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JUST JOSH: "Staying Sane on Israel" · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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It's never been particularly undangerous to try to hold a nuanced and sophisticated
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position about Middle Eastern politics, but wholenelly now is definitely not the time
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to try to straddle that fence.
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Everyone seems to be pretty hunkered down in their opinions about exactly what's going
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on between Israel and Iran and Gaza, and is the whole world sleepwalking into some
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conflagration that is going to end in World War III, Tucker Carlson's worried.
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I'll tell you that for nothing.
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I don't know if you've been keeping tabs on old Tuck, but he ain't happy with Israel.
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As far as he's concerned, those Zionists and the Ukrainians are just trying to drag
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the good Godfaring people of the United States into World War III.
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And Tucker has quite a lot of allies on the left, the anti-Zionist left.
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In this concern, they tend to make an exception for Ukraine, but not for the Zionists who
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will be on the pale.
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I'm not going to spend a lot of time today talking about Iran, although I will give you
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my brief reaction and my temporary downloads, but it's so provisional because things are
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moving so fast.
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I want to pull back and reflect on where we are, with Israel, with Zionism, with Gaza,
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and now, of course, with the broader war with Iran, because I have been in the thick of
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it for the past couple of weeks.
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I wrote a piece earlier this month that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and
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the Age in Melbourne, which was the main Saturday weekend newspaper op-ed column.
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And it was basically calling for diaspora Jews to no longer make excuses for Israel, to
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not reflexively defend all of Israel's actions, to start thinking independently and constructing
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a view of Jewishness that was independent of whatever the state of Israel does.
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I felt like we've gotten to a stage at which Jewishness is just too synonymous with the
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Israeli Defense Forces and with the bombing of Gaza and civilians to be tenable anymore.
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We have to construct a version of Jewishness that is independent of the self-proclaimed Jewish
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state.
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Now, you might wonder why I get myself into these little brujahas, shall we say, but
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I just can't help trying to make the more sophisticated position than simply Zionism
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is evil or Israel is always right.
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And yet watching the fallout has been extraordinary because, although I wrote 1150 words, trying
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to painstakingly make my point perfectly clear, the instant it hit the internet and then
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subsequently the printed page, the barrage of misrepresentations has been extraordinary.
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And it's revealing to all of us about not just how badly our conversation has deteriorated,
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but also the specific ways in which we have blind spots about this issue, this issue of
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Israel, Zionism and Jewishness and Gaza.
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So I just want to address those here and I want to read the article so you know what
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we're talking about and then address some of the criticisms of it in order to make some
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points about Zionism more broadly, Israel specifically and the current moment that we
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find ourselves in.
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I hope this is useful.
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The opinion piece begins since the October 7th butchery of Jews by Gaza's reigning
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a death cult, I wrote, the anti-Zionist left and the anti-Semitic right have indulged
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in a masterclass of double standards and selective outrage.
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Social media algorithms designed to inflame flood our feeds with gas and disaster porn.
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Instagram influencers are suddenly brave opponents of the Zionist colonial settler state.
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Many of them know little of the Oslo Accords, of Yitzhak Rabin, of Ehud Olmert's peace plan,
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of the savagery of the Second Interfarter.
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They couldn't tell you who invaded and occupied the West Bank as soon as Israel was created.
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Hint, it wasn't Israel and it rhymes with Blordan, or who invaded and occupied Gaza.
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Hint, it wasn't Israel and it rhymes with Bleedjept.
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The online warriors allied the Arab states' sterling effort at wiping out Israel in 1967
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and the attempted do-over in 1973.
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They denounced Israel's failure to create a Palestinian state while ignoring the repeated
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reluctance of Palestinians to condone a two-state solution during periods when a majority of
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Israelis believed it was not merely desirable but inevitable.
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So Jewish Australians have found it headspinning since October 7th to be collectively blamed
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for the plight of Palestinians by anti-Zionists who don't seem to give two stuffs about actual
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real-life Palestinian people.
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Activists who never mention the sinister coercions of Qatar, Iran, or Hezbollah, who've never
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campaigned for the right of Palestinian refugees to escape Hamas's brutality by seeking
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better lives in neighboring Arab states, who remain silent about Muslims being crushed
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in Syria, Chechnya, Yemen, and Sudan, who chant catchy slogans whose subtexts they don't
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understand about rivers and seas and globalized into farders, who pretend that Iranian
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theocracy and jihadist ideology aren't a problem in Palestine or the wider Muslim world.
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Many pro-Palestinian Jews who detest Netanyahu are rendered mute by a tsunami of foggy-headed
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anti-Zionist righteousness, so selective that it smells like an anti-Jewish double-standard.
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I went on to write, many Jews also remain wistful about a homeland for the most persecuted
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group in history.
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There's still an allure to the Israel that my grandmother dreamt of when she fled the
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Holocaust.
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The Israel envisioned by Zionism's early pacifist socialist hippie-dippy kibbutzniks of which
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today's anti-Zionists are ignorant.
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But I wrote, and as on the side you will note that I've spent the entirety of the article
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so far doing nothing but shitting on anti-Zionists, something which apparently my Zionist friends
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didn't read.
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But I wrote, how far does the actual existing Israel, and I capitalize that, actual existing
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Israel have to stray from its founding principles and from the basic moral tenets of Jewishness,
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and for how long before we stop making excuses for it?
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Palestinians in the occupied West Bank endure lives of systematic dehumanization under military
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law.
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They're Jewish neighbors, most of them in newly illegally built towns, enjoy the full
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rights of citizenship, sometimes with violent impunity.
