Divisions in Israeli society - with Dr. Micah Goodman
First, a housekeeping note: Over the past eight months the audience for this podcast has grown in ways we could never have imagined, but there is no real way for us to know who is listening - age group, ideological leanings, the country you are living in, etc. These are all very helpful data points for us to improve the podcast and understand our audience.
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And one other item we wanted to bring to your attention. We are repeatedly reminded how the NYPD has continued to bravely protect our community— most recently 10 days ago at the Nova Music Festival exhibition where a mob of antisemitic rioters attempted to intimidate Jewish New Yorkers, and just before that when the NYPD helped ensure a smooth Israel Day Parade here in New York in which over 100,000 people participated. To express our thanks for helping to keep our Jewish community and all New Yorkers safe, The Paul E. Singer Foundation is matching donations up to $200,000 made to the New York City Police Foundation. Donations must be made Monday, June 24, 2024. Join us to meet and exceed this goal.
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As for today's episode, as we discussed at length in our last episode -- "Haviv Unplugged!" -- the issue of a military service exemption for Haredi Jews (ultra-Orthodox Jews) is coming to a head right now, as Israel is at war. Or maybe it's coming to a head with such ferocity precisely because Israel is at war, and it's raising all sorts of questions about whether Israel has the manpower to fight a continued war in Gaza and possibly other fronts that could open up. It does seem like Israel is in an entirely new military environment, across multiple fronts. Also, are some parts of the Israeli population paying a disproportionately high price?
These are questions that are being considered right now by Israel's government. These are questions that are weighing especially heavy on society after 12 soldiers over the past few days. Dr. Micah Goodman is our guest today, to help us unpack all of this. Micah is on the speed-dial of a number of Israeli political leaders – from right to left, but especially on the center-left and the center-right. He is a polymath, a podcaster and one of Israel’s most influential public intellectuals, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel’s geopolitics. One book in particular, had an outsized impact in terms of its framing of the conundrum that Israel has been in with the Palestinians since 1967. That book is called "Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War", Not only have all of his books been bestsellers in Israel, he essentially created a new genre; books that bring core texts of Jewish thought to a general, secular audience.
In his new book – called "The Eighth Day", which Micah wrote in a four-month sprint after October 7th – Micah tries to understand the implications of the nation’s trauma and what it means for the other ‘day after’ (not the ‘day after’ in Gaza, but the ‘day after’ inside Israel). What does this moment mean for Israelis? How will 10/07 re-shape Israeli society…and its politics?
Micah Goodman’s books:
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
MG: During the 90s, there were some periods where there were very narrow and pure left wing governments, and they tried to impose the classic left wing ideology of the two state solution. And as a result, ever since, Israelis are traumatized from the second intifada, and that trauma has brought an end to the political left in Israel. When this dark moment we're in, when we'll be in the future looking back, and this will be a memory, I think it's going to be a traumatic memory. A traumatic memory linked to the idea of yamin al-maleh, the idea of pure right-wing governments, which means, as we're talking, the idea of a pure right-wing government is changing its status. It used to be a fantasy, and from now on, it's a trauma. A fantasy is how you imagine the future. A trauma is how you experience the past.
DS: It's 6:00 PM on Sunday, June 16th, here in New York City. It is 1:00 AM on Monday, June 17th in Israel. Before we begin today, a housekeeping note. That is, about you, our listeners. We don't know who you are. The podcasting platforms simply do not share that data with creators. Which is odd, but not the point I want to make right now. The point I do want to make is that over the past eight months, the audience for this podcast has grown in ways we could never have imagined. But there's no real concrete way for us to know who actually is listening. Age group, ideological leanings, the country you're living in. These are all very helpful data points for us to improve the podcast and better understand our audience. So in today's show notes, you will find a link to a two minute survey, which we would greatly appreciate if you could fill out and send our way. It could literally be done by the time this introduction is over. And now on to the subject for today's conversation. As we discussed at length in our last episode, called ‘Haviv Unplugged!’, the issue of a military service exemption for ‘Haredi’ Jews, or ultra Orthodox Jews, is coming to a head right now, as Israel is in the midst of war. Or maybe it's coming to a head with such ferocity precisely because Israel is in the midst of a war. And it is raising all sorts of questions, about whether Israel has the manpower to fight a continued war in Gaza, and whether or not Israel has the manpower to also possibly fight other fronts that could open up. It does seem like Israel is in an entirely new military environment, not just on its southern border, but regionally, across multiple fronts. And it's not just a question of whether Israel has sufficient manpower, but also where Israel is drawing that manpower from, from within the Israeli population. Are some parts of the population paying a disproportionately high price? These are questions that are being considered right now by Israel's government, including a recent vote in Israel's Knesset. These are questions that are weighing especially heavy right now on Israeli society, after 12 IDF soldiers over the past few days have been killed. Micah Goodman is going to help us understand this debate and some of the old divisions and potentially new divisions within Israeli society. Micah is a frequent guest on this podcast. He is on the speed dial of a number of Israeli political leaders from right to left, but especially on the center left and the center right. He's also a character in our book, ‘The Genius of Israel’, in which we describe him as a polymath, a podcaster and one of Israel's most influential public intellectuals, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel's geopolitics. One book in particular had an outsized impact in terms of its framing of the conundrum