Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Antony Loewenstein: Is Israel Immoral?

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Antony Loewenstein: Is Israel Immoral? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Can I humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and today's dangerous idea is Israel.
• 0:10
  Very, very bad.
• 0:12
  Or is it good?
• 0:14
  Is it an apartheid state or is it a plucky little nation just trying to make do with a bad hand that it's been dealt?
• 0:22
  Antony Lowenstein is an independent journalist, like me, of Jewish heritage, like me, a descendant of Holocaust survivors,
• 0:31
  not like me, very, very, very well educated about all that's wrong with the great state of Israel.
• 0:39
  Or not so great state of Israel.
• 0:41
  He lived there.
• 0:42
  He lived in East Jerusalem from 2016 to 2020.
• 0:47
  He's the co-founder of declassified Australia.
• 0:51
  He has a lot about privacy rights, human rights, Palestinian rights.
• 0:55
  He's written for the Guardian, for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, many others, and he's written many a book,
• 1:00
  of which his latest is the Palestine laboratory.
• 1:05
  How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world.
• 1:10
  And this focuses mainly on the spy technology, the military technology that Israel uses to export this kind of ideology of besiegement to the rest of the world,
• 1:21
  capitalized upon by far right people and politicians and autocrats, and theocrats, the world over, to pull off some not so nice things on innocent people.
• 1:33
  I wanted to talk to Anthony mainly to have an argument with someone who's more anti-Israel than I am.
• 1:41
  And I usually find myself on the position of being the more anti-Israel Jew when I'm talking to other prominent Jews in the public sphere.
• 1:50
  You can go back and listen to my interview with Chloe Valdery, who's a fabulous and articulate and brilliant woman, but is very pro-Israel.
• 2:00
  And in that exchange, I'm the anti-Israel peacenick, and in this exchange I'm the pro-Israel hawk.
• 2:07
  I hope that both conversations are useful.
• 2:09
  This is basically me taking an opportunity that I've wanted to take for some time to have an argument or a disagreement or a friendly debate with someone who is much more critical of the world.
• 2:19
  It is much more critical of Israel than I am.
• 2:21
  Anthony is a brilliant guy, and I disagree on much.
• 2:25
  Oh, by the way, I should add, if ever you have considered subscribing to the premium podcast and going on a uncomfortable conversation.
• 2:33
  If you want to know why I find myself back into a corner arguing for the case that there are better and worse forms of ethnic cleansing and better and worse forms of rape,
• 2:58
  what could possibly go wrong and how could I cancel for that?
• 3:02
  Then you probably want a subscription to the premium fee.
• 3:05
  I hope you enjoy this interview with the one and only Anthony Longstown.
• 3:09
  There seem to be a couple of ways of criticizing Israel.
• 3:22
  There are Israeli idealists or Jewish idealists around the world who say that the country's gone off the rails in the past couple of decades thanks to right wing Netanyahuism.
• 3:33
  And then there are those who would say that the whole project was doomed from the start and it was a misbegotten concept to try to create a homeland for the Jews.
• 3:43
  Do you believe one of those or both?
• 3:46
  I'd say that the project was, I mean, when I say doomed from the start, of course it depends who you ask.
• 3:53
  When I say that as someone who is Jewish and much of my family were killed in the Holocaust and had Israel existed before the Second World War,
• 4:03
  who knows if those family would have gone to Israel, I mean it's impossible to know of course it's something I've thought about over the years.
• 4:11
  But from its very beginning in 1948, as Israel was created in the ashes of the Holocaust, it was proudly excluding anyone who was not Jewish.
• 4:23
  I mean that wasn't particularly even a secret at the time and it's certainly not a secret now based on huge amount of declassified documents some which are in the book and other places in books, other people's books.
• 4:35
  And that the plan was to try to kick out as many Palestinians and Arabs as possible, that was the plan from the beginning.
• 4:43
  You have David Benguri on the first country's prime minister openly saying so in declassified documents at the time 1948, 1949.
• 4:52
  So is the idea of a place for Jews to be secure a bad idea? Absolutely not. Historically of course Jews have every reason often to feel unsafe, obviously culminating in the Holocaust amongst a multitude of other horrendous actions.
• 5:10
  But the problem is that 75 years on after the establishment of Israel, you now have even putting aside the Palestinians, the occupation, all that which we'll talk about.
• 5:22
  You have now increasingly, frankly, a war within Israel itself. It's mostly non-violent. I'm talking about between either the settler movement who are often very hard lines and hard lines even the wrong word.
• 5:36
  They are often fundamentalist Jewish theorists whose vision is a Taliban-style state, obviously Jewish, not Muslim.
• 5:48
  And they are minority, but they have frankly taken the controls of the state long before Netanyahu.
• 5:56
  I mean, there's an argument that as you said at the beginning in the question that some people say, well, the country's gone off the rails since he came to power.
• 6:03
  There's current government extremely extreme. And if only we get back to the good old days of supposed liberal Zionism or it's a Arabian or former prime ministers who are seen as more progressive or more open to negotiation with Palestinians.
• 6:19
  But the problem is that for so many years, in arguably since the beginning, but certainly since 1967, when there was a six-day war in Israel took control of these Jerusalem and Gaza and the West Bank and the Golden Heights.
• 6:35
  So 56 years now has been an occupation, it's the longest occupation in modern time. There's been this unbelievable campaign started off as a minority of a fringe group of Jews who believe that they are the right to settle all the land.
• 6:49
  So now we have three quarters of a million Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. No one thinks they're actually ever going to be removed. They're there now pretty permanently, I would say.
• 7:01
  That it's an extremist ideology. It basically to the point where you have just this year, it's been going for years.
• 7:08
  And I think much of the Western press, the shield of Israel and my view from this, the reality that there are pogroms, regularly Jewish-led pogroms against Palestinians.
• 7:19
  This is not a few bad apples. This is happening regularly. So to me, you're talking about in the occupied territories.
• 7:26
  I'm talking about in the West Bank, principally, absolutely.
• 7:29
  But at the beginning of this answer, you said that it extends, you know, setting aside the territories, talking about internally in Israel proper.
• 7:36
  I mean, you can say what you want about the settlements in 1967, of course, was not a war that Israel chose. It was a war of invasion.
• 7:45
  And then they found themselves, you know, according to many generals, kind of undesirably against their own will in control of all these areas that they'd rather not control.
• 7:56
  And the process of extricating themselves from those areas was tricky. How do you do that?
• 8:03
  I mean, obviously it would have been preferable if they, if you'd been able to create a second state, but it's understandable that if you try to have a Jewish state and then another state next to it, and those people don't want to negotiate for another state, but they want to drive you into the sea, then what's the, what do you do with those territories?
• 8:21
  It's certainly not that you occupy them with far-right settlers who engage in pogroms against them, and you ignore international law and just try to occupy as many of them as you possibly can. But what's the alternative?
• 8:34
  I mean, I guess I know we have time to talk about this, but I mean, so much of what you just said in that description, I would fundamentally disagree with.
