Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Where Does Anti-Zionism End and Anti-Semitism Begin?

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Where Does Anti-Zionism End and Anti-Semitism Begin? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Anti-semitism has a long history and I already see that my grandchildren's lives as Jews will not be quite as simple straight forward as mine was
• 0:09
  Maybe the long-sort vaccine on anti-semitism is actually called liberal democracy
• 0:20
  How we doing on anti-semitism at the moment you've been looking at this for a long time?
• 0:26
  Are we has it been this bad?
• 0:29
  It's going in the wrong direction.
• 0:32
  And I don't yet see when the reversal comes.
• 0:37
  I think it's going to get worse before hopefully it begins to get better.
• 0:42
  Do you see, do you notice a pattern in why it waxes and winds?
• 0:48
  Well, I'm not sure I would say waxes and wanes because I think we had a good run in the post-war period.
• 0:57
  I would say that I was born in 1949 and I cannot recall any significant or serious anti-semitic incident in my lifetime going back to my childhood.
• 1:13
  My wife and I raised three children.
• 1:17
  I think of anything they had, if I didn't have any, they had minus any.
• 1:24
  And now we are grandparents and I already see that my grandchildren's lives as Jews will not be quite as simple straight forward as either mine was in the United States or my kids.
• 1:38
  And watching closely what's going on in places like Britain, Canada and here in Australia.
• 1:44
  I think what's happening throughout these countries is, as I said earlier, it's deteriorating.
• 1:52
  Where is it coming from? How's it showing up?
• 1:56
  It comes from multiple sources. It's hard to pinpoint and say, you know, here's the one source so if we solve it.
• 2:02
  First of all, we have to understand anti-semitism has a long history.
• 2:08
  I'm talking about thousands of years and anti-semitism has certain distinguishing factors.
• 2:16
  Among them is its adaptability, its creativity, its ingenuity.
• 2:24
  Some have called it a shapeshifting virus.
• 2:27
  So, you know, a statement, a conference, a study, a poll will not solve the problem.
• 2:35
  This has been around a long time and it comes as we know historically with lethality.
• 2:42
  I mean, this is serious stuff.
• 2:47
  And now I think we had a period after the Second World War where in liberal democracies like our own anti-semitism receded.
• 2:58
  Our countries opened up. They overcame a lot of their own internal restrictions and prejudices.
• 3:05
  And that was all to the good.
• 3:07
  And so we thought maybe, maybe the long sought Pfizer vaccine on anti-semitism is actually called liberal democracy.
• 3:16
  But lo and behold, here we are in 2026 and we're talking about liberal democracies and the resurgence of anti-semitism.
• 3:24
  So we know that as appealing as liberal democracy is and it is, it's not sure proof.
• 3:32
  Liberal democracy itself is not bullet proof either as we're finding increasingly the assumptions that we might have had 20 years ago about the durability of liberal democracy are also upended.
• 3:41
  It's not. And as someone whose immediate family came from the talitarian societies, my mother was born in the Soviet Union.
• 3:53
  And lived there until her family were able thankfully to leave to land in France where only a few years later the Nazis arrived and together with the French Vichy collaborators revealed what Nazism and fascism looked like.
• 4:11
  My father was a student to Vienna when the Nazis arrived and my wife, which is the least known story for many was born and raised in an Arab country in Libya.
• 4:24
  And as a Jew, they were lucky to be able to escape with their lives in her case at the age of 16.
• 4:32
  So just knowing something about fascism, communism and jihadism, whatever the imperfections of liberal democracy, I for one will do everything possible to try and ensure that the foundation of liberal democracy remains strong because the alternatives are not pretty.
• 4:51
  You and me both kid. So let's think you said anti-Semitism ends in lethality. A lot of a lot of well meaning left wing listeners will hear that and may roll their eyes internally a little bit by saying, yeah, of course, jihadist anti-Semitism in the case of the bond terrorist attack white supremacist anti-Semitism in the case of the tree of life synagogue attack.
• 5:18
  These things will be on the pale, we wouldn't support them, there's no excuse for them, they're shocking and horrible.
• 5:25
  And then there'll be concentric circles of concern that people might express about things that Israelis or Zionists or Jews might be up to.
• 5:34
  There might be a concentric circle of conspiracy theories about Jews have a lot of money, they seem to have a lot of sway, they have a lot of political power, they're overrepresented in their influence that they exert over the media, over banking and things like that.
• 5:49
  Then there might be a slightly more innocent version which is, they seem awfully attached to this country that keeps breaking United Nations resolutions and impoverishes and dispossesses and other people and dischamelists about it and seemingly cavalier about the right to life of cousins.
• 6:09
  And then there might be a yet more innocent version which is just, we all want to get along but, you know, it'd be nice if the Jews, if Zionists were a little bit more involved in our way of life and less loyal to each other.
• 6:29
  How do you pass that? Like, I'm reluctant to draw a causal line.
• 6:34
  Let me take a few hours. We've got a couple of hours, buddy.
• 6:38
  I'm not sure we have enough time because there's a lot in what you said and I'm not sure I'll be able to do justice with your concentric circle.
• 6:47
  In other words, let's be as generous to the, you know, skeptical to the, let's be as generous to the person who, to the center of gravity person in Australia or Western Europe, who I think thinks Jews are always going to bang on about anti-Semitism and we know that Jew hatred is terrible.
• 7:06
  But this, but that is impeding our ability to properly criticize Zionism and defend human rights.
• 7:18
  Well, first of all, may I remind those listeners and viewers that the Holocaust happened before Israel was reborn in 1948.
• 7:33
  So to try and conflate the conversation between Jews, Zionism and Israel reflects a contemporary discussion.
• 7:42
  But as I said earlier in our conversation, this is the world's oldest social hatred.
• 7:49
  So Zionism and Israel cannot explain the Holocaust, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the imposition, the introduction of the ghettos in Italy centuries ago.
• 8:05
  But these people don't support any of those things and don't think that they hate Jews.
• 8:09
  I understand, but they also, I think, need to understand that one can talk as much as one wishes about criticizing these, this is really government, so that is really government.
• 8:21
  And by the way, it's a national sport within Israel.
• 8:26
  At any given moment, in any government, certainly in my lifetime, 50% of the country is railing against the other 50%.
• 8:36
  So reading the newspapers, following the debates in the Knesset, the Parliament, there's no shortage of internal is Jewish slashes, rarely self-reflection, criticism, accusation.
• 8:52
  That's not the issue as far as I'm concerned.
• 8:56
  The issue rather is whether that criticism is meant in good faith, if I may frame it that way, as an assessment of this or that is really policy, as one would this or that Australian policy or American policy, and I get that.
• 9:14
  I come from a country of the United States, which is extraordinarily fragmented politically.
• 9:21
  But there's another question that has to be asked.
• 9:24
  Does that therefore morph into a question about Israel's very legitimacy? It's very right to exist.
• 9:31
  And here I think we're getting into a darker zone, because if that person, if that person's initial premises, you know, I'm a globalist.
• 9:43
  And for me, screw the borders. I want one world. I want everyone learning to speak Esperanto.
• 9:52
  I may think they're a little cookie, but they're consistent.
• 9:57
  If, on the other hand, you take the 193 United Nations member states, and you cavalierly ignore the right to exist of 192, and relentlessly obsessively focus on just one.
• 10:14
  And that happens to be the only Jewish majority nation on earth, this vast nation, two-thirds the size of Belgium.
• 10:24
  I mean, the size of New Jersey, one of the smaller American states, then something else is going on, I believe.
• 10:33
  And similarly, the Jewish population in the world is 0.2% of the global population, where roughly 16 million people in a world of roughly 8 billion people.
• 10:46
  And if one obsessively relentlessly seeks to attribute the world's ailments to 0.2% of the population, that what you're doing today is what's been done for 2,000 years,
• 10:58
  you're reminding the world that anti-Semitism at its core is a permanent conspiracy theory.
• 11:06
  Unlike other biases, you know, growing up, I heard jokes about other groups, jokes in inverted commas.
• 11:14
  I'm sure you did others did, but it was always looking down on other groups.
• 11:19
  They're dumb, they're stupid, they're clumsy, they're inefficient, whatever.
• 11:24
  Anti-Semitism is different. Anti-Semitism looks up.
• 11:30
  Anti-Semitism ascribes to this tiny group of people, these inordinate powers, which are combined with malevolent intent, evil intent, total self-interest.
• 11:47
  And again, I think one has to understand, so you earlier mentioned the conspiracy theory, that's exactly the point.
• 11:53
  Anti-Semitism is a permanent conspiracy theory. The United States would never have gone to war with Iran.
• 12:01
  The fact that the current Iranian regime tried to assassinate the current President of the United States doesn't matter.
• 12:08
  The fact that the Iranian regime blew up the American Marine barracks and many other examples doesn't matter.
• 12:18
  All that matters is Israel puppeteered the United States government to do what otherwise would not have done.
• 12:26
  COVID, economic recession, Germany's lost in the First World War, pandemics, poisoning of the wells, missing Christian children, go back in the history of anti-Semitism, Jews were ascribed and blamed for all of these things.
• 12:44
  So I think what I see is Israel, for many, has now replaced the Jew as the reawakening of these age-old tropes.
• 12:57
  For a short while there was a break. How do I put this? Hitler gave anti-Semitism a bad name.
• 13:08
  You know, it was hating Jews more than necessary.
• 13:14
  My dad used to joke about that. Anti-Semitism means hating Jews more than an absolute necessity.
• 13:19
  So I may hate them, but I'm not sure about the Zeitklon B and the gas chambers and the Krematoria.
• 13:26
  And I'm not sure about the million and a half Jewish children who were murdered simply for being Jewish children.