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The settlements are an elaborate, militarized, thicket of ethnic discrimination.
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Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza have been crushed to with an inch of their lives, many
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of them too young to bear any responsibility for the jihadists holding them hostage, the
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annihilation of Gaza, and the open rhetoric from senior Israeli cabinet ministers of ethnically
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cleansing the territory are not self-defense.
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Israel is no longer in an emergency, where all bets are off.
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It is now choosing a strategy, it is now proactively erasing the future of millions of people.
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Quick reminder, as an aside, I wrote this before the attack on Iran, I would say it very
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much is in an existential war of self-defense now, but it wasn't two weeks ago.
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To continue my article.
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If you suspect that a fair bit of the pro-Gaza Huha is motivated, but can I also just say,
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please give credit to the fact that I managed to get the word Huha into a mainstream broadsheet
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publication, the most prestigious and widely-read broadsheet in Sydney and Melbourne.
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If you suspect that a fair bit of the pro-Gaza Huha is motivated by bias against Israel and
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some of it is, read the work of Israel's own progressive independent media, Haherats
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972 magazine and Butsalem and the Israeli historian Lee Mortichai's website witnessing
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the Gaza War.
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Listen to my recent interview with the world-renowned Israeli genocide expert, Professor Amos Goldberg,
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who wrote, there's no Auschwitz in Gaza, but it's still genocide.
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The facts of Israel's bloodshed are staggering.
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The IDF's own artificial intelligence system, Habsora, generates bombing targets so fast
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that a former Israeli intelligence officer described it as a, quote, mass assassination
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factory.
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Targets have been expanded to include non-military sites, such as universities, banks, government
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officers, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which the army defines as, quote, power targets,
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Matarot Otsem.
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Several rules on killing Palestinian civilians have been so loosened that a former US state
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department senior adviser on civilian harm, Larry Lewis, told the New York Times, the willingness
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to accept this level of harm to civilians is far beyond what I've seen in operations
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in the past.
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Renowned American trauma surgeons with experience in other wars have returned from volunteering
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at Gaza hospitals horrified.
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One wrote in the Los Angeles Times, quote, I've worked in other war zones, but what I witnessed
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in Gaza was not war, it was annihilation.
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Another told the UN Security Council, quote, as surgeons, we have never seen cruelty
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like Israel's genocide in Gaza.
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This can't all be anti-Semitic lies.
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The claim that this is a just war being prudently prosecuted, in which civilian lives are lost
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only regretfully, is at this stage laughable.
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To be fair, I wrote, Hamas, as Israel constantly reminds us, is worse.
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Compared to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, to Hezbollah, to genocidal Jew haters, and
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to murderous Arab autocrats, Israel is the most moral actor in the Middle East.
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But it's still responsible for what it does.
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If I kidnap a murderer and yank out his fingernails with pliers, I don't win a morality prize
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because he's a murderer and I'm a mere fingernail extractor, at some point my actions need to
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withstand moral scrutiny on their own.
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The terrorists made me do it, is neither an excuse, nor a moral blank check the Jews of
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the world are required to honor.
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You need to innovate.
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You need to humanize.
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You need to find moral courage.
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That's the Jewish way.
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The Israel which my grandmother dreamt of does not exist.
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What exists is illegal settlement building.
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What exists is a discriminatory occupation.
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What exists is a political establishment so eager to undermine Palestinian statehood
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that it bolstered Hamas.
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What exists is the jailing of moderates like the Palestinian lawmaker Marwan Baguti
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in order to keep Palestinian leadership either moribund or radical.
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What exists is a state that's preparing to annex or reoccupy all the lands of the
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Palestinian people indefinitely.
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What exists is the obliteration of Gaza.
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For thousands of years Jews have preached fairness, resilience, reason, pacifism.
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It is the most un-Jewish thing in the world to make somebody a refugee.
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Hasn't this Israeli state?
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This real world government, not the idealized vision of a Yisrael in the clouds, proven
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that justice and peace are not its priorities, that it is unworthy of our support.
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Israel, the country made to save the Jews, is now the thing that most endangers the Jewish
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people, physically, culturally, and morally.
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Until Israeli politics can radically reorient itself, it's time to construct a vision of
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Jewishness that is independent of the state that pretends to act on our behalf.
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It's time for Jews to reclaim the moral mantle of our ancestors.
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For the Palestinians, but also for the future of the Jewish people, it's time for Jews to
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abandon Israel.
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So that was that little shot across the bow.
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You can imagine in the most high-profile newspaper context in the country how that went down.
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It had landed literally for minutes, and I was, by the way, on holiday in Europe at the
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time, and it had been online for minutes before I got a message.
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I stupidly had, for some reason, people could go to my Facebook page like, you know, how
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they can do like a page page that's not a person, but is like a brand, so like there
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was like a Joseph's celebrity page or something that we probably set up when people
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still did that 15 years ago.
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And I would get pinged when people would message that page, not anymore, not after the delightful
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messages I got in the wake of that.
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The first one was from a very high-profile Australian Jewish comedian who was, who used
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to be successful.
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He said, I know you need attention and you made several reasonable points, but what does
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it achieve to slam Israel right now?
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Why give a hand to haters who wish us dead?
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Most of what you say about Gaza is probably mostly fiction disseminated by Hamas.
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Anyway, I don't need to expand right here.
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The thing is, you need to shut up instead of sharing your profound, mostly rehashed views
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because in reality, you are empowering murderers and arsonists to attack us.
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And then he said, best to your father, I assume he must have crossed paths with my father
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who was a famous Australian actor still is alive but has Alzheimer's now.
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So that's nice.