• 8:44
  I mean, look, yeah, I mean, I think there is no doubt that for many, many years, the myth, I'm not suggesting this particularly you, but in general, the myth, and I heard this one, I was growing up, I'm from Melbourne, originally I grew up in Melbourne in a liberal Jewish home, and Israel was never the center of our lives, but it was something that we were told we should support because of the history of the Jewish people and the Holocaust.
• 9:07
  And the idea was always that Palestinians don't want to have us there there being in Israel. They don't respect us, they want to kill us, they want to throw us into the sea, we have no choice but to be strong and essentially control them brutally. And of course, in the 20th century, including after the establishment of Israel, there's no doubt there are a number of Arab armies and states and peoples that didn't like Israel and didn't like Jews, and in fact that continues to this day.
• 9:36
  I don't deny any of that, and the book doesn't shy away from that. I've spent a lot of time working in the Arab and Muslim world as obviously a Jew, and I've often talked about this and written about this, I don't deny that there is anti-Semitism at all or hatred of Jews in the Arab and Muslim world, it's real, undeniably it's real.
• 9:57
  If you as a state choose to, and I think this argument says Israel wanted to extricate itself, it didn't have a choice, there's a choice.
• 10:06
  I mean, after 56 years, this argument that says, well, we'd love to withdraw, but now we can't, and if we do withdraw the Arabs in the Arab world, you're fast forwarding through a half century.
• 10:18
  I mean, I was only making the point that in the immediate aftermath of 1967, would we at least agree that the 1967 war was not a war of Israeli aggression?
• 10:26
  No. We wouldn't agree with that.
• 10:29
  No, I think there is a, I mean, there's always no Arab army. There was a mass on the border ready to invade.
• 10:36
  Yes, but there were lots of declassified documents that have come out in the last 10, 20 years, particularly thanks to Israeli Jewish historians that have questioned that narrative.
• 10:47
  There was an Arab threat. I'm not denying that. I'm not denying it then or now, but there was not this inevitability that 1973, young people wars a different story.
• 10:57
  That was essentially an attempt of a surprise war against Israel.
• 11:01
  I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting 1973 confused with 1967. You're right. Yes. Okay, 67 is a slightly more ambiguous case.
• 11:08
  1973 was the young people war where the armies were all amassed and then they were ready to, ready to strike.
• 11:13
  Either way, so I'll grant you that point, but either way, it once went, when we're in the mid-70s, have you seen that amazing documentary
• 11:20
  where it's used interviews with the generals who were presiding over the occupation? I mean, they speak with one voice about the tragedy of the thing.
• 11:29
  I sometimes feel like because there is currently a disingenuous right wing Israeli claim that, oh, we have to, you know, we have no partners in peace.
• 11:40
  We have no interlocutors where we're a defenseless nation. We have to do these things. Our hands are tied because that claim gets used so disingenuously as a rational for barbaric behavior by the Israeli defense forces and barbaric policies against Palestinians.
• 11:57
  It's easy to say that there's, to discredit it and say that there's no truth there, but at many stages in Israel's history, there has been a truth there.
• 12:06
  I mean, in the late 40s and early 50s and in the late 60s and early 70s, there really wasn't anybody to have a dialogue with.
• 12:14
  So we can talk about the nation going off the rails, but in terms of the question of the sort of intrinsic wrongness of the project from the start.
• 12:24
  I don't see it in that first half century. I mean, of course, it was horrible for the Palestinians who were driven from their land, but how else do you make a Jewish state if you're a Jewish settler than by creating a Jewish area and that with every expectation that the Palestinians will live side by side at some point?
• 12:41
  But that was not the expectation. I mean, right from the beginning, the aim of 1948 was deliberately to ethnically cleanse, as what happened, 750,000 Palestinians.
• 12:51
  And today, if I was to have a tiny little Israeli state where the Jews would live and the hope was that those Palestinians would live in, you know, that what is now the West Bank? And Jordan?
• 13:02
  No, their hope was they would live in neighboring Arab states because they had no desire for Palestinians. And the aim was to have as few Palestinians or Arabs as possible in the Jewish state, which is still the aim today.
• 13:14
  I mean, it hasn't been particularly successful, frankly, in that level because the vast majority of Palestinians have not left, have not have not decided to lead.
• 13:22
  They've decided to stay despite all the challenges. I mean, the issue of legitimacy of a state on the one hand, you could argue it's a rather irrelevant argument.
• 13:31
  I mean, the state exists. It's real. It's there. It's not going to disappear tomorrow. But I think like a lot of states akin to Israel and Australia is one of those.
• 13:40
  There is, there are serious profoundly unresolved questions about its birth and how you deal with that history.
• 13:47
  Obviously, Australia is going through that conversation. I think we're not dealing with it very well here personally, but some states deal with it rather than others, other settler colonial states, all these kinds of states, New Zealand, Canada, US, and others are having these kinds of conversations and policies.
• 14:03
  Some deal with the kind of okay, mostly not particularly well. I think Israel hasn't even started that conversation. If you speak to, as I do, many Jewish people, not just in Australia, but elsewhere. Of course, I'm generalizing. There are many exceptions.
• 14:18
  There's not even an acknowledgement that there was ethnic cleansing in 1948, which is acknowledged and written about mostly by Israeli Jewish, yes.
• 14:26
  I don't find that among them. You're hanging in the wrong Jews. No, I'm hanging in with the further Jews that you hang out with. I'm talking about the majority of the, I mean, the mainstream is not left-wing.
• 14:37
  Everyone would agree that the, I mean, everyone who I know in liberal Jewish circles and academia would agree with it.
• 14:44
  Yes, that's liberal. The vast majority of Jewish leadership is not politically, they're not.
• 14:51
  They are liberal. Well, there are liberals when you look at the Jews outside of Israel. I mean, the Jews inside Israel keep electing these right-wing governments, much to the chagrin of the diaspora.
• 15:03
  Absolutely, but for decades in much of the Jewish diaspora, the US, Australia, Canada, South Africa, England, there's a reason why virtually every single mainstream, Israel advocate, lobbyist, call it whatever you want, is right-wing to far-right. That's not accidental.
• 15:25
  Well, yeah, the people who devote their lives to defending Israel are Israelis.
• 15:30
  Doesn't that matter? I mean, the fact that yes, but your claim wasn't that the people, that the spokespeople are apologists for the Israeli rights, but the Jewish people are...
• 15:40
  I am saying that people deny the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in their 40s.
• 15:46
  Well, I guess yes, yes, yes, of course many, I mean, obviously I like Jewish friends, whatever, who are profoundly disillusioned with it, but there's a difference.
• 15:59
  What I say, and it's not particularly in this book, I've said it elsewhere for many years, I see huge complicity and silence in much of the establishment Jewish diaspora in Australia and elsewhere who have either said nothing or much in the last decades about what's happening or they've defended what's going on.
• 16:23
  There is a reason why without Jewish diaspora support, Israel would not exist. It wouldn't exist.
• 16:30
  I mean, you're right, the people are conflicted about removing their support altogether from Israel. Yeah, Jews in the diaspora.
• 16:37
  But that's amazing, yes, but that's all about that.
• 16:40
  But I don't think that they're carrying water for a notion that Israel was founded without the sin of the expulsion of an entire civilization of people.
