Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREVIEW: "Two Jews Debate Israel" with Antony Loewenstein

Transcript

PREVIEW: "Two Jews Debate Israel" with Antony Loewenstein · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:05
  Here's an idea that is no longer quite as dangerous as it used to be.
• 0:10
  The idea is that the state of Israel is fundamentally a genocidal project, that it was a misbegotten
• 0:18
  venture from the start, has never made any real attempt at accommodating Palestinian
• 0:24
  interests and Jews around the world should distance themselves from it and reject it as a Jewish
• 0:31
  state.
• 0:33
  Since the October 7th Hamas attacks and the brutal war in Gaza, this conversation has
• 0:39
  been taking place in its most brutalizing, simplistic, rudimentary form on social media
• 0:45
  and mostly among non-Jews.
• 0:47
  There is a very clean, clear, simplistic, anti-zionist principle that you can see on social
• 0:52
  media all over the place, which articulates the point of view that I just stated.
• 0:57
  And there is a counter-vailing, equally simplistic point of view that's put forward by, for
• 1:02
  example, the Israeli government and the Israeli defence forces, which says that Israel
• 1:06
  has always sought peace and just wants the best for everybody in the region, but it has
• 1:10
  to respond to terrorists and it has never had a partner for peace.
• 1:14
  Of course, the reality is complex.
• 1:18
  And nowhere is this conversation undertaken in as robust a spirit of vehement, disagreement
• 1:25
  and intellectual curiosity than within the Jewish community itself.
• 1:31
  Jews all over the world since October 7th have been wrestling with these questions.
• 1:36
  What should their relationship to a state that proclaims to be their homeland be when
• 1:40
  that homeland behaves in ways that they regard as unconscionable?
• 1:46
  Anthony Lowenstein has become something of a persona non-grata to Jews who were in lock
• 1:50
  step with Israel because he is an anti-zionist.
• 1:53
  He is a ferocious critic of Israel.
• 1:55
  He is an independent journalist who has lived in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020.
• 2:01
  And he had, I suppose, the accidental good fortune to in 2023, just six months before the
• 2:08
  October 7th attacks, publish a book.
• 2:11
  It's called the Palestine Laboratory and it details how the technologies that Israeli
• 2:17
  intelligence and the Israeli military have developed to essentially control Palestinian
• 2:22
  populations and to make their occupation of the West Bank successful have also been
• 2:27
  exported to all kinds of ugly regimes around the world to be used for nefarious purposes
• 2:31
  against good citizens.
• 2:34
  That book, needless to say, after October 7th and when the Gaza war began, shot up the
• 2:40
  best cellar charts in the West.
• 2:43
  And Anthony became celebrated.
• 2:45
  It won Australia's highest journalism prize, a walkly award.
• 2:49
  And at the same time, as Anthony was being fated by journalists and anti-zionists the world
• 2:55
  over, he was being shunned by his own community of Jews, at least publicly.
• 2:59
  We also get into this about the scope of the disagreement within the Jewish community
• 3:03
  in this upcoming conversation.
• 3:05
  I copped an enormous amount of flak.
• 3:07
  For speaking with Anthony, I had actually recorded the interview with him initially before
• 3:11
  October 7th.
• 3:12
  But I released it after October 7th and got a lot of pushback from Australian Jews who
• 3:17
  felt that it was impolite in the wake of the largest slaughter of civilian Jews since
• 3:21
  the Holocaust to be conversing about these things.
• 3:24
  But really, what is a Jewish dinner table if not a forum for argumentation about the
• 3:30
  biggest moral questions of our time?
• 3:33
  The Jews are a notoriously argumentative, thoughtful, philosophical, and talmudic people
• 3:38
  who are constantly quarreling amongst themselves about the best way to live a good life and the
• 3:43
  best way to forge a path forward.
• 3:46
  That may come as a surprise to people who think that Jews are a monolithic, money-grabbing
• 3:52
  power-hungry cult.
• 3:54
  But it is the truth.
• 3:55
  It is the truth.
• 3:56
  It is the lived experience of Jews, the world over, trying to understand how they should
• 4:00
  feel about this state that claims to act for them, and over which they have no practical
• 4:06
  control.
• 4:07
  So I thought it was time to invite Anthony back on the show, do the thing that Jews do
• 4:12
  best, which is get into a big argument, a friendly argument, a respectful argument about
• 4:16
  the nature of the Jewish state.
• 4:18
  I hope you enjoy.
• 4:19
  As much as I did, do you want to know only Anthony Launstein?
• 4:26
  How are you feeling being a Jew these days?
• 4:30
  In Australia or just in general?
• 4:31
  In Australia.
• 4:32
  I feel all right.
• 4:33
  And in general.
• 4:35
  I mean, I'm not religious.
• 4:36
  I'm Jewish.
• 4:37
  I don't really practice, although I'm trying to give out young kids some more cultural
• 4:45
  Jewish experiences.
• 4:47
  What does that look like?
• 4:48
  Well, I guess some of that.
• 4:49
  I see some of the Jewish holidays, Hanukkah, Passover, not necessarily religious, but
• 4:53
  I'm not taking them to synagogue around here.