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And I said, I texted back, said, hello, mate, I'm a fan, I saw you when I was a kid.
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I could say that my commitment to principles is more important than to tribe and that every
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tribe needs a member who is brave enough to deliver tough love, but I suspect you're not
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proud of telling me to shut up and I don't think you'll end up particularly proud of
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that message.
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So I won't take the bait piece to which this gentleman replied, what you did is dangerous
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to others.
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You can sleep well.
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Just shut up, keep these opinions to yourself at this dangerous moment.
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I'm proud of my message.
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There are plenty of silly Jews who are happy to pour their self hatred out so they feel
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more comfortable.
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I tell them all to shut up.
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Regardless of your father, quit up with my father.
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I wanted to say my dad would shit on you if we knew what you were doing.
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You fucking mop it and then they could just start rolling in.
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Your Holocaust frizzes another person.
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Your Holocaust survivor grandmother would be ashamed of you and on and on.
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So let me just summarize the main thrust of the opposition because it's not all abusive
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and it would be small of me to dismiss the criticisms of the article because I understand
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that this is a difficult time for people and that I have felt really, really, really bad.
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It's actually been the most difficult fallout over the past couple of weeks that I've
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ever had from one of these eruptions of, you know, cancellation, but mainly because
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in the past, when I've pissed people off and have caused a social media fire storm and
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have been the subject of a lot of hate, I have felt that the people who were leveling
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the hate were fundamentally bullies because I've generally found myself going up against
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finger wagging social justice scolds, people who are trying to enforce their own view of
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the world on everybody else who are trying to shut people up who are trying to shut conversation
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down.
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It's been able to feel like it's sort of water off a duck's back to suffer the slings
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and arrows that one must suffer in order to just try to say things that make sense and
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be the grown up in the room.
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And I felt like, you know what, if those people are hurt because I transgressed their stupid
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made up to boo good because they're frankly autocrats who are trying to enforce, who are
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trying to force everybody else to march and lockstep with them.
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What's been different about this experience is that Jews are really hurting right now.
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There is only one community in most Western nations at the moment who are worried every
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morning when they send their children out to wait at a bus stop that those children
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will be identified as a member of their ethnic group who are paranoid about wearing any
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kind of religious insignia that associates them with their ethnic group.
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You feel that their risk of being the victims of random abuse and violence has dramatically
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escalated from having already been the highest of any ethnic group.
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I mean, we used to hear a lot about, you know, attacks on Muslims or mosques and so
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on.
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When you actually dig into the data both in Australia and the United States, I don't
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know about Western Europe, the rate of attacks and violence against Jews and synagogues
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is four or five times the next most hated group.
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You know, there's a reason why mosques don't have gigantic bollards out the front and security
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all over the place in case someone drives a truck bomb into them, but every single synagogue
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does.
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So it's been tricky both emotionally and financially a lot of people cancel their subscriptions
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after they read that.
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So if you've ever been on the fence about subscribing to the sub stack, now would be
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a moment when you can throw a few shackles into the desire to have more independent and
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centrist voices, rather than the extremes.
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But to go through the criticisms in as far away as I can, the main one seems to be that
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talking like this in dangerous Jews, that it puts Jews at risk for Jews to speak out
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against Israel, which is a strange one to me.
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Because it strikes me as self evident that what puts Jews at risk is being perceived
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as synonymous with the IDF.
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If all Jews are defenders of and culpable for the actions of the Israeli defense forces
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in Gaza, doesn't that make attacks on them more justifiable, more morally permissible,
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than if Jews are a rambunctious, arguing group of heterodox people of varying degrees
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of faith, varying degrees of fidelity to Israel, a whole range of different beliefs?
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I mean, the self evidence of this, to me, is obvious when you just try to transpose it
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to any other ethnic group, or you look in your own heart, when search our own souls
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about our own bigotry.
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When I walked down the street these days, I was in a shopping mall the other day, and
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I saw a conservative Muslim family.
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The guys had big bushy beards, the women were all covered, and walking a few feet behind
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at the males, and I got to say, I thought to myself in a way that I wouldn't have prior
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to October 7th, if they knew that I was a Jew, how would they feel about that?
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If I was in an altercation with them about something else, about a parking spot, or disagreement
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about who was getting into the escalator first or something, then would that altercation
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go differently if they knew that I was a Jew?
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It probably would, and does my suspicion that that's the case rest partly on my belief
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that the conservative Muslim community is pretty uniform and conformist when it comes
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to their thinking about Jews?
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Yes.
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If I was familiar with lots of conservative Muslims and Arabs who had lots of different
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ideas about Zionism and about Jews, I would be much less likely to make snap judgments
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about them when I saw them in shopping centers.
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But the only thing that I ever hear out of the conservative Muslim and Arab communities
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is how Zionism is a partied ethnic cleansing and genocide, and they were saying this long
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before October 7th.
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They really had, as a community, an antipathy towards a Jewish state for a long, long time,
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and to the extent that they don't, to the extent that they were dissenting voices inside
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that community, which of course I'm sure there are, there are millions and millions of
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people we're talking about here, so there's as many points of view as there are spectrums
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in the rainbow, those voices are not amplified.
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Those voices are not being published on the main opinion page of the main newspaper
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on the weekend edition at the moment.
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So the question for me is just ask ourselves how much likely a society is going to be,
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a culture is going to be, to tolerate discrimination against a group when that group seems to be
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in lockstep with a policy that is reviled and rightly reviled.
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I mean, the war in Gaza and the way it is being conducted should rightly be something
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that we're ashamed of.