that Israel has been in with the Palestinians since 1967. That book is called ‘Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War’. Not only have all of Micah’s books been bestsellers in Israel, but he did essentially create a new genre - books that bring core texts of Jewish thought to a general secular audience. His new book, called ‘The Eighth Day’, which Micah wrote in a four month sprint after October 7th, tries to understand the implications of Israel's trauma, post October 7th, and what it means for the other day after. Not the day after you often hear talked about on this podcast, about the day after in Gaza, but what about the day after inside Israel? What does this mean for Israelis? For Israeli society? How will October 7th reshape Israeli society and its politics? Well, that's a test that Israel is experiencing right now, with this debate during a war about exempting the Haredi community from military service. And one final item I wanted to bring to your attention, one that is more local. It's about the New York City Police Department, who we have seen bravely protect our community here in New York. We saw it on the Israel Day Parade, which had a record turnout, and the NYPD was just extraordinarily professional and provided the best security one could imagine. And most recently, about 10 days ago, at the Nova Music Festival exhibition, where a mob of anti Semitic rioters attempted to intimidate Jewish New Yorkers. The NYPD had our backs during both of those events, as they have had consistently, and especially since October 7th. We feel safer as a result. And to express our thanks for helping to keep the Jewish community and all New Yorkers safe, the Paul E. Singer Foundation is matching donations to the New York City Police Foundation for up to $200,000. Any donations made up to $200,000 will be matched. The donations must be made for this drive by Monday, June 24th. So if you're interested in donating, you can do it with the link we'll provide in the show notes, and we hope you'll help us meet and exceed this goal. And now, Micah Goodman on ‘Divisions in Israeli society’. This is Call me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, my longtime friend and frequent guest on this podcast joins us from Jerusalem, Dr. Micah Goodman. Micah, thanks for being here.
MG: It's great to be here, Dan.
DS: Micah, explain to the listeners in the introduction that you are the host of one of the most, if not the most, popular podcasts in the Hebrew language called Mifleget Hamachshavot, which is, rough translation in English, is ‘Party of Ideas’, where you try to have a gathering, a discussion that is metaphorically a gathering of different perspectives on a core idea, central idea. And somehow, every season, these are about 10 episode seasons, every season that you do this, your 10 episodes focus on a theme and you somehow manage to anticipate what the hottest issue facing Israel will be, and then manage to produce 10 episodes before that issue is on anyone's radar screen as a front and center issue. And your timing is impeccable. So either you're getting insider information about what issues will be coming front and center before the Knesset or elsewhere, or you just have incredibly good luck. But either way, it's quite extraordinary. So we're going to have a distilled version of that 10 episode series you did in Hebrew and we'll do it in English. And the focus of this 10 episode season was the Haredi question, with the final issue or climax of the season being released the same week that the Knesset voted on the Haredi military exemption. So if there's anything else about the future of Israeli politics that you want to share with us that we should know about -
MG: I'll let you know. I'll let you know what our predictions are.
DS: I would love to know. But today we're going to do a deep dive into this question, the Haredi question moment. Before we do, I just want to revisit one thing that came up in our last conversation, which was, we spoke during the time that Israelis were demonstrating extraordinary solidarity. This was in the earlier phase of the October 7th war, and the days after, and you expressed actual optimism that Israeli society, having experienced a, what you called a ‘near death experience’, was what helped explain the extraordinary solidarity we were seeing. And my sense is you thought it was going to endure, and it's not clear that it is enduring, or at least it's entering a very bumpy phase right now. So just picking back up on our earlier conversation, how do you account for what appears to be growing division in Israeli society while Israel's still at war?
MG: I think we're in trouble. I'm pessimistic, but I'm pessimistic about the short term. I don't know how long this short term lasts. These challenges we have right in front of us, hostages, Lebanon, we have serious challenges, and we're addressing these challenges from a weak point of internal polarization. I'm pessimistic about the short term. I'm optimistic regarding the long term. I think, during this conversation, I'll try to present a theory of I'm very optimistic about the long term, but I'm pessimistic about the short term. I’ll try to explain why. From the very beginning of this war, Israelis, if we try to think about Israelis, about their relationship with their government, like, vertically, when Israelis look up at the leaders that are governing them and leading them. So from the very beginning, there was a massive trust deficit. In other words, most Israelis don't trust the government and their political leaders. At the same time, horizontally, when Israelis are looking at each other, we have an abundance of solidarity. Now that structure: vertically, lack of trust, horizontally, a lot of solidarity - was the structure that shaped the Israeli attitude from day one, from October 8th. Now, how does that play out, Dan? How does this play out? It plays out that a very powerful Israeli Paradox, where from the very beginning Israelis did not trust this government, or the majority of them, like roughly 60, 70 percent did not trust this government, and trust in this government was around 30, maybe 35%, that's all - that's on the one hand. And on the other hand, almost all Israelis are supporting this war. Which means that you have Israelis that are willing to fight and die in a war that is led by a government that they don't trust. This is very Israeli. Horizontally, solidarity. Vertically, lack of trust. The problem is, Dan, is this structure sustainable? After eight months of this war, can we sustain this structure where we're willing to fight, and some of us sacrifice everything, in a war that's led by a government that many of us don't trust? Is this structure sustainable? And the bad news is that it seems like it was sustainable for a few months, but after eight months, this structure is starting to crack.