• 4:56
  I think some of those...
• 4:57
  Were you by my side by the way?
• 4:58
  I was.
• 4:59
  I'm from Melbourne.
• 5:00
  You say that as if every Jew in Melbourne gets by my side.
• 5:04
  I'm from Melbourne.
• 5:06
  Yeah, I did.
• 5:07
  It would have been strange at that time if I wasn't actually.
• 5:12
  I mean, I didn't grow up in a religious home or anything.
• 5:14
  It is a pretty active Jewish community.
• 5:16
  It is.
• 5:17
  And I grew up in a pretty traditional, not a liberal-ish Jewish home, but Israel was
• 5:25
  certainly part of that education.
• 5:26
  I didn't go there with my parents.
• 5:28
  I didn't go there with my family or anything.
• 5:29
  But it was just seen as the right thing to support Israel because of our families were
• 5:34
  killed in the Holocaust when once they got out, they were spread around the world.
• 5:38
  It's true.
• 5:39
  Yeah.
• 5:40
  Year of the US, et cetera.
• 5:41
  Did you have friends or family in Israel?
• 5:43
  All your parents?
• 5:44
  We did, and we do.
• 5:45
  I was in family, yeah.
• 5:46
  I've met them once and it was probably enough.
• 5:48
  When did you first go?
• 5:49
  That was probably enough, how unkind.
• 5:52
  Not really.
• 5:53
  I mean, the feeling's mutual.
• 5:55
  What a baby.
• 5:56
  It's not like I'm going to name them.
• 5:57
  I mean, I met them about 20 years ago when I first went there.
• 6:00
  Right.
• 6:01
  And yeah, we're like this.
• 6:02
  We're like this places of totalitarian dump.
• 6:04
  What are you all doing here?
• 6:05
  No, I think they were there because they were believers in the project, they were very
• 6:12
  hard-line.
• 6:13
  They were very, I think, prosettler, they didn't live in settlements, but, yeah.
• 6:17
  And I presume that they've gone even further right since as Israel has.
• 6:21
  Yeah.
• 6:22
  Yeah.
• 6:23
  I mean, we spoke, I think, last time just before October 7th, as from my recollection, we
• 6:28
  then released it after October 7th.
• 6:30
  Good timing.
• 6:31
  What has...
• 6:32
  I mean...
• 6:33
  Nothing's happened since.
• 6:34
  I don't know why we've been here.
• 6:35
  My goodness.
• 6:36
  I mean, it's been a journey.
• 6:38
  It's been a real journey, I think, for a lot of people.
• 6:41
  Both Jewish and non-Jewish, since then, what has your arc been like?
• 6:48
  Look when it happened on October 7th, I was here in Sydney, I was...
• 6:53
  On the one hand, shocked by the violence, shocked by the audacity, I don't mean that in
• 6:59
  a positive sense, but the fact that Hummus was able to do that, I spent time in Gaza
• 7:02
  as a journalist in the last 15 years.
• 7:06
  And I think a lot of people who follow this issue, Jew, non-Jew observer were pretty astounded
• 7:13
  by the fact that that was able to happen.
• 7:15
  And I tied in in some ways a lot of my work, obviously, because I talk a lot about Israeli
• 7:20
  security and surveillance, and essentially it just collapsed on October 7th.
• 7:23
  And I was shocked by the level of violence against, well, principally, Israeli Jews, although
• 7:29
  obviously it was directed at Thai workers and other people as well.
• 7:34
  And I knew from the first day that Israel's response, I didn't know exactly what it was
• 7:39
  going to look like, but I knew it was going to be overwhelming and almost certainly what
• 7:44
  had happened in the past to Gaza, the every two or three year wars, would be a prelude
• 7:50
  to what was going to happen.
• 7:53
  And I guess for me, I had a book that came out in May of that year, The Palestine Laboratory,
• 7:58
  which obviously is not about that event, October 7th, but it has, for a lot of people since
• 8:05
  become a way to explain the moment we're in.
• 8:12
  And what I mean by that is that the book goes into detail about how Israel uses Palestinians
• 8:20
  as a testing ground, essentially, to then sell these weapons to countries all over the
• 8:25
  world under the guise of we're fighting terrorism, you can do the same as we do.
• 8:29
  So when October 7th happened, look, my initial response was shock and horror.
• 8:33
  And I was interviewed on October the 7th, I think it was a BC TV and I said that.
• 8:36
  I mean, I, I've spent time as a setting Gaza, I spent time at Hamas as a journalist and
• 8:43
  just to be clear, you were not the second in command to say what many say.
• 8:48
  Well, some have said worse, but no, I was not.
• 8:52
  And I have friends still in Gaza, friends who have left some support guards and many,
• 8:56
  Hamas, so many do not, many have been appalled and disgusted about what's happened.
• 9:02
  I'm talking about both on October 7th, but also since.
• 9:06
  So my feeling has been, and the journey, and I've been back to Israel, Palestine since,
• 9:11
  I was there about four or five months ago, not Gaza, because some people may be wearing
• 9:15
  no journalist, international journalists allowed into Gaza, which I think is an absolute
• 9:20
  outrage, which is decided by Israel, by the way, I mean, they say it's for security.