• 16:51
  In some ways, I think Jews outside Israel and inside Israel, grapple on the left at least, grapple with this in at least as complicated a way as we grapple with the Australian, the tragedy for First Nations Australians or the fact that the Western half of the United States is sitting on top of Mexico.
• 17:11
  And we actually don't talk about those things as much as we talk about the tragedies and the sins of Israel.
• 17:17
  In some ways, I think Israel looms larger, at least in the global consciousness as a villain, because it happened so much more recently.
• 17:24
  I mean, if we'd done to the Aborigines, what we did in the 1700s, in the 1940s and 50s, then Australia would be as maligned as Israel is as well.
• 17:36
  But we may just swim in a slightly different circle.
• 17:40
  Yeah, I mean, maybe, but the argument that says all these huge amounts of international attention on Israel, it's in the media a lot.
• 17:49
  Of course, that's true, but Israel has complete impunity.
• 17:53
  It's not like after 56 years of occupation to seriously suggest that Israel is under this massive amounts of international pressure from where it doesn't exist politically.
• 18:06
  That doesn't exist.
• 18:08
  The reason why we're talking about the sort of conflictedness of Jews, ourselves, I suppose.
• 18:13
  Yes, but I think that there is.
• 18:16
  Yeah, definitely.
• 18:18
  The geopolitically, there are lots of reasons.
• 18:20
  But it's meaningless.
• 18:21
  Don't pressure Israel.
• 18:23
  Not least of which is a point that you make in the book, which is that every time someone criticizes Israel, the Israeli government cynically uses accusations of anti-Semitism as a way to deflect legitimate criticism of its policies.
• 18:35
  Not just Israel, but often the Jewish establishment in various countries.
• 18:40
  I mean, I think it doesn't happen in Australia or the US or elsewhere.
• 18:43
  There are continual attempts to pressure media, to pressure politicians.
• 18:47
  This is how it works.
• 18:48
  I've written about this for 20 years, that there is a...
• 18:51
  There's not uniformity, of course, with the Australian Jewish community on Israel, and there is a shift going on, which is reflected in the US particularly.
• 18:59
  Where there's really a Jewish insurgency going on, as I call it, within the Jewish community, where you have in general younger Jews versus older Jews.
• 19:09
  It's not quite as neat as that, but that's generally how it is.
• 19:11
  And many older Jews who have spent decades supporting Israel being uncritical towards Jews, are at least publicly.
• 19:17
  And younger Jews who are saying, not in my name, I can no longer support or are not going to support a state that commits hideous abuses against Palestinians.
• 19:25
  And that leads to growing pressure on politicians, alternative lobby groups, alternative Jewish organizations, et cetera.
• 19:33
  And to me, that civil war that needs to happen in the Jewish community is utterly vital.
• 19:39
  The idea that there are...
• 19:41
  But I think there are so many liberal Jews who feel...
• 19:47
  Here's the expression, Josh. Israel has... Israelis have this expression, crying and shooting.
• 19:53
  Which is not unique to Israel, but it's often used by people who sort of say, oh look, it's really tough what's happening in there.
• 19:59
  You know, it's the occupation, it's really awful, but what choice do we have?
• 20:03
  Well, in that argument, you could be saying that in 50 or 100 years. What choice do we have to occupy in other people? You have a choice.
• 20:09
  It's like Israel, you know, Gideon Levy, who's a close friend of mine, who's an amazing Israeli-Jewish journalist, who often sort of says and writes,
• 20:17
  Israel is the only country that occupies another country that wants the world to be sympathetic towards them. They're the occupier.
• 20:25
  They're occupying people brutally.
• 20:27
  I mean, I think this is...
• 20:29
  I mean, I think this is...
• 20:31
  I think this is the winning terrain though, rather than the criticisms about Zionism, in the sense that we're likely to win...
• 20:41
  Well, you are likely to win converts like me by tapping into the inherent injustice of depriving and entire people in perpetuity of our homeland
• 20:55
  and requiring them to live effectively and squall at outdoor refugee camps forever in the name of security.
• 21:03
  That's clearly an untenable and morally unacceptable position.
• 21:07
  And as I agree with you, there is a generational shift on this, and more and more Jews around the world, which is why I think it's now certainly a majority outside of Israel.
• 21:17
  Although that they agree with you, the majority is not necessarily reflected in the mainstream spokes organizations for defending Israel and Australian and American Jewry.
• 21:27
  But nonetheless, a groundswell of people who've become fed up with the total disregard for the rights of self-determination of the Palestinians.
• 21:39
  When you say there is a choice, I think you're making it sound like an easier choice than most people would concede in the sense that, of course, you can pull out of the occupation.
• 21:51
  And then people would say, so then what are the contours of a security agreement with the neighboring state?
• 21:58
  Obviously, you would not condone the Gaza-style solution of just pull out and put up a big wall and block the place off from everybody else.
• 22:06
  So that state has to have some kind of responsible standing in the world, and there has to be a security guarantee between it and Israel.
• 22:14
  And that's where the details become critical.
• 22:18
  For sure, look at all those things need to be negotiated, but just to be clear, virtually every Arab state is in a quasi-peace with Israel now anyway.
• 22:27
  And it's not like Iran, who would say that evidence that strength works.
• 22:33
  Well, you would say that, but it's a piece that's paper thin.
• 22:37
  I mean, I write about this in the book that if one really thinks that Egypt and Jordan and Saudi and all these other countries are actually friends with Israel, it's delusional.
• 22:48
  They're not. Their leaders are so-called friends with Israel because they're frankly one arms and surveillance technology from Israel.
• 22:56
  If you see most of the polling across much of the Arab world, which has been the case for decades, it hasn't really changed.
• 23:02
  There are some people who want to be friends with Israel for sure, but it's a tiny, tiny minority. Most people see the occupation for what it is.
• 23:08
  It's a festering saw. I mean, I spend not just in the book, but I've said this for years that I'm not a defender or supporter of Hamas in Gaza.
• 23:17
  I spend a lot of time in Gaza. I spend time with Hamas as a reporter.
• 23:22
  And with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, they deeply corrupt and disaster for the Palestinian people.
• 23:28
  I'm not defending them at all. I think they're a disaster. But ultimately, there's an occupying power.
• 23:34
  And of course, you need to negotiate and all that's true. However, you resolve this conflict.
• 23:39
  There's been various people have written books. I did a book years ago called After Designism, which had huge numbers of prominent writers, Jewish and Arab and Palestinian talking about.
• 23:46
  What it would look like, not a utopia, if Israel's a Jewish state ends, but how it would work with some kind of quasi piece with a settlement, with how you try to bring the people together.
• 24:01
  And it would take a bloody long time. And you look at how Northern Ireland did it, far from Persia, if you look at how South Africa did it, far from perfect.
• 24:09
  But you take various examples of different models. And there have been lots of people who talk about this now.
• 24:14
  And I don't talk about this in the particular book, but I talked about it in previous books and other people who are on the ground do talk about a lot.
• 24:21
  You don't really hear this at all, frankly, in much of the Western press. You don't really hear it in Israel. It's in the Jewish press anyway.