DS: And to be clear, Micah, since the War of Independence, Israel has not ever had to fight a war as long as this war. So…
MG: That's right. We never had to fight a long war and we had wars. We never had such a long war. We had moments of polarization, but this is the first time we have, from the bottom, within the people, between the tribes, high level of polarization, that's dividing a people that as a people are fighting for their existence. That combination is unprecedented. Well, it actually, in the War of Independence, there was actually some moments of deep polarization between Menachem Begin's sect and Ben Gurion. We won't go into that, but they managed to overcome that because of the greatness of Menachem Begin. But ever since then, we never saw this structure. And now, we're in this structure where we're fighting in a war and willing to serve in a war, to win a war, led by a government that Israelis don't trust. Now that paradox is unsustainable. And what you see now in Israel, more and more Israelis have a hard time backing a war, supporting policies that are led by a government that they don't trust. That's starting to happen as we're talking. So, and this is happening not at the end of the war, which would have been okay. This is happening - I'm sure your listeners probably know this, but a lot of people don't, that it's possible that we're not in the end of the war, we're only in the beginning of the war. It's very possible. Many Israelis feel this way, 60 percent of Israelis think that Israel should initiate a war against Hezbollah. And in order to create the conditions will enable 64,000 Israelis evacuated from their homes up north to come back to their homes in Metula. So that's not a healthy place to be in and that's why I'm pessimistic regarding the short term. That structure that carried us through the entire campaign in Gaza that we're willing to fight a war led by a government we don't trust, that structure is starting to collapse before we even began the massive war. I personally hope it won't happen now, but it's very possible that it will. You know, history is very unpredictable. Even if no one wants this war, it could still break out because wars are an organism of their own and they have, it escalates by itself. So that is why there's a lot of pessimism in Israel. I think this is one of the reasons why there's a lot of pessimism. We might might find ourselves facing a massive war up north when the people are not as united as we were in the beginning of this war in Gaza.
DS: Okay, and we're going to come back to this question because it relates to what I want to focus on today. When you're specifically talking about divisions, and growing division over time, I want to talk about the division over the ultra Orthodox military exemption, and what it means for Israeli society. So in your podcast, you define that status quo as, and there's not a perfect translation from Hebrew to English for it, but it's the weird model, the peculiar model, the odd model. So I want to talk about the Haredi community more broadly, but first, what is that model? What is the odd model?
MG: Very briefly, modern ultra orthodoxy in Israel had two main projects. Project number one is to isolate themselves from Israel, because Israel is Western and modern, and they are, they don't want to be infected by modern values and modern temptations and Western values and Western temptations. So in order to isolate themselves from the West and from modernity, they have to isolate themselves from modern Israel. That's one project. But there's a second project. During the Holocaust, the entire centers of Torah, meaning ultra Orthodox studying all day Torah, the yeshivot, their studying academies, were destroyed. And they took upon themselves, heroically, in the 1950s, to restore that world, to rebuild that world, and they're creating a reality that never existed before. Communities that learn as a community. It used to be that communities enabled individuals to learn. They gave them scholarships, and all men see themselves as people that devote their lives to learn, especially among the Lithuanians, it's a large and important and dominant group within the ultra Orthodox. Now you put this together, the idea that as a collective, we learn. That's one project. And the idea that as a collective, we need to isolate ourselves and protect ourselves from the influence of the Israeli majority. Now you put that together. The only way, as a community, they can learn Torah all day long and have many of their men not go work in productive jobs. The only way to do that is to create economic dependency on the Israeli majority, which is not ultra Orthodox. If you put this together, the weird model is created. It means ‘Haredim’, the ultra Orthodox, they try to isolate themselves from the majority that they are dependent on economically. So they have dependency, they're dependent on the majority that they separate themselves from and isolate themselves from. That paradoxical structure, that is what we call the weird structure. And the interesting thing is, Dan, as our listeners already figured out, is that this is not a sustainable model. It was sustainable, when the ultra Orthodox were 2-3 percent of Israel. A very small minority maybe could pull off the model where they isolate themselves from the majority that finances their life. That might have worked. But what happens when this minority grows? And what happens when some people believe that by 2050, 2060, this won't be, they won't be the majority, but they might be the largest group in Israel. Which means they'll be seen as a majority. So while the minority can isolate itself from the majority, can a majority or the largest group isolate itself from other minorities while they are dependent economically on those minorities? This is not sustainable. This model is going to collapse.