• 9:25
  And I think journalists would fear that they would be targeted and killed by Israel,
• 9:28
  because Israel has a pretty big track record on that.
• 9:30
  Could potentially be targeted and killed by Hamas as well.
• 9:33
  Oh, they could be, but I'd say it's far less likely.
• 9:38
  I mean, Hamas has a hardly still a record on freedom of speech or polarity.
• 9:45
  That's true, but 99% of journalists who are being killed in Gaza, if they're probably
• 9:51
  100%, as far as I'm aware, since October 7th have been killed by Israel, not by Hamas.
• 9:57
  This is not a defense of Hamas.
• 9:59
  So I guess my journey has been one of trying to provide both an explanation of what Israel
• 10:06
  is doing, and also a way to detail what I would call a deeply necessary humane Jewish view
• 10:19
  compared to what I and many other Jews see as a mainstream Jewish establishment perspective
• 10:26
  for one of a better expression here and globally, who view Israel's war, I call it genocide
• 10:34
  as not just justified, but necessary.
• 10:38
  And I feel that that is causing profound harm to the Jewish community.
• 10:44
  I think it's causing harm to the fight against antisemitism, which is a necessary one.
• 10:49
  And I think it shames all of us Jews who don't speak out against it.
• 10:54
  So there's been a sort of a waxing and waning of, I guess, fed upness with Israel, I would say,
• 11:01
  among the global Jewish diaspora that I've noticed since October 7th, 2023, where I mean,
• 11:09
  it should be said to begin with that, I mean, if people don't know me or my work by having
• 11:16
  the past not been as ionist and have felt that the idea of an ethno state is very 19th century and
• 11:24
  regressive. And has that changed?
• 11:28
  Yeah, it has a little, it has a little, and we can wrestle with that, yes, since October.
• 11:34
  And I'm also a relentless and tireless and unapologetic critic of the Netanyahu government
• 11:39
  and of the liquid and of the settler movement and of the occupation and have said many times that it's
• 11:46
  immoral that, you know, to require people to live in a state of permanent refugees to
• 11:51
  add us in perpetuity and squalid open air refugee camps that's intolerable.
• 11:56
  And it's shameful that Israel hasn't figured out a way to get out of that situation.
• 12:01
  Because I don't want to.
• 12:02
  Since 2008, they haven't wanted, they certainly haven't wanted to. We can quibble about what the,
• 12:07
  you know, what the real motivations of the various players were throughout the,
• 12:10
  throughout Oslo and throughout, you know, rubbing and, you know, all the mayor and those various
• 12:16
  offers, but, and what role the second interfered applied. But so it's certainly clear that for
• 12:21
  the past almost two decades, there's been complete intransigence and active,
• 12:31
  steamrolling of, you know, any notion of Palestinian self-determination.
• 12:35
  Largely that.
• 12:37
  I mean, I mostly agree with that analysis, but mostly backed by the global Jewish
• 12:44
  establishment. Let's be clear on that. I'm not saying all Jews. I'm saying the mainstream,
• 12:49
  so to speak, Jewish voices. So in the U.S. that would be APAC and others in Australia.
• 12:54
  It's interesting you say the mainstream Jewish voices because there are prominent, I mean, it
• 12:58
  reminds me a little bit of the difficulty in figuring out what like the Arab street believes versus
• 13:02
  what Arab leaders or spokespeople believe or like what, you know, Muslim women believe versus what
• 13:09
  the, you know, Muslims who are preaching in mosques, tell us Muslim women believe. The pro-Israel
• 13:16
  hawkish organizations that constitute themselves as spokespeople for Israel in the West are hawkish.
• 13:24
  And the media goes to them 95% of the time. Frequently, yes, although you interviewed on October 7th as well.
• 13:30
  I was in that, of course.
• 13:32
  But I suspect that if you poll, I mean, the conversations around the SATA table of the Jews who,
• 13:42
  at least, well, I was going to say at least in America, but I think this is true everywhere.
• 13:46
  The center of gravity of the Jewish diaspora is closer to Jerry Seinfeld and Mel Brookes than it is
• 13:54
  to, you know, by the way, are both a ringlet wearing who, yeah, I mean, Seinfeld who
• 14:02
  he's show was very funny. That's the purpose of my comment about that is a pretty hard line pro-Israel hawk.
• 14:09
  That's exactly a secret. I mean, he's made comments about it. He's visited events in the settlements.
