Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / An Anti-Zionist & a Pro-Zionist on “Apartheid Violence” in the West Bank

Transcript

An Anti-Zionist & a Pro-Zionist on “Apartheid Violence” in the West Bank · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a Humans, welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas, a special bonus double-feature
• 0:09
  episode today.
• 0:11
  The uncomfortable question is this, does Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and
• 0:18
  the increasing violence by rogue Israeli settlers against Palestinians there call into question
• 0:26
  the legitimacy of the Jewish state?
• 0:29
  Since the October 7th attack and since the Gaza War, a lot of criticism of Israel has
• 0:36
  broadened from perhaps a previously targeted critique of Israel's actions in the Palestinian
• 0:44
  territories to a more general criticism that the state itself, the state of Israel, is
• 0:52
  a colonial apartheid ethno-state.
• 0:55
  And while we've all been focused on Gaza, not enough attention has been paid to the larger
• 1:01
  and more populous part of the Palestinian territories, the West Bank, and Israel's actions
• 1:07
  there.
• 1:08
  I want to dig into the reality on the ground there, with two very different voices to give
• 1:15
  you the full range of opinions.
• 1:17
  The first is Andre X, who's a young Russian Israeli journalist and activist who lives
• 1:22
  in the Palestinian West Bank and who documents Israeli violence there for his 400,000 odd
• 1:28
  Instagram followers.
• 1:30
  First, in this episode, I speak with him to understand his impression of the facts on
• 1:35
  the ground from an anti-Israel perspective.
• 1:39
  And then to inject some historical context, I'm bringing back on the show, the American
• 1:44
  Israeli educator of Jewish and Israeli history, Charlotte Courchak, who was born in Los
• 1:49
  Angeles, moved to the Palestinian part of Jerusalem in 1997 and lived through the second
• 1:56
  into Fadah, sort of straddling Israel and Palestine at the time.
• 2:00
  So both of these guests today have lived in the occupied territories, they've lived and
• 2:05
  worked with and reported on both Israeli settlers and also Palestinian residents there, and
• 2:11
  both of them have very different ideas.
• 2:13
  Not so much about what is actually happening on the ground in the West Bank at the moment,
• 2:18
  but why?
• 2:19
  I didn't structure this as a debate, which can get heated and which can sort of throw more
• 2:24
  heat than light on the subject.
• 2:26
  I wanted to give them each time to flesh out their own thoughts, their own opinions.
• 2:30
  We don't often do a feature episode like this, but the future of peace in the Middle East
• 2:35
  will inevitably hinge on the West Bank, at least as much as on Gaza.
• 2:42
  And it is indispensable to hear from both the anti-Zionist and pro-Zionist side about
• 2:48
  the occupation there.
• 2:50
  So first you'll hear my conversation with André X, and then Charlotte, this episode
• 2:53
  is unpayable so that you can get the whole thing.
• 2:56
  As always, if you believe in encouraging more of these kinds of conversations, instead
• 3:03
  of hot takes and clickbait and legacy media echo chambers, do subscribe.
• 3:08
  It is what keeps the lights on, what keeps us going.
• 3:11
  Enjoy the one I'm only, André X.
• 3:21
  Just tell me a little bit about, so where do you live, what is your life like, what do
• 3:26
  you do?
• 3:27
  I mean, I live no-wording particular.
• 3:31
  I have an apartment in a, in Abel Estinian city, the West Bank, I generally don't see
• 3:38
  which, you know, to prevent targeting, but I don't really live there either, I move
• 3:45
  around all the time, I don't really stay anywhere for longer than a couple of days.
• 3:50
  So, yeah, what I do is I cover West Bank, Army and South of Ireland against Palestinians,
• 4:01
  and this is what I've been doing full time for the past year and a half, and on and off
• 4:06
  for the past two years, half years.
• 4:09
  Are you a journalist, do you think of yourself, what do you write on the customs form when
• 4:12
  you have to describe what your occupation is?
• 4:14
  Yeah, I write a journalist, yeah.
• 4:17
  And you grew up in Russia?
• 4:19
  Yes, yes, I grew up in Russia and I studied in the UK.
• 4:23
  What brought you to Israel?
• 4:26
  Initially, it was just, you know, because Russian-rated Ukraine, and there was a sharp
• 4:35
  increase in the refreshment there, and, you know, being a political journalist in Russia,
• 4:42
  it's not something that is particularly fun or safe, so, yeah, I needed some more.
• 4:49
  You weren't interested in becoming cannon fodder at the Ukrainian frontline?
• 4:54
  Yeah, I mean, like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't agree to that, I mean, jail instead, but it's
• 5:04
  not.
• 5:05
  So, I get a lot of the easiest passport that I could.
• 5:07
  I got this very passport, and at that time, I did not know where I was coming to.
• 5:14
  What did you think you were going to?
• 5:16
  I had this, I had a very cursory understanding of what's going on, like, I knew vaguely
• 5:22
  about, when I'm a occupation, I knew vaguely about whatever conflict, but it took some
• 5:31
  time of going around and talking to people to become absolutely horrified and what's
• 5:36
  happening, and, you know, just the principles in which this whole country is built.
• 5:44
  And once I learned more, I realized that, like, I need to either leave or start doing
• 5:49
  something about it.
• 5:51
  What was your first experience in the West Bank?
• 5:57
  In the West Bank?
• 5:59
  Like, how does someone, because a lot of Israelis are completely insulated from, you know,
• 6:03
  the Palestinian territories, what was it that drew you there and took you there, and what
• 6:07
  was it like?
• 6:08
  Yeah, I mean, my very first experience was when I was thinking the Jericho by a tour guide,
• 6:17
  and he, like, was explaining stuff, and I remember that we were driving by Palestinian
• 6:23
  veteran villages on the way to Jericho, and the only, he was like, he was a tour guide.
• 6:28
  He told, he was like, talking about a lot of stuff about, like, the history of Jericho
• 6:33
  and whatever, but the only comments that he said about the Palestinian veteran communities
• 6:41
  there is that these are veterans, they sell weapons, that's it, that was, that was the very
• 6:48
  first thing that I heard, it sounds to be, like, that's not quite right, like, that
• 6:52
  can't be the end of the story here.
• 6:54
  Right.
• 6:55
  Also, I, like, I live in Israel and I come from Russia, I'm pretty sure I'm familiar
• 6:58
  with countries that sell weapons, we're all in that game.
• 7:01
  Yeah, and that at some point in front of mine took me to Masafriata to the South
• 7:08
  Heaven House.
• 7:09
  To where, sorry?
• 7:10
  Where?
• 7:11
  To the South, Abraham Hills, it's the South of the West Bank, a place with some of the
• 7:17
  most fat loved islands and land grabbing, which has been going off for a very long time.
• 7:25
  And yeah, and there I learned, more than there I saw for the first time, you know, a sort
• 7:32
  of, an exceptional relation and an interaction with all of that and that's, you know, that
• 7:37
  is a very, very, to somebody who doesn't know where they're coming soon, to someone who
• 7:42
  is not prepared for this, it's very jarring.