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You know, this is not, I'm not some people say, oh, you're just a self-hating Jew who's
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trying to throw a bone to the crocodile, hoping that the crocodile will eat him last.
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Trust me, this is not a cynical move in the hope that I can carry favor with people
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I disrespect on an issue that I don't truly believe in.
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I truly believe that it is implausible that Israel is the moral actor in Gaza at the moment,
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at this particular moment after all of what's already been accomplished in that campaign.
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So who does it serve for all Jews to remain in lockstep with the actions of Israel?
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Certainly not the average Jew who's walking down the street who wants a bystander who might
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be able to intervene in an instance of anti-Semitic violence to do so by giving the Jew the benefit
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of the doubt that they may not be a wholehearted, flag-waving, card-carrying supporter of the
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IDF.
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So I think the claim that it endangers Jews for Jews to speak out against Israel is not
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only wrong, but actually the opposite of the truth.
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The second critique of my position, of the sort of, I suppose speaking out against Israel,
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Jewish Zionist position, is to say why should Jews be expected to be responsible for a country
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in a way that no other communities are?
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And I'll quote you some of this from a piece criticizing my piece, which was in the Australian
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Ruput Murdoch's Broadsheet, which is the competitor to the publication that I was published in.
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This is by a gentleman who is the co-convener of labor friends of Israel and the co-writer
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of the book, boycotting Israel is wrong.
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He writes a piece in the commentary section, saying, double standard, why should Aussie
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Jews wear the collective blame for Israel's flaws?
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And I quote, on Thursday, Josh Zeps indulged in now routine feel-pinion in the age and
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the Sydney Morning Herald.
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Because his grandmother fled the Holocaust, Zeps imagines himself well qualified, despite
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lacking intellectual training, publications, or basic Middle East expertise, to urge Jews
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to abandon Israel and inject a hysterical dose of victim blaming into the surge of anti-Semitic
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hate and violence.
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Quote, Israel, the country made to save the Jews, he writes, is now the thing that most
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endangers the Jewish people physically, culturally, and morally.
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It's all depressingly familiar.
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This columnist writes, why are Australian Jews being told, I've skipped a few paragraphs
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here, why are Australian Jews being told yet again, and by a Jewish voice with no subject
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expertise, they must publicly wear the burden of Israel's flaws?
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Why should Jews alone among the world's diasporas be singled out?
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Why should any Jew feel obligated to perform emotional penance for the actions of the
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Israeli government?
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It is absurd, offensive, and ultimately counterproductive to assign collective guilt to individuals,
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simply because of their ethnicity or ethno-religious identity, but evidently not when it comes
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to Jews and Israel, suddenly the political is personal.
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In a way, no other national group is forced to endure, Jews are told their attachment
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to Israel is suspect, unless accompanied by a conspicuous ritual of shame.
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The hypocrisy is staggering, he's got a way with words this bloke doesn't he?
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The hypocrisy is staggering, who requires Palestinian Australians or any Arab or Sunni Muslim
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in Australia to be ashamed of any violence perpetrated by Hamas and formerly the Palestine
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Liberation Organization, who requires Russians or members of the Russian Orthodox Church
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to be ashamed of Russia's actions?
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You get the gist.
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So well, greatest respect, not really, he seems to be making my point, isn't that my point?
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My point is why do Jews have to be held accountable for the actions of the Israeli state?
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Why can't we assert the ability to distinguish ourselves from that state and say that it
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doesn't act in our name?
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So I mean, I actually send a message back to this bloke just to say who requires Palestinians
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or any Arab or Sunni Muslim in Australia to be ashamed of any violence perpetrated by
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Hamas and formerly the Palestine Liberation Organization?
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Well, the answer that is, I do, and I presume that he does.
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I presume that he would welcome an article by a Palestinian Australian or an Arab or Sunni
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Muslim in Australia denouncing the violence perpetrated by Hamas.
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And I suspect that he finds it a little bit fishy that there's such silence coming
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from those communities.
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I imagine that he would welcome an article by a Russian or a member of the Russian Orthodox
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Church denouncing Russia's actions in Ukraine.
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And I imagine that he finds it a bit fishy that they're so silent.
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This is exactly my point.
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Why is it that we have to take this tribalistic groupthink knee-jerk reaction to defending
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entities that proclaim to speak on our behalf instead of being independent-minded,
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reasonable people who make sense on our own terms?
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And don't give me this bullshit about not having expertise as if I lack intellectual
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training, publications, or basic Middle East expertise.
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I've got a degree in journalism that I spent decades reporting on the Middle East.
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What exact qualifications do you need?
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The whole point of my argument is that as a Jew, you have a presumed connection to Israel.
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Israel proclaims that connection.
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You don't need any additional expertise, although I do happen to have it probably more
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than this decade.
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But you don't need additional expertise.
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What you need is to be considered as part of a community that is held morally liable
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for the actions of one state.
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And it is important, now more than ever, for Jews to be able to articulate a vision of
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morality that is not hitched to the wagon of Israel, such that Israel and the IDF are
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not albatrossers around the necks of every single Jew on the planet.
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And let's be clear, this is independent of the question of whether or not you support
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one particular Israeli policy or another.
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I happen to be pretty heartened by the fact that Israel attacked Iran.
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And that's a pretty hawkish position.
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I also continue to be a Zionist, which is something that readers, Jewish readers of
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article seem incapable of understanding.
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Insofar as I do believe that it is legitimate for communities to conceive of themselves
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as a country.
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And when they are given a country by the international community, it's consistent for
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them to retain it.