• 14:14
  I mean, I've never spoken to him personally, so hi, Jericho, listening, but that's
• 14:18
  not exactly a secret. I mean, he's not a, there are things that Israel will do that he'll be
• 14:24
  critical. I was, is my point. So, you know, pick your, pick your generic sort of culturally Jewish,
• 14:31
  not particularly religious, not particularly ideological. I disagree. No, that's not true. That is,
• 14:38
  you are not you. One is deeply ideological. You can be a, most of your time is being a comedian,
• 14:44
  Jerry Seinfeld writing films, sitcoms, whatever he does these days. But if you have a position,
• 14:50
  and he's asked now and then about his views on the Middle East, on Israel Palestine,
• 14:54
  on US politics, not all the time, but some of the time, his views are deeply ideological. I don't
• 14:59
  think he says, oh, my day job is a comedian, but I just sort of now and then have views about
• 15:04
  Israel. I mean, it's obviously a big part of his life and that's great for him. But it's pretty
• 15:11
  galling to see someone like him and just use him as an example where I can't remember when I was
• 15:16
  last five or so years. I think he took his family to like a shooting range in the West Bank. This
• 15:21
  is not a secret. It's online people can find it. Just sort of, I guess, give his family that kind
• 15:26
  of experience of what exactly of this kind of Jewish militarism hard on. That's basically what
• 15:33
  it is. Well, I don't know what that example is because I've never heard of that, but let's assume
• 15:38
  that I don't know if you actually don't know what I'm talking about or if you're just pretending
• 15:42
  to not know what I'm talking about. I'm using him as a random example. I pulled out of my ass of
• 15:48
  your average Obama voting, you know, secular, basically Jew, who if you want to condemn them for
• 15:58
  being ideological because they feel an affinity for the state of Israel and for Zionism, that's one
• 16:03
  thing. My point is that they don't carry water for Netanyahu and the liquid. They're not,
• 16:10
  they're not APAC. They're not the Israel lobby. They're not like, you know, they might not be
• 16:15
  APAC. They're not super exercised about whether or not we expand settlement building in the West
• 16:20
  Bank and frankly, they'd probably rather than Israel didn't. But to me, I'm not saying you have
• 16:27
  this view. Maybe you do. I don't know. I think there is a mistake to overly focus on Netanyahu
• 16:33
  obviously he's prime minister. He's a very important figure. He's the government. He's a coalition.
• 16:37
  The issue in Israel is not Netanyahu. It is the fact that in poll after poll after poll for years,
• 16:44
  long before October 7, Israeli Jewish society itself has been profoundly radicalized. Jewish
• 16:51
  society in terms of the deep dehumanization towards Palestinians racism. Again, it's not my opinion.
• 17:00
  It's based on poll. Netanyahu might win the next election. He might lose. I don't know. No one
• 17:05
  does. But the likely successes on these key issues are very little different because that reflects
• 17:11
  Israeli society. But isn't that because we've reached a tipping point at which trust on both
• 17:17
  sides has collapsed completely? I don't know how far back you want to go. If Yitzhak Rabin doesn't
• 17:23
  get assassinated in the mid 90s, there was clearly a quorum of Israelis who wanted peace at that
• 17:30
  point. It conceivably could have been since then has Israeli society radicalized. Absolutely. Has
• 17:38
  Palestinian society radicalized? Absolutely as well. Was Israeli public opinion coming from a
• 17:44
  more tolerant place in the 90s than Palestinian public opinion? Yes. It was coming from a more
• 17:49
  accommodationist point of view. The Palestinian, the Palestinian center of gravity in the 70s and 80s
• 17:55
  wanted the whole pie and the majority of Israelis. So they set a majority of Israelis? No,
• 18:00
  they didn't. No at the time. I don't agree with that. Well, it's clear that after 67, most Israelis
• 18:05
  thought, this is weird. No, but we're sitting on top of another country. We're going to have to
• 18:08
  figure out a way of giving that back. But no, but no. I mean, yes. Like just watch that documentary
• 18:13
  with all of those Israeli shen-beds and generals. I met one of them. I did a film recently
• 18:19
  and I'm aware of that. But this is a cop out, Josh. Not for you, but that argument. Because
• 18:25
  that essentially says that if you're an Israeli Jewish citizen, you have the power to vote as opposed
• 18:31
  to many Palestinians who of course don't, if you under occupation. You are making a choice to
• 18:36
  vote for parties for decades, decades that deepen the occupation, worse than the occupation. I'm
• 18:43
  just talking about the right wing, the left wing in the 90s, the left or in power, normally the left.
• 18:49
  They expand a settlement more than the right at the time. So I guess when I say, I think this is a
• 18:55
  mistake that's regularly made that Israel's gone crazy right wing, which is true, because of the
• 19:00
  Secondary Department, because of suicide bombing, some of that's undeniably true. I think that's true.
• 19:05
  But the center of gravity for many Israeli Jews is even worse now than it was 20 years ago.
• 19:12
  There is no real association with Palestinians. They barely speak to them as they meet them at all.
• 19:17
  They're media with a few notable exceptions. And this is, I'm not talking about the few great
• 19:21
  journalists with higher rates, Israeli press who speaks to a Palestinian shock horror. It is
• 19:27
  day after day, often of literally Nazi-like rhetoric. People might be shocked to see that or hear
• 19:34
  that. It is Nazi-like rhetoric, long before October 7th, and certainly since.