• 13:32
  So there was a hiatus. Anti-Semitism some thought had actually disappeared in reality and it had hibernated.
• 13:40
  And now for reasons we can discuss, it's back out in the open. It's no longer just on extremes. It's penetrated the mainstream.
• 13:48
  And there are no more of the consequences that the ones might have been for anti-Semitic behavior.
• 13:53
  So just borrowing into this claim that Israel is the Jew among nations essentially.
• 13:58
  And you're linking of theories about why America is at war in Iran with theories about Jews poisoning wells or creating COVID or something like that.
• 14:12
  It strikes me that that does sort of snooker in the opposition in a perhaps unfair way.
• 14:19
  Because if it were the case that President Trump wouldn't have gone into Iran, had it not been for Israel's influence,
• 14:29
  would it still be anti-Semitic to claim so?
• 14:37
  You put it all together, Josh.
• 14:40
  Like it sort of prevents people from pointing out anything that Israel might be doing by saying, well, there's a long line of anti-Semitism.
• 14:49
  Therefore we can discredit.
• 14:51
  No, I primarily see the claim.
• 14:53
  I think that that becomes a kind of straw man argument.
• 14:57
  I've heard it again and again. The Jews and the Zionists are gagging us.
• 15:03
  They're not allowing us to speak to say what we want to say.
• 15:07
  When? Where? Who?
• 15:10
  It's a straw man argument, I believe.
• 15:14
  As I said earlier, if that's what we're doing, we're doing a hell of a bad job.
• 15:22
  I mean, read Nicholas Pristov's column in the New York Times as we meet this week.
• 15:30
  Read what Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, says on a daily basis regarding Israel and its behavior.
• 15:41
  If we're trying to put a lid on criticism of Israel, we're doing a hell of a bad job.
• 15:49
  I guess I'm just asking, is it necessarily anti-Semitic to say that Israel wields too much influence over American policy?
• 15:59
  Not necessarily. Well, it depends on who says it, how it's framed, and whether there is a context for what's being said.
• 16:10
  Let me put it this way. I would argue it's really on a case by case basis.
• 16:14
  Is it inherently wrong to say that I believe that this was a war that Israel wanted and tried to make the case to the United States?
• 16:23
  I don't see that as anti-Semitic, but the notion that the United States is the puppet and that Israel is the puppeteer.
• 16:35
  That really touches on age-old images, which used to be imposed on the Jews.
• 16:43
  And now they're imposed on the Jewish state that the protocols of the elders of Zion, if some of your viewers are familiar.
• 16:52
  So it's a framing. What is the context in which you're framing the clients?
• 16:57
  For me, the threshold issue is, do Jews have the right or do not have the right to exercise sovereignty?
• 17:10
  I'm not drawing borders in the ancestral land of the Jewish people.
• 17:18
  If someone's answered to that, yes, of course they do. Then for me, every other subject is open for discussion, debate, and analysis.
• 17:27
  But if the answer to that is hell no. While at the same time, every other nation on earth goes unscrupulous.
• 17:36
  I'm a guest of Australia. I've been to this country many times. I admire this country.
• 17:42
  But forgive me. What exactly is the legitimacy of this country? I'm a proud American. What exactly is the legitimacy of the United States?
• 17:54
  And if I want to go further, I can pretty much discuss with you almost every country on earth, which was born in sin.
• 18:06
  Or in the case of the Arab world, that was the creation of arrogant British and French colonial map makers, who determined that for their own interests a country called Jordan had to exist or Lebanon had to be crafted in this way or Syria or Iraq.
• 18:23
  I can also ask, why were the Arabs the dominant force in North Africa?
• 18:30
  The Arabs, by their very name, come from the Arabian Peninsula. It's thousands of miles away.
• 18:36
  So people look at these other situations and they roll the rise and say, who cares? This is just distraction. No, it's not distraction.
• 18:46
  Because if one is relentlessly obsessively focused on Israel's, quote, illegitimacy, unquote, then I have to ask the question, what's behind it? Or as you said, what's the framing?
• 18:58
  So there are certainly people who never accepted the legitimacy of Israel from day one, many of them.
• 19:05
  There's also a cohort of young people today who have none of the history or baggage of the 20th century that they're aware of, who would argue that the difference in Israel's case, if there are 193 countries, why do we give 192 a pass and we focus on this one?
• 19:23
  Well, it's the only rich Western country that is in the club of democracies that is presiding over an enduring conflict with its other indigenous people.
• 19:38
  If Australia, you say, what is the illegitimacy of Australia? If indigenous Australians, First Nations Australians, had responded to the original settlement or invasion of this country in 1788 by waging what could have been a successful war against the incomeers and then had tried to wipe us out again in 67 and then again in 73.
• 20:04
  And if our solution to that had been to push them all into Victoria and close them off because we didn't want them to upset us and commit suicide bombings in Sydney, and that was still a status quo.
• 20:20
  And we'd never found a way to resolve that problem, then we would probably be that one country out of the 193 and it may not just be anti-Australian hatred that was motivating that concern.
• 20:34
  Yes, but in saying that certain things are being, shall we say, overlooked, please?
• 20:40
  Where to begin? So for the Jewish people, the centrality of Israel is not a recent addition to the portfolio.
• 20:54
  One will go back thousands of years to among the most widely read books in history, the Hebrew Bible or some would call it the Old Testament, upon which the birth of Christianity was based.
• 21:12
  And to some extent, upon which the foundation of Islam was also based, since after all, Al-Aqsa were told the third holiest site of Islam, where is it located? Well, it's located in Jerusalem.
• 21:30
  So if Jews have no ancestral link as some have tried to make, then forgive me the foundation of Christianity and Islam crumbles.
• 21:40
  If Jews were forcibly expelled over the centuries by various occupiers, but always kept a yearning for Israel at the center of their prayers, it can't be blively dismissed.
• 21:54
  If I were to say, God bless Islam, but I don't recognize the connection between Mecca and Islam or between Rome and the Catholic Church, I would be rightly condemned.
• 22:10
  But only Israel has that ancestral link denied by many point number one, point number two.
• 22:20
  The United Nations understood that there were two nationalisms, two quests, two peoples. Australia was one of the 11 countries that was asked in 1947 to participate in what became known as the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine on Scope.
• 22:39
  That committee explored exactly the issue you're raising and understood that the only solution possible was a partition.
• 22:49
  The vote was seven in favor of that recommendation, three in opposition and Australia abstained.
• 22:59
  It was referred to the UN General Assembly, which a few months later in November 1947 floated on the partition plan.
• 23:09
  In that case, Australia supported the partition plan.
• 23:14
  Now, I'm not here to argue that the partition plan was perfect or that it met the maximum needs of both sides.
• 23:22
  But under the circumstances, the international community recognized that this was the only way to address two nationalisms.
• 23:31
  The Jews wanted more, believed they were entitled to more, but as a hungry people accepted half a loaf of bread.
• 23:40
  The other side, and this is not my talking point, this is, yes, there is something still called factual history.
• 23:47
  We don't live in a post-truth society entirely. The other side said no. Hungry though we may be, it's all or nothing.
• 23:56
  So they went to war.
• 23:59
  Wars have consequences, whether in 1948, Josh or on October 7th.
• 24:05
  You can't declare war and then whine about the consequences, expecting the sympathy of the world for an action that you triggered aggressively.
• 24:16
  Let me ask you this or let me ask reviewers.
• 24:22
  From the end of that independence war until 1967, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the eastern half of Jerusalem were not in Israeli hands.
• 24:34
  Was there a Palestinian state?
• 24:36
  No, the West Bank was Jordanian and Gaza was, was there a discussion about a Palestinian state?
• 24:41
  Was there a global movement to create a Palestinian state when the decision was in the hands of the Arab world?
• 24:50
  I can go through the other attempts to create a two-state solution.
• 24:55
  Because your framing earlier ignored all the efforts to find that two-state solution, which again would not mean meet the maximalist demands of either side, I get that.
• 25:08
  But in life, that's often the case.
• 25:11
  We have to find a point of consensus, a point of compromise, a midpoint.
• 25:18
  After 1967, when the Arab world called for the annihilation of the state of Israel, the record is clear.
• 25:25
  Forced the UN buffer troops to withdraw from the Sinai, shut Israeli access to the Gulf of Akhaba leading to trade routes to Africa and Asia.
• 25:36
  After that war, which Israel thankfully won, they thought they now had something tangible to trade.
• 25:43
  And we had the land for peace formula.
• 25:46
  What was the Arab response that came on September 1, 1967 in Cartoum Sudan?
• 25:52
  No peace, no negotiation, no recognition.
• 25:56
  I can bring us up to date, but I would urge viewers who are interested in the subject to listen to President Bill Clinton,
• 26:04
  who has said recently, and not for the first time, all of his efforts to create a Palestinian state on his watch.
• 26:13
  Which failed, and for which he attributed all the blame.
• 26:18
  This is Bill Clinton speaking, not David Harris.
• 26:21
  This is not a Jewish Zionist talking point.
• 26:24
  He laid all the blame on Yasser Arifat.
• 26:29
  Look at the words of Prince Bandar, who was a long time Saudi ambassador to the United States,
• 26:34
  and a key member of the Saudi royal family, who said publicly that the Palestinians were always said no until it was too late.
• 26:45
  I can't want the Palestinian state for the Palestinians more than they wanted for themselves.
• 26:51
  But only on the condition that it is a peaceful Palestinian state living alongside Israel in coexistence.
• 27:00
  If that's the case, I have no doubt that a majority of Israelis even today, if they were convinced it was a peaceful state with enduring peace built in,
• 27:11
  I have no doubt that Israelis would approve it.
• 27:14
  But otherwise...
• 27:15
  How could you guarantee that? How would you meet the...