• 24:29
  And I think there's really been this sense for years, for a lot of people. I'm talking mainly about non-Jewish people now, that they kind of subscribe to this notion still of how Israel sells itself, which is it's a thriving democracy in the Middle East.
• 24:52
  Now, maybe you and I hear that and say, who are you kidding? I can't speak for you. I would say that.
• 24:58
  I think who are you kidding? I just think it falls far short of that. I mean, you know, of all the places, if you created a, if you created a dark board with all of the countries of the Middle East on it.
• 25:12
  And you were throwing darts and you were blindfolded and you didn't know which country you'd hit and you were going to end up in one of those countries and you didn't know what your circumstances would be there.
• 25:22
  Then when you took the blindfold off and you saw that you'd hit Israel instead of Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Iran, you'd probably be happy.
• 25:34
  I guess it depends who you are. And also, let's be clear that the fact that so many Arab states now are being assisted in their autocracy by Israeli weapons and surveillance is a pretty key part of how Israel is trying to maintain its core dominance or whatever it is in the hegemony in the region.
• 25:56
  I want to get to that. And I also want to get to the one state solution, but just to put a button on the two state solution and the security and the conundrum of Israeli security.
• 26:06
  When we say that, you know, when the cynical right wing Israeli hawks say, we don't have anyone to negotiate with. What are we going to talk to?
• 26:18
  And you see that. Thank you very much. It's my best enough tally Bennett. I got to interview him for half an hour in New York on TV once when he was foreign minister.
• 26:31
  That was interesting. Absolutely fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Well, I would call him an extremist, but I don't know.
• 26:38
  He is absolutely an extremist, but he has that beautiful. He's incredibly cute and charming. He has a winning smile. He's just such a lovely guy in the way that people who preside over regimes of utter brutality can can be.
• 26:58
  I don't know. I remember the first thing he said to me was he was he was doing a tour of the US. I was in New York and he was saying that, you know, Israel can really be a model for other Western countries about how to manage their security arrangements.
• 27:15
  And I said, my first answer to him was like, if I'm living in America or Australia, and you come to say, you come to me and you say, I've got a great solution for you. You too can live just the way we do in Israel. I'm not taking it like I'm not buying that. I'm not buying that. I don't think that you're really.
• 27:35
  I think you've managed the security situation as well as you think you have. And let's get to that. But so on the security of the border, were there to be a Palestinian state?
• 27:47
  Didn't you just say that the illusion of Israel security is paper thin in all of these countries and they see the occupation for what it is? And I mean, you can blame the occupation if you want, but long before 1967, these populations already hated the concept of Israel and hated Jews specifically as a people.
• 28:07
  So what is the rationale for being sanguine that Israel doesn't need a strong security buffer?
• 28:16
  Well, there's a few things there. One, I wouldn't accept that the majority of Arab people before 1967 hated Jews. There was anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world. Absolutely.
• 28:27
  Do they now?
• 28:28
  Well, most do they want the majority of Arabs hate these Jews? I mean, I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that there's no polling that backs it up as I said.
• 28:41
  I mean, I'm not saying they I'm not saying they do, but I'm saying to everyone.
• 28:45
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• 29:15
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• 29:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 30:15
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• 30:45
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• 30:55
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• 31:05
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• 31:15
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• 31:25
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• 31:35
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• 31:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 31:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 32:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 32:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 32:25
  There is nothing to do with them. There is nothing to do with them. There is nothing to do with them. There is nothing to do with them.
• 32:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 32:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 32:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 33:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 33:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 33:25
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 33:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 33:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 33:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 34:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 34:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 34:25
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 34:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 34:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 34:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 35:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 35:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 35:25
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 35:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 35:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 35:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 36:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 36:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 36:25
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 36:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 36:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 36:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 37:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 37:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 37:25
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 37:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 37:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 37:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 38:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 38:15
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 38:25
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 38:35
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 38:45
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 38:55
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism.
• 39:05
  There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There is a lot of dissimilarism. There
• 39:35
  there
• 40:05
  changed. In fact, last year was the most violent year against Palestinians for years, until
• 40:09
  this year. So, I've often said to people, let's obsess over Netanyahu if you want, but
• 40:15
  the problem is not Netanyahu. I don't like him, it's not like I'm a fan of him, obviously
• 40:19
  I'm not. Like I said, they say about the US. Trump is not the issue here. Trump is a symptom.
• 40:25
  Trump is a dangerous person, in my view, Netanyahu is dangerous too. But the issue is not simply
• 40:30
  removing Trump or removing Netanyahu as a leader or as a candidate. It doesn't solve
• 40:34
  the problem of any of this. It doesn't solve the problem, but nothing solves the problem.
• 40:40
  I mean, these are accelerants. These are in Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are extreme,
• 40:46
  are gasoline on a small brush fire that turn it into a... Absolutely. You know, into something.
• 40:53
  I'm not denying you that. You're right. Just take the counter. Take the alternative history,
• 40:58
  counterfactual, you know, and assume that Rubin isn't assassinated. And there's actually a
• 41:04
  peace deal. Then do you fast forward to 2023? And you're still saying that it wasn't Netanyahu,
• 41:10
  it was inevitable all along, or do we live in a parallel universe in which there are two states?
• 41:16
  Look, like with anything, right? It's impossible to say, I don't know.
• 41:19
  I mean, all the evidence since, obviously this is principally since he was killed,
• 41:24
  but all the evidence since has shown that there's been never any intention to end the occupation,
• 41:29
  because the occupation has gone from... Well, there was. They signed for deal.
• 41:35
  Yes, but they signed the deal while expanding the occupation, Josh. In the 90s,
• 41:38
  the settlements doubled in size, mostly under so-called left-wing government. This is what I'm
• 41:43
  saying. You mean before they signed the deal? After they signed the deal.
• 41:48
  Oh, he was dead. Not before. It was dead. Yeah, I know. They shot him. I mean, you know,
• 41:53
  if he hadn't been... What I'm saying is if he hadn't, of course, you come to the table,
• 41:58
  you finally make the arrangement, you finally come out your shake hands, you make a deal,
• 42:03
  and then the guy gets assassinated, the deal falls apart. Of course, there's an instinct
• 42:08
  when the right-wing government gets elected to go fuck it. This was a misbegotten venture
• 42:11
  in the first place. Thank God that peacemaker is dead. Let's go see him ahead with the settlements.
• 42:16
  I don't think that... I think it's just... It ignores the kind of the complex contingency of history
• 42:23
  to be like, this is the way it is. Therefore, it was always going to be thus.
• 42:27
  No, I don't think that... No, I don't think... I think nothing is inevitable. But I do think that
• 42:31
  when there were labor in Israel labor, labor prime ministers who are nominally left. There's not far
• 42:38
  right. There's not liquid. They're not right-wing labor prime ministers. The settlements mostly
• 42:45
  doubled in size. These are not far-right people. I mean, we're talking about the past quarter
• 42:50
  century, right? We're not talking about... We are. Yeah. We are. But I guess what I say is that
• 42:56
  hence my comment that it is a profound mistake to think that the... Not that you've said this,
• 43:02
  but that the soul or the primary issue is a person like Nesanyahu. He is obviously a political
• 43:10
  animal. He's an evil genius. He's a political operator. He's got nine lives. All that's true
• 43:15
  as is Trump for that matter. And there are certain figures in history that for a variety of reasons
• 43:22
  can be an accelerant. I agree. And those two figures are two of them and there are obviously
• 43:25
  others. But again, the occupation is not just happening when these figures are in charge. This
• 43:34
  is the point. This is a continuum regardless of who's in power in Israel. It doesn't matter.