• 19:39
  But the claim that the entire conversation in the Middle East is contaminated, polluted and toxic
• 19:46
  is controversial to nobody, I would have thought. I mean, you look at the other side of Palestine,
• 19:50
  you mean, or yeah, I mean, I don't think everything in the Middle East, I mean, I think everything
• 19:53
  is about Israel, Palestine, it's not. No, no, no, I'm saying on both sides of everything that
• 19:57
  you just said, you could just remove the word Israel and put it in Palestine or Israel.
• 20:02
  Society have an extremism parts of it. It's not like, but I think you're doing the mirror image
• 20:10
  of what people who you disrespect on the other side do, which is. But I'm not denying that.
• 20:16
  A generalization about a complicated demos, right? We're like, of course there are factions
• 20:23
  who isn't. But it's not a faction, Jot, hang on. It's not a faction. If you are the occupying
• 20:29
  power, you're the one with the power. Of course, there is. With Israel, with their factions in the
• 20:34
  1990s, who genuinely wanted peace, who wanted to create. There was someone on the left. Yes, I
• 20:40
  think so. Probably were the prime minister. Well, I think it's that ribbon. It is deeply the prime
• 20:45
  minister and the whole man where he actually was ever going to seriously give up loud. I think
• 20:49
  that he's very. Of course, it's contested whether or not, you know, Arifat was going to do it as
• 20:53
  well. It's contested whether everyone was going to do it. The question is, in a multi-party,
• 20:58
  like pluralistic democracy, you've always got people bumping into each other. I mean, we have
• 21:03
  politicians in Australia who are national party right wingers who do not represent the Australian
• 21:08
  people. And I would not want to be defined by them. If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be
• 21:13
  defined by RFK, Jr. Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Yeah, or Trump, exactly. So, I mean,
• 21:20
  you know, weird things happen under, in extreme. Of course. And other people with elections,
• 21:25
  you don't like in support. I understand that. But to say that, to say that at no point during the
• 21:29
  decades after the 1967 war was there a significant faction of Israeli society and politics that
• 21:37
  sincerely wanted to get rid of the occupation. I just was thinking of us as saying. It's not.
• 21:43
  As saying that Israel is blameless and has always wanted, has tried nothing but peace, but we never
• 21:47
  had a partner for peace. That's on the other side. No, it's not extreme. If you look at the fact
• 21:54
  during the 90s, when these governments were in power in Israel, they were expanding and deepening
• 22:01
  settlement. It's not an opinion. That's what they were doing. Because they were coalition
• 22:04
  governments where they had to make stupid deals with assholes in order to get things through.
• 22:08
  That's not what your point works. I mean, do not hang on. Democracy works in what way that you
• 22:14
  deepen and dehumanize Palestinians day in day out. Sometimes, sometimes you need to do bad things
• 22:19
  to get good things done. So, is there a reason why people like Edward Said, the late Palestinian
• 22:23
  intellectuals said from the beginning, unlike Palestinian colleagues, some of them,
• 22:27
  many Israeli colleagues were saying, from the early 90s, this is essentially a Faustian bargain.
• 22:33
  That we, as Palestinians, are entering into a deal with the New Israel that A has no interest in
• 22:38
  peace. Two is determined to continue to expand settlements. And three, importantly, the Palestinian
• 22:44
  authority, the corrupt body that was set up to kind of manage this situation, was going to be a
• 22:50
  contractor for the occupation. Now, he didn't have the luxury of, I'm 40, seeing what where the
• 22:56
  future is, let he died a number of years ago. But he was right on all of that. Now, he's one person,
• 23:02
  I think he was prescient. Yes, I eat a cup of guy. I mean, he's also coming from one side and one
• 23:09
  perspective. Of course. Well, anyone comes from one side by definition. But I guess what I'm saying
• 23:13
  is that I think it's, it's not a question I'm looking at one side and saying, he's really
• 23:18
  society is so broken that there's no way to reform them as if I'm, I've written about and I'm
• 23:23
  well aware, there are elements of Palestinian society in Gaza and elsewhere, which are fundamentally
• 23:28
  opposed to how I see the world about how I want to live. I'm aware of that. I mean, I've spent
• 23:34
  time traveling lots of countries around the world, not that often wear a sign on my head saying,
• 23:38
  hi, I'm a Jew, hug me. But I'm well aware that a lot of people, the most people wouldn't hug you.
• 23:43
  They wouldn't. I don't have much of my hand. Maybe if you're a Jew, if I don't have rage in the
• 23:48
  world. So this is not, this is not Jewish. So you won't be met. And I'm not denying real anti-Semitism
• 23:54
  exists, regardless of what I think about Israel, Palestine and deny anyone who says that about
• 24:00
  the world is naive. I don't think that. But I think a lot of it is and this ties back to what's
• 24:05
  happening in Australia and a lot of countries since October 7 are deliberately conflating
• 24:11
  legitimate concerns over actual anti-Semitism. Five bombing is synagogue,
• 24:16
  uncontroversially anti-Semitic. Who knows who did it? We don't really know yet in Melbourne
• 24:21
  a few months ago. It's a horrific act. But if you have on a side of a house,
• 24:28
  fuck Israel, not that I support, by the way, doorbing people's houses to make that very clear,
• 24:34
  I don't see that necessarily as anti-Semitic. I just don't. Saying fuck Jews is that anti-Semitic?