DS: Okay. So in your podcast, in your Hebrew language podcast, you're trying to understand the division of Israel, is what you say, the division between it being a Jewish state and a democratic state, which cuts to the core of this. First of all, is that true? Does there have to be a distinction between Israel being a democratic state and a Jewish state? That's my first question. Then I'm going to, I have a second question on this point. I want to get to the implications of what it means for the Haredi community, but before we do, just explain that distinction between Israel being a Jewish state and a democratic state.
MG: Well, this is actually even more important than the Haredi community, because this distinction comes to the core of a serious problem we have in Israel. And the problem is that we believe that we're divided into two. And we buy the optical illusion that we're divided into two. And anyone that visited Israel during the first nine months of 2023, when we had that very heated and very poisonous argument or national or polarization around the whole judicial overhaul or reform or choose your words. When we're having that internal poisonous fight, anyone that visited Israel or even just entered, you know, listened to Israeli press or social media, would come to the conclusion that Israel is divided between Democratic Israel and Jewish Israel. And once we divide Israel into two camps, Democratic Israel versus Jewish Israel, we project onto this dichotomy all our stereotypes, saying that Democratic Israel is liberal Israel and Jewish Israel is nationalistic Israel, and Democratic Israel is the Israel of Tel Aviv. And the Jewish Israel is the Israel of Jerusalem, and the democratic Israel is facing the future, and the Jewish Israel is only tied to the past, and it's so easy to divide Israeli Jews into two camps, the democratic camp versus the Jewish camp, the national camp versus the liberal camp. The thing is, we were victims of that optical illusion. We were victims because that optical illusion increased and amplified our internal battle. Our internal battle made us weak. Our weakness was detected in the radars of our enemies and Hamas could not restrain itself. The temptation was so big. So there's a very deep connection between us being the victims of this optical illusion, that we're divided into two and we're doomed to clash, and October 7th and the horrible war that we're fighting now, but that's an optical illusion. The truth is that we're not divided into two. We're divided into three groups. And I think a better way to think about how Israel is divided is the following. In my book that we discussed last time in your podcast, ‘The Eighth Day’, that came out right before Passover, I present a theory, which I'm now sharing with many Israelis. And the theory is based on a series of intuitions, observations, and a very massive poll that was done in order to check if these intuitions have any truth to them. And this is what we came up with. If you measure Israelis using values and using not one, but two values, one value being nationalism, the other value being liberalism - and you try to measure, how liberal are Israelis, meaning, how are human rights important to them? How is human autonomy cherished by them? Are they non judgmental towards other ways of life? How liberal are you? And we could also check, how nationalistic are you? Are you proud in your heritage? Are you proud to be an Israeli? Are you willing to serve your country? Are you willing to die for your country? How nationalistic or patriotic are you? And here's what it turns out. In the far right, there is a group that's not large, it's also not small, it's significant, but it's not a very big group, that scores very high on nationalism and very low on liberalism. It's a homogeneous group, it has one main value, it's dominant. By the way, Saul Singer, our friend, corrected me, he said ‘homogeneous’ works better in Hebrew, in English, we’re better to use the word -
DS: Monolithic?
MG: Monolithic. Yes, that's right.
DS: See, Saul and I are totally in sync. We're totally in sync. I'm in his head, he's in mine.