• 43:41
  It doesn't... It hasn't mattered for half a century. In fact, much of the massive settlement
• 43:45
  expansion happened under labor. Didn't happen under liquid. Happened under labor who were supposedly
• 43:51
  left wing. And so to wrap up the thing on apartheid, one of the people you quote unfavorably in
• 43:58
  the book is the position leader Benny Gantz in 2019 saying that the best place to be an Arab
• 44:07
  in the Middle East is in Israel. And you say that basically is like what South African apartheid
• 44:14
  era politicians used to say, look, it's better to be a black in South South Africa than it is to
• 44:18
  be older, black elsewhere in Africa. On the other hand, is it not true that Israel is one of
• 44:26
  the best places to be an Arab? Well, obviously, I mean, firstly we're comparing... I mean, I
• 44:35
  don't know if I can't really write this if I write this exactly in the book. I haven't got the
• 44:38
  words in front of me. But I mean, it's... On one level, it was a pretty weird comparison. It's like
• 44:43
  saying, right, so what you're comparing yourself to who? Saudi or a man or Morocco, which are obviously
• 44:52
  dictatorships, autocracies. They're not claiming to be democracies. And yeah, if many people in
• 44:56
  those countries, not all, that many are not treated well. But this, I think, goes to the heart of
• 45:02
  the reason I put that in the book, was to say to people, and particularly, I guess, to the wider
• 45:08
  community, but also to Jewish people too, is that I think there is still a really strong sentiment
• 45:15
  of not feeling comfortable. Because of 20th century history, to say and acknowledge and dig deep
• 45:22
  into the fact that there is unbelievable racism within Israel, Jewish racism towards Arabs and
• 45:30
  Palestinians, and then extends into diaspora profoundly so that we feel much more comfortable
• 45:37
  talking about, I don't know, Muslim racism or Muslim terrorism or Hindu terrorism or I don't know,
• 45:44
  any other kind of extremism that we sort of feel a bit uncomfortable when I say we much in the
• 45:49
  West. I mean, I don't personally, but I understand the hesitation in a way because of the 20th century
• 45:55
  that what happens if, which I would argue is the case, there is a profound racism at the heart of
• 46:03
  much of Israeli political life and therefore much of Jewish diaspora political life. And when
• 46:09
  the evidence to me for that, and that one comment by Benny Gance is one of many, I could have
• 46:13
  picked others. And I do compare it to how many whites of Africans talked about apartheid
• 46:20
  South Africa because back then, I mean, if you heard that in 1990, what would you say? Would you
• 46:27
  say, well, short, it's not great in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. So yeah, I guess it is better in Johannes
• 46:33
  Berg. I mean, okay, if that's your comparison, but it's apartheid. It's an apartheid state and even
• 46:41
  worse, by the way, in the modern era when Israel is assisting and backing and selling surveillance
• 46:48
  equipment to these Arab autocracies to remain autocratic. Like, that's what they're doing.
• 46:55
  Usually, in fact, I mean, the arms sales to the Arab countries are off the chart, surveillance
• 47:00
  technology, drones, etc. So, I mean, to me, it's a pretty weird argument for a mainstream Israeli
• 47:08
  politician to say, go, we're pretty amazing compared to the Middle East. And he say, well, okay,
• 47:15
  yeah, I guess I made this point before it's funny. I'm enjoying being cast as the more pro
• 47:22
  Israeli person because I'm usually enjoying it as the as the yeah, I'm normally the the self-hating
• 47:28
  Jew who hates who hates Israel in comparison to most people, but you're so much further along
• 47:32
  the spectrum that I get that I'm on the right of this conversation. But I but when I was having
• 47:38
  an argument with more pro Israeli commentator, she was, you know, she was saying making this argument
• 47:47
  that Israel is so much better than all of the other countries in the Middle East. And I made the
• 47:52
  point, but they don't compare themselves to other countries in the Middle East on the global stage.
• 47:57
  They don't stand up at international forums and say, look at Israel, we're not Yemen. They
• 48:04
  stand up and say, we are like the United States, like we're a civilized country. And therefore,
• 48:09
  they're inviting us to hold them to the standards of, you know, of a modern Western liberal
• 48:15
  democracy. Nonetheless, ideally, it may just be that we that you and I again are in different
• 48:21
  circles, but I, you know, like I was working with a colleague who's a well-known Australian personality
• 48:28
  and something came out about strife in Israel. And we were in the production room. And she
• 48:35
  is the Jewish colleague of yours or not? No, no, non Jewish. And she said fucking Zionists and
• 48:42
  wandered off. And there was something about like the tone that did make me think there's something
• 48:50
  in that accusation of Zionist, not Israelis. She can't say Jews, but she doesn't say that
• 48:58
  fucking country or that fucking government or whatever. It's Zionist specifically as a proxy
• 49:04
  for something that I think is aligned with post-colonial white guilt in general that the Zionist
• 49:14
  is the avatar of all of our sins in some ways, I think, as colonizers. And I mean, quite apart from,
• 49:23
  you know, Jews not wanting to reconcile themselves to the fact that there's a racism at the heart of
• 49:29
  any project that elevates one ethnicity over others. I think there's also a squeamishness amongst
• 49:38
  non Jews about any harm that befalls poor, colonized brown people. And then in actual fact,
• 49:47
  there's a there's a reflexive anti-Israeli sentiment, not among governments, not among the people
• 49:56
  who claim to speak on behalf of the Jewish community, but among a large proportion of people where
• 50:02
  I think Jews see a double standard. And, you know, you say, okay, what is Israel going to compare
• 50:08
  itself to Oman and Yemen and I don't know Morocco? Well, I mean, it's in that neck of the woods.
• 50:16
  And if we're going to boycott and divest and sanction Israel, are we going to do the same for Saudi
• 50:20
  Arabia and Morocco? No, but and if not, why not? And why the double standard? And some people feel
• 50:28
  like it's because, you know, we like the image of the endlessly suffering, colonized brown person
• 50:34
  being attacked by the the white guy in a suit. Like that fits this stereotype that that pushes all
• 50:40
  the right guilt buttons in the West. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, there's a lot to unpack
• 50:45
  there, but I mean, if I had a friend or colleague or I don't know if that colleague of yours is a
• 50:51
  friend or does someone you work with, but if someone said that in front of me, I mean, it's not
• 50:56
  I don't use that kind of language, but I'm not that I don't. I probably would go, okay, that's,
• 51:02
  wow, I mean, I mean, obviously what they were talking about, I guess Israel was doing something
• 51:05
  horrible, I presume. And that was their response. I could potentially feel a bit uncomfortable,
• 51:11
  and I might don't know the person. I'm not for a second suggesting there are any Seminic, I
• 51:14
  of course don't know who they are. But I think the language that we use is important when I say
• 51:21
  anyone who talks about this issue. I've thought that for years, and there is no doubt, I don't talk
• 51:26
  about this particularly in the book, but I talked about it in other circles. A lot of my work over
• 51:31
  the years has nothing to do with this issue, but sometimes it has obviously been a central part of
• 51:36
  my life. And there are parts of the left, I mean, it's hard to generalize, but there are parts of
• 51:41
  the left that there is a uncomfortable or concerning slippage between Jews and Zionists.