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It's not consistent for them to settle another country or occupy another country or block
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aid another country, but it is perfectly consistent for them to have a right to sit on
29:39
land, even if it was acquired messily, and there was all kind of bloodshed and dispossession
29:44
in the creation of that state.
29:46
That is how the creation of states go down, and Israel is no different.
29:49
But you would have no idea that that is the thrust of my argument.
29:53
If you read, for example, a piece in the Jewish independent entitled, Buy Not and Zeps
30:01
have surrendered to despair.
30:04
We mustn't.
30:06
It's subtitled, Giving Up on Israel is neither a logical nor a fair response to its failures.
30:11
So we've addressed criticism number one of my Jews should be allowed to be critical
30:16
of Israel position, which is that it endangers Jews.
30:19
We've addressed claim two, which is why Jews held to this double standard when we don't
30:25
expect Americans to disavow America or Russians to disavow Russia or Muslims to disavow
30:31
and jihadism, even though to some extent we do expect that, also one last point on
30:35
this whole thing, okay?
30:38
Jews find themselves in a very strange position, because we are an ethnicity.
30:44
We are also a religion, and we are also, whether we like it or not, a country.
30:50
And some people are ethnically Jewish and non-religious.
30:55
Some people are religiously Jewish, but not ethnically Jewish.
30:59
And some people are Israelis, but they are not Jewish, they're Arab Israelis.
31:03
And they're not ethnically Jewish.
31:05
So there are these, there's a strange Venn diagram where you can sort of, to some extent,
31:11
pick and choose, or you can have it picked and chosen for you, the version of Jew that
31:15
you are.
31:17
This can lead some people into a kind of total logical gotcha, where they think they've
31:23
made a terribly clever point by saying why are Jews required to denounce Israel that
31:28
Russians aren't required to denounce Russia?
31:30
Well, hang on.
31:31
You've sort of just switched the meaning of Jew.
31:34
You've sort of just gone from the Jew as an ethnicity to the Jew as a nationality, because
31:40
Russia is a country.
31:44
Here's maybe a better way of thinking about it.
31:46
Suppose that Vladimir Putin, which he does, purports to be the leader of white Slavs.
31:52
He's a defender of Slavic culture against sort of Muslim invading hordes and against
31:57
gay families and rainbow western nonsense that seeks to undermine traditional Slavic
32:03
values.
32:05
Would it not then be justifiable for the Slavs of the world to say, well, hang on, no.
32:09
Russia is not us.
32:11
We are a distinct people.
32:12
It claims to speak on our behalf, but it is not the bill and end all of who we are as
32:16
a community, and not everything that it does is something that we endorse.
32:20
Similarly, Saudi Arabia claims to be the homeland of Muslims and Arabs.
32:24
It has two of the holiest sites in Islam.
32:27
The House of Saud proclaims to be the home of Islam, the home of Arabs.
32:30
It's got literally Arabia there in the name, but it would be legitimate for Arabs around
32:34
the world to say, no, no, no, no, that is not exactly the same as us.
32:37
We are an ethnicity that is distinct from the Saudi Arabian regime.
32:41
Ditto Persia.
32:42
I mean, there are Persians all over the place who are deeply, deeply critical of the mullahs
32:47
in Tehran.
32:48
And they're not regarded as being guilty of betraying their heritage, their Iranian heritage,
32:53
their heritage of their faith, of their traditions, of their culture, they're simply speaking
32:58
out against the regime.
32:59
So the people who are imposing the double standards, it really, it seems to me, are the Jews
33:04
who insist on all Jews being in lockstep with everything that Israel does.
33:08
Not the Jews like me who are claiming that we should construct a vision of our own ethnicity
33:12
and our own faith traditions, independent of the actions of the state today.
33:18
The third and final big misunderstanding that arises amongst Jews and Zionists and anti-Zionists
33:24
also on this question is the question of a country is not the same as its government.
33:30
And this sort of relates to the last point, relates to the question of Zionism in this
33:33
piece in the Australian, in the Jewish independent wrapper.
33:37
The columnist says the narrative arc for both binat, oh, binat is Peter binat who has
33:44
very little in common with me, actually, in our attitudes towards Israel.
33:48
He has devoted his entire career to being critical of Zionism, whereas if you're a regular
33:52
listener to this show, then you'll be familiar with my output since October 7th, you would
33:57
hardly regard it as being rapidly anti-Zionist.
34:03
It says the narrative arc for both binat and Zeps is familiar but illogical.
34:11
I'm Jewish with biological references or Hebrew terminology, too.
34:17
I publicly condemn Israel.
34:20
Three, I'm moral and if you don't speak up, maybe you're not.
34:27
Four, Jews no longer need a nation state.
34:32
Five, now I can sleep at night.
34:37
That is the summary of the article that I wrote.
34:41
You want me to read it again?
34:42
You want me to read the article again?
34:43
You want to read the article that I wrote again?
34:46
Do you remember it?
34:47
Do you remember enough of it that we don't have to read it again?
34:50
Because I don't know if you were listening, but this column is sure wasn't because the
34:55
first two thirds of the piece was about how misguided anti-Zionist opposition to Israel is
35:02
at the moment.
35:03
But let me just take these points one to five, one by one, one I'm Jewish.
35:09
Well, guilty is charged.
35:11
You're on a kind of too much about that, too.
35:13
I publicly condemn Israel.
35:15
I don't.
35:16
That's not my stick.
35:17
I mean, yeah, in this piece I did, but it's not my stick.
35:21
Three, I'm moral and if you don't speak up, maybe you're not.
35:25
Well, I mean, I don't say that in so many words.
35:32
It's sort of a cheap shot to claim that someone writing an op-ed about morality is saying
35:39
that they're moral because isn't that the subtext of basically every moral argument?