• 24:39
  Probably possibly. Well, fuck Jews definitely is. Probably is. How could not be?
• 24:47
  Well, the question is, yeah. Look at the meaning of that B, except for antipathy towards Jews.
• 24:53
  Yes, probably. If it's next to the silence says fuck Israel, I would say the context matters,
• 24:58
  but I don't like, I mean, I don't support that. That's exactly the difference between bigotry
• 25:03
  and a political opinion. I mean, it's one thing to say, fuck India. It's another thing to say,
• 25:08
  fuck Indians. That would be bigotry against India. It is. But I think if you have a sign,
• 25:12
  there has been cases of this in Sydney in the last six or so months of two
• 25:16
  adorbed walls next to each other, fuck Jews and fuck Israel, neither which I like seeing. I mean,
• 25:23
  I don't say that in my, I don't say it publicly at least. I think that there is a deliberate attempt
• 25:31
  by many political forces in this country and many countries to whip up profound fear within
• 25:38
  the Jewish community of which there's 120,000 or so Jews in the country to make them feel like,
• 25:45
  as is regularly said, it's essentially is 1933 Berlin here. It is insane. But wait, don't
• 25:52
  attack the straw man. Is there just staying on the point of like fuck Jews? Is there,
• 25:59
  is there do you doubt that a spray painted sign that says fuck Arabs is bigotry against Arabs?
• 26:06
  Almost as I said with fuck Jews, almost certainly is anti-Semitic. The reason I'm saying it
• 26:10
  is next to a sign that says fuck Saudi Arabia. Does that make it less bigoted?
• 26:16
  I think it's impossible to actually answer that because we actually now don't know the reason why
• 26:21
  people did something. That's why we made the decision that it doesn't really matter why people do
• 26:27
  something. I think it does. No, we sort of, I think isn't the part of the social justice
• 26:32
  revolution of the past 10 years that you don't get away anymore with saying, oh, I wasn't being racist.
• 26:37
  I was just, you know, I was just making a joke. No, if black people think you were being racist,
• 26:41
  then it was racist. You don't get to walk into the office and slap a woman on the ass and say,
• 26:46
  this is my day to it. No, it's just don't take, don't be so serious about it.
• 26:50
  It doesn't matter what you, if you write fuck Jews, fuck Arabs, you know, whatever, that's
• 26:55
  a bigotry. It's just totally, that's to be clear. It's utterly unacceptable and I don't support it.
• 27:00
  My comment simply was to say with a hundred percent certainty that saying that is by definition
• 27:06
  bigotry, I do question that. I'm not saying that I don't see that and celebrate it.
• 27:11
  I think it's almost total logical. Like fuck Jews is by definition anti-Semitic.
• 27:16
  You don't think a man or anything else. It's hatred towards one group of people on the basis of
• 27:22
  their ethnicity. In 99% cases, I'd agree with you. What's the one percent? The one percent is
• 27:30
  it matters who did it and why. Who could do it and for what reason that would not be anti-Semitic?
• 27:36
  Put it this way, there is lots of evidence in the last six, 12 months in Australia that some
• 27:41
  of the people who appear to be doing attacks against Jews or other Jewish places, other places
• 27:48
  to worship or are not motivated by ideology. They are doing it for, and this has been shown as
• 27:56
  not my opinion. It's been pretty clear. People who are being paid by we're not quite sure who to do
• 28:01
  ugly things. I think it matters if a, for example, neo-Nazi is riding fuck Israel or fuck Jews
• 28:15
  as opposed to some random person being paid by criminal organization. It does it. Is the ultimate
• 28:20
  message changed how a Jew feels seeing it? Possibly not. But I think that matters. I think it matters
• 28:27
  because at the moment in Australia, and it's not unique to Australia, there is a concerted effort
• 28:32
  by elements of a Jewish community, parts of the current Labour Party, parts of the coalition,
• 28:37
  which is the alternative government. They may well win in a few months, who knows? To try to not
• 28:42
  just potentially outlaw certain speech, talk about outlawing legitimate protests about
• 28:48
  people upset rightly about what's happening in the Middle East, these are all connected.
• 28:53
  And I feel very uncomfortable with the idea that we are constantly told we being the public in
• 28:59
  parts of the murder not press and other media as well, that Jews should feel unsafe.
• 29:05
  Now, I'm not for a second minimizing the fact that if you are living in parts of Australia where
• 29:13
  there has been attacks against synagogues, you have the right to feel upset and angry about that.
• 29:19
  As I do, there is an antisemitism issue in this country. I'm not denying that and it's expanded
• 29:25
  since October 7. But I think it is being used and weaponized by certain actors,
• 29:33
  mostly in Australia but elsewhere, to put in place or attempt to put in place legislation or ideas
• 29:40
  that it is illegitimate to say certain things beyond an imaginary line that they define.
• 29:47
  I mean, it has certainly been enormously harmful, I think, to Jews everywhere that right wing
• 29:56
  Israelis have continually and apologists for Israel. I've continually deployed antisemitism
• 30:03
  as a phony cudgel to prevent criticism of Israel. And so now everyone sort of smells a rat
• 30:09
  when you call out, when you use the term antisemitism.