MG: So in Hebrew I say ‘homogeny’, but I guess in English you have to say ‘monolithic group’ because it has one main value. Only nationalism, no liberalism. In the far left, we also have a monolithic group. Those are the Israelis, the post Zionist left, that score very high on liberalism, and very low on nationalism, and they're also monolithic. They're the mirror image. Instead of, in the far right, there are only nationalists. In the far left, there are only liberals. And both, by the way, have a narrative. In the far right, they feel like liberalism is not a Jewish authentic value, and it shouldn't contaminate our nationalism. And the far left, they always see nationalism as fascism and racism, and it shouldn't contaminate liberalism. You have to protect liberalism from nationalism. Those are two monolithic groups. But the largest group in Israel is the group that's populated by Israelis that score very high on liberalism and very high on nationalism simultaneously. Meaning they have a sense that they're part of a collective and they want to be in service of the collective. They are very national, and they're proud to belong to this collective, and human beings have rights, and they should be protected, and we should fight for those rights, and I should have the ability to liberate myself from the will of the majority within that collective. So while it seems like it's divided into two, nationalistic Israel versus liberal Israel, actually it’s divided into three. Nationalists on the right, and liberals, pure liberals on the left, and hybrid Israelis, the national, nationalist liberals, the Israelis that play the yin yang and national liberalism, that's the largest group in Israel. But this group has a problem. The problem of this group is that it's the largest group, but it doesn't have group awareness. It's the group that doesn't know that it's a group. And why don't we know that we are the group, the group of hybrid Israelis? It’s because we buy the false dichotomy. We buy the optical illusion that's national Israel versus liberal Israel, even though anyone that knows Israelis know how liberal they are at their hearts and how individualistic they are. And we have our rights and we have our autonomy and we have our dreams and we're ambitious. And Dan, you know, many of these in the hyper individualist, ambitious Israelis that they'll do it the way Frank Sinatra saying - ‘my way.’ With hyper individualism. And then October 7th happens and they find themselves, 120 days in Khan Yunis, in service of their nation, in service of their collective. That yin yang of individualism and collectivism played out in the yin yang of nationalism and liberalism. That yin yang is Israel's secret superpower. And that's the majority of Israelis, but that's the group that we can't recognize when we use two categories, liberalism versus nationalism, because we actually have to use three categories. And we have only liberals on the left, the people who are only nationalistic on the right, and the hybrid Israelis, which is the largest group of Israelis. And here's our tragedy of hybrid Israelis. The first tragedy, it's the largest group of Israelis that doesn't know that it's a group, doesn't have group awareness. But the second tragedy is what happens when the Israelis - these are all the Israelis that are hybrid, they're both very nationalistic and very liberal. These values soften each other and balance each other. But not all Israelis have the same balance between these values. Some Israelis, which are hybrid, are a little bit more national than liberal. And some Israelis are a little bit more liberal than national. That's fine. These people potentially could agree, and lead Israel together, and create broad coalitions and broad governments. The problem is, what happens is when the Israelis are a little bit more national than liberal, they’re seduced to become allies of the Israelis. They're only national and not liberal, or what happens like what happened in the 90s, when Israelis that are a little bit more liberal than national, become political allies of the Israelis, which are only liberal and not national. When that happens, Israel that is divided into three finds itself when it's divided into two, politically. And the big question is, is this war going to give birth to group awareness for hybrid Israelis? And if on the other side of this war, Israelis could be led, not from the right, not from the left - those are October 6th categories. Can hybrid Israelis create coalitions between themselves and not with the extremes? That I think is the will of many Israelis, I think majority of Israelis. And that is I think how Israel can reinvent itself on the other side of this war. And that is why, Dan, I was saying I'm pessimistic about the short term because we're in deep trouble. But there is a promise on the other side of the reinvention of Israel by hybrid Israelis. But to get there, we have to reimagine Israel differently, not as a country divided into two, but as a country divided into three. And the largest group is the hybrid group.
DS: And where does the Haredi community fit into all of this?
MG: Well, actually, the Haredi community, I believe, is also going through serious change. And its leaders are not enabling the spontaneous forces, on the grassroots, on the ground level, to go through the process that they want to go through. And I wouldn't say most Haredim, I would say maybe 30, 40 percent of the Haredim, they want to integrate into Israel and to be a part of the Israeli hybrid mainstream. And Amos Oz said a few, I think it's Amos Oz, and if it's not, it's someone else, said something very profound and very interesting: that the last big aliyah, the last big wave of immigration to Israel came from Russia and from what used to be the Soviet Union. The next big wave of immigration will be from Bnei Brak. And, I even think you picked up on this line in your book, right Dan?
DS: Yeah.
MG: Right. The next big Aliyah will be from Bnei Brak. The next big Aliyah won't be to Israel, but into Israelis.
DS: Yeah, the basically, we talked about in ‘The Genius of Israel’, that there's this large number of Israelis that are in Israel, but not of Israel.
MG: Yes.
DS: And that's the next big aliyah. We talked about the big aliyah, the big immigration from the former Soviet Union, from Russia, that was, that was big in the 90s. There were big aliyahs from the West, there were big aliyahs, there were smaller aliyahs from parts of North Africa, from Africa, from Ethiopia. And this is a unique aliyah in that it's, it's people that are already in Israel that aren't fully integrated into Israel. And that's the Haredim. Or could be.
MG: So I believe one of the reasons why Haredim can't make aliyah today is, paradoxically, they can't connect to Israel socially because they are connected to Israel politically. Because this is what they do. Their leaders connect to Israel politically, the coalitions depend on them, and they use the fact that politically, coalitions are dependent on them in order to get the funding and the legislation that enables their community to stay separated, culturally and socially, from Israel. So Haredim, their model is to connect politically in order to isolate culturally. That's their project, which means, by the way, if they're caught off politically in the long run, they'll start integrating culturally and socially. So my prediction is that if Israeli, hybrid Israelis, unite, the Haredi community splits, splits into two and a chunk of it, a part of it joins mainstream Israelism.