• 51:51
  There obviously is anti-Semitism in parts of the left, there can be, of course there can be,
• 51:56
  as some people who are anti-Science anti-Semitic, of course they are. I can't put a number on it,
• 52:01
  I think it's a relatively small amount, but yeah, of course, I don't deny any of that.
• 52:07
  But then I think if you're a Palestinian having that conversation with friends and you say, well,
• 52:15
  gee, you know, I can't go back to Palestine, I can't become a citizen, a state doesn't exist.
• 52:22
  My family's home was demolished last week by the IDF. How would you view that situation,
• 52:28
  not you particularly, but how would one view that situation then? Would you look favorably at what
• 52:35
  Israel is doing? And I would suggest something most Palestinians I know, and I presume you'd say the
• 52:40
  same, would not go, well, yeah, I guess I'd rather be in, I don't know, the West Bank than Saudi. I
• 52:48
  mean, sure, I guess if you forced to choose between, you know, the horrendous war in Yemen and
• 52:54
  living in Tel Aviv, I guess most people would choose Tel Aviv. It's a no-brainer, I guess, if you
• 52:59
  have to choose, but I agree with you that Israel doesn't seemingly want to compare itself to
• 53:05
  autocracies. It says we are a thriving democracy, and as I say in the book, you should copy from us,
• 53:12
  and we will sell you the tools and technologies to repress your own people. And to me, when you are a
• 53:20
  state that was born in the ashes of the Holocaust after the most cataclysmic war, violence, genocide
• 53:28
  against Jews imaginable, and I don't know your history, Josh, but I presume there was some connection
• 53:32
  to the Holocaust. Yeah, my husband came on a boat when he was eight years old as a war-torn
• 53:39
  penniless refugee. His parents were Holocaust SKPs, they weren't in the camps, they were all of their
• 53:47
  families. Yes, same. So there's a deep connection then, and obviously I don't know exactly
• 53:53
  if you're upbringing, but yeah, I mean, there was a key part of, well, not key part of my upbringing,
• 53:59
  I mean, I think you and I may roughly a similar age, but yeah, it was certainly something,
• 54:04
  I mean, I was often told, as I said, that Israel was something we should support because of the
• 54:08
  history, and that it was a safe haven, and we could go to if God forbid something happens,
• 54:13
  and I think a lot of younger Jews do, well, less and less do believe that of course, but I think
• 54:20
  many people still share that view, and I am constantly saying to people that the language that we
• 54:27
  use to talk about this issue is important, that it's important that we don't, obviously, don't
• 54:33
  use language to demonise Jews, that there is an acknowledgement anti-Semitism is real, and
• 54:37
  certain parts of the world it's growing, but of course, the great irony, frankly, of Israel's
• 54:41
  existence, 75 years odd after its birth, is that it's more unsafe in Israel as a Jew,
• 54:49
  than in, frankly, most places in the world. Well, also the current is the current Israeli
• 54:55
  position and strategy is making Jews everywhere more unsafe. I mean, you know,
• 55:00
  the tragic irony of it is that I do, by firmly believe, that the rise in anti-Semitism
• 55:08
  in the West is not helped by Israeli-Israel's misbehavior, and the plight of the Palestinians,
• 55:16
  Jews everywhere would be a lot safer if Israel were more reasonable.
• 55:21
  I mean, obviously, I agree with that, but you would know that saying that in the majority of
• 55:25
  mainstream Jewish establishment circles, you'd be harassed for that kind of comment. I've
• 55:31
  said it for years, but that is not something that I would argue about. I honestly don't think
• 55:35
  you should do. I don't think it is. I think that is a main. Most Jews are not, you know, fans
• 55:44
  have enough tully been at. Most Jews are Jerry Seinfeld Jews. The most Jews are just people who
• 55:50
  are very pro-Israel, by the way. So he's very pro-Israel, by the way, to get a long pro-Israel, but yes.
• 55:54
  But yeah, they're just regular people walking around. So I want to talk about, you've mentioned
• 56:00
  several times the military hardware and spyware that the Israeli State exports to some of these
• 56:06
  autocracies. Tell us about that. Maybe Pegasus is an interesting place to start.
• 56:14
  Yeah, so a lot of listeners will be aware of Pegasus. It's probably the most infamous spyware,
• 56:20
  spyware, basically, is a tool that is installed without your knowledge on your phone, so you might
• 56:26
  have an Android or an iPhone, whatever you may have. And all the contents of your phone, so literally
• 56:33
  everything text messages, photos, emails can be viewed by someone else. Usually the way this
• 56:40
  works is that NSO Group is an Israeli company. It started about 15 or so years ago and developed
• 56:46
  these incredibly powerful tools. The people who were involved with it were veterans of the
• 56:50
  Israeli military who'd spent decades surveilling Palestinian. So they took that experience
• 56:56
  and built it back then. It was Blackberry, the good old days, but it obviously evolved into
• 57:01
  modern smartphones, Apple and Android. And it's just an unbelievably powerful tool where you have
• 57:09
  huge numbers of states. We don't know exactly the number, but in the high dozens, probably
• 57:15
  70 or 80 around the world states, democracies and dictatorships, militaries by government
• 57:21
  departments, by police departments, by, and essentially it's a spying tool that allows,
• 57:26
  you know, all of us, for better or worse, spend so much of our lives on phones these days that it
• 57:31
  led to essentially control someone's life without their knowledge. And particularly in a country
• 57:36
  which is a non-democracy, it really threatens people's lives. So for example, a lawyer might have
• 57:42
  information about a client or a general about a source, whatever it may be. And one of the reasons
• 57:47
  why that's got so much attention in the last years, particularly Pegasus, is there's been a number
• 57:52
  of leaks, some listeners may remember that I talk about those and the book people can google that
• 57:56
  for more if they want. But essentially, it shows how so many governments are utterly obsessed
• 58:03
  with these tools because they just give you an unbelievable amount of power over people
• 58:09
  you don't like, dissidents, critics, human rights activists. And this is not just autocracies,
• 58:14
  this is also democracies as well. So I use, I talk a lot in the book about Pegasus, but Pegasus is
• 58:20
  the tip of the iceberg that really the key point I was trying to make in the book around this,
• 58:25
  I call it the Palestine Laboratory, is that Israel has spent decades and decades developing tools
• 58:31
  and technologies to control Palestinians under occupation. And after half a century, those tools
• 58:39
  and technologies have been battle tested in Palestine on Palestinians. You have huge numbers of
• 58:45
  companies which promote their tools, drones, spyware, pressure recognition technology,
• 58:52
  biometric tools, whatever it may be, they actually promote them in PR material as
• 58:56
  battle tested in Palestine, they sell them around the world. And as I detail on the book,
• 59:01
  over 130 countries in the world, so the majority of nations on the planet. And the reason
• 59:05
  this to me is important, they are far from the obvious, human rights disaster, is that it shows
• 59:11
  that the occupation of Palestine is not staying there. Like so many, I've done a lot of reporting
• 59:16
  in the last 20 years of huge numbers of conflicts in South living in South Sudan years ago in Afghanistan
• 59:22
  and its conflicts are horrific and brutal, there's no question about that. But they basically stay
• 59:27
  within their borders, roughly, give or take, some of the refugees of course are not, but the conflict
• 59:33
  itself mostly does, although Afghanistan obviously bleeds into Pakistan often. But what's happening
• 59:39
  in Palestine is that the conflict itself and the tools that are used to maintain that are now a
• 59:45
  huge key part of Israel's export business and Israel goes around the world both as a government,
• 59:50
  successive governments and companies saying you can do what we do and it's not just about the
• 59:56
  tools, it's also about the idea of getting away with it because Israel does get away with it,
• 1:00:01
  there's no one stopping them really, they have complete impunity. And I say in the book that
• 1:00:06
  I would argue that the weapons and the surveillance and all these repressive techniques that Israel
• 1:00:13
  sells is really an insurance policy for Israel because there are people in Israel the elites there
• 1:00:19
  who recognize that a lot of people around the world don't like what they do, they don't,
• 1:00:23
  not a family occupation, they don't like the awful treatment of Palestinians but Israel thinks
• 1:00:28
  and for its perspective I'd say pretty correctly at least for now that if you sell so many of these
• 1:00:33
  tools to states around the world, they're much less likely to really criticize you where it
• 1:00:39
  matters, sure I might put out an occasional press release saying that the settlements are terrible
• 1:00:44
  but it's cheap, it's words are cheap, there's no action. And most of Israel I think calculates
• 1:00:50
  correctly that and the evidence is clear that very very few states, effectively no states,
• 1:00:56
  are seriously interested in challenging Israeli occupation beyond the national press release.