• 30:13
  Absolutely. And who do you think is a fault for that?
• 30:16
  Right wing Israelis and apologists for Israel. And who are the key centers of power here and elsewhere?
• 30:24
  Is that a question or are you saying that they are?
• 30:25
  Well, I think it's more of a statement rather than a question.
• 30:29
  I mean, I'm conceding that and I also don't think that hate speech legislation,
• 30:36
  because I think it's two, unless everyone in the country can all agree on five sentences
• 30:42
  that we can jolt on the back of a napkin that we all agree and are allowed to say and there's no more,
• 30:48
  which as you say, they never will. Then I think there's an expansion of hate speech legislation
• 30:55
  to outlaw ideas that are regarded as being perverse or misguided or degenerate or something.
• 31:02
  And you know, and I know that there are attempts by elements of a Jewish community, wider community,
• 31:08
  non-Jews as well, to put in place certain red lines over conversation around Israel.
• 31:15
  Yeah. That if you come out and would say, Israel is a racist endeavor, was from day one.
• 31:20
  Now, in some definitions, that's essentially hate speech.
• 31:24
  Which to me is insane.
• 31:27
  And well, it certainly should not be prohibited speech, regardless of whether or not you think it is.
• 31:34
  It's certain Australian university campuses and elsewhere.
• 31:37
  There is a growing move towards if a student or I guess a lecturer says something like that,
• 31:43
  presumably in a lecturer or in a public space, that you are breaching a rule that says that you
• 31:50
  can say Israel is doing terrible things in Gaza. That's probably okay. Can you say the
• 31:54
  committing genocide? Can you say that Israel was a racist endeavor from day one? No.
• 32:01
  And I think that this is an attempt to try to curtail...
• 32:06
  Well, you allowed to say that Australia was a racist endeavor from day one.
• 32:09
  We should be able to. Yeah. I mean, it should at least be consistent, right?
• 32:13
  I mean, I would not say Israel. I'd say that from any countries.
• 32:16
  Innings to Israel, absolutely. Of course Australia was.
• 32:21
  One of the big concerns here about the kind of expansion of quote-unquote anti-Semitism
• 32:28
  and its conflation with legitimate criticism of Israel is that how do you see the...
• 32:37
  How do you think about the vast body of quote-unquote pro-Palestinian activism?
• 32:44
  Because I've had many a conversation since October 7th with people who are extremely
• 32:50
  agitated about the Palestinian cause, extremely opposed to Zionism, who say things publicly and
• 33:00
  loudly about Zionists, such as Zionists want to pretend that they're white in order to...
• 33:10
  But Zionists want to pretend they're not white, but they're actually the widest people of all,
• 33:16
  and that they love the blood of Palestinian babies.
• 33:20
  So where is Zionism? I never say that.
• 33:23
  Never say that. I'm not saying you're asking that. I've never said that at all.
• 33:27
  But you're intelligent. I'm talking about there being a bunch of concentric circles of,
• 33:33
  or maybe not concentric, but overlapping, like, then diagrams of people who...
• 33:38
  I come to realize, don't know anything actually about the conflict,
• 33:43
  but the conflict is superimposed onto a pre-existing set of ideas and heuristics that they have
• 33:48
  about the world, which is many of which are true that colonialism is bad, that poor brown people
• 33:55
  in rubble being bombed is a bad thing that babies being dragged out of. The rubble is bad,
• 34:01
  that posturing corrupt, wealthy politicians standing on the global stage and trying to justify
• 34:08
  war crimes is bad. These are all good instincts, and I was doing one interview with one
• 34:17
  of the people I started talking about 1967, and it became apparent that she didn't know anything
• 34:22
  about... She spends all of her professional life talking about Palestine, and she doesn't know
• 34:27
  what happened in 1967. Okay. How do you wrestle? So that's where I start feeling like
• 34:34
  there's a definition of antisemitism that could be that the due of nations is sort of like regarded...
• 34:43
  Suffers an undue focus from people who really could just as well have picked up any other
• 34:47
  thing that the algorithm puts in front of their face. I look my response to that. Obviously,
• 34:51
  I don't know. I'm not asking to say who that was. I don't know who that was, not that it overly
• 34:55
  matters. Look, there's a one side of me that thinks people should know history and read and
• 34:59
  understand as any issue they talk about as extensively as possibly. On the other hand,
• 35:03
  if you were speaking to someone in 1985 about South Africa a part-time, would you overly care
• 35:09
  if they said we're against a part-time that blacks are being oppressed? If you said to someone,
• 35:15
  gave them some date about some important event in South Africa's modern history,
• 35:18
  that didn't know. Would it matter? I don't think it matters at all.
• 35:23
  They ultimately, people rightly felt that that was a profound injustice that should end.
• 35:29
  Obviously, it didn't end till 1994. South Africa is still filled with lots of problems. I was there
• 35:34
  a few months ago. Economic apartheid continues there, sadly, for a range of reasons. But
• 35:39
  so yeah, should people read why they understand what they're talking about? Yes.