DS: Micah, you've made the point to me in the past that the Haredi community, there's like different layers to the Haredi community. People talk about the Haredi community as this universal term, but there's the political leadership of the Haredi community. And then there's the rank and file members of the Haredi community. And then there's the individual members that are just individual members of the Haredi community. They're just trying to lead their lives. They're almost like three groups. There's the political class. There's the community of, the Haredi community, which obviously has all its sub communities. And then there's just these individual Israeli Haredim. And their interests aren't totally aligned. What the political class bargains for, which we've seen, you know, and negotiates for in this Knesset vote, is not necessarily entirely where those other two layers are.
MG: Haredi community is so complicated. It's very hard. How do you categorize it, right? And how do you divide it? How do you slice it? So one way to say is that there is, A, that the Haredi elites are doing everything they can to conserve the model. The weird model, where they, on the one hand, are economically dependent on the Israeli majority, while they want to separate themselves and isolate themselves from that majority. So that's the Haredi elite. But within Haredi community, this model is not a model that many Haredim want to live by. And want to accept. So you ask, so why aren't they rebelling against this model? The Haredim that don't like this model, they're not rebelling against this model, it’s because there's a lot of fear. Because the Haredi leadership has very sophisticated ways in order to regulate the behavior of just ordinary Haredim. It's like, what school can you go to, what school you can't go to, if you don't behave, you won't get to a good school, and if you don't go into a good school - so your value in the Shidduch and the dating market goes down. So they have very powerful ways to regulate. But my argument is the following. Here's something I noticed, and something I think I told you once, is that we have, I think around a million people who immigrated from the former Soviet Union to Israel. And you speak to them, I've never bumped into one Russian speaker -
DS: By the way, just for our audience, it was from that community, more or less in the surrounding former Soviet Republics, it's like Israel immigrated a fifth of its population. Or added a fifth of its population in a decade. So literally, it's like, it transformed Israel, right? In a concentrated period of time.
MG: And every Russian speaker I speak to has an allergic reaction to socialism. I didn't meet one Russian in my entire life - they probably exist, but I never met one, that identifies with Marx and Lenin and communism, or even softer brands of socialism. So that's interesting. Now, I think this is representative of something larger we had in the Soviet Union, where it was communism from the top and the bottom, critical masses of Russians did not identify with that project anymore. So how can a project be sustained when the people on the bottom don't believe in it? They don't identify with it. And the answer is through fear. But the thing is, when you take an ideology and you keep it going only through fear and not through identification, meaning power being imposed on the top and not identification of the people from the bottom, that's not sustainable. And it's doomed to collapse. Now, in that sense, the analogy works, that many ultra orthodox, not all of them do not believe in the model anymore. That they want to, on the one hand, be financed by the Israeli majority, and on the other hand, isolate themselves from that majority. This doesn't work. Some of them don't want to be - they want to start working, they want to get good jobs, they want to get a great education. Many of them want to join the army, but they don't speak out as much. And they don't do enough, not because they identify with the ideas promoted by their leadership, but because they're afraid of that leadership. So I believe that this model is unsustainable in the long term. But I'll tell you, we'll break this model. What will break this model is not only change from within, within the Haredi community - what's going to break this model is October 7th. Once Israelis realize that being a weak Israel is an oxymoron - in the Middle East, if you're weak and you're Israel, you don't exist. The only way for Israel to exist is to be strong. We have to be strong and strong all the time. And this model is making us weak. It's making us weak because financing the minority that's isolating themselves from you is weakening us, making us weak economically, and the fact that they don't serve in the military is making our army more weak. We need these soldiers. So now Israelis are not thinking about questions of justice and fairness. We're speaking, Israelis are thinking about strength versus weakness, and we need to be strong in order to survive. And this model has to be broken. This model has to end in order for Israel to be strong and survive. So once hybrid Israelis discover themselves, develop group awareness, and they'll be able to create broad coalitions that are not dependent on the ultra Orthodox, that's the moment this model collapses. From within, from without, this model, this party, the free ride is over. That's what it seems like.
DS: Israelis have experienced two big traumas over the past, I guess, three decades? Exactly three decades, right? The trauma that resulted from the Oslo process, that promised something to Israelis that was never delivered upon, or was never delivered, which was a real two state solution, a real accommodation with the Palestinians. It came really crashing down later than Oslo, more during the second intifada. And then the other big trauma was October 7th. I mean, how was Israeli society shaped as a result of the first trauma? And how will Israeli society be shaped by the second?
MG: This is a very powerful question because what pushes Israeli society and the architecture of our politics is never hope, it's always fear. I don't think it's unique to Israel, I think it's unique to almost all societies in the world. And anxiety is always linked to memory. It's very hard to be afraid of something when you have no live memories attached to it. I'll give you an example. Rationally speaking, us Israelis, we should be talking a lot about earthquakes. Because once every century, there's a massive earthquake in this area, and the last one I think was more than a hundred years ago, I think. So, rationally speaking, we should be afraid of an earthquake and be talking about, how do we prepare for that catastrophe of an earthquake. No one's talking about it, Dan. No one is. You know why? Because where there's no fresh memories, there is no strong anxieties. And Israel has a very fresh memory of a catastrophe that was, it's linked in our memories to left wing governments. And the catastrophe is the Second Intifada. Over 140 terrorist attacks, over 1,100 Israelis were murdered. And just to remind our listeners, during the 90s, there were some periods where there were very narrow and pure left wing governments. Like, there was a moment where you had a government in the 90s where labor had 44 mandates, which now labor has, according to the polls, I think five, Meretz, which doesn't exist today, it's further to the left, had 12 mandates and that's together 56. And there was a moment, it's complicated, but there was a moment where in order to pass a threshold of 60, they were really leaning on the Communist Party and the Pokesinist Party and the far, far left.
