Professor Yuval Noah Harari has again publicly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times that “nobody in the history of Israel has divided the nation against itself more than Netanyahu.”
Harari, the Israeli historian and author of the international bestsellers Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus, appeared on Ezra Klein’s podcast for a discussion on liberalism, nationalism, artificial intelligence and the war in Gaza. But large parts of the interview turned into a critique of Israel, Netanyahu’s government and what Harari described as a dangerous shift away from a Jewish legacy of learning, minority existence and tolerance.
Harari began his discussion of Israel through the question of nationalism. Nationalism in its proper sense, he said, is not hatred of other groups, but love and concern for large numbers of people one does not personally know. In that sense, he argued, Netanyahu had done the opposite by dividing the country’s citizens.
“And in this sense, he has been the worst enemy of Israeli nationalism,” Harari said.
He later addressed Gaza and what he described as the difficulty many Israelis have in confronting Palestinian suffering.
“A lot of Israelis have a problem simply acknowledging that the Palestinians suffer,” he said. “Intellectually, they know it. But in many cases, they simply cannot observe it.”
“You show them images of a starving child in Gaza, and they will say: This is fake news. Or they will immediately divert the discussion to something else, like: This is because of Hamas,” he said.
Harari argued that even those who believe Israel is fully justified and that Hamas bears responsibility for the war should still be able to look at the consequences.
“Even if you tell them: Israel is 100 percent correct — 100 percent of the fault for what happens in Gaza is Hamas. Everything Israel does is 100 percent correct. Since it is so correct, since this is so just, it should be easy for you to observe the consequences of your perfect justice. Here, just look at this image. But so many people just can’t do it,” he said.
Harari also argued that Israel is not using its power in a way that could bring an agreement with the Palestinians closer.
“You do need to rely on force to some extent to ensure your security, but it just cannot be the only thing,” he said.
“If you think force is the only thing that guarantees your security, eventually you will have to conquer the entire world,” he added.
Harari said he was not arguing that Israel should dismantle its military, but that force alone could not provide long-term security.
“So I’m not saying Israel should dismantle its army, but it’s better if you have both — a strong army and a peace agreement — than only one,” he said.
He said Israel’s conduct toward Palestinians in the West Bank could not be justified on security grounds.
“If you look at the way that Israel is treating the Palestinians, not in Gaza but in the West Bank, there is no security justification for that,” he said. “They did not attack Israel on Oct. 7. And by Israel’s actions, the chance that there will be a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians is decreasing.”
Speaking about Hamas, Harari said that Yahya Sinwar had squandered a major opportunity through the brutality of the October 7 attack.
“Sinwar had an amazing victory within his grasp, and he lost it just because of his cruelty,” Harari said. “On Oct. 7, Hamas managed to secure a stunning military victory over the IDF, and to humiliate Israel and the IDF.”
Harari said Hamas could have achieved a far greater political and geopolitical victory had it spared civilians.
“They needed to do just one thing differently in order to achieve a much bigger political and geopolitical victory. This one thing was just to spare the civilians,” he said.
He described an alternative scenario in which Hamas carried out the same attack, but instead of killing or abducting Israeli civilians, held them and invited the world’s media to see that they were being given water, medicine and food. In such a scenario, he said, Hamas could have taken soldiers as prisoners of war while avoiding harm to civilians.
“They capture the soldiers and take them prisoners of war, which is legitimate, but they do not harm the civilians — and that’s the only difference,” he said.
In that scenario, Harari argued, Israel’s ability to respond with overwhelming force would have been sharply limited.
“In such a scenario, Israel’s hands would have been tied,” he said. “Not only would world public opinion but also Israeli public opinion, not have allowed Israel to just bombard Gaza into rubble.”
“And in that world, there would have been very little legitimacy for Israel to have overwhelming reprisal against Gaza, and Hamas would have won — not just a tactical victory but a major political victory,” he said. “It didn’t happen, simply because of their cruelty.”
Harari said Israel had won its battles tactically, but risked losing the broader story that had underpinned its legitimacy.
“If you lose that story in the long term, you’ve lost something real,” he said.
He pointed to declining support for Israel among young Americans, saying Israelis often treat that shift as insignificant.
“I think, in the long run, it is significant,” he said.
Harari described Netanyahu’s government as betting on a more force-driven world order.
“I think Israel is making a big bet that Stephen Miller’s worldview will prevail,” he said. “That the world will be a place in which force is the only thing that matters, and Israel will be one of the champions of this worldview. This is the bet that the Netanyahu government is making.”
Later in the interview, Harari said Zionism may have tried to combine things that do not easily fit together. The Zionist idea, he said, was to combine the legacy of Judaism with working the land, building an army and creating a state.
“Yes, and the idea was that they could combine the lessons, the legacy of Judaism with working the land and building an army and building a country,” he said. “Maybe it was just wrong, and ultimately a choice had to be made whether you want to be Vespasian and command a legion, or whether you want to be Yohanan ben Zakkai and study and develop your spiritual side, and the two cannot go together.”
Asked whether he now believes that contradiction cannot be resolved, Harari qualified his answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “History is a very complex and unexpected process. I don’t think that there is an inherent contradiction between power and justice, or between developing your power and developing your spiritual wisdom.”
“But I think it’s very difficult to combine the two. The temptations of power are very, very big, and not a lot of people or a lot of movements throughout history have managed to resist it,” he added.
Harari also warned that Israel’s force-first approach could undermine 2,000 years of Jewish history. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, he said, Judaism had positioned itself against the idea that the world is governed only by brute force.
“When the Roman legions of Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E., and you have Yohanan ben Zakkai asking Vespasian as a favor: Grant me a small town called Yavne — near Tel Aviv of today — where he wants to establish a center of learning,” Harari said. “Vespasian agrees: OK, you Jews can have your center of learning.”
“And since then, for 2,000 years, Jews in Yavne, and then in Cairo, in Baghdad, in Poland, in Brooklyn, they study, they learn. This was the essence of Judaism,” he said.
Harari said the central Jewish message over those centuries was that it is acceptable to be different and to think differently from the majority.
“If you try to think of what was maybe the most important message of Jews to humanity over the last 2,000 years, I would say the message is that it is OK to be different. It is OK to think and behave differently than the majority,” he said.
But now, Harari argued, that tradition is being challenged by a very different lesson.
“And then people like Netanyahu tell you: Oh, we have learned that you need to be a Roman, that you need to be strong, that you need to build legions, that you need to destroy cities. This is the only thing that matters in life,” he said.
“If after 2,000 years, the Jews simply become the Romans, what was the point?” he added. “Why did you waste 2,000 years, then? You could have just become Roman back then.”
“It just nullifies the whole of Jewish history,” Harari said.
He also contrasted biblical Judaism with the Jewish tradition that developed in the diaspora.
“Biblical Judaism was a very violent, very illiberal, very intolerant religion,” he said. “For its time, it was probably the most intolerant religion in the world.”
He cited the biblical commandment to kill the Canaanites and what he described as deep intolerance toward the religions and beliefs of other peoples. Jewish life as a minority under other religions, he argued, forced Jews to develop a more open and tolerant worldview.
“But now this 2,000 years of tolerant Jewish tradition is being completely denied and destroyed,” Harari said.