• 27:18
  The guarantee which?
• 27:19
  The security of Israel. I mean, the criticism would be...
• 27:22
  Of course.
• 27:23
  That now the...
• 27:24
  I understand.
• 27:25
  The environment is so toxic.
• 27:27
  It's not going to happen today, George.
• 27:29
  I'm looking forward because, you know, we may live in the moment, but we have to project forward.
• 27:35
  If there's ever going to be a solution that will not be today, you're right.
• 27:38
  It will not be tomorrow.
• 27:40
  The environment is, especially after October 7th, is understandably untrusting.
• 27:51
  But long term, if there is to be a solution, I don't see what the other options are.
• 28:02
  But you hit the most important point.
• 28:06
  How will you convince a majority of Israelis that in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, that a proposed two-state solution will ensure Israeli safety and security,
• 28:19
  especially following October 7th.
• 28:22
  I mean, it just may be the case that that's too high a bar.
• 28:26
  And that some countries sit next to each other and tolerate, you know, South Korea is next to North Korea.
• 28:31
  And it sucks, but they have to deal with it.
• 28:33
  Yes, but again, overlooking a couple of things, number one, there are, I think, 30,000 US troops in South Korea,
• 28:43
  who are there permanently and have been there permanently since the Korean War in the 1950s.
• 28:50
  And number two, North Korea is North, and South Korea is South.
• 28:57
  But if you look at the map of Israel and where a Palestinian state would be, more or less,
• 29:07
  we're talking about a tiny space in which the margin for error is virtually nonexistent.
• 29:15
  Until 1967, Israel at its narrowest point was nine miles long.
• 29:22
  And when George Bush, former President of the United States, saw this narrow point from a helicopter,
• 29:30
  he allegedly commented that some driveways in Texas are longer than Israel's with.
• 29:37
  Israel's international airport would be within short striking distance of the Palestinian state.
• 29:45
  Its capital, Jerusalem, would be cheek-by-jowel.
• 29:50
  It's very hard for Australians and for Americans to understand this geography.
• 29:58
  Because I just came from Melbourne.
• 30:01
  I think of one drive, it's about eight or ten hours.
• 30:04
  At least, yeah, if you stop for coffee and lunch, it's twelve.
• 30:08
  So it's even twelve hours.
• 30:09
  If you started in Tel Aviv and drove twelve hours, you'd be through Lebanon and into Syria.
• 30:16
  Yeah.
• 30:17
  Or through Gaza and into Egypt.
• 30:19
  No, I remember, I mean, I was there a little over a year ago, yes.
• 30:23
  And yeah, we took off to the east out of Tel Aviv Airport.
• 30:27
  And before the seatbelts sign went off, we were over the Palestinian territories.
• 30:31
  You know, we were over the West Bank.
• 30:32
  I could still see the farms who were still ascending.
• 30:35
  Precisely.
• 30:36
  But I think for those who have never visited it, and that's obviously the majority of people,
• 30:40
  they don't have the occasion or the resources, it's almost impossible to imagine.
• 30:45
  But wait a second, I mean, Australia's big, America's vast.
• 30:51
  And yes, North Korea and South Korea are two separate countries with a DMZ that is highly guarded
• 30:58
  and protected on both sides.
• 31:00
  It's not perfect.
• 31:01
  It doesn't mean war can't break out.
• 31:04
  But there is a certain kind of tense modus vivendi that would be a lot harder in this case.
• 31:11
  So I suppose North Korea is contained in a way that...
• 31:14
  I think you're pointing to something about the way that activists, progressives perceive the conflict
• 31:24
  versus the way that Israelis and increasingly to us produce as well see the conflict,
• 31:30
  which is, I think the main narrative that people, that the average boy on the street feels,
• 31:36
  is that Israel is this powerful, militarily sophisticated, urban country that is beating the shit out of Palestinians
• 31:47
  and has been for at least decades.
• 31:51
  And the reason why I elided the sort of peace, the long history of peace negotiations in the 20th century
• 31:58
  is because the people who I was talking about, who are younger anti-Zionist activists,
• 32:05
  who might be under the age of 30, only know in Israel that has been ruled by the good
• 32:09
  and what they perceive as obstructionism and antagonism from Netanyahu.
• 32:16
  But the Israeli sees not necessarily the Palestinians as...
• 32:24
  I don't want to misspeak a, an unrelated and contained people,
• 32:29
  but the entire Arab world as the adversary that they have to be cognizant of when they're thinking about their own security.
• 32:37
  So it's not a few million Palestinians, it's a few hundred million Arabs.
• 32:43
  I think you're touching on something really important that too often gets overlooked,
• 32:49
  maybe because in our social media world, once you get past the first sentence, you're losing your audience.
• 32:57
  But you really have a split screen here, and you're creating the split screen.
• 33:04
  And I would say that the quest of Israel, probably its rebirth in 1948,
• 33:12
  and I stress rebirth because there have been a sovereign Israel a long time ago.
• 33:19
  King David Deis?
• 33:20
  Yes, there's recently a 70 in the common era.
• 33:27
  Just what a couple of thousand years between friends?
• 33:32
  Look, the purpose was not conquest.
• 33:37
  The purpose was recreation.
• 33:43
  Israel was not created by the Holocaust.
• 33:47
  That's one of these urban myths.
• 33:51
  The quest for a sovereign Israel began three thousand or more years ago.
• 33:56
  But the urgency of the quest was revealed by the Holocaust.
• 34:01
  The absence of sovereignty.
• 34:03
  The absence of an army.
• 34:06
  The absence of control over one's borders, including entry, was revealed very painfully.
• 34:15
  Jews had no army in the Second World War.
• 34:19
  Some volunteered for the Jewish brigade in the British army.
• 34:23
  But Jews had no army to defend themselves.
• 34:27
  And Jews in Europe, when Hitler was teasing the world in the 1930s,
• 34:32
  saying, if you care so much about the Jews, take them.
• 34:36
  And those Jews included my mother and father.
• 34:39
  And the world's response?
• 34:42
  The world's response was, no thank you.
• 34:45
  Do you know what Australia's response was?
• 34:48
  In 1938, before the war began, the Australian delegate to the Evian conference,
• 34:55
  which was the 32 countries that met in Evian France, to discuss the refugee problem.
• 35:01
  And his name was Mr. T.W. White.
• 35:04
  This is what he said, I'm quoting him.
• 35:07
  As we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.
• 35:13
  That was his answer to the plight of Jews like my mother and father and countless others
• 35:19
  who still had a chance to leave but nowhere to go.
• 35:23
  So I ask myself as a practical question, Josh.
• 35:26
  If in 1938 there had been a sovereign Israel 10 years earlier,
• 35:31
  and there had still been an Israeli consulate or embassy in Bucharest or Athens or Brussels or the Hague,
• 35:42
  how many Jews might have been saved?
• 35:45
  So again, I stress, the notion of Israel, Zion, Judea, Jerusalem,
• 35:53
  dates back to the Hebrew Bible, to the Psalms, to the metaphysics and spirituality of Jews.
• 36:01
  But the urgency was revealed by the Holocaust.
• 36:05
  And who are the people, who are the building blocks of Israeli population, the basic building blocks?
• 36:12
  One, Holocaust survivors.
• 36:15
  Two, the refugees that came from communist countries after the war ended in the Soviet Union,
• 36:24
  reintroduced anti-Semitism and three, very importantly, Josh, the ones most neglected,
• 36:31
  the Jews from Arab countries.
• 36:35
  People like my wife, my wife and her seven siblings,
• 36:40
  who had lived in Libya, or what was called Libyan soil,
• 36:45
  for over 2,000 years according to the history and archaeology,
• 36:49
  may I add long before the Arab conquest of Libya.
• 36:56
  Does anyone stop to ask what happened to those 850,000 Jews?
• 37:02
  Why is Israel measured by how it treats its Arab citizens, 20% of the population,
• 37:10
  or the Palestinians in the territories, and no one asks why not a single Jew is left in Libya?
• 37:18
  Not one.
• 37:20
  There's not even a trace.
• 37:22
  There's not a marker, a monument, a memorial, nothing.
• 37:26
  And Libya is not unique.
• 37:29
  How about Algeria, how about Sudan, how about Syria, and Iraq, and Yemen,
• 37:35
  and Afghanistan, I can keep going?
• 37:39
  Those are the three building blocks of the Israeli population.
• 37:43
  They didn't come to this reborn state to conquer.
• 37:50
  They came to create a safe haven,
• 37:54
  and had the Palestinians and the larger Arab world accepted the partition plan in 1947,
• 38:02
  or the UN General Assembly vote, we would now be close to 80 years into a two-state solution.
• 38:09
  So I'm not here to argue that Israel has not made mistakes.
• 38:14
  Statecraft is not science.
• 38:17
  It's a very imperfect art.
• 38:20
  But Israel had a legitimate claim to be there.
• 38:27
  Israel was prepared to compromise the opportunities for crafting a two-state solution have been there.
• 38:35
  And I can't be responsible if the other side rejects each and every one of those offers.
• 38:43
  How does the current snapshot in Israel and its policy and the West Bank and Gaza become so?
• 38:52
  I mean, I gave one explanation, which is Israel presents itself as being a sophisticated cosmopolitan,
• 38:58
  an urban member of the Western Liberal Democratic Club.
• 39:01
  Therefore, we are likely to feel more judgmental of it than we don't have any interest about the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• 39:07
  Of course, we don't talk about that as much as Israel.
• 39:10
  It doesn't proclaim to be part of one of us, right?
• 39:13
  So we're going to be critical of our own more than we are of others.
• 39:17
  I think that's a natural human psychology.