• 1:01:01
  Presumably there's certainly not going to boycott you altogether if their own intelligence
• 1:01:06
  services and militaries are reliant on your highly sophisticated material. Absolutely indeed.
• 1:01:14
  And Israel's selling both to large countries that have their own intelligence services
• 1:01:18
  but often states that can't develop that themselves. So I mean I have so many examples but one
• 1:01:24
  country that really strikes me is so fascinating about this is Mexico which obviously was run
• 1:01:31
  for years by right-wing governments now which normally left wing, although you could argue about
• 1:01:35
  that, they're the country that most obsessed in the world with spyware, Israeli spyware,
• 1:01:41
  utterly obsessed with it of all levels of government. So they're spying on dissidents and
• 1:01:46
  journalists and human rights activists and God knows who else, how you interview some people in
• 1:01:51
  the book who are victims of these of this spyware. This spyware doesn't directly kill you, it's
• 1:01:56
  not a it's not a gun, it's not a you know armed drone but in a place like Mexico if you're one of
• 1:02:02
  those minority groups that are fighting or not in a literal sense but fighting corruption and
• 1:02:09
  and the profound collapse of the Mexican state and half the countries permanently at war because
• 1:02:14
  of the crazy drug war then being spied on by the state without any accountability by Israeli
• 1:02:22
  technology which is tested first on Palestine makes people profoundly scared and I interviewed a lot
• 1:02:28
  of people in the book who are really scared about their not just their sources but their day-to-day
• 1:02:34
  life because of drug cartels or government violence so Pegasus can be a way into this story for a lot
• 1:02:42
  of people because they've heard about and it's got a bit of press in the last five or so years but
• 1:02:46
  it's a tip of the iceberg. I mean some of the analogies you use are terrifying because military
• 1:02:55
  hardware can be terrifying and spying software can be terrifying but then there are some examples
• 1:03:01
  like you use the example of patrolling Europe's borders in the Mediterranean using Israeli made drones
• 1:03:08
  and the EU doing that as if that is prima facie a bad thing can't the pro-Israeli
• 1:03:16
  hard military hardware and spyware person just say look it's a tough world lots of people need
• 1:03:22
  lots of tools some of those tools get used for bad purposes but most of them get used for good
• 1:03:26
  purposes there's nothing necessarily wrong with the European Union having borders and using
• 1:03:32
  drones to figure out when refugees are coming across the ocean so if we don't make them some
• 1:03:38
  well yes why is that a catastrophe? Well you described that in a very nice and benign way
• 1:03:45
  there Josh but actually what the European Union is doing is not that what they're doing is and
• 1:03:51
  Israeli drones are obviously one part of a much larger architecture of course the EU is not doing
• 1:03:56
  this because of Israel the EU has made a decision in the last years to essentially allow people to
• 1:04:02
  drown that is the policy decision of the European Union and we know that and I haven't ever listened
• 1:04:08
  to the Australian policy towards people arriving by boat as well absolutely it's very similar
• 1:04:14
  and the very few rescue boats are sent out by the EU the NGOs that do rescue people are mostly
• 1:04:19
  either given very short shrift by the EU or are massively outnumbered and I really much respect the
• 1:04:25
  NGOs that are doing that they're in the book but you know how many NGO boats can monitor the whole
• 1:04:30
  Mediterranean very very few and so the Israeli drones which are unarmed are monitoring the Mediterranean
• 1:04:37
  24-7 sending back footage to Frontex which is the EU border security arm in Poland Warsaw and that's
• 1:04:46
  where the choices are made not by Israel of course but by the EU which boats will get rescued and which
• 1:04:51
  won which migrants will drown and which won just this week in fact they released the latest
• 1:04:54
  figures of how many people are drowning and the numbers are sore and we're talking thousands and
• 1:04:58
  thousands a year and those Israeli drones were first tested in Gaza over Gaza in various Israeli
• 1:05:05
  wars against Gaza and you could argue well if the EU didn't use Israeli drone they would maybe get
• 1:05:11
  it from Turkey or somewhere else but yeah that's possibly true and Turkish drones as an example are
• 1:05:16
  surging in popularity because they're much cheaper in fact than Israeli drones and they become
• 1:05:21
  quite ubiquitous in many conflicts now around the world but I think it's important that Israel is
• 1:05:26
  selling a lot of this architecture to the EU because again it goes back to this same point that
• 1:05:33
  they are selling not just a tool in this case not a weapon but a tool but they're selling an idea
• 1:05:39
  and I think the issue of how Israel deals with its borders which essentially I cannot think of a more
• 1:05:46
  ironic situation and grimly ironic situation where they essentially are surrounded by walls
• 1:05:51
  they're ghettoizing themselves within the Middle East now you could say or there are threats from
• 1:05:57
  other countries and we can have that discussion but that a lot of other places around the world
• 1:06:03
  do admire that and the EU whereas years ago never had a great refugee policy but certainly
• 1:06:09
  was better than it is now and it's only getting more hard line and I do think that the book was
• 1:06:14
  partly written also as a warning to say to people and countries in general we have a choice in
• 1:06:20
  decades to come there are currently around 100 million migrants around the world according to
• 1:06:26
  the U.M which is the highest number since World War II who are looking for safe haven most people
• 1:06:32
  looking their own country or in neighboring nations they don't travel across the world but many
• 1:06:36
  people of course do as well and that number is only going to increase because of climate change
• 1:06:41
  climate wars all these other issues and nations are going to have to make choices about what
• 1:06:46
  kind of so-called border security they want and I think that the evidence so far you'll be shocked
• 1:06:52
  to know I think this is pretty grim that what the EU is doing what the Australians have done for 20
• 1:06:58
  odd years what the British are trying to do now what France and others are doing offshoring
• 1:07:03
  refugees in God for second places in Africa and elsewhere is the sign of things to come and
• 1:07:09
  Israeli architecture is a key part of that in many nations border security including the US on
• 1:07:14
  the US-Mexico border I mean of course as the as the grandchild or even child as the child of refugees
• 1:07:21
  I've always been strongly supportive of taking in lots of refugees and during the Syrian migrant
• 1:07:26
  crisis I was outspoken about the need to be compassionate towards these people and to have some