35:45
I mean, like the person who's writing this column presumably is doing so because she wants
35:52
to demonstrate that she's right or at least more right than me.
35:56
Why would you write the column if the subtext wasn't that you're right?
35:59
So I guess guilty is charged on that one.
36:02
Point four, Jews no longer need a nation state.
36:04
I've never said anything like that.
36:06
Certainly not in that piece.
36:09
Five, now I can sleep at night.
36:12
Trust me, lady.
36:13
I have not been getting a lot of sleep in the days after publishing that particular piece.
36:17
Thanks mostly to misguided critiques from people like you who don't seem to have actually read the piece.
36:23
She writes, the claim that Jews shouldn't have a nation state because we can't handle power
36:28
is itself an anti-Semitic trope.
36:31
Other people's have states, borders, governments, often terribly flawed,
36:36
imperfect countries scatter the world.
36:39
Why are Jews uniquely disqualified to have our own country?
36:43
Israel's government deserves scrutiny.
36:45
It should be better, a lot better, but collapsing a government into the question of a country's right to exist
36:52
is intellectually dishonest.
36:55
Well, I agree with her.
36:57
It would be intellectually dishonest.
37:00
If that were what I had fucking done, which it wasn't,
37:05
she writes, we need progressive Zionists to be confident and informed understanding Israel
37:10
to criticize policies, yes, but not to question the country's existence every time we feel discomfort
37:15
or grief, by and out and zeps want to give up on Zionism.
37:19
Hang on, hang on.
37:21
Maybe I've brought this upon myself because it was a punchy way to make my point
37:30
to say that it's time for Jews to abandon Israel,
37:33
which if you only read those seven words or whatever and you ignored the preceding 1143 words,
37:40
you might misunderstand to mean that all Jews in the world should give up on Zionism.
37:46
But I did choose the words carefully and I preceded them with the words
37:51
until Israeli politics can radically reorient itself.
37:55
Until Israeli politics can radically reorient itself,
37:59
Jews should stop reflexively justifying everything that Israel does.
38:04
That is the point.
38:05
Now, that's a bit clumsier and clunkyer and more ugly to put on the page than to say that Jews should abandon Israel.
38:10
If you read the whole piece, it's obvious that what I'm saying is that diaspora Jews should stop carrying water
38:15
for everything that the Israeli state does.
38:17
We should stop reflexively insisting that we defend all of its actions until such time as it gets its shit together.
38:25
That is a very different claim than saying that Jews don't have a right or the ability to construct a state,
38:32
to run a state and to defend a state, none of which are anything that I've said.
38:37
This article in the Jewish Independent wraps up by saying,
38:41
a diaspora Jewish communities can do better than surrendering to despair.
38:47
We can reach for a more nuanced, confident, hopeful, optimistic, generous,
38:52
and literate approach to being Jewish in the modern world.
38:57
Here, here.
38:59
Yes, and the way we find a more nuanced, confident, hopeful, optimistic, generous,
39:04
and literate approach to being Jewish in the modern world is by allowing ourselves as a community
39:09
to wrestle openly without conflictedness about the things that the Israeli state is doing,
39:14
instead of taking an off-the-shelf version of Jewishness, which Bibine Netanyahu has manufactured for us.
39:20
This is not about Israel's right to exist.
39:25
This is about the right of diaspora Jews, not to have to carry water for it.
39:31
And the last point I'll make about this, which I think is useful to bear in mind
39:34
when we're arguing about all these questions, is that...
39:39
So a lot of people have been critical of me saying that I'm just naive, right?
39:43
It's like that article in the Australian saying like he's not an expert,
39:46
he doesn't understand the Middle East, he doesn't understand the complexities
39:49
about what Israel is up against.
39:51
And one text message that I got from a very prominent Jewish Australian said,
39:57
Josh, I read your article, it was, in my view, ignorant of history
40:01
and inviting more violence against Israel and World Jewry.
40:05
We've done away with that claim that it invites violence.
40:08
I think you got it badly wrong, this person wrote,
40:11
I was just in Israel and you should go and see for yourself who they are and what they're up against.
40:17
And I like this person and I respect their opinion.
40:21
It's the wrong question.
40:23
The question isn't, what is Israel up against and who is to blame?
40:29
But I think I made it perfectly clear in the article where I'm talking about
40:33
how Hamas is much worse than Israel and out of all of the various actors in the Middle East
40:38
from Iran and Hezbollah, Arab autocrats and jihadists,
40:44
Israel is the most moral actor in the Middle East.
40:47
You know, a lot of people will object to that, to that,
40:50
but I believe that a strong case can be made.
40:53
But that's not the question.
40:55
The question isn't, am I better than my enemies?
40:58
It's, what am I doing and what do I hope to achieve?
41:02
And in the months after October 7th, it could be argued that there was a legitimate
41:08
both moral and strategic case for Israel's actions.
41:13
There came a tipping point at some time earlier this year
41:17
when I think it was obvious to all fear-minded people who weren't carrying water
41:21
for the Netanyahu government that that was no longer the case.
41:25
And whatever you think of who's better or worse, who's justified or unjustified,
41:30
the facts on the ground are that the strategy was taking Israel nowhere.
41:34
The strategy was taking Palestinians nowhere.
41:37
The strategy was taking the region nowhere.
41:40
However, now we have the war with Iran.
41:46
And it may surprise many people to learn that when I heard about the Israeli attacks on Iran,
41:55
I was pretty heartened.
41:58
Let's just pull back here.
42:01
Iran is a middle class, highly educated, sophisticated culture.