• 7:46
  You know what?
• 7:47
  How?
• 7:48
  You know, it's a very physical confrontation.
• 7:53
  These people came and they started, like, physically, they brought the donkey to start
• 8:01
  plowing the land and then there was a whole, like, it turns into confrontation because
• 8:05
  they came to it, but to the agricultural land of the Palestinians who live there.
• 8:12
  And so, I like it turned into a shouting match and so on, it's like, at this point, it's
• 8:18
  not really surprising to me, it's not, like, it wasn't much, there was nothing there,
• 8:23
  there was just people shouting at each other and then the army of the police came and said
• 8:26
  that it's like, okay, no one uses the slander at all now.
• 8:29
  And it was just very jarring because they had never seen something like this before.
• 8:36
  I remember that I came to the activist who was there, who was sort of the heads of us.
• 8:44
  And I asked Turkey, what they call it, how often does this happen?
• 8:48
  Because in my mind, like, this, this can't be, there's no way this happens, like, once
• 8:51
  every two days, right?
• 8:52
  Like, this has to be, like, once in a month, the currents are, like, maybe, you know.
• 8:57
  And the response was, those happens, like, three, four times per day.
• 9:02
  And this was before, I think even before the election of the current government, I think
• 9:08
  there was under the quoting with liberal, previous Israeli governments.
• 9:12
  So long before it was happened, yeah.
• 9:16
  And paint the picture for us, Andre, when you say that they've brought a donkey and
• 9:19
  they're trying to plow the land, who's there they, what do the settlers look like?
• 9:23
  Are they ultra-orthodox dressed, are they dressed in normal clothes to do the Palestinians,
• 9:29
  look like?
• 9:30
  Were the Palestinians on the land?
• 9:32
  Like, what were you seeing?
• 9:34
  Um, which receptors look like?
• 9:38
  I mean, it depends.
• 9:40
  But they have a certain style of dress to them, which is not, it's like, this is not
• 9:46
  ultra-orthodox.
• 9:47
  Uh, this is, like, religious, but here it's, it's called, that you do me, uh, national
• 9:54
  religious, uh, the, the movements and they have like a specific type of dress to them.
• 9:59
  They wear these knitted, uh, keep us, they, um, uh, like you can, you can usually tell
• 10:07
  them, even whether it's not in the West Bank, when they're like, when you run into them
• 10:11
  in Jerusalem or something, like, you, you can tell, you can tell them apart, you can
• 10:14
  tell that it's, it's, it's now, it's this specific, um, branch of, I would say Israeli
• 10:22
  state, because it's like, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, uh, it's a project, it's
• 10:26
  not, it's not just a faction or a branch of Judaism or whatever, like, it's, uh, it's, uh,
• 10:31
  it's like, you know, you have the army, you have the police, and you have the satellite.
• 10:35
  And, um, and the satellite, the satellite looks about, um, about the same regardless of
• 10:40
  where you go.
• 10:42
  Um, and, uh, yeah, so at some point, in my comment section on Instagram, someone
• 10:52
  characterized them, um, someone wrote, white to the old, we always look like homeless pirates.
• 10:58
  And it's, it's unkind.
• 11:03
  That's, it's not entirely an actor, and they kind of do look like homeless pirates.
• 11:08
  Uh, I mean, the, the, like, the hills of youth, the, like, these kids who are used, like,
• 11:13
  on shepherding outposts, like, specifically for violence there, the, the, like, the hyper
• 11:17
  violent branch of the, of the settlement movement.
• 11:21
  And, yeah.
• 11:22
  And how do they join?
• 11:23
  How are they recruited?
• 11:24
  Where are they coming from?
• 11:25
  Are they people who were born and raised in Israel?
• 11:27
  Are they fanatical Zionists who've moved to Israel in order to enact a vision of, uh,
• 11:33
  settling the West Bank?
• 11:35
  Like, is it possible to generalize?
• 11:37
  Uh, about specifically the, uh, this sort of, uh, as I said, branch of, uh, of the
• 11:44
  state.
• 11:45
  Most of them are born and raised here.
• 11:48
  In general, settlers in the West Bank are, like, a lot of them are immigrants, a lot
• 11:53
  of them come for economic reasons, but, uh, uh, uh, the vast majority of them are not
• 11:58
  used for violence.
• 11:59
  The vast majority of them are used for lines capture.
• 12:02
  So the, like, kind of the, the more so, but, um, is to bring in the, uh, sort of forward,
• 12:10
  forward, uh, pushing the health abuse, uh, to clear anti-Italia and then to, you know,
• 12:17
  just physically put people move in immigrants and so on.
• 12:21
  And these immigrants that you move into that, uh, move into that area, who will not necessarily
• 12:27
  be, like, themselves violent towards Palestinians, most of them will not interact with Palestinians
• 12:32
  at all, uh, and they will be used in order to economically support these forward operating
• 12:37
  basins that will be doing the actual terrorist acts against Palestinians.
• 12:41
  And to, you know, just quote and quote creates facts on the ground, uh, to make sure that
• 12:47
  it's impossible to move, uh, you know, like, so the legal question has to just deal with
• 12:53
  the reality on the ground where we have a bunch of, uh, a bunch of them living there.
• 12:59
  And, uh, but the majority of them are, of the health abuse, we're born and raised here.
• 13:06
  A lot of them are recruited from, um, like, difficult families, a lot of them are orphans.
• 13:14
  And this is, again, this is a state sponsored thing very, very directly.
• 13:18
  Like, the state gives money to set the office to North Bank for taking in these quote,
• 13:24
  quotes, troubled youth and educating them and, uh, you know, the ideas, but it's like,
• 13:31
  oh, you come and spend this summer on a farm with sheep and you are taught the Torah
• 13:37
  and whatever.
• 13:38
  And it's like, this is the facade and in practice, they're using sort of child soldiers,
• 13:44
  uh, brainwashing kids from difficult backgrounds and from, you know, with the, with the
• 13:49
  troubled history, in order to enact violence, uh, upon the Palestinians and the West Bank.
• 13:56
  And, Andre, why are they, what, sorry, why are they not doing national service?
• 13:59
  I mean, why aren't they in the military, if they're, of military age?
• 14:03
  Uh, some of them are, are in military, some of them get exemptions.
• 14:08
  Some of them do it before or after the military, um, but it's also a lot of them will be
• 14:13
  before the military.
• 14:14
  So, like, you see a lot of literal kids being brought there, uh, sometimes as young as
• 14:19
  like 12, 13, um, and it's parts of the, you know, parts of the, um, parts of the concept
• 14:28
  because it's, uh, helps that it's like, you know, you, you're not allowed to fill minors
• 14:33
  so they can, hmm, so they can, you know, commence violence without be, without being registered.
• 14:39
  Uh, and it's like, if, if, uh, you know, if like one of them gets hurt, it's like a whole
• 14:45
  big deal.