DS: And when you say mandates, you mean, just for our listeners, it means seats in the Knesset.
MG: Seats in the Knesset. And you have to have over 60.
DS: You need 60 seats to form a government. And there was a government that was formed, all the way from the left to the hard left. It was a pure, extreme, left wing government that managed to build a majority coalition.
MG: And later on, that was in the early 90s. In the later 90s, under Barak, there were even more, I mean, we had very narrow left wing governments. And they tried to impose the classic left wing ideology of the two state solution. And what happens many times when people fall in love with ideology is when you fall in love with ideas, so you're blinded by those ideas, and you don't see reality. So you try to impose ideology on reality - reality has a tendency, we do it in a sloppy way, to rebel and then destroy the ideology. And as a result, ever since - Israelis are traumatized from the Second Intifada. And that trauma has brought an end to the political left in Israel. And it's a trauma, not only from left wing ideology, but also from left wing narrow, pure governments. Now that anxiety has pushed Israeli politics all the way to the right. Now, 2023 is the second story. This is a story that for the first time in many, many years, a narrow pure right wing government was formed. Now, just to remind you and our listeners, Bibi always avoided a pure right wing government. He wanted representatives from the center and center left.
DS: So in many of his governments in the past, Netanyahu was actually in the center of his governments. So he had members of his government to the right of him, but then he had people like Tzipi Livni or Yair Lapid or Ehud Barak, who were part of his coalition and were to the left of him. Then he kind of, was holding the balance. He was holding the whole thing together.
MG: And within the Israeli right wing circles, there is a term for pure right wing government, and it's called in Hebrew, it's hard to translate this. I think the best translation is ‘pure right wing government’. No representatives of center, center left. No Lapid, no Gantz, no Tzipi Livni, just pure right wing. And this was, this used to be a fantasy in certain right wing circles. And it wasn't only a fantasy, like ‘one day we'll be able to have a large majority without the center, without the left, have a pure right wing government.’ And this fantasy served something. It was an answer to a question. The following question: you are in power ever since 1977, I mean, on and off in power. Ever since Begin came into power, the right has been on and off, but most of the time, Israel was governed by a right wing government. Most of the time, not all the time. So if you're in control for such a long time, why aren't we in heaven? You had so much time to rebuild Israel. And the answer is, we weren't really ever really in control. We always had babysitters from the center left or from the left. We never had a pure right wing government, so we never had our chance to implement our pure ideology because it was always stopped and blocked by the representatives of the center or the left that was in our governments. ‘One day we'll have a pure right wing government.’ That was a fantasy and it was an answer to a question. Now, Dan, you know what the best way to ruin a fantasy is? What's the best way to ruin a fantasy?
DS: It’s to actually have some success in achieving it, in fulfilling it.
MG: That's right. Fantasies are ruined when you try to implement them. And I think 2023 was the first time a pure right wing government was formed in many, many years. And 2023 is considered by every Israeli I meet as the worst year in Israel's history. The first nine months we had a cold civil war, then October 7th, now we're in this horrible, horrible strategic situation in this horrible war. And here's my argument. That, right now, Dan, it's hard to think about this, we're in the past. We are now in the past of the future. Because two things are being shaped at every moment. Events and memories of those events. And it's a big question, what shapes the future? Events or the memories of those events? And I think you could argue that the way we remember events have larger impact on the future than the events themselves. When this moment we're in, this dark moment we're in. When this will be the past, when we'll be in the future, looking back, and this will be a memory, I think it's going to be a traumatic memory. A traumatic memory linked to the idea of yamin al-maleh, of pure right wing governments. Which means, as we're talking, the idea of a pure right wing government is changing its status. It used to be a fantasy, and from now on it's a trauma. A fantasy is how you imagine the future. A trauma is how you experience - it’s about the past. And my argument, and my prediction, Dan, is the following. That when this war is over, we'll have a new trauma, a trauma from pure right wing governments, but the new trauma is not going to replace the old trauma from pure left wing governments. It's not going to cancel the old trauma. It's not going to replace the old trauma. It's going to be added to the old trauma, which means after this war in Israel's future, our politics and our society is going to be pushed by not one, but by two sets of anxieties. We have anxiety from pure left wing governments, formed in the 90s, and now we have a new set of anxiety from pure right wing governments. And I think now that we'll be pushed by two traumas, it's pretty obvious where we're going to be pushed to. We're going to be pushed to the center, probably the center right, because Israelis are also more hawkish ever since October 7th. But the kind of governments that are going to be created will be governed from the center, from the center right, they'll be broad and balanced. And my hybrid Israeli theory is to try to capture that sentiment. Because while Israel is being pushed by two traumas, I don't want to say that we're being pushed to the middle. Because the middle has a sentiment of having no passion and no charisma. Like we're in the middle between liberalism and nationalism. No, Israelis are not between liberalism and nationalism. Israeli centrists, either center left or center right or center center, are hybrid. They're not in the middle of liberalism and nationalism. They're the yin yang of nationalism and liberalism. And that is why I think, if you ask, why am I optimistic about the long term? It's because in this war we're discovering the power of the combination of individualism and collectivism, liberalism and nationalism. We're discovering the power of that, but also a new set of anxiety. A trauma is being created that's going to be added to the old trauma. We have a trauma from the far right, a trauma from the left, and these two traumas are going to be pushing us, I think, to the hybrid center, which I think is the group, that once it has group awareness is going to reinvent Israel after the war. That is why I'm optimistic about the long term. And that is not to erase our deep pessimism about the short term and impossible challenges that we're facing as we're talking.