• 39:20
  But the way in which international aid organizations, human rights organizations,
• 39:25
  international institutions like the United Nations become spokes outlets,
• 39:33
  I suppose, for a relentless focus on Israel's misdeeds is curious to me.
• 39:40
  And that's something I hadn't quite noticed before October 7th.
• 39:43
  But the extent to which it has possessed the conversation in the past couple of years is curious.
• 39:50
  What's the mechanism by which that happens?
• 39:54
  That's a great question.
• 39:56
  I wish I had the three by five card in my pocket to give you the answer.
• 40:02
  Let me add to the question, not to put you on the spot, but just to go back to the framing.
• 40:14
  At the same time that you speak about this obsession with which I agree,
• 40:19
  there are an estimated 40 to 60 million stateless people in the Middle East
• 40:27
  who share among themselves a common language, a common identity, a common history,
• 40:36
  and a common quest for sovereignty, which was expressed most vividly in 2017
• 40:44
  when 93% of the Kurds in Iraq in a referendum voted for freedom.
• 40:54
  So when one tries to answer your question, I add the second question,
• 41:00
  and why does this group of people vastly outnumbering Palestinians
• 41:06
  with a very clear identity with responsible self-governance in Northern Iraq, for example,
• 41:14
  but no statehood, why does no one care?
• 41:19
  And this is a group of people who have been targeted again and again in what they define as genocide,
• 41:26
  including chemical weapons attacks by Saddam Hussein when he ruled Iraq,
• 41:33
  and people shrug their shoulders, and the most that someone like me would get was,
• 41:38
  ah, another Zionist trick to distract the conversation.
• 41:42
  I'm not trying to distract the conversation.
• 41:46
  I don't live in Israel. Two of my wife's sisters do live in Israel.
• 41:51
  Countless cousins of mine live in Israel. I have Israeli grandchildren as well.
• 41:58
  I will yield to no one in the quest for peace and coexistence.
• 42:03
  No one signed up when they came to Israel for permanent conflict and war.
• 42:10
  But if the price for that is giving up sovereignty, it's an unacceptable price.
• 42:18
  Now, let's, let's, if we may leave the curses with that unanswered question,
• 42:23
  at least perhaps you can answer it.
• 42:27
  No, I think you're right, because as you were saying it, I was thinking through the prism of my last remark
• 42:34
  about Israel being one of us, and so we judge it according to,
• 42:38
  at least Israel proclaims to be one of us, therefore we judge it by our own standards.
• 42:43
  We wouldn't necessarily feel as much empathy for Iraq or Iraqis,
• 42:50
  but actually Iraq isn't the main impediments to Kurdish independence.
• 42:54
  It's Turkey. Iraq doesn't have any power. Turkey has power.
• 42:57
  And we do think of Turkey as being a sort of member of our club.
• 43:02
  Well, yes, go further.
• 43:05
  Democratic Kish country.
• 43:06
  It is less like checked a member of NATO.
• 43:08
  Yeah, NATO is not just a common defense pact.
• 43:11
  It's meant to be a common values pact.
• 43:15
  But that's the same Turkey, which also occupies since 1974,
• 43:21
  37% of an EU member state called Cyprus, yet all those clamoring for an end to occupation
• 43:29
  never seem to include Cyprus on their list.
• 43:33
  Just as all those clamoring for sovereignty and self-determination,
• 43:37
  never seem to include the Kurds, again, who vastly outnumber the Palestinians.
• 43:44
  But let me, if I may also...
• 43:47
  Yeah, please.
• 43:48
  ...if the theme of this conversation becomes the word framing of the headline of the conversation.
• 43:55
  Let me come back to the premise that this is not necessarily how a Western Democratic country behaves.
• 44:03
  Well, I'm paraphrasing you perhaps.
• 44:05
  Sure, that'll do.
• 44:06
  Perhaps inaccurately.
• 44:08
  What happened on October 7th?
• 44:11
  Let me frame it in American demographic terms.
• 44:17
  1200 people in Israel were slaughtered in one day.
• 44:22
  In American demographic terms, that's 42,000 people.
• 44:28
  The United States is 350 million people.
• 44:31
  Israel is 10 million people.
• 44:34
  I think Australia is 27 million or thereabouts.
• 44:37
  So roughly three times.
• 44:39
  So 1200, let's call it 3500 people in Australian terms.
• 44:45
  251 Israelis were kidnapped.
• 44:49
  Multiply times 35.
• 44:52
  You'll check me.
• 44:54
  But it's around 8,000, I think.
• 44:57
  And in Australian terms, it's a little simpler.
• 45:00
  Let's call it around 750 people.
• 45:04
  Let me ask you this.
• 45:06
  What would the Western Liberal Democratic nation of Australia do?
• 45:11
  If in one day, 3500 people, including babies, children, were slaughtered,
• 45:22
  sexually violated, and other sexually violated, and some 750 people were taken captive in,
• 45:30
  I know this is an island nation, but for arguments sake, pick another Pacific island nation.
• 45:37
  Well, I don't know what Australia would do, but I do know what America would do.
• 45:42
  Because on December 7, 1941, just under 3,000 people were killed in the surprise attacked by Imperial Japan on Pearl Harbor.
• 45:57
  And I know what happened on September 11, 2001, because I wasn't far from the World Trade Center.
• 46:05
  When roughly 3,000 people were killed there, and the Pentagon and the fields of Pennsylvania.
• 46:12
  America went to war.
• 46:15
  In 1941, we entered into a war that lasted nearly four years, resulted in the carpet bombing of Japanese cities,
• 46:23
  and ultimately the dropping of two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 46:28
  That's what a Western Liberal Democratic country did when it felt that it had been attacked in a way that threatened its sovereignty.
• 46:38
  And after 9-11, America entered into the two longest wars, I believe, in American history, in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.
• 46:49
  I'm not here to argue whether the wars were correct or incorrect or the dropping of the bomb.
• 46:56
  The decision by President Truman was the right decision or not.
• 46:59
  I'm here to answer the question that you framed in a way, which is Western Liberal Democratic societies don't necessarily always behave as one might impute to Western Liberal Democratic societies.
• 47:14
  Because as long as they lived in a kind of gentile bubble, they can do all the preaching they want from the platform.
• 47:27
  They can tell other nations how to behave, they can use grandiose terms like international humanitarian law and proportionality and de-escalation and negotiation and compromise.
• 47:40
  I don't think I saw any of that after the attack on Pearl Harbor or after the attack on 9-11, and I would just add, I also didn't see something else after the attack on 9-11,
• 47:54
  which was in the United States of America, I don't know if you were there at the time.
• 47:59
  I wasn't in New York yet, no.
• 48:01
  I didn't see Americans immediately rushing to mosques and attacking mosques in the United States of America,
• 48:11
  nor did I see Americans singling out Muslims on the streets and saying, you and you and you are responsible,
• 48:19
  and that mosque which faces towards Mecca is also collaterally responsible, and therefore you become legitimate targets.
• 48:32
  Why do I say this? You know why? Because if 15 people are going to be killed on Bondi Beach on December the 14th, 2025, for what?
• 48:45
  For what exactly were they killed, Josh? Because they were seen as proxies for Israel or for the Zionists.
• 48:53
  If a synagogue is going to be torched in Melbourne, if a synagogue in the Detroit, Michigan area was ran by a car with the intention of doing as much damage as possible when they were up to 150 nursery school children in that synagogue,
• 49:17
  then the script flips. Those are somehow considered justified or rationalized or explained because after all, if there's an Israeli flag in the synagogue, then Ipsil facto it's connected to what's going on allegedly in the Middle East,
• 49:42
  but liberal democratic societies today don't behave that way. We did in 1941, actually in January of 1942 when President Roosevelt made a huge error by rounding up Japanese Americans in the western part of the United States and internally deporting them to camps.
• 50:05
  It was a huge mistake. It took years and I was one of the people in fact involved in reversing it. It didn't happen until the 1980s, but America acknowledged it's mistake and I think that mistake will not happen again and we saw it in 9-11.
• 50:23
  So why do we excuse the behavior of one side while obsessively focusing on the other side and then coming up with the rationalizations and justifications to explain that behavior rather than being outraged? No, no,
• 50:41
  no, Moss should have been attacked after 9-11 in the United States and no synagogue or no Jewish gathering or no celebration of a Jewish holiday should be attacked because of what you, not you, but what one believes Israel may or may not be doing. Why don't those rules apply across the board?
• 50:59
  It's a good point. I mean, I suppose the, I suppose the anti-Israeli says that the enduring existence of the problem like during existence of the problem, which is the enduring existence of the state, John.
• 51:23
  Well, good point. I wasn't going to say the state, although you might be getting on something there. I was going to say the enduring existence of the problem of the Palestinians not having self-determination and the fact that it is a, it's not for a lifetime.
• 51:37
  Why take a snapshot just today? All the people see if that I know the history of the 20th century is images of it. It's almost, I mean, I almost wonder if did you see the image of the marathon being run in Gaza last week? Do you see that one?
• 51:54
  A strip of land that we're told is whatever the most dire explanations are from the, from the pro-Hamas crowd to countries under genocide run 26.2 mile marathons and then retreat to seaside cafes and restaurants.
• 52:13
  I'm not saying the condition in Gaza is perfect. Not at all. Don't misunderstand me. But how do we allow those split screens to continue? How?
• 52:27
  How? Gaza was given its first opportunity in history, Josh, history to run itself. And it wasn't given by the Egyptians, who, as you mentioned earlier, occupied, occupied Gaza and and established military rule until 1967. No, they didn't give them a chance. How about the Muslim Ottoman Turks?
• 52:57
  Who rule Gaza for 400 years? 400 years. No one spoke about freedom for Gaza. Israel. Israel ironically was the only country that gave the people of Gaza the chance to rule themselves. And it was in the Israeli interest.