• 14:46
  Like, it's, uh, you know, they're doing this in a specific way in order to, uh, in order
• 14:53
  to be more effective.
• 14:55
  It's, uh, a lot of them, I'm sure, go at some point into the national service.
• 15:01
  Now a lot of them going to the Army, uh, and for a lot of them, this is kind of the, the
• 15:07
  service that they do, uh, you know, uh, uh, and, uh, at the Yale University gives extra
• 15:12
  credits to students who go volunteer for the Ashramariosh and Ashramariosh is one of these
• 15:21
  set of organizations that the, the function of which is the expulsion of Palestinians
• 15:26
  off their land and the West Bank.
• 15:28
  Like you get the university credits for the fall, participating in ethnic cleansing, um,
• 15:34
  and yeah.
• 15:35
  So the sense that many people in the United States have about the settlements is, uh, that
• 15:41
  they are a regrettable necessity because, uh, there has never been a proper piece process
• 15:47
  that has been successful.
• 15:49
  The Palestinians have been intransigent in Israel's overtures of peace in the past.
• 15:54
  There was the second interferda.
• 15:56
  There was Oslo, there were all these attempts that fell apart and now you've got Israeli
• 16:01
  towns being built on uninhabited hilltops, uh, that strategic locations throughout the
• 16:07
  West Bank in order to keep the peace and keep calm.
• 16:11
  How does that mesh with what you see?
• 16:15
  Yeah, I mean, the security excuse is something that Israel uses for anything and everything.
• 16:21
  Uh, there are these two main arguments that Israeli propaganda makes for the settlements.
• 16:26
  One of them is security, um, and this one is particularly ridiculous, um, I can give
• 16:34
  just a very, uh, stark example from, um, um, about a week and a half ago when it was
• 16:43
  the Simfat Papa, uh, Jewish holiday.
• 16:47
  And I was in the village for my fair where the settlers, a few months ago, set up an
• 16:52
  outpost inside the community.
• 16:55
  The community is now surrounded by settlements, so there is like a large settlement which
• 17:00
  cut off half of the community and there is an outpost that is also inside like in the
• 17:04
  backyard of, uh, of a Palestinian house.
• 17:10
  And uh, during the holiday, the settlers came to the, from like all over the area, came
• 17:16
  to this outpost to celebrate and they brought the army who were wearing masks and holding
• 17:23
  guns and they like were standing in the middle of, of the, of the Palestinian village and
• 17:28
  the settlers brought the children, whatever, and they were praying and dancing and, uh,
• 17:33
  hanging out in their outpost inside the Palestinian village for a long time.
• 17:38
  And the sort of, and this is kind of, I think that event is the microcosm of the Zionist
• 17:47
  propaganda surrounding settlements.
• 17:48
  It's there.
• 17:49
  One is we bring the army for security because the Jews cannot safely pray, uh, and
• 17:56
  it's the meat of selves and celebrate their holidays unless they have, uh, the army
• 18:01
  protecting them.
• 18:02
  And two is just about the Jews returning to their lands, they're not doing, they're
• 18:06
  like, this is all they want and the Palestinians want them out.
• 18:10
  And this whole picture starts to fall apart when you realize that at the exact same time
• 18:14
  there, there's about a dozen, uh, Jewish Israeli activists in the village were invited
• 18:21
  by the village, you're welcome to celebrate any holidays that they want, uh, who are in
• 18:27
  the great, who are in the great relationship with the Palestinians there and the Palestinians
• 18:32
  would like have told me the rest of them, oh, I have told me many times that like, well,
• 18:38
  this is my home.
• 18:39
  I'm welcome to live there, to come there anytime and so on.
• 18:42
  And, um, I don't need an arm, uh, I don't need armed protection, only armed protection
• 18:49
  I could ever need was from the soldiers and from the settlers, um, and, uh, you know,
• 18:55
  that it couldn't that isn't it possible that the reason why they welcome you is because
• 18:59
  you say the right things about how evil Israel is and if you had a different opinion about
• 19:05
  Israel, then they would be less welcoming.
• 19:09
  Of course, they would be less welcoming.
• 19:10
  If I, if it was my opinion that they need to be, you know, erased off their land, of
• 19:15
  course, they wouldn't be less welcoming.
• 19:17
  Uh, well, no, not that, I don't mean that, I don't mean that, that far.
• 19:20
  I don't mean the, the, the expansionist Zionist vision of, like, Judea and Samaria.
• 19:26
  But, uh, you know, if you even had a moderate, uh, mainstream American opinion, for example,
• 19:31
  that, uh, Israel was, has a right to exist and was, was, and behaved properly in 1948,
• 19:38
  but the Palestinians didn't want their territories.
• 19:40
  So now they're stuck in a bad situation.
• 19:43
  But they still be welcoming to you.
• 19:46
  Uh, in general, in specifically individual, I find that my positions are more radical
• 19:54
  than than theirs.
• 19:55
  They, they're welcoming to many, many different people of many different, uh, for, for,
• 20:00
  from many different places and you always welcome to, you know, talk politics with them,
• 20:06
  to debate with them and so on.
• 20:08
  Uh, but at no point regardless of who you are, of what you believe, are you unsafe there
• 20:14
  because of them?
• 20:15
  This is just never the case.
• 20:17
  Um, and, uh, you know, the, the army and the satellites and so on, they're never answered.
• 20:25
  Like you, you see this from, you know, satellites walking alone in sort of Palestinian communities
• 20:32
  with their sheep harassing people, physically assaulting people, because they know nothing
• 20:36
  will happen to them.
• 20:37
  They know that, uh, there is no, uh, there is no danger there.
• 20:42
  The, the project that the satellites are enacting is an expansionist one, not a defensive
• 20:47
  one.
• 20:48
  Um, they, the goal is to capture land, like in a warfare where they have stolen half the
• 20:53
  village decades ago, and now they, they just want, they're, they're coming for the rest.
• 20:58
  Um, and this new outpost that was created, um, it was created inside the community.
• 21:04
  And now, you know, you get this, uh, full spicture of always just, just, just want to be
• 21:11
  Jews.
• 21:12
  They want their coming to their land.
• 21:13
  Uh, but in practice, that outquist was built, uh, by, you know, on levy, the person who
• 21:19
  murdered a friend of mine and, um, a, uh, a resident of that village, uh, just earlier
• 21:27
  this year, about three months ago.
• 21:30
  And, uh, these are the same people who come to physically assault, but Palestinians and
• 21:34
  so on.
• 21:35
  Uh, wait, what do you mean that this, uh, who was this person who got murdered?
• 21:42
  Yes, there were, uh, I don't have a lien, uh, Palestinian access and teacher was murdered
• 21:48
  and brought their lights by a settler by the name of the non levy who has been convicted
• 21:55
  for this, by the way, I know he's free.
• 21:58
  He's walking free.
• 21:59
  He's back.
• 22:00
  I'm just cautious about not, not, I don't want to defame someone by accusing them of being
• 22:04
  a murderer.
• 22:05
  If, uh, they're not, they haven't been found guilty of it.
