that Israel not going to take over and try to govern this.
Alright, Noam. Ten years. Is there or is there not a Palestinian state?
NO: I think there is. I think it'll be rammed down our throats. Israel or Netanyahu's Israel, which is most of my lifetime, has been very averse to proactive decisions in this front. And I think public sentiment in America has shifted. And this will, I'm not sure if it'll be a Palestinian led Palestine, but there will be a Palestine and it will be independent of Israel. And we're going to lie on the bed we made.
Okay. One last thing. What gives you on Yom Haatzmaut the most hope for this country?
SB: The Yom HaShoah. Today…
Wow. Wow. I think you finally succeeded in shocking him an hour into the conversation. All right, so your answer was just to make sure everybody understands. Your answer was, what gives you the most hope was Holocaust Memorial Day. Now you guys are high fiving each other. But why?
SB: Because even though what happened, I'm still secured in my home.
So, what fundamentally animates this place is a sense that we're not going to be safe anywhere else?
SB: Right. Like today during the tzfira [siren] at 10:00 a.m. I thought about my grandparents from both sides. They came here with no one, their whole family, siblings, parents, they were just…
They were wiped out.
SB: Yes. And we're not in this situation. We're not even close, like we have our country. It's hard. As we spoke in the last hour, there's many, many challenges, but we live.
Noam, what gives you the most hope? What's the major source of hope?
NO: Hard to follow that. My sister-in-law recently had a baby.
Mazal Tov.
NO: She's the first granddaughter of her family.
That's a big deal.
NO: And I hold her on my shoulder and all the noise dies down. And it's here, it's nowhere else. She's going to speak Hebrew. She's going to walk in sandals in an orchard, and that's that. It's not so much a rational, sort of well thought out argument, but just a clear sense of providence.
There's a pulse of life here, basically. Look, I’ll just wrap up by saying, well, as a kind of an extraordinary conclusion, but in a way, your answers aren't really all that different. They're both about the need for Jewish life. That was what really animated. That's the shared, that's the shared piece of this. I mean, Sapir, you talked about it as what gives you hope for this country is Holocaust Remembrance Day. But it's basically a refusal, it's a refusal to die. And when you talk about your niece being on your shoulder, the first generation of the first child of a new generation, it's the same thing. There is a pulse about the embrace of life, which I think when people visit here, even if they're not Jewish. They just feel it. The number of kids here per capita and the focus on children and the sense of the way in which more than 100% of the people who were called up showed up. And you just said, everybody in your union is going back. And in a way, going back is harder than going in the first time, because you go in the first time, you know, it's not going to be pretty, but you don't really know what you're getting into in quite the same way. And to go back to it after having gone back to civilian life is a very hard transition to make. And although we hear stories of some people that are saying they're not going back, the vast majority of people are going back.
There's a commitment to life. There's a commitment to a flourishing Jewishness. And we all understand that in different kinds of ways of what this place is. And I'm just going to take the last word here and say that I'm positive that I speak for many, many, many of our listeners who will listen to this conversation and say to themselves, okay, they agree about certain things. They don't agree about certain things. But with young people like that who make up the core of the next generation, the listeners to are going to share your optimism.
So, it's a hard conversation, it's a complicated conversation, but it's really, to me, a very moving conversation and a perfect conversation for Yom Haatzmaut. I'll just wish us all that the next time all three of us celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, it's with an audience at the ceremony. Not because I really care if there's an audience at the ceremony, but because it'll be a metaphor for us having come back together, hopefully the fronts will be quiet and we'll be able to celebrate our children.
SB: Amen.
And think about the country that we're going to bequeath to them. So, I wish you guys a Yom Haatzmaut Sameach and thank you both very, very much.
SB: Thank you.
NO: Thank you.
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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"What gives you hope for this country?" One answers the Holocaust, one says a baby just born