42:07
It is not a backward group of warring tribes,
42:11
sorry to use pejorative language,
42:13
if we're talking about the hill tribes of rural Afghanistan,
42:16
you know what I mean by backward? I'm sure they have very advanced and wonderful cultures
42:20
that are very rich and it's a whole tapestry of life.
42:23
I'm not being Western and provincial and parochial by saying they're backward,
42:27
but they're fucking backward, right, in comparison to like Persia.
42:30
And in the 70s, you had a revolution that has suppressed and thwarted that country
42:37
and created the most horrendous thicket of violence and nonsense
42:43
and jihadist ideology across the whole region,
42:46
from the Houthis with their child soldiers and their incredible terrorist attacks,
42:52
to Hezbollah, which has deranged and broken Lebanon.
42:55
It's not all Hezbollah's and Iran's fault.
42:57
Of course, like Israel tries to muddle around with it and smashes that country apart.
43:01
I mean, the lives that have been ruined, the institutions that have been ruined,
43:04
the countries that have been steamrolled by the nutty fucking Ayatollas in Tehran
43:10
had things gone differently.
43:13
There would have been a lot of bloodshed spared
43:16
and there would have been a lot of civilizational flourishing that was possible.
43:20
And do I wish that we lived in a world in which we could unwind that revolution
43:24
and have a prosperous democratic Iran without military intervention?
43:30
If we lived in a world with a very wise and prudent American president
43:33
and a robust and strong and economically dynamic European Union
43:38
who could bring Iran to the table with sober-minded leaders in Tehran
43:43
who understood how best to empower their own people,
43:47
of course, I would rather do it that way.
43:50
That's not the world we live in.
43:52
The world we live in is a world with a President Trump
43:55
and a fairly moribund European Union with the exception possibly of France and Emmanuel Macron.
44:02
And an Iranian regime that was getting closer and closer to the point at which
44:07
there would be no more military options left on the table.
44:11
So a world in which Iran is not able to have nukes
44:17
is a better world, or other things being equal, than a world in which Iran does have nukes.
44:23
A lot is hinging, though, on that little phrase, all other things being equal.
44:28
It is risky to undertake an action like this.
44:32
It is also policy.
44:35
And I don't proclaim to know enough about the future to know that it's the wrong decision to have made.
44:41
I've got to say, the actual pulling off of the operation seems at the moment of recording at least.
44:47
I could be proven wrong in three seconds because of some horrifying backlash to have been a masterstroke.
44:53
I highly recommend a podcast by Dan Senar called Call Me Back.
44:59
He's an Israeli who interviews mostly Israeli security experts, politicians, philosophers, thinkers about modern politics and strategy and security.
45:11
And he had a fascinating sort of pulling back the curtain on what went on.
45:15
The fact that BB was able to play with the timing of Trump's second round of negotiations with the Iranians
45:23
to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security.
45:26
The fact that Israel did not have the air power to be able to take out the thousands of missiles that were stationed on Iranian launch pads
45:36
ready at a hair trigger to fly towards Israel.
45:40
So instead they managed a covert operation in which they left some breadcrumbs intellectual intelligence service breadcrumbs to lure the senior Iranian military officials into the same place at the same time.
45:54
So the first strike that the Israelis could undertake was to assassinate all of those people such that they had sort of a four-hour window to go around mopping up all of the missiles.
46:06
And the people who were in control of the missiles didn't realize that their boss was dead and that their boss was dead.
46:12
And so there was nobody left to give the order to fire the missiles.
46:16
The fact that Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, seems to have actually had people on the ground in Iran constructing miniature explosive drones,
46:26
which were able to take out some of the smaller targets that the fighter jets weren't going to have time to get to.
46:33
It is dazzling. And when you have a sort of a paper tiger regime, a regime with feet of clay, as we might say, a tired, weary regime,
46:43
its people don't trust it anymore. It's sort of running along on the exhaust fumes of an old revolutionary fervor that has long since passed.
46:53
It is not the craziest thing in the world to try to give it one final push over instead of bolstering it and sitting down across from it and giving it credibility and giving it credence and seeing what it would like and seeing how it thinks about the world.
47:08
Let's all have a cup of tea and let's have some scums and figure out what you're going to do.
47:12
I understand that from the perspective of Israel, October 7th changed everything, as 9-11 changed everything for America.
47:20
And they are blundering in massive ways, I believe, at the moment. I think the war in Gaza has been an unjustifiable moral calamity.
47:27
But at the same time, I have some sympathy for the Israeli position of when you are surrounded by a half billion Arabs who live in states that almost universally agree that you shouldn't be there and that they will do anything to get rid of you with the exception of the states that are whose leaders are inching towards the Abraham Accords, which is also enormously welcome.
47:47
Notwithstanding the fact that the Arab street completely disagrees with a reproach with Israel, but when you're surrounded by those kinds of neighbors, it is necessary to take the front foot and it's not good enough for us just to wait and see when people have always said that they're going to kill us and then every opportunity they have they do.
48:08
There's a piece in the Australian Broadcasting, published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this morning by their America's editor who's a very learned, I would say, anti-Israel voice, but a very well-established, incredible popular Australian columnist and has been a bureau chief and a foreign correspondent for the National Broadcaster and all kinds of foreign locales currently stationed in Washington, DC.
48:34
And just as a way of pointing out finally, the persistent, consistent soup of bias that we're swimming in in all of this, he writes a very measured piece, which includes, though, this paragraph.
48:54
There are serious questions about whether Israel's bomb first then regime change later policy is achievable.