• 22:10
  You're welcome to not, not the state's anything, uh, whatever it like because it's, it is
• 22:15
  a camera and are they actually filmed to their own murder or they was filming it and you
• 22:19
  can see that there's the footage of you non levy raising has handgun and pulling the trigger
• 22:24
  and honor that he was murdered by a shot in the chest, uh, by non levy and, uh, and
• 22:31
  of course he's walking free.
• 22:32
  There's no, there, there were no consequences for him whatsoever.
• 22:36
  He was on house arrest for two days and I, on the, I think, for the fifth day, he was
• 22:40
  back in the village and the same bulldozer, uh, destroying, uh, property belonging to,
• 22:45
  to the people.
• 22:46
  There is no-
• 22:47
  What is his claim and what is the claim of the, of the, like the military tribunals or
• 22:52
  whoever was overseeing his detention as to why it was a justified killing?
• 22:57
  Uh, the, uh, the, the, the Israeli state, uh, the, um, the, um, the, uh, court, and it's
• 23:06
  a civilian court because, of course, uh, within the Israeli part of the system, Palestinians
• 23:11
  are subject to military law and, uh, Israelis are subject to civilian laws.
• 23:15
  You have, like, these two parallel legal systems existing in the same, in the same area.
• 23:19
  Um, the, uh, uh, the civilian courts, um, decided to release, uh, levy on the basis of
• 23:29
  the fact that there is not enough proof that it was him who shot all the, which is, you
• 23:34
  know, especially ridiculous, even though it's filled on several cameras, including the
• 23:38
  camera of all the, who was himself murdered.
• 23:41
  Um, but this is, this is something that happens is everywhere, like, it's not that there
• 23:45
  is, there is, there are no consequences for, uh, for satellite attacks because it's,
• 23:50
  you know, consequences are reserved for crimes.
• 23:53
  And what's the crime is decided by the prevailing ruling order.
• 23:57
  It's not what's written in some book.
• 23:59
  It's just what the, the ruling or the decide and the ruling order, uh, here is, you know,
• 24:07
  deciding that this is the part of the, part of the whole point of, of, of what they're
• 24:13
  doing.
• 24:14
  Um, you know, murder, murder is a crime in under Israel civilian laws, Israeli civilian
• 24:20
  laws.
• 24:21
  So you're talking about a, a misapplication or what you regard as being, uh, you know,
• 24:25
  a travesty of justice in the application of the law, but it's still on paper.
• 24:28
  It's a crime.
• 24:29
  Yeah, but this is what, what is on paper is not, what is in reality.
• 24:35
  You know, there was, there was big debates about this and, uh, um, in the 19th century
• 24:39
  about what is the constitution and, uh, there was, uh, this philosophy for Ferdinand
• 24:44
  Lasal, who was arguing that like, yeah, you can brighten paper whatever you want.
• 24:48
  They're considered like the real constitution is still just going to be unwritten and is
• 24:52
  going to reflect the, the, you know, the balance of powers that you have in reality.
• 24:58
  And if we're looking at not, uh, not as was written, but what is the reality, uh, murdering
• 25:04
  Palestinians is not a crime in this country.
• 25:07
  It is, you know, it is rewarded and supported and done at the highest levels.
• 25:15
  Uh, and, uh, and you see this, you know, over a thousand Palestinians have been killed
• 25:19
  in the West Bank in the past, uh, uh, two years.
• 25:23
  And, uh, they're barely ever any consequences, uh, for anybody involved.
• 25:31
  What are the daily indignities and harassment do you see living in the West Bank from settlers
• 25:37
  against Palestinians?
• 25:39
  I mean, um, you have, I don't know if I would say hundreds, but lightly over a hundred
• 25:53
  per day across the West Bank, settler invasions of Palestinian communities.
• 25:58
  And the majority of them are gonna, uh, look very weird and benign, uh, where the settler
• 26:06
  is just gonna invade the community, uh, sometimes with a flock of sheep, sometimes just like
• 26:12
  that.
• 26:13
  And in maybe 80 percent, maybe sometimes 90 percent, that's where it's gonna end.
• 26:19
  That's it.
• 26:20
  He's gonna invade.
• 26:21
  He's gonna sit there for a few hours.
• 26:22
  Uh, he's gonna see what's happening, sometimes try to provoke something and leave.
• 26:27
  Uh, but in 10 to 20 percent of these cases, it's gonna escalate.
• 26:33
  And the settlers are gonna steal something, attack somebody, uh, bring their friends and
• 26:39
  launch a whole program, uh, in the worst case scenario, he's murder somebody, uh, and
• 26:45
  it's a, you never know if like when you're, you are sitting next to the settlers, you never
• 26:50
  know if that's, if it's the 10 percent or the 90 percent, you know, so you're always
• 26:57
  on edge.
• 26:58
  You never know when they're gonna escalate.
• 27:00
  And it's part of this psychological terror campaign where it's not just the, the, the,
• 27:08
  this sort of attacks themselves, but also the, whenever the attack can happen and doesn't
• 27:12
  or can't have an end does, um, and the attacks themselves can take many different forms.
• 27:19
  They throw rocks.
• 27:20
  They, uh, these people with clubs, they steal livestock, they burn down houses.
• 27:27
  Uh, they, you know, it's, it's, it's the, it's the regular sort of, uh, pogrom stuff,
• 27:36
  but it's a much like it's not an industrial-skilled murder that we saw in Gaza, uh, but it's
• 27:42
  more of a sustained long-term pressure campaign, which is escalating in its violence, but it's,
• 27:50
  uh, it's not, like they're not coming and burning down and killing everybody in an entire
• 27:55
  village, as we would have seen in like some other cases of ethnic cleansing, uh, in the
• 27:58
  past century, but, um, it's, uh, it's, it's much slower because they know that they have
• 28:05
  all the time in the world.
• 28:06
  They've been, they've been at it for decades and they know that like there's nothing really
• 28:11
  stopping them.
• 28:12
  Uh, so they're trying to stay within the confines of waters, uh, you know, of, of the media
• 28:18
  space where they were, where there isn't too much outrage over this and they can just
• 28:23
  continue until, you know, every Palestinian has gone.
• 28:28
  And when you try to document these skirmishes and these, uh, humiliations and indignities
• 28:34
  against Palestinians and you try to film it, what is the response from settlers and what
• 28:40
  is the response from the Israeli Defense Forces if they're there?
• 28:45
  Um, and it's sometimes, especially in the past, no less so, um, sometimes cameras prevent
• 28:52
  violence and you can, when you are there, documenting and they know that everything
• 28:57
  is, is, is reported and they know that like you have connections with the international
• 29:02
  media and, uh, lawyers and everything that's like they, they might be some actual consequences
• 29:07
  for it.
• 29:08
  If they, if they do something, um, and so in, in those, in those, like it can reduce the
• 29:16
  amount of violence, uh, sometimes it's just, you know, we just became targets.
• 29:22
  Uh, which has become targets, the activists, the journalists were covering stuff.