• 53:18
  That Gaza moved in the model of Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Singapore because you can change many things in life. You can change your clothing, your hairstyle. You can't change your neighbor.
• 53:33
  Gaza made the choice. And, and, and again, there are people in the world who are trying to infantilize the Palestinians by removing any agency for them.
• 53:47
  So anything that happens to them by ipso facto by definition cannot be their responsibility. Even when they were given governance, even when the Israelis withdrew every last settler, forcibly, forcibly, removed the gravestones, left the greenhouses to kickstart the economy.
• 54:10
  The pro-Hamas crowd, whether in Australia or the United States or Europe, want you to forget all the inconvenient facts. Gaza today could have been a 21 year old, increasingly thriving, prosperous, strip of land that models itself on Dubai or Singapore living in peace and coexistence.
• 54:35
  And just in case anyone in the audience is thinking, well, of course, they couldn't because there was a blockade and the Israelis weren't allowing in enough food. That all happened after Hamas came to power.
• 54:45
  Was it overlooks another inconvenient fact?
• 54:49
  Yeah, so I was gonna say when Israel pulled out, there was no blockade, there was no rationing of food, there was none of that.
• 54:56
  I'm not trying to put you on the spot. You're the host.
• 55:01
  Another inconvenient fact that it's fascinating how the world wants to ensure that we forget or never learn. Gaza has two borders.
• 55:12
  Two borders. Why the world expects Israel to continue to feed and clothe and house a population that has declared war on Israel?
• 55:26
  By the way, I don't remember many humanitarian missions traveling to Dresden and Hamburg during the Second World War and funded by the United States or Great Britain or for that matter, the Dominion countries as they were called of Canada and Australia.
• 55:43
  But guess what? There is a second border called Egypt, Egypt and Arab country, a majority Muslim country.
• 55:53
  No expectations of Egypt in this. Israel doesn't control Egypt's border. Egypt controls Egypt's border.
• 56:02
  Why have you seen the pictures of Egypt's fence?
• 56:08
  The first thing that happened after October 7th was the Egyptian sent all their tanks up to the Gaza border to make sure that none of the Gaza's got out.
• 56:16
  I don't know. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these.
• 56:46
  I don't know any of these.
• 57:16
  I don't know any of these. I don't know any of these.
• 57:37
  No one applied the same logic, everyone who applauded Poland for its reaction to the
• 57:42
  Ukrainian refugee crisis, and I was one of them.
• 57:46
  No one said, wait a second, there's a crisis.
• 57:51
  Israel is doing something no other nation in history has ever done.
• 57:54
  They are warning the gossens, we're going to target this building, civilians leave, we're
• 58:00
  going to target that building because you put the word hospital on it or Moscow on it
• 58:07
  or school on it, but we know that there are weapons caches inside control and command
• 58:12
  centers inside.
• 58:14
  So we're tapping the roof, we're sending messages through cell phones, get out and Egypt
• 58:23
  sealed this border.
• 58:26
  And for Hamas it was a brilliant strategy.
• 58:29
  I hate to give them credit, believe me Josh, I hate, there was a brilliant strategy because
• 58:34
  the worse it got the better it was for Hamas.
• 58:39
  And a lot of those people like Francesca Banesi, the UN special rapporteur, they just followed
• 58:47
  the script and everyone wanted to ensure that Egypt was forgotten.
• 58:54
  The walls were forgotten.
• 58:56
  The question of why Egypt could not open its doors to a fellow Arab and Muslim population
• 59:02
  was forgotten.
• 59:03
  The spotlight was singly focused on Israel and the strategy worked and Israel was blamed
• 59:11
  and it was accused and it was charged with every sin under the sun and Egypt got away
• 59:17
  with murder.
• 59:18
  I mean, to be fair, the anti is trying to be fair.
• 59:22
  Well, I mean, if Egypt had opened its borders in such a way that not only refugees could
• 59:29
  get out, but material could get in, then Israel would have lost its shit.
• 59:35
  And they're, you know, Israel would have, if you're under arrest, as many leave as it
• 59:38
  could pull on it.
• 59:39
  I should underestimate the Egyptians if they decide they want to do something like control
• 59:45
  the inflow, they could control the inflow from Egypt.
• 59:49
  Right.
• 59:50
  They could have allowed out refugees without allowing the women, the children, the elderly,
• 59:55
  the handicapped or for that matter, those people who simply said, I don't want any part
• 59:59
  of this, but Egypt didn't do it and no one asked why.
• 1:00:10
  Maybe Egypt's policy was also to keep the spotlight on Israel, but they knew something
• 1:00:17
  else as well.
• 1:00:19
  Again, one of those inconvenient truths.
• 1:00:23
  Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood.
• 1:00:26
  The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in 1929.
• 1:00:31
  The Muslim Brotherhood is not a fraternal organization and it's not the equivalent of, I'd
• 1:00:35
  know, the Jewish Bin A. Brith or a Greek fraternity life in American campuses.
• 1:00:41
  The Muslim Brotherhood wants to destroy Arab secular governments and replace them with
• 1:00:49
  a caliphate.
• 1:00:51
  So the Egyptians knew Hamas very well and the last thing that Egypt wanted to do was to
• 1:00:58
  import Muslim Brotherhood activists from Gaza who would stir up trouble in Egypt.
• 1:01:06
  So leave them in Gaza, let Israel worry about it, but we're not touching it.
• 1:01:14
  And by the way, how many other Arab countries open their gates or doors even by plane.
• 1:01:21
  So Australia rushed to receive refugees, whether they were legitimate or not from Gaza.
• 1:01:30
  And everyone said that's normal and no one bothered to ask the abnormal, why did neighboring
• 1:01:36
  countries that presumably have a shared interest in religion, background, language, ethnicity,
• 1:01:43
  favorliness, why did they?
• 1:01:46
  Why did all the Central European countries open their door to millions of Ukrainians and
• 1:01:51
  the world applauded, but when no Arab country opened their doors to those trying to
• 1:01:56
  flee Gaza, no one said a word.
• 1:02:00
  By the way, why do European countries and others applaud what we call the righteous among
• 1:02:06
  the nations honored in Yad Vashem for those who courageously tried to save Jews during
• 1:02:11
  the Second World War and no one asked the question, why to date?
• 1:02:16
  To date, we have not heard of a single account in Gaza of any Gaza resident trying to protect
• 1:02:23
  or save or rescue a single kidnap victim.
• 1:02:29
  It's again, it's as if we have not just two standards, we're operating in two completely
• 1:02:34
  different universes.
• 1:02:37
  By creating a lower set of expectations, I think former US Senator, Senator Daniel Patrick
• 1:02:44
  Moynihan, who became the US ambassador to the UN, called something similar, the racism
• 1:02:52
  of low expectations.
• 1:02:55
  So back to your framing, of course we expect this of Israel as a liberal democratic society,
• 1:03:02
  or we expect nothing of anyone else.
• 1:03:04
  And even if Israel is facing existential threats, genocidal threats, including October
• 1:03:11
  7th, or the constant stream of threats from Iran, the head of the snake, we expect them
• 1:03:19
  to behave the way we in theory behave until we're attacked, but when we're attacked, it's
• 1:03:29
  different.
• 1:03:30
  I mean, the question of agency is such an interesting one to me, a friend of mine says it's
• 1:03:35
  very, it reveals a lot about a person to hear them, who they give agency to and who they
• 1:03:40
  give sympathy to.
• 1:03:42
  And we give agency, we meaning broadly the left in Western countries, we give agency to
• 1:03:52
  Israel, we give agency to Jews, and we give sympathy to Arabs and to Palestinians.
• 1:04:01
  That's basically the model at the moment.
• 1:04:03
  I mean, you mentioned the Arab states not taking in Palestinians, it's worse than them
• 1:04:09
  just not taking them in.
• 1:04:11
  If you know any body, if you know any Qataris or any Emirates and you talk to them about
• 1:04:16
  Palestinians, I've never heard in Israeli express such contempt for Palestinians as you will
• 1:04:21
  hear from the wealthy, well-to-do Arabs, they despise them, they look down on them, I mean,
• 1:04:27
  not all of them.
• 1:04:28
  Enough of them.
• 1:04:29
  Enough of them think that they're vermin, that they're radical, that they're crazy, you
• 1:04:32
  know, jihadists, and of course they don't, they wouldn't have them in their temples
• 1:04:41
  of gleaming skyscrapers.
• 1:04:42
  So let the dopey Western countries bring the men and deal with the consequences.
• 1:04:49
  Maybe I need to insert something for your viewers.
• 1:04:56
  I'm not here engaging in conversation with you to simply present the Israeli side of
• 1:05:04
  the case or to offer talking points, I've spent most of my professional life exploring
• 1:05:13
  opportunities to create political links coexistence between many of the Arab countries that we
• 1:05:22
  have and even haven't named and other larger Muslim majority countries that should be in
• 1:05:29
  the picture.
• 1:05:31
  So my goal at the end of the day is not to prove that Israel's right and the other side is wrong,
• 1:05:38
  though obviously those discussions come up.
• 1:05:41
  My goal is rather to extend as much as possible the emerging circle of peace.
• 1:05:52
  And there I, therein I think lies the ultimate ingredient of what we need to do.
• 1:06:00
  And within that my hope and prayer is that the Palestinian leadership one day, it won't
• 1:06:06
  be today, but one day will understand that they can either pursue victimhood from here
• 1:06:14
  to eternity, from generation to generation, or like like every other result of war where
• 1:06:24
  there have been refugees, where there have been defeated people, come to terms with it,
• 1:06:29
  make the best of of the situation and recognize that a half of law for bread is better than
• 1:06:36
  none.
• 1:06:37
  Well, that's the goal here.