DS: Micah, before we wrap, in our previous conversation, you had made what could be described as a optimistic prediction about where Israelis would take this near death experience that you described as October 7th, and this prediction you're making is pretty optimistic, that these hybrid Israelis will create a new governing coalition, or one that we've never seen before. Is that purely just analytical or is that also some wish casting by you? A blend of forecasting and I hope this will happen?
MG: Well, in our history we had three very successful national unity governments in our past. The Six Day War was led by a national unity government, where Begin joined the labor government, and that led to the unification of Jerusalem and the victory of the Six Day War. In the 1980s, Israel had 400%, in the beginning of the 1980s, 400 percent inflation. And then Shamir and Peres got together, formed a hybrid national unity government that managed to take Israel out of Lebanon and defeat inflation. And finally, the Second Intifada was brought down. by a national unity government. The Operation Chomat Magen, Defensive Shield, that destroyed the Second Intifada, which by the way is the model for the IDF while we're fighting this horrible war in Gaza. The model is Defensive Shield, which managed to break down the Second Intifada, was led by the two titans, Arik Sharon, then he was considered the most hawkish Prime Minister Israel could have imagined.
DS: Right, most right wing leader, yeah.
MG: And Shimon Peres. The prophet of peace. So when Israelis from these two tribes unite, usually good things happen. Six Day War, defeating inflation, and destroying the second intifada. By the way, when we have narrow governments, that led to the first Lebanon war, which is seen as a war that could have been avoided, it was led by a very narrow right wing government. And like I said, the 1990s, the Oslo governments, and now this narrow right wing government. So, Israeli political history is teaching us something. And the question is, will Israelis learn this something? The theory I'm selling you, Dan, I don't think it's based on hope. It's based on anxiety. Just saying that from now on, we have not one trauma, but two traumas pushing us that way. And that's why I don't think it's wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is saying, because it's what has to happen, it will happen. We have to have hope that it will happen. That's wishful thinking. I think what will push us in that direction is not hope, but anxiety, and anxiety is actually something you could build on that could transform a society. Just from now on, we have two different sets of anxieties, from the left, and from the right, and they're pushing us to a new space. And I'm trying to create a theory for that new space, the yin yang of nationalism and liberalism.
DS: Micah, we will leave it there. Thank you, as always. I will see you soon in Israel. That's when I'll see you next, in a few days. I will also say that our mutual friend, Tal Becker, once said to me that sometimes he feels that Israel was created, he said this a while ago, that Israel was created so that it could be, you can concentrate the world's Jewish community's anxiety all in one place, that every Jew in the world could focus on this one little place. And it was like, it was a very efficient way to focus and channel one's anxiety. And you've just added to my anxiety about Israel. Since you said it 15 minutes ago, in the back of my head, I'm thinking about when the earthquake is coming. When is the next Israeli earthquake is coming? And while it will be an extraordinary event, if God willing, and I believe it will, Israel makes it to a hundred years, I'm also now worrying about the earthquake. So, thank you for that.
MG: Anytime you've got more anxiety, just give me a call.
DS: No, you're normally Mr. -
MG: I’m Mr. Hope. No, but the paradox is, now I'm hopeful because of anxiety. I think the anxiety from the right is balancing the anxiety from the left -
DS: Right, exactly.
MG: Anxiety plus anxiety creates hope.
DS: That takes algorithms to a whole new level. Micah, thank you as always. I'll see you soon.
MG: See ya.
DS: That's our show for today. We'll post links to Micah's books in the show notes. And again, please remember to fill out our survey. The link to that, Call me Back survey for our listeners and community members, will be in the show notes. Call me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.