• 29:26
  Uh, the day before yesterday, two of my friends were beaten during a set of pogrom where
• 29:34
  the set was invaded the town of Muhramast in the central West Bank, masked armed, uh,
• 29:40
  with, um, um, some of them with, uh, with the salt rifles and some of them with, uh, iron
• 29:46
  bars and they attacked several people in the town and then they came to the nearby
• 29:51
  bedroom community where two of my friends were staying to documents in the human rights
• 29:56
  violations and the settlers attacked them with, with the iron bars.
• 30:01
  Uh, one of my friends, one of my friends had her arm broken and the other one, um, recorded
• 30:08
  stitches, uh, on her head and so it had the internal bleeding as she fell in the hospital
• 30:16
  is unclear what, what she would require surgery.
• 30:19
  Um, um, and there were 30 people, 30 settlers, uh, who attacked the town and then the village
• 30:26
  and then it burned down nearly the entire bedroom community, it burned down seven houses, uh,
• 30:32
  so it's largely gone now and the Israeli soldiers who arrived on the scene, um, as, like,
• 30:40
  to, to the two of my friends who were bleeding on the ground were laughing at them and saying
• 30:45
  that, um, like, yes, the, like, last, like, who are you on this access, uh, and, um, uh,
• 30:52
  and the, the soldier said all activists are more like your activists of terror and, uh, yeah,
• 31:00
  this is the common reaction.
• 31:04
  Have you been injured?
• 31:05
  Do you worry about getting injured?
• 31:07
  I've been injured.
• 31:08
  I've been injured many times, um, but a year ago, I was sitting in the head with a stick
• 31:12
  by a settler who tore my, um, ear drum and I couldn't hear much on my ear on one side,
• 31:21
  um, the next two months, I've been beaten by the army many times, um, less than a year
• 31:30
  ago, I was, um, kidnapped by, uh, the Israeli police from the middle of Tel Aviv.
• 31:38
  They shoved me into an unmarked vehicle, drove me across the country to a police station
• 31:42
  and then sat me down and beat me for about half an hour.
• 31:45
  Um, like, it, it happens, but it's, uh, you know, what happens to us, to people with
• 31:51
  Israeli passport, to international, is nothing compared to what is happening to Palestinians.
• 31:56
  You know, the world faced more attention when it's, uh, white people, when it's Jewish
• 32:01
  people who are, uh, the subject who, who are the targets of violence, rather than
• 32:06
  where it's Palestinians, uh, and, but, uh, you know, much worse things happen to prostitutes.
• 32:14
  When you were hit by the settler that, um, damaged your ear drum, did you report it?
• 32:20
  Is there anyone to report it to?
• 32:23
  Sure, you can make a, you can lodge a complaint with the police and there are thousands,
• 32:28
  there's not tens of thousands of complaints, uh, by activists and Republicans, which are
• 32:33
  being in, uh, Israeli police and nothing is, like, it doesn't result in anything.
• 32:39
  You can, you can file as many complaints as you want.
• 32:41
  They will just be there in the archives forever.
• 32:44
  I've seen a video on Dre of you interacting with, uh, Israeli defense force soldiers
• 32:51
  who are giving you a hard time until you show them your Israeli papers and they realize
• 32:56
  that you're an Israeli at which point their demeanor completely changes and they say,
• 33:00
  well, why didn't you say so in the first place as if, uh, as if they're absolved of any
• 33:05
  responsibility for mistreating you because they didn't realize you were one of them.
• 33:10
  How common is that double standard?
• 33:15
  I mean, it's, the business started the foundation of, uh, of the state.
• 33:20
  This is the foundation of the system that's, that we live under here.
• 33:24
  You have two types of citizens. Uh, you have the sort of, um, you, you have the ethnic Elise
• 33:33
  and you have the, the sub-humans and this is in the, in the, the intensity of the distinction
• 33:41
  depends on the who you're interacting with for the, for a large proportion of the settlement
• 33:46
  movements and for a large proportion of the army and for a large proportion of the government.
• 33:52
  It is a very, you know, like blood and soil biological distinction where you have the
• 33:57
  master race and you have the sub-humans and you need to exterminate these sub-humans in order to
• 34:03
  create, you know, like, free up the living space for the, uh, for the master race and this is,
• 34:08
  like, something that they're saying very explicitly. Um, but, uh, even when you're getting down to,
• 34:14
  uh, not, not to, to place it where, like, personal ideologies don't matter where it's a systemic thing.
• 34:21
  Um, where, like, you know, everybody's just following orders. It's, you know, this distinction stays.
• 34:28
  You have, um, uh, you know, in the West Bank, you have roads that are stateless specific and
• 34:34
  Palestinians are not allowed so, uh, to drive them. Uh, you know, every Palestinian city is, uh,
• 34:40
  surrounded by, by a bunch of checkpoints that you have to go through to, you don't want to enter
• 34:45
  an exit which occurs that will, um, and yeah, and you just see, see the difference when you, when
• 34:52
  you're crossing, uh, any checkpoint when you're going somewhere, the industry is meant that's, um,
• 34:58
  in the soldiers treatment towards you and in the soldiers treatment towards Palestinian
• 35:03
  night and day. And so there have been several examples where I was somewhere with my Palestinian
• 35:10
  colleagues and where the, the soldiers or the police would arrive and they would take an arrest
• 35:18
  or kidnap the Palestinian and just let everybody else go because they don't care and that they, uh,
• 35:25
  and with, with Palestinians who are on the military law, they're allowed to take them with no charges
• 35:30
  whenever they want anybody. They don't need to justify themselves. They, and they often use
• 35:36
  this opportunity to take people, hold them at military bases, torture them, beat them and they're
• 35:41
  just like several hours later, throw them on the side of the road and they don't even need to
• 35:47
  log it. Like they don't, they don't need to do anything. It's, it's, it's, they, they can just do it
• 35:50
  for fun and they do, like, they have done this to my friends many times. I mean, isn't there a
• 35:56
  military? The, the, the Israelis claim that there's a system of military tribunals and military
• 36:01
  processes. Uh, their rationale is that the Palestinians aren't citizens and they would, so,
• 36:07
  they're not entitled to civilian courts. It's a military occupation. So they are subject to
• 36:12
  military rules. Uh, but their claim is that they still, that soldiers still have to follow rules
• 36:17
  and they don't, they can't just torture people and detain them.