• 1:06:39
  Let's drill into anti-Semitism in the West then.
• 1:06:41
  Oh, do we have that?
• 1:06:44
  I've been having so much fun talking about the Middle East.
• 1:06:46
  It's so much easier when we were just solving the Israel-Palestinian side now comes closer
• 1:06:50
  to home.
• 1:06:51
  Yeah, I mean, my worry over the past couple of years and I've copped a lot of flak from
• 1:06:56
  both sides of, you know, from both the Jewish community and from non-Jewish lefty friends
• 1:07:02
  for my vacillation on the question of how much loyalty diaspora Jews should have towards
• 1:07:09
  Israel is that it has rendered Jews more unsafe to be perceived as a monolithic group with
• 1:07:21
  the reflexive knee-jerk defense of Israel than it would if we were more open about what
• 1:07:31
  we actually are, which is a quarrelsome tribe of disagreeing and, you know, non-orthodox,
• 1:07:40
  very diverse ideas.
• 1:07:45
  And I worry that Israel somehow has us trapped unintentionally, I mean, it's doing what
• 1:07:55
  it thinks it has to do, but that we're all kind of prisoners in the diaspora to the way
• 1:08:02
  that the world is going to regard that conflict.
• 1:08:07
  And we can quench about it as much as we want and why I didn't say it shouldn't be
• 1:08:11
  last, but that it's not helped, we're not helped by being so closely linked to a foreign
• 1:08:23
  state.
• 1:08:24
  Can they reframe it?
• 1:08:28
  Please.
• 1:08:29
  And drawing on the thread of the conversation, I came close together with my then girlfriend
• 1:08:40
  and now wife of more than 50 years to choosing to live in Israel when we were in our 20s.
• 1:08:51
  I often reflect back on that and wonder whether we made the right decision in the end not
• 1:08:58
  to do it.
• 1:09:00
  Part of me wishes we had done it to this day.
• 1:09:04
  And part of me also says that if our now growing children, all of whom are married with grandchildren,
• 1:09:10
  if they make the decision, we will follow.
• 1:09:16
  But my reframing begins way back, Josh.
• 1:09:22
  In the year 70, in the common era, as was mentioned earlier, to the year 1948 when Israel
• 1:09:29
  proclaimed its independence, was I won't try to do the math now, but roughly, you know,
• 1:09:38
  not quite 1900 years.
• 1:09:41
  And let's say that's roughly 75 generations of Jews scattered around the world who prayed
• 1:09:50
  every day or every week, looking at Jerusalem to the east and every Passover Seder ending
• 1:09:59
  the Seder by saying next year in Jerusalem.
• 1:10:04
  I'm part of the 76 generation.
• 1:10:09
  For them it was a yearning, a prayer, a hope, a distant dream.
• 1:10:14
  For me, it's a reality.
• 1:10:17
  So my starting point is not, as you describe it, the complication of being a diaspora Jew
• 1:10:23
  in my relationship to Israel and how close or how distant it should be, my starting point
• 1:10:27
  is very different.
• 1:10:30
  My starting point is that in Psalm 137, which was one of President Harry Truman's favorite
• 1:10:38
  Psalms, and which became a very popular rock and roll song some years ago, the words
• 1:10:45
  were by the rivers of Babylon, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion.
• 1:10:52
  I don't have to weep.
• 1:10:55
  I don't have to pray next year in Jerusalem, maybe metaphysically, but as a practical notion,
• 1:11:04
  I consider myself infinitely blessed.
• 1:11:08
  More blessed in many ways than those previous 75 generations.
• 1:11:13
  Israel has been reborn, it's messy, it's complicated, some of them are crazy drivers.
• 1:11:20
  For many years the food was lousy, it's gotten better.
• 1:11:25
  They could be loud, they could be assertive, but my God, it's a miracle.
• 1:11:36
  We play the little dreidel game at Hanukkah and there are four sides with four letters
• 1:11:42
  and two of the letters represent the words Nes Gadol, a big miracle.
• 1:11:49
  I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that every day, and I'm not a particularly religious
• 1:11:55
  person, but every day I recognize and I'm grateful for this big miracle because I know that
• 1:12:06
  without the land we are diminished as a people and with the land spiritually, metaphysically,
• 1:12:16
  culturally, politically in every which way, however difficult the task is, it has profound
• 1:12:24
  meaning and I'm very bullish on Israel's future.
• 1:12:28
  I believe that it's the world is to get through this crazy century.
• 1:12:34
  That will be among the three or four nations on earth, whatever size may be, that will
• 1:12:39
  produce many of the critical answers that the world will need to get through, whether
• 1:12:44
  it's in medicine, water, food, technology, go down the list.
• 1:12:51
  So that's my starting point and it's only after I go through that starting point, then
• 1:12:58
  I come to your question.
• 1:13:00
  I don't support Israel out of some sense of obligation.
• 1:13:04
  No one tells me to and no rabbi obligates me to as if that would matter.
• 1:13:11
  I support Israel in the larger quest for both peace and security because I feel privileged
• 1:13:18
  to have that opportunity which previous generations did not.
• 1:13:23
  So I devoted my life to this.
• 1:13:26
  This is not a rabbi, this is not a once-a-week affair.
• 1:13:30
  This has been my living, breathing reality since, if you will, I listed in the Jewish
• 1:13:36
  Army, so to speak, in 1975, I didn't grow up expecting to.
• 1:13:44
  My lifetime ambition was to be an American diplomat, maybe one day an ambassador.
• 1:13:50
  I was most interested in Moscow, I come from a Russian speaking home, I studied Russian
• 1:13:55
  affairs, and I decided for a series of reasons that no, I'm going to be a Jewish diplomat.
• 1:14:06
  And my goal is not just to defend the Jewish people and to defend the state of Israel.
• 1:14:12
  Not in every single thing it does on every single day by every single Israeli spokesman.
• 1:14:18
  I'm not here to be responsible for what Mr. Ben Gvier says, but there's a larger picture.
• 1:14:25
  But I'm also here to see if I can contribute, traveling the world to creating the conditions
• 1:14:31
  for a circle of peace.
• 1:14:34
  So that's how I approached the question and not, I'm trapped in Israel unintentionally
• 1:14:40
  trap me.
• 1:14:41
  If I show too much support, then I'm the wrong kind of Jew and I'm raising questions about
• 1:14:49
  by loyalty, I see no conflict between my love of Israel and my pride in being an American
• 1:14:55
  citizen.
• 1:14:56
  I mean, you speak in such a touching way about it.
• 1:14:59
  It makes me wonder whether we're just, we've lost the knack for, for that sales pitch
• 1:15:04
  in a way.
• 1:15:05
  If you're reminding me that when I first went to Israel with my dad, it was the only time
• 1:15:08
  he went there and I was 18 and I remember him just sort of with, you know, do we hide
• 1:15:16
  having been born in a refugee camp in Switzerland in 1943, I mean, I've still got my grandmother's
• 1:15:21
  star of David that she would wear around Paris in the early 40s.
• 1:15:25
  And he, I said, what's, what's got to you?
• 1:15:29
  He said the guy pumping petrol at the gas station is a Jew.
• 1:15:34
  The person sweeping the streets is a Jew like the rich people, the poor people, the homeless
• 1:15:40
  people, the partying people, they're all Jews.
• 1:15:44
  Like it's the improbability of that to people, I think, of your generation, not to age
• 1:15:50
  you, is much more resonant than for younger Jews, especially in the diaspora where it's
• 1:15:56
  a given, you know, that Israel is a thing.
• 1:15:59
  And we could, we have the luxury of kicking it and, you know, you're absolutely right.
• 1:16:03
  Judging it, my, my first visit I was, I think that was maybe 19 or 20 and like I was
• 1:16:11
  an anti Vietnam war.
• 1:16:14
  I was not one of the leaders in the movement, but I was part of that movement.
• 1:16:18
  I saw myself very comfortably Jewish, but it didn't define me in every which way.
• 1:16:24
  The aspirations for civil rights progress in the United States to find me, the opposition
• 1:16:29
  to the Vietnam war, not because I was a pacifist, because I thought it was the wrong war.
• 1:16:37
  But, but under different circumstances, of course, than your father, but I came to Israel
• 1:16:45
  and I couldn't recognize myself.
• 1:16:50
  And I think the most poignant moment, and there were many, but the most poignant moment,
• 1:16:53
  it was a summertime, it was very warm.
• 1:16:57
  And I was on a bus in Haifa, just a local city bus, probably going from nowhere to nowhere,
• 1:17:04
  and there were no seats, so I was standing and holding onto the railing and all of a sudden
• 1:17:11
  noticed that the man next to me holding onto the railing had a short sleeve shirt and he had,
• 1:17:17
  no, no folks, it's not a tattoo of, you know, as we have today, he had a number.
• 1:17:25
  I come from a survivor family and it was immediately obvious to me.
• 1:17:30
  So, it's not that I hadn't seen it before, but my point is, Josh, I had never seen it before in Israel.
• 1:17:39
  And I never spoke to the man, it would have seemed odd, I didn't know if he spoke English anyway,
• 1:17:45
  but I was fixated on his number and the meaning for him, having been a victim of the Nazis
• 1:17:55
  who miraculously survived of what it means to live in a tiny but sovereign majority Jewish state.
• 1:18:03
  And I think it was in that moment that between the tears and the realization to myself, David,
• 1:18:11
  this is a project that's a lot bigger than politics.
• 1:18:15
  This is a lot bigger than the daily ebb and flow of what happens in any nation.
• 1:18:20
  There are days I'm more proud of America and there are days I'm slightly embarrassed and that may be the case in Australia for you and pick any other country.
• 1:18:30
  But it just dawned on me.