• 1:07:32
  kind of an international system that can share the burdens so you don't end up with Lebanon and
• 1:07:36
  Turkey sheltering you know as much of the burden as they currently do and a systematic way of
• 1:07:41
  divvying people up including to some of those rich countries that are completely awful on
• 1:07:47
  reset on the reset accepting resettled refugees Australia at least has a reasonably good score
• 1:07:52
  on on that but I mean I you just to put a button on the on the example of Israeli ingenuity
• 1:08:01
  in the form of drones I mean I would argue that if it were the case that that the world got to a
• 1:08:07
  position at which there was a more well firstly there's a socio-cultural kind of political
• 1:08:12
  argument that can be made which says that in the absence of a of strong borders and a clear-headed
• 1:08:19
  immigration policy you get nasties and a phobic backlash and that if the US had for example gotten
• 1:08:25
  on top of its immigration 20 years ago you wouldn't have Donald Trump because there would be a
• 1:08:31
  sense of orderliness to the process that Americans feel is totally out of control and that point
• 1:08:36
  has been made in the Australian context that the price that you pay for transforming Australia from
• 1:08:41
  a white country just a half century ago to one of the most multi-ethnic countries in the world
• 1:08:47
  that the the price that you pay is you have to have a quite a rigid immigration policy in order to
• 1:08:52
  get buy-in from people who from the population that believes that people are coming here because we
• 1:08:57
  want them to rather than because they just show up we don't have to litigate that argument but I
• 1:09:01
  think there's probably some I mean yeah that's not an argument that's made I mean I would I would
• 1:09:05
  I mean yes there's no doubt that a lot of people do argue like that but I would suggest that the
• 1:09:10
  word to use for Australia's immigration policy I don't know if rigid's quite the right way when you
• 1:09:14
  have basically what do you call what's happening on Manus Island on a roux in the last 15 20 years
• 1:09:20
  I mean I don't know rigid you know I wouldn't I wouldn't call it that but I mean I'm not saying
• 1:09:24
  you the entire post for I mean the entire post war immigration policy taken as as a whole and as
• 1:09:30
  you said of Israel this has been a bipartisan thing in Australia as well where labor governments
• 1:09:34
  have presided over it over it too but I would also just say that if we get to a world in which
• 1:09:39
  there is a much more humane and cooperative resettlement of refugees and that has to be managed
• 1:09:45
  by intelligent systems and AI's and all kinds of computers and barriers that allocate people
• 1:09:53
  and transport them around you can also bet that Israeli ingenuity will be up the front going like
• 1:09:58
  hey where the little country that could we're going to be able to provide those systems as well
• 1:10:02
  so in a sense isn't Israel praying on whatever the need is and at the moment we live in a world where
• 1:10:08
  a lot of people are asking for spyware and bombs and if we made another world they would just
• 1:10:13
  as easily I mean they are making lots of innovative things in AI and medical advances and so on as
• 1:10:19
  well they're their mercenaries they'll make what you what people need yeah I mean look I don't
• 1:10:29
  really call weapons that have been tested in Palestine as ingenuity I mean yes Israel claims
• 1:10:35
  that's what it is and there'll be a market for it I mean of course as I say in the book Israel's
• 1:10:39
  only country selling weapons I mean the US is number one by a mile it sells 40% of the world's
• 1:10:44
  weapons and arguably any nation it sells weapons by definition all industries amoral I mean that's
• 1:10:50
  just the nature of the arms industry one of the most corrupt industries in the world along with
• 1:10:54
  the illegal drug trade I mean of course Israel's not alone in doing that but my question that's
• 1:10:59
  true I think the difference is that Israel has a ready-made occupied population on its doorstep
• 1:11:06
  for over half a century to be able to test and trial these weapons and I think for a lot of people
• 1:11:12
  based on the response to the book have either been not entirely or some people run away but
• 1:11:18
  were really shocked by the extent of it the detail and the amount of nations in the last half
• 1:11:23
  century that Israel has assisted in their refreshing across pretty much every part of the world so
• 1:11:28
  again showing that the occupation is exported I think that is part of making more people aware of
• 1:11:35
  not just what's going on over there but the threat in my view of what Israel poses the threat is
• 1:11:42
  not just the Palestinians which is bad enough I mean it's five million occupied Palestinians who are
• 1:11:47
  living under a brutal occupation but there's huge numbers of other people around the world who are
• 1:11:52
  suffering under Israeli weapons and drones and God knows what else as I show in the books by where
• 1:11:59
  they're also under threat and I think that is exactly the way I didn't write the book for this
• 1:12:04
  reason but that was exactly the way when you speak to people who campaigned against apartheid
• 1:12:10
  South Africa back in the day I guess started years ago but obviously culminated in the 1990s when
• 1:12:16
  the apartheid fell in 94 but it's about showing people and explaining to people in their case the
• 1:12:22
  extent of the connections to South Africa had with many other nations and Israel is on the far
• 1:12:27
  biggest scale frankly then South Africa ever could hope to be it's making people aware of that
• 1:12:32
  and what they do with those tools as a writer I'm not telling people what to do with it I'm making
• 1:12:37
  people aware of it and what they do with it is up to them and to say I think the book is also a
• 1:12:41
  warning like is this the kind of world we want to continue to be in I would say no and I'm guessing
• 1:12:48
  you would agree with that and some people would say what's a brutal world and this is how it is
• 1:12:53
  well I guess but that argument could have been made at any point in human history could it not
• 1:12:59
  right Anthony I want to end with a look towards the future what the future of Israel might be
• 1:13:07
  what a one-state solution would look like but I want to thank our free listeners for listening
• 1:13:12
  if you're subscribed to the free version of the podcast then we'll wrap it up and I greatly
• 1:13:17
  thank Anthony for the conversation if you want to be a previous subscriber you can go to
• 1:13:22
  uncomfortable conversations at substake.com slash listen to your own personalized feed Anthony
• 1:13:27
  a one-state solution what would it look like what would it be a one-state solution which before I
• 1:13:34
  briefly explain to hear the rest of this conversation go to uncomfortable conversations.substake.com slash
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