• 36:21
  Um, they can, and they do. That's, you know, they, they, uh, if there are rules, they, if, if, if, if this is
• 36:31
  their following rules, then, uh, then I don't know what these rules are. Um, and, and like the
• 36:38
  rules themselves are very lax, of course, uh, where, for instance, they kind of hold
• 36:44
  Palestinians, uh, West Bank, uh, Palestinians for months with no charges and with no access to lawyers
• 36:51
  and with the no access to their families. And this is something that they keep doing. There are,
• 36:57
  I think, around 4,000 Palestinians in, uh, Israeli jails who are held with no charges at all. Uh,
• 37:06
  some of them are children, some of them are women. And, uh, you know, just, just, it's not, it's not
• 37:12
  an arrest. It's not even a millich, it's not even a military tribunal. It's kidnapping. It's,
• 37:17
  this is what it is. When we can just clock you out of the streets without any sort of view
• 37:23
  process and the whole view for as long as we want. This is, this, this is kidnapping. And, um,
• 37:30
  Andrei, a lot of, a lot of people will, will be thinking, uh, military rule,
• 37:36
  sucks, occupations, suck. If the Palestinians wanted their own court system, their own
• 37:43
  justice system, they could have agreed to have a state in the 90s. They could have negotiated
• 37:49
  in 2002. They could have not walked away again in 2008. If you keep blowing up buses and
• 37:57
  rebuffing every attempt at a two-state solution because you want the whole
• 38:00
  of the Palestinian mandate for yourself, then you're going to end up in a sucky situation,
• 38:07
  but then's the brakes.
• 38:12
  Palestinians have never in the history of this land have never had the power to decide anything.
• 38:21
  There have been places where Israel has been forced to the negotiating table and the only
• 38:25
  places where like Israel has been forced to make concessions. But, uh, throughout this whole
• 38:32
  period since, since before the foundation of the state, there has been one actual site which
• 38:41
  holds the power here. At any point, uh, Israel could have decided this and decided that's,
• 38:47
  uh, you know, of forced this solution and that solution. Uh, but Israel has now been interested in,
• 38:53
  in a, in like an age sort of equitable solution because from the beginning, the concept
• 39:00
  was to create an ethnic state which is based on, you know, ethnic supremacy of only one
• 39:07
  group of people. And the other group is an obstacle to that. And even the sort of more liberal
• 39:13
  or leftist, uh, Zionist thinkers and actors in the past century have sort of acquiesced to that
• 39:21
  reality that's, uh, there needs to be that like, uh, for older, their democracy and liberalism,
• 39:28
  they want a state which is based on ethnicity and that, uh, that, that makes every Palestinian
• 39:35
  and obstacle. So, yes, but I understand your criticism to be criticism of the occupation,
• 39:42
  not criticism of the way that Arabs are treated in Israel proper, right? I mean, the, in 1948,
• 39:49
  yes, they, the vision of Zionism was a vision of a Jewish homeland where Jews would have
• 39:57
  dominance. Uh, but there was no expectation that they would be living on top of the,
• 40:03
  all of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Uh, that was supposed to be a separate state.
• 40:08
  And then Jordan invaded and Egypt invaded and they said, they occupied them for some decades.
• 40:14
  Uh, but are you, are you saying that the, the principle of Jews having self-determination
• 40:21
  is objectionable or the way that they are exercising dominion over the West Bank is what's
• 40:27
  objectionable? So, you have, uh, in terms of the, uh, concept of living on talk of somebody
• 40:35
  else's land and as sequencing and so on. This is something that has been done throughout the
• 40:39
  existence of the state. This is something that began before the, before the existence of the state.
• 40:43
  Uh, you know, the ethnic landings, uh, in Galilee, the expulsions of Palestinian farmers and
• 40:49
  shepherds began at the end of the 19th century with the concept of Abu Dhabi Rites where, uh, the,
• 40:55
  you know, new, new, new, coming landowners would just kick out for families from their lands
• 41:00
  in which they would be, they had been working for centuries. Um, and this is something that
• 41:05
  continued into the 20th century and then escalated in the 20s and then escalated into a full-blown ethnic
• 41:11
  cleansing campaign in 1948. And, uh, this is the exact same principle that they're utilizing
• 41:17
  in, uh, in the West Bank now. And, um, yes, I mean, a lot of people were getting kicked out of a lot
• 41:23
  of places in the 19, in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Jews were
• 41:28
  getting kicked out of all the Arab states. Jews were being slaughtered in Europe. There was a lot of
• 41:33
  movement of populations going on. Isn't the, uh, so why are Jews the only people who don't get, uh,
• 41:40
  sort of who have to have the, the people who have the people, uh, no, no, but I think you're,
• 41:46
  aren't you conflating the West Bank situation with the situation in Israel proper? Why does Israel
• 41:52
  have to be the only country that accepts back into its own land, one of the people who were
• 41:57
  kicked out 80 years ago? I think the West Bank is the very, it's a, it's a very, it's a very,
• 42:03
  the very logical continuation of everything else that was, uh, that was being done here. And they
• 42:07
  were very, they were very explicit about the fact that it would not end with the territories that
• 42:13
  ended up having at the end of 1948. Uh, even at the beginning during the, uh, peel commission, I think,
• 42:20
  when, uh, that allocates, it's just maybe 20% of, uh, of the entire land to, to design a state.
• 42:27
  Ben Goliun said that like we will accept any kind of partition because, you know, the population
• 42:31
  percentage is low. The power balance is not what we need, but we will accept any partition, but in
• 42:36
  the end, we want the entire territory between the river and the sea. And this has always been the
• 42:41
  concept besides a couple of years before the, before the six-day war, like, where there appeared a,
• 42:50
  movement within the, within the newly founded Israel that's decided, okay, no, we should settle
• 42:58
  on these borders. But even in 1949, 1950, 1951, if you look at the cabinet meetings of, um, Ben Goliun
• 43:08
  and his cabinets, which are, luckily for us, they're available, they're, they're, they're public.
• 43:14
  They are talking about, okay, so we've secured the, these borders, what do we take next? And there are
• 43:20
  three options. We can take the Sinai, what you take the West Bank, or we can take the southern Lebanon.
• 43:27
  And they are, you know, they're like, it's always been, the plan has always been to expand and so
• 43:32
  capture more land because the plan has always been to hold exclusive ethnic sovereignty over
• 43:39
  the entire land between the river and the sea. And after the six-day war, it came into fruition.
• 43:45
  This is, you know, they, they, they, they managed to get more. They were forced then by
• 43:51
  Carter and a bunch of other people to give back the Sinai, but there was nothing managed to keep.
• 43:57
  And so the goal has always been to, you know, to hold the land and to fold it under this
• 44:04
  regime of ethnic supremacy, but they set up on one half of the land and now they've set up on
• 44:09
  the other half. If Israel is as expansionist as you say it is, do you think they regret giving
• 44:14
  back the Sinai? Do you think that if they were offered the same deal as they had with Sadat
• 44:19
  on the Sinai for the West Bank? In other words, we hand it back and we get peace
• 44:26
  forever that most Israelis wouldn't take that deal.
• 44:33
  I mean, the state would definitely not take that deal. Well, right now Netanyahu, yeah,
• 44:37
  is a corrupt, is a corrupt little hack, but we're talking about the principle of science.
• 44:43
  Maybe, maybe no, no prime minister bar Rabin in the past, like in the entire history of the
• 44:55
  land, what it would accept a bad deal, I don't think. I must have started Rabin and I must have
• 44:59
  started. So there are two prime ministers, I think, in the history of this land, who would have
• 45:01
  taken that deal, the rest of them know. And it's, I mean, all mayor offered it.