• 1:18:33
  This is something different that defies that kind of daily reaction.
• 1:18:41
  And we never spoke, I left the bus, but something changed to me.
• 1:18:49
  And it's never left me. I mean, here we are, whatever, 55 years later.
• 1:18:54
  So, to young people, it's going to be different.
• 1:19:00
  However, October 7th, I would hope at the very least given the cost,
• 1:19:08
  might have opened some eyes to what we now refer to as the October 8th Jews.
• 1:19:15
  People who until October the 6th were more focused on the judiciary formed debate and they picked sides.
• 1:19:21
  And they were decrying with the future of Israeli democracy.
• 1:19:26
  And if one side won, what would it mean for the state of justice in the rule of law?
• 1:19:34
  But October 7th didn't end that, but it shelved it.
• 1:19:39
  And for those who were willing to see what actually happened is supposed to picking their favorite narrative
• 1:19:46
  by going to their favorite sources.
• 1:19:53
  They understood that, you know what, Jewish vulnerability is not yet over.
• 1:20:00
  My wife is, do I say, Israel was, you'll tell me, is related through marriage to the bebis children.
• 1:20:11
  Do you know the bebis children?
• 1:20:13
  Explain who they are.
• 1:20:14
  Those beautiful little children with red hair who were kidnapped with their mother on October 7th and who were murdered.
• 1:20:26
  Three years old, one year old, the bebis children.
• 1:20:31
  Those were my wife's cousins through marriage.
• 1:20:35
  What exactly were they killed for?
• 1:20:39
  Were they Israeli soldiers carrying boozy machine guns?
• 1:20:45
  Were they occupying someone else's land in the West Bank?
• 1:20:52
  And they were babies.
• 1:20:56
  And that's why I began to use the word not as some political machination,
• 1:21:03
  that there was genocidal intent in the invasion of Israel on October 7th.
• 1:21:08
  Now we see this kind of attempted Holocaust appropriation and Holocaust inversion
• 1:21:14
  where the Holocaust is used against the Jews and used against Israel, which to me is obscene quite honestly.
• 1:21:23
  Yeah, I mean, I think it's that that is the most disturbing.
• 1:21:26
  I mean, October 7th, we could go back and forth for three hours about whether or not it's a predictable reaction of a people
• 1:21:39
  who have been mistreated for so long, right?
• 1:21:42
  There is that where we stop right there.
• 1:21:46
  The October 8th Jew in the sense that it exists in the diaspora here.
• 1:21:52
  I would say as a person like myself who thought that their Jewishness was optional prior to October 7th
• 1:21:58
  and for whom the great trauma was not the terrorist attack of October 7th.
• 1:22:03
  But the instant it kind of again coming back to context and framing simplistic reaction to the subsequent war
• 1:22:15
  in which the whole thing was inverted and the genocidal intent of the attack was erased.
• 1:22:23
  A genocidal intent of the reaction was imputed.
• 1:22:27
  Links to, you know, now the Jews have become the Nazis whom they so despised, become part of the currency.
• 1:22:35
  And all of the stuff you were talking about earlier about, well, what about Egypt?
• 1:22:39
  What about the other Arab states? What about any getting any help for the Palestinians?
• 1:22:43
  Why is everything on Israel's shoulder? Why are we only caring about this?
• 1:22:47
  We're not caring about the Muslims. All of that confused, that headspinning confusion about why there was such sudden intensity.
• 1:22:56
  Essentially forced us secular diaspora Jews, young-ish secular diaspora Jews to be like,
• 1:23:02
  all right, I guess we are Zionists and Jews because the world is going to treat us that way regardless of whether or not we cop to it.
• 1:23:10
  You used the word mistreatment at the beginning, which is where I wanted to.
• 1:23:14
  Please push back.
• 1:23:16
  Well, reframe.
• 1:23:24
  I have to stress, Israel unilaterally withdrew every soldier and settler in Gaza in 2005.
• 1:23:39
  And there are documentaries of Israeli soldiers forcibly removing settlers who didn't want to leave.
• 1:23:51
  Gaza had every chance after 2005 to build. I know I'm repeating myself.
• 1:23:58
  But this refrain about mistreatment, occupation, open air prison persists.
• 1:24:11
  And I think again it infantilizes the Palestinians in Gaza. It denies them agency.
• 1:24:21
  There were alternative paths. And I still cannot find any other potential explanation for October 7th. Maybe I'm too narrow-minded, some will say.
• 1:24:39
  Then this was a bloodlust that was planned for quite some time and that was very cleverly disguised.
• 1:24:50
  And the Israelis were pretty good at intelligence. They seem to know where every Iranian scientist not only lives, but where he eats, where he exercises, where his mistresses are.
• 1:25:02
  I mean, they know everything. So somehow they miss this. But I think this was an anti-Jewish pogrom slash genocidal attempt.
• 1:25:16
  And I don't know how else to explain the murder of children, the kidnapping of Holocaust survivors.
• 1:25:24
  And it was all of that. All I'm saying is I'm trying to give voice to understand, but I'm kind of trying politely to push back at those who otherwise.
• 1:25:35
  So even as you say all of that, I can hear them thinking, yes, of course it was all that and it was terrible. And it was taking place in a context in which Israel had persistently been found itself unable for at least 20 years to.
• 1:25:53
  Find a way to pursue self. I mean, it's not like it's not like since since Netanyahu has been in power, there has been a proactive attempt to foster grassroots democracy and soft determination in the West Bank.
• 1:26:06
  But it's Israel's responsibility after withdraws from Gaza after it leaves the greenhouses to kickstart the economy, which by the way, as I think you know, were completely ravaged and destroyed within the day or two.
• 1:26:22
  Yeah.
• 1:26:23
  The longer exist because they didn't want the Jew greenhouses to be growing.
• 1:26:27
  So even when Israel withdraws and even when there is a border with Egypt and when even there is more per capita aid flowing from around the world to Gaza, we're told that to any other nation on earth per capita.
• 1:26:47
  Israel still remains responsible for the behavior of a strip of land in which the people gave Hamas the power to rule.
• 1:27:00
  You know, I recently wrote a book on anti-Semitism.
• 1:27:06
  And I guess I should can I can I shift to a commercial. I plug the plan away.
• 1:27:11
  I don't have a picture. So please imagine it. It's the book is called anti-Semitism, what everyone needs to know.
• 1:27:19
  It's published by Oxford University Press. It has been released first in the United States and Canada, then in Britain, now in Australia.
• 1:27:28
  You can find it on Amazon, Australia, you can see it on good reads in terms of reviews and ratings.
• 1:27:35
  But it's fascinating to me.
• 1:27:40
  And I thought I knew something going into the book. I learned an awful lot in the too lonely years of writing it.
• 1:27:46
  How much of what we're seeing about Israel today reflects age old anti-Semitic tropes.
• 1:27:55
  But adapted because anti-Semitism is a fluid virus, if you will, adaptable to different moments.
• 1:28:11
  And how age old tropes are now superimposed not on the individual Jew, but on the Jewish state.
• 1:28:18
  And again, for those who want to say, there he goes again trying to shut off criticism, no.
• 1:28:25
  But when Jews are assumed to want to kill children, Palestinian children, or when there was that massive movement back to an earlier point you made, Josh.
• 1:28:38
  When there was that massive movement to want to believe that Israel destroyed a major hospital in Gaza.
• 1:28:47
  Only to learn later though no one cared to learn it, that it was actually by an errant Palestinian missile that hit the hospital.
• 1:28:58
  And that was acknowledged even by United Nations experts.
• 1:29:04
  So many wanted to believe it and insisted because in a post-truth world, in a post-truth world, the best that I can do is present my narrative.
• 1:29:15
  And you present yours, but my facts aren't your facts and your facts aren't my facts.
• 1:29:25
  There was this rush to want to condemn, to want to believe every worst allegation about the state of Israel.
• 1:29:32
  We were also being pumped full of it though by nefarious actors.
• 1:29:36
  Absolutely. I can't blame the average person.
• 1:29:40
  You're saying what I wanted to say. There was a global industry that was poised for this moment.
• 1:29:46
  Josh, on October the 8th, before the IDF, the Israeli army had even had the chance to recover, much less take the battle to Gaza.
• 1:29:59
  34 student organizations at America's preeminent university, Harvard, gathered together an issued a public statement which is easily discoverable that Israel and Israel alone was responsible for what happened on October 7th.
• 1:30:16
  The worst day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and we were being told we were responsible.
• 1:30:25
  Because our eyes were lying to us, those people who came from Hamas in the air on the ground, however they came, slaughtering, and by the way, unlike the Nazis, recording and gleefully sharing their videos.
• 1:30:45
  We have the audio or the video, mom, dad, I killed a Jew, I killed two Jews, I stabbed them, I murdered them, I sexually violated them and then murdered them.
• 1:30:58
  How do we explain this?
• 1:31:02
  So for younger Jews, yeah, there was a rude awakening, now there are those who live in ideological bubble, and I see that in New York City where my wife and I live, where just over 30% of New York Jews,
• 1:31:19
  the younger Jews voted for a mayor who has made the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian, even pro-Hamas, platform central to his very identity, he's saying it.
• 1:31:39
  He's not saying pro-Hamas.
• 1:31:42
  But he invites Hassan Piker and Mahmoud Khalil and others who have been active supporters of Hamas to his dinner table.
• 1:31:54
  Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.
• 1:31:57
  So you said we're a quarrelsome people.
• 1:32:02
  We are.
• 1:32:04
  There are more October 8 Jews, including younger Jews that I've met who have woken up and who now understand that you know when their parents seemed oddly nervous still, even though everything seemed safe.
• 1:32:17
  But you know, they seem like relics of another age, but there were our grandparents, we love them, but you know what, they weren't always wrong.