• 35:42
  Are you sure? I know I understand what your point is there. The difference,
• 35:49
  I would argue, is that what is the clear moral wrong that's the equivalent to apartheid in this
• 35:57
  analogy? A lot of people who had to generalize the so-called pro-Palestine world,
• 36:03
  I mean, it's diverse. It's not just one thinking person, but regard what's happening again
• 36:09
  before October 7th, and that movement, I guess, is exploded to some extent since October 7th,
• 36:14
  and regard what Israel's doing wrong. They see it as a colonial project. I think what
• 36:18
  Israel's doing in Gaza is, whether you call it genocide, mass slaughter, whatever term you want to use,
• 36:23
  they think Israel, and again, I can't speak for everyone how I feel. What do you feel?
• 36:28
  Well, I feel Israel's, well, Israel is undeniably committing apartheid in Israel and Palestine.
• 36:37
  I say that, it's not so much an opinion. I've seen it with my own eyes. I was there a few
• 36:42
  months ago. There is profound discrimination between Jews and non-Jews, Palestinians in the West
• 36:47
  Bank, treated like second-class citizens. There's only so many words for that. It's based on a
• 36:54
  racial hierarchy in Jews and number one, and Arabs and Palestinians, some of them are Christian,
• 36:59
  many of them are Muslim, and not treated the same way. It's as simple as that. In Gaza,
• 37:03
  it's obviously a bit more complicated, and this was the case before October 7th, but now
• 37:08
  Gaza has been destroyed, which was, I would argue, the point. He asked before about what I thought
• 37:13
  might happen on October 7th. I didn't necessarily think it was going to be that level of destruction,
• 37:20
  but I think now seeing what's happened there, I see what's happened in the last 15, 16 months,
• 37:26
  very much part of a long trajectory. In 1948, there was an attempt to depopulate as many
• 37:33
  Palestinians from Palestine as part of 1967 and the same. There was always a realization amongst
• 37:37
  many Israeli leaders. You couldn't get me to be everyone at the same time, but the idea was
• 37:42
  incrementally you can do so. If pro-Palestine activists say that Israel should be, as I personally
• 37:52
  believe, a state for all its people, Jew, Christian Muslims, like as I believe in Utopia, my eyes
• 37:58
  are open to the hatreds that exist in that part of the world, long before October 7th,
• 38:04
  but I do not accept the fact, and I do not feel any safer as a Jew with a Jewish state existing.
• 38:10
  In fact, I would argue, as I have for years, that the existence of a Jewish state, as it is
• 38:15
  currently constituted, makes us all much more unsafe and it increases antisemitism.
• 38:21
  Yeah, I mean, I've justifiably since October 7th and the war in Gaza,
• 38:26
  but I mean, you and I would put different emphasis on the extent to which the right wing in
• 38:30
  Israel is responsible for this versus Israel as a theoretical motion, as a whole. But clearly,
• 38:36
  that is an albatross around the neck of every Jew in the world, and people are much less safe as
• 38:42
  a result of what's happening there. But it's more unsafe to be, it's more unsafe to be
• 38:47
  Jew and Israel in any other place in the world. Well, not in any other place in the world.
• 38:52
  Well, virtually, Syria. There might be okay.
• 38:55
  In Indonesia, almost any Arab Muslim country.
• 38:58
  Well, there are a handful of Jews in this country. It's not many, but okay,
• 39:01
  where the majority of Jews live, Europe, and again, I'm not denying that any Jews have had
• 39:06
  to self-select the few places where they're not going to be counted. But why is that?
• 39:11
  So, some would say what's because Arabs has had Jews. Muslims has had Jews. I don't accept that.
• 39:17
  Of course, there are some Muslims who hate Jews. Yes, absolutely.
• 39:21
  But I mean, it's obvious. Yes, I think everyone will accept that it's both. I mean, it is
• 39:27
  partly Israeli but actions. But long before Israel, there was many an Arab Muslim town that you
• 39:35
  could go into and the easiest thing in the world would be to get a mob going against a Jew.
• 39:40
  I mean, like, it's not there was obviously there were pogroms before 1948, but there's also
• 39:45
  lots of examples of both communities living pretty well together. Yeah, sure, but I mean,
• 39:49
  as you were saying, the amount of the corrosion of the conversation on both sides in the past
• 39:55
  few decades has reached fever pitch, such that the prospect of those two communities getting
• 40:00
  along peacefully seems as distant as they are. It's distant now, but at the same time,
• 40:05
  the current trajectory, as I've said for a long time, is Israel's moving towards becoming
• 40:11
  a theoretical state. To hear the rest of this conversation, go to uncomfortableconversations.substac.com-listen
• 40:17
  and you will get your own personal premium podcast feed with at least three extra episodes of the
• 40:24
  podcast every month and heaps of extra stuff, including the remainder right now of the fabulous
• 40:29
  conversation you've just been hearing. If it was worth listening to this much of, don't rob yourself
• 40:35
  of the rest, pull out your phone right now, and search for uncomfortable conversations on
• 40:39
  the subject.