• 45:05
  The offer that we can get into the domestic maneuvering of Israel, it's a whole complicated
• 45:16
  topic. I mean, it's all complicated, but I mean, I feel, Andre, this worldview that Israel
• 45:22
  is exclusively an exterminationist, expansionist apartheid state and always has been, although
• 45:30
  I'll agree with you about all of the barbarism that is currently enacted in the territories that
• 45:36
  it holds and in Gaza, that that requires a lot of generosity towards the Arab side and
• 45:46
  blindness to attempted overtures from the Israeli side. That like, it does feel a bit like the
• 45:54
  caricature that happens from the other side as well, where both sides have sort of cartoon caricatures
• 46:00
  of each other, which makes peace more difficult because they assume that the other is totally
• 46:07
  intransigent. It sounds a little bit like when I speak to Israeli, to hardcore Zionists who say,
• 46:14
  look, the Palestinians have never wanted peace. The Palestinians have always wanted to wipe us off
• 46:18
  the map. And I say, well, you know, there's some of them like that, but most of them probably just
• 46:23
  want to live in peace. Can't the same be true of Israelis?
• 46:30
  I think it's less relevant what the general populist believes. And in the moments, if you
• 46:39
  like poll Israelis and they have been poll as you see, but no, Israelis don't particularly want peace.
• 46:43
  Israel is after decades and decades and decades of having peace rebuffed. It's hard to,
• 46:51
  how long do you have to keep extending an order?
• 46:54
  It's Israeli speaking overtures for peace and those overtures being rejected. It's kind of not
• 47:01
  exactly what has been happening. You can make the same argument about Hamas offering many, many times
• 47:07
  to secure peace deal with the course of the past two decades and Israel rejecting it every time.
• 47:12
  Like it's again, like if you have the political side of things, you have the diplomatic side of things.
• 47:18
  And the diplomatic side of things is, it's a very complicated thing where like nothing, like
• 47:24
  no overture, no statement ever means what it says. And it's like a whole complicated topic.
• 47:31
  All the negotiations that have been happening over the course of this entire existence of the state.
• 47:42
  But in terms of what you said about the inside state being exterminationists,
• 47:50
  I don't think the inside history, like I don't think Zionism is extermination as by definition,
• 47:57
  even though currency that is the prevailing form of Zionism. But I do believe that Zionism is by
• 48:01
  definition an apartheid ideology because it is based on ethnic supremacy. And there have been
• 48:12
  attempts to kind of reconcile that this big debate between those, so you have the democratic
• 48:19
  state in Jewish state, which are of course irreconcilable because you can't have an ethnic,
• 48:22
  you know, like a state based on ethnic supremacy and have it be democratic unless you
• 48:28
  expel people and become exterminationists and the process and so on.
• 48:33
  Well, I mean, isn't this precisely the conundrum that Israel has backed itself into by occupying
• 48:38
  the West Bank? I mean, this is the central problem, right? If Israel was just...
• 48:44
  This has always been a central problem. No, no, but what I mean is it's not a problem in 1966
• 48:52
  before they occupied the West Bank because Israel was just continued to be Israel and 50,000
• 48:59
  people were expelled. They sold that problem for... Right. Well, yes, like I say, there were lots
• 49:05
  of movements of populations in the 40s, and I don't think it's fair for Jews to be the only ones
• 49:09
  who have to take in the refugees in perpetuity. If the Palestinians who were expelled in 1948
• 49:18
  had a country to live in, then we wouldn't be talking about this 80s on, right? They'd just be
• 49:23
  living in that country just as I'm living in Australia and my grandmother was expelled from her
• 49:28
  little Jewish town in Poland during World War II. It strikes me that if Israel had a significant
• 49:36
  majority Jewish population in Israel proper and no occupied territories, then Zionism would be
• 49:43
  consistent with democracy. It has created a problem for itself by being incapable of solving the
• 49:49
  Palestinian question by now presiding over all of these people who it either has to make citizens
• 49:55
  and give the vote to or decolonize. But it's just kind of a continuation of the same problem,
• 50:04
  isn't it? And it's being solved in the exact same way where the problem is a presence of
• 50:11
  a population which is breaking your ethnic majority, which you're trying to solve by a
• 50:16
  ethnic-click-lanching population. It's the exact same thing that we did in the
• 50:21
  in the territories that are now internationally considered Israeli territory, and this is what
• 50:27
  they're doing now in the rest of it in the West Bank. It's the same problem and the same
• 50:34
  solution that they're doing. This is kind of just the continuation of the tradition.
• 50:38
  And I mean, I would just say the only difference is that when it was done in Israel,
• 50:45
  it was in the process of the creation of an internationally recognized country, whereas now
• 50:50
  it's being done in contravention of international law on other people's land, which makes it a bit
• 50:54
  different. The settlements themselves, sometimes people have an idea about what the settlements are,
• 51:00
  and I must say I was naive as well, which is that a big construction company comes to an empty
• 51:07
  part of the West Bank and builds some fancy houses with swimming pools and golf courses
• 51:13
  in a little town in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes there are skirmishes at the edges
• 51:18
  between local Palestinians who wander off their farms, but really it's a self-sufficient,
• 51:23
  self-contained community. To what extent is that true and to what extent are people coming into
• 51:29
  pre-existing structures that are built and actually occupying them? Like what is a settlement?