49:02
Rather than pave the way for regime change in Gaza, Israel has left in its wake a slice of land so heavily bombed that it is now unlivable and yet it's 2.1 million inhabitants are still trapped inside the enclave as Israel continues to bomb it.
49:18
Okay, that's fair enough. He's making the point that Israel thinks that regime change in Iran is likely to take place if they bomb and if they don't.
49:27
But the lie to that is put by the fact that there's no regime change in Gaza and they've been bombing that and all of the people are trapped there.
49:38
Why are the people trapped in Gaza?
49:41
The people are trapped in Gaza because, well, I mean, if you want to blame Israel, you can blame Israel and say that Israel could have let them out.
49:49
There's also a border with Egypt and the whole world view of the Trump Riviera and the whole world view of the far right hawks who people like this journalist are so critical of in Israel,
50:05
which is that Gaza should be repatriated to better places to live in the Arab world is regarded as so taboo because it undermines aspirations of Palestinian statehood.
50:17
In the same article, this journalist editor correspondent goes on to say,
50:23
it was Trump who first flagged the idea of clearing Gaza of Palestinians and turning it into a quote Riviera of the Middle East.
50:30
Trump faced a huge backlash from the Arab world and key European countries and then appeared to drop the idea.
50:37
But Israel has taken up the idea with enthusiasm and made it policy. Netanyahu has even gone so far to make it a condition for any ceasefire.
50:48
Hang on, this is head spinning. On the one hand, we're saying that Israel is evil for trapping 2.1 million people in the enclave while they bomb it.
50:59
And on the other, we're saying Israel is evil for trying to export those 2.1 million people out of the enclave.
51:06
The reason why Palestinians are trapped is because all of the other Arab states fucking hate them. They look down on their note, they know that they talk to anyone, any Emirati, anyone from Qatar, they think that the Palestinians are vermin.
51:17
They talk about them in the most discriminatory, I mean, I'm talking about a widespread view of Palestinians. They will go out in the streets and they will burn some Jewish shit down.
51:26
They will burn American flags and they will chant anti Zionist slogans. But the moment it comes time to give refuge to a single Palestinian, absolutely not.
51:35
Absolutely not. They regard them as being filthy jihadists.
51:39
So the Onus falls entirely on Israel, a country with a different religion and a different ethnicity and a different democratic system to absorb an Arab population that no other Arab country with the same ethnicity and the same language and the same traditions and the same religion, the same faith tradition.
51:57
They're not going to take them, but it's the job of the black sheep Israel to do their work for them. And the moment you suggest that there's any fault on the part of Egypt, which has a border with Gaza, Egypt didn't have to respond on October 8th by pushing tanks towards the border of Gaza to make sure that not a single Gaza refugee got out, which is what Egypt did.
52:18
They didn't have to respond that way. And yet the only responsibility that we hear from journalists like this one in big mainstream objective publications like this training broadcasting corporation.
52:29
The only blame for why garsons are trapped in Gaza is on Israel at the same time as they say that it is beyond the pale for Israeli leaders to say that garsons should leave Gaza.
52:44
Talk about being damned if you do and damned if you don't. You say that garsons should be allowed to leave you're an ethnic cleanser.
52:50
You say that garsons should stay, you're a genocidal. You either want to kill them or expel them.
52:57
Anyway, not an easy situation to be in. I empathize since I have not had an easy rhetorical situation to be in since writing that piece.
53:04
I don't think this is useful. I hope it helps clarify a few things. Namely, I believe it's important as important now as ever for Jews to be able to articulate a vision of Jewishness that is independent of Israel.
53:17
I don't believe that that in dangerous Jews. I think it makes Jews safer because it puts the lie of anti-Semites. It lays bare the lie of anti-Semites that all Jews are basically just synonymous with the IDF.
53:31
I think that it's reasonable for Jews to say that they shouldn't be held accountable for the actions of Israel if they actually behave that way and stop reflexively defending everything that Israel does.
53:42
I don't think it's viable for people to criticize dissident Jews.
53:48
Why are we held accountable for the actions of Israel when other nationalities and ethnicities aren't? What about the Muslims and what about the Russians?
54:00
I believe that when we hear more Jews distance themselves from Israel in ways that are nuanced and sophisticated and still remain Zionist.
54:10
The claim that a country isn't its government is also just worth wrestling with. Of course a country isn't its government. Of course you can oppose the policies of the Netanyahu government without being anti-Israel and certainly without saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist or a right to defend itself.
54:27
My point is that there comes a point in the life of a nation's polity. There comes a point in the evolution of the thinking of its demos. There comes a point in just the sort of spiritual evolution of a nation at which if it continues to persist in a strategy of dominion over the Palestinian people.
54:51
With no expectation of change, building settlements a pace, militarizing the West Bank, blockading and occupying and obliterating Gaza, there does come a point at which it's not simply a question of, well I don't like this particular policy but I'm not going to speak out against the country.
55:09
The country does become synonymous with the policy at some point. That doesn't mean that you stop being Zionist, it doesn't mean that you stop believing that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination, it doesn't mean that you claim that Israel should somehow be dissolved, it doesn't mean that you claim that the Palestinians have a right to return in unlimited numbers and swamp Israel.
55:28
What it means is that you hold the Israeli state to account, qua Israeli state. You hold it to account in a way that is bigger than just nitpicking about this Netanyahu policy or that Netanyahu policy. You make the Israeli state embody the vision of Jewishness that you would expect for yourself.
55:48
I hold myself to extremely high moral standards. I hold Jews to high moral standards. It is not unreasonable for me to expect the same of Israel.
56:02
Thanks, I'll see you next week.