• 1:32:29
  They understood that anti-Semitism is a shape-shifting virus, it may hibernate, but it doesn't disappear as quickly as we might wish.
• 1:32:39
  So there were those October 8 Jews and if you will, they kind of stood up and if you will join the team and then there were other Jews who said, no, I'm still buying the other narrative and choose to ignore the oddity that whether they say so or not, have joined the other team.
• 1:33:02
  The team of Hamas, which calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, Hezbollah, which calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, and Iran, which is the head of the snake.
• 1:33:17
  So if they think they can live in some other space by arguing against Israel and joining the pro Hamas supporters at Columbia University or New York University or at the Opera House in Sydney, I think history will prove them wrong.
• 1:33:33
  I mean, I hope you're not right. I hope it doesn't have to be that funerary.
• 1:33:37
  I can't believe that there isn't a space of nuance in which you can make the argument.
• 1:33:44
  As I did, that diaspora Jews in particular should stop carrying water for what a foreign state is doing in order to expand, I mean, A, because it's the right thing to do.
• 1:33:57
  So be pragmatically so that our fellow countrymen can understand that Jews are Australians, Jews are Americans, Jews belong everywhere, Jews do not have a sinister loyalty to a foreign state when it's acting against their interests that they are a sinister loyalty.
• 1:34:12
  Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's the bloodline.
• 1:34:14
  So when, when, when the Prime Minister of Australia joined with the President of France and the Prime Minister of Canada and Britain to recognize and not exist in Palestinian state in the middle of a war, should Jews in Australia have kept quiet?
• 1:34:31
  No, Jews in Australia can say whatever they want to about it.
• 1:34:35
  But, but then they're representing a foreign state.
• 1:34:38
  No, not necessarily the liable against Jews globally.
• 1:34:42
  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm phrasing it the way that an anti-Zionist would or an anti-Semite would perhaps that Jews are somehow suspect because they have this sinister loyalty towards a foreign state they're not really part of us.
• 1:34:55
  I can't believe that anybody who wants to present a vision of Jewishness that is bigger than a reflexive knee-jerk defense of Israel that is more pluralistic, more multicultural, more indigenous to their new country like Australia, that that person is automatically an apologist for the head of the snake and Hamas and his bowler.
• 1:35:23
  Well, maybe we come from different national models because in the United States, our Constitution invites us to petition the government.
• 1:35:32
  And ever since I was a child, there was a vast Irish-American voice in support of uniting Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.
• 1:35:46
  In fact, many of them actively supported and raised funds for the IRA.
• 1:35:51
  From, from young days, the Hellenic community in the United States, also very large, was outspoken in its support for Greece and Cyprus.
• 1:36:02
  And then its opposition to armed sales, armed transfers to Turkey, which was seen as an opponent.
• 1:36:10
  Palestinians in the United States are incredibly vocal and outspoken and active in making clear their identity.
• 1:36:18
  We have members of Congress, like Rashida to leave from Michigan, who makes clear that her solidarity with the Palestinians is at the center of her political agenda.
• 1:36:29
  Yeah, but she's a Palestinian and Greek.
• 1:36:32
  So I'm a Jew. You're not an Israeli. I'm not an Israeli.
• 1:36:37
  I'm a Jew for whom there are three pillars to my identity.
• 1:36:41
  And no one else can have the audacity to define for me what being a Jew means.
• 1:36:49
  Of course not. You're entitled to have that version of Jewishness.
• 1:36:52
  But earlier, it seemed like you were implying that a Jew who doesn't share that version of Jewishness, that solidarity with Israel, is on the side of Iran and Hamas.
• 1:37:01
  I tried to frame it a little more carefully than you presented it now, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
• 1:37:13
  Josh, where exactly is the third space?
• 1:37:17
  I have not seen those Jews who joined the encampments at the American universities.
• 1:37:24
  I've not seen one of them hold up a sign saying I supported two-state solution.
• 1:37:31
  No, they're on the wrong side.
• 1:37:33
  Where is the third space? You're sitting in it. This is the attempt to create a third space on all issues in which we're invited to slip into a lazy one.
• 1:37:43
  But I don't think for myself, I'm simply here speaking for myself, that I don't think that October the 7th gave me the luxury of looking for a third space.
• 1:37:58
  Maybe a year or two or three from now, depending on how things go, I personally will be more comfortable having that conversation.
• 1:38:07
  But after October the 7th, it seemed to me the choice was either to stand up with Israel, to stand up against Israel, or to try and live life without raising my head over the parapet.
• 1:38:28
  And I chose very immediately and without any regret, and it reflects my whole life to stand with Israel, because I thought in particular, this was not a debate over judiciary form.
• 1:38:42
  If you and I were having that debate on October the 6th or discussion, I should say, whatever your opinion would be, I would completely respect.
• 1:38:53
  And I would not see it as quite as existentially urgent, important though it is.
• 1:38:59
  I felt after October the 7th, when Hamas crossed that border, again, I don't want to recite, when Hezbollah joined the attack from the north.
• 1:39:10
  I mean, if you think it was tricky putting your head above the parapet to defend Israel, you should walk a mile in my shoes and see what I was like to have your head above the parapet, both hedging on your support for a Zionism and the existence of Israel in the abstract, whilst also couching that in all of your concerns about the way that Israel was currently instantiated, thanks to a couple of decades of Netanyahu, not easy.
• 1:39:35
  Maybe you should have invited me on to the show earlier and I could have helped you could have disabused me.
• 1:39:41
  I could have helped you chart the path.
• 1:39:43
  Well, you have to go to a dinner, so I want to wrap, but I what would you say there are still a few people who if there are some cohort of the people who are still listening to this, who are not convinced, who are thinking this is all very interesting.
• 1:39:58
  We're still talking about and violence against Jews is terrible and I have Jewish friends and I'm a fan of Josh's and he's Jewish and so I'm not a Jew hater.
• 1:40:11
  But Israel is still doing things that are so terrible I think that I should be able to be a proud anti Zionist and I should be able to agitate for the Palestinian cause without being made to feel guilty about being an anti-Semite.
• 1:40:32
  What's your final pitch to that person for them to just be mindful of? What does the left the squishy lefty goi need to get?
• 1:40:44
  I don't know how to consolidate the answer since you've given a big hint that we're winding down here.
• 1:40:53
  I know you have I would stay all night but you've got to go.
• 1:40:58
  And there must be an expiration date to the attention span of even your loyal.
• 1:41:05
  If they're still here then they're still here.
• 1:41:08
  Look I believe that Jewish identity is built on three pillars.
• 1:41:15
  There's a pillar of faith whether one takes everything literally or otherwise but it's undeniable that we were people who embrace the set of values and beliefs which distinguish us from others and in some ways we're quite revolutionary.
• 1:41:33
  The notion that we were all creating the image of God I think is the very foundation for the quest for human equality.
• 1:41:40
  The search for social justice said that said that you're doff.
• 1:41:45
  I'm immensely proud of the courageous Jewish voice that chose to break eggs to become dissenters to tell Pharaohs they were not the final word.
• 1:42:00
  Emperors and monarchs there was a higher vision of what life should be and a moral GPS that the Jewish people were related.
• 1:42:12
  There's a second which to me is also non-negotiable like the first and that is we are a people.
• 1:42:21
  And therefore I feel a sense of both connection and responsibility whether it's Jews in Australia or Jews in Chile or Jews in the former Soviet Union or Ethiopia and we are connected to a land.
• 1:42:39
  We may or may not live there but to me it's undeniable what cannot read the Jewish story from the beginning and fail to recognize the connection to a land that land is not called Poland nor is it a city called New York or Los Angeles or Sydney or Melbourne.
• 1:43:02
  So for me those are the three non-negotiable elements within each of those we can be more religious less religious atheist ultra observant.
• 1:43:12
  We can be active Zionists but we can also live elsewhere.
• 1:43:17
  So when you say an anti Zionist Jew you know for me my ears perk up because I don't know how to be an anti Zionist Jew.
• 1:43:28
  Because whether I literally believe in the Hebrew Bible or not and whether I learn all the Psalms by heart and whether I understand the trajectory of Jewish history when Jews forcibly were in the diaspora alone.
• 1:43:46
  I know that Zion was an essential part of everything they said they did they felt they believe they prayed.
• 1:43:54
  So I don't know what an anti Zionist Jew means.
• 1:43:57
  I know what that's called an anti Netanyahu or an anti liquid or an anti earlipid or an anti nutali Bennett or a reformist on the Cotel the Western wall.
• 1:44:11
  I get all that but when a Jew says to me I don't believe that Israel has a right to exist the Jewish people have a right to a land of their own.
• 1:44:23
  And on top of that not only do I not believe it but I'm going to join forces with those who actively oppose it.
• 1:44:33
  And don't just oppose it as we know using debate and arguments but endorse globalizing the anti father the central chant calling for from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.
• 1:44:52
  That's a step too far for me Josh maybe I'm just incapable maybe you need another guest who has a broader sort of bandwidth.
• 1:45:03
  But as I said earlier my starting point is nesca doll a big miracle and I feel blessed to have been among the first Jews I was born a year after Israel was recreated.
• 1:45:18
  And believe me I follow the political debates I have my own views on the political debates in Israel.
• 1:45:25
  But the big picture for me is thank God there's Israel I'm bullish on its future and I hope those people who may think differently might one day perhaps read a little more plan of visit.
• 1:45:40
  And maybe a visit that's not sponsored by an organization that starts with an anti Zionist or anti Israel agenda because that will only build upon it but actually says you know wait a second.
• 1:45:52
  My grandparents were right not wrong.
• 1:45:55
  I wish all Jewish activists were as articulate and as thoughtful thanks so much for being on the show.