• 51:38
  I mean, I think the majority outside of the East Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem there are a lot of cases of
• 51:45
  just physical houses belonging to Palestinians being taken over. In Hebron also you have
• 51:50
  that where you have entire Palestinian families being kicked out of their houses and the
• 51:57
  the settlers moving in to live in them under the guard of the army, but the majority of the
• 52:07
  houses where settlers live are built for them and there is a large construction industry around this
• 52:14
  and a lot of them pre-fabbed houses that are built just very quickly, just to accommodate as
• 52:20
  many people as possible, especially in the small outposts that are used in the terror outposts
• 52:26
  that are used to launch attacks against Palestinians. Those are usually pre-fabbed houses that you
• 52:31
  can erect in like a couple of days and you have like a whole new settlement, a small one but an
• 52:39
  effective one and you know becoming an a terror outpost for the area. And of course all of them are
• 52:49
  built on land that's that belongs to somebody in the case of Umakhir as I said, it is built inside
• 52:57
  the community like it's in the back of their house, of Palestinian house and it's not
• 53:06
  it's not accidental. Of course the a lot of the settlements are built specifically strategic
• 53:13
  locations in order to cut communications between Palestinian villages in order to take
• 53:19
  strategic hilltop locations to you know then launch attacks from there on the on the people going
• 53:26
  between places on the people you know in the in the communities down in the valleys and so on,
• 53:35
  you have you have the example of the settlements which wasn't it was established as a settler
• 53:42
  outquaste but now has sort of become a settlement of Khavat Mahon in the south of Hebron Hills that
• 53:49
  cuts communications between two Palestinian villages, Tuba and Tawani and you only have one
• 53:56
  school in the area in Tawani so the children of Tuba used to walk because it's just like a 15 minute
• 54:02
  walk from from from one village to the other but then the children started getting attacked by
• 54:08
  settlers every time they go to school and Khavat Mahon was situated in the strategic
• 54:14
  location specifically between these two villages in order to make it easy for the settlers to
• 54:19
  attack residents moving between them whatever they want and now it's impossible now you have to drive
• 54:23
  around and the drivers about half an hour like the drivers longer than the walk would have been
• 54:29
  adjusting norms to get from my community to the other their neighbors and so yeah and now with
• 54:36
  the establishment of like very very small outpost where sometimes you will have no permanent
• 54:40
  population at all where you have like these like one or two people maximum you can just surround
• 54:46
  the community with them you can set up an outpost inside the Palestinian village and like with
• 54:54
  the outpost the explicit goal is to just clear out as many people as quickly as possible
• 55:00
  and then on top of that you move in a regular you know just just like regular civilians who are
• 55:09
  and and then they turn into these big settlements that have the reputation of first oh this is
• 55:15
  that this is a corner quite good settlement this is this is okay they're just living there
• 55:20
  and so then there will be just living there the as I said they won't do the violence they won't
• 55:25
  even interact with the Palestinians 99% of the time but they're going to be instead the sort of
• 55:32
  supply depots of the of the of the you know arms settlers and just you know the the location of
• 55:43
  of land capture so Andre we have sometimes seen a freeze on settlement building being part of
• 55:50
  an Israeli concession to various peace processes now that there is no peace process whatsoever
• 55:57
  what is the pace of settlement expansion that you see
• 56:06
  I mean it's it's unprecedented right now you have the highest
• 56:11
  rates of that it's been going this sometimes it's been slowing down sometimes it's been
• 56:17
  speeding up of the course of the whole of the past six decades right now it is at its peak
• 56:26
  because you have settlers controlling like you have West Bank based settlers in control of the
• 56:33
  government to a large extent and they are putting more resources they have more resources available
• 56:38
  to them than ever before so now it's the highest rate of violence and the highest rate of
• 56:45
  settlement expansion we've ever seen I have friends in Israel who are definitely not
• 56:51
  expansionist and they're not bigoted people most of them are labor supporting peace nicks
• 56:59
  but they have a fatalistic sense after October 7th of you know what we got rid of the settlements
• 57:06
  in Gaza and yes we can quibble all until the cows come home about how Stymied Gaza was by
• 57:15
  the blockade and by having to live under the conditions that it was living in being surrounded by
• 57:20
  Israel and Egypt not exactly being supportive of Hamas nonetheless they feel like that was the
• 57:29
  lesson about why you need settlements and that was the sad reality of like you Hamas is now
• 57:35
  apparently more popular in the West Bank than Mahmoud Abbas is so if we removed all the settlements
• 57:42
  what becomes of the West Bank and do we just end up with a gigantic Gaza and a gigantic
• 57:48
  Iranian-backed terror regime in the West Bank do you do you think they're wrong in those fears?
• 57:57
  I think that's the truth in the exact opposite direction in that sense I think four is long as there
• 58:06
  is violence oppression and apartheid that Israel has been enforcing here for throughout its
• 58:14
  existence there will be resistance to it there is no there is no case of repression where the
• 58:21
  resistance has suddenly gone and there are two wrong resistance to Israel you know in 1948
• 58:30
  in 1967 in 1973 I mean the Arab street and the Iranian street all over the region you've got
• 58:37
  a half billion Muslims who are not crazy about the Jews having a state so it can't be only
• 58:43
  because there's an occupation that is causing antipathy towards Israel and violence against Jews
• 58:49
  but see this is why like you you're drawing you're drawing a very clear distinction between
• 58:53
  the occupation of the West Bank and everything that was happening here before then I don't and
• 58:58
  this is I feel like this is a good this is a good example of a reason why I don't because the
• 59:04
  resistance that you had so like the resistance to Israel that you had among Palestinians before
• 59:13
  the occupation of the West Bank is resistance based on the exact same reasons it's because this
• 59:19
  process that we're seeing in the West Bank is the exact process that was that was happening in what
• 59:25
  is now internationally recognized Israeli borders before 1967 it was by the people who were
• 59:32
  dispossessed who were second-rate citizens who until 1966 were directly on the military law so
• 59:38
  you have the exact same system as often that you have you know where you have ethnicity based
• 59:45
  governance where group people is on the military or group people in the civilian law you had
• 59:51
  that for everybody in the before 1966 and of course do you mean in the West Bank under Jordanian
• 59:59
  control or do you mean in Israel no I mean in Israel in Israel there was military like Palestinians
• 1:00:06
  every Palestinian citizen of Israel was under military law until 1966 but if your argument is
• 1:00:14
  if your argument is that the if your argument is that the way that Palestinians were treated
• 1:00:21
  60 to 100 years ago justifies resistance against Israel today that's just not going to be
• 1:00:30
  palatable to any prospective peace process because it means that there's nothing Israel can do
• 1:00:36
  actually that Israel could withdraw from the West Bank completely and it would still have the
• 1:00:40
  iron of all of its neighbors and would still feel vulnerable because they still have a legitimate
• 1:00:45
  gripe about having been driven off that land in the first place and that would make this would
• 1:00:51
  make that the only conflict where the people who were driven off their land in the wake of World
• 1:00:56
  War II have a claim to continue picking at that scab and seeking redress and seeking to go back
• 1:01:04
  to that place it would be like me going back to Poland and expecting to be given land in Poland
• 1:01:11
  because my grandmother was driven off it in the 1940s like that that kind of resolution
• 1:01:17
  is on a mistake and based on the fact that your grandmother was driven out of Poland you can
• 1:01:25
  claim you like you have a claim to publish citizenship which is the the regular process everywhere
• 1:01:30
  in the world i don't think so i would have been out there like refugees have their like this is
• 1:01:36
  what this is in the Yuancharter refugees have the rights the incentives have the rights to return
• 1:01:41
  and this is the old concept like the state of Israel is founded on this concept it's just that like
• 1:01:45
  it's not a couple generations it's like dozens of generations down the line it's like you know
• 1:01:51
  being the the fact that your ancestors are from somewhere means that you will have some sort of
• 1:01:57
  claims to living there but to answer your question at the beginning about you know justifying
• 1:02:04
  like if events 100 years ago justify resistance now no i think that's throughout the existence
• 1:02:15
  of the Zionist movements in this land it has been treating Palestinians in about the same way
• 1:02:20
  as an obstacle and as you know as something to overcome in order to achieve the idea
• 1:02:27
  and that inevitably has been leading to resistance in the past and this is inevitably
• 1:02:32
  leading to resistance now and the only thing that is going to stop this is the dismantling of
• 1:02:40
  the system of ethnic supremacy and this is something that needs to happen both in the West Bank
• 1:02:46
  and in the internationally recognized Israeli warriors there needs to be complete dismantling
• 1:02:51
  dismantlement of the apartheid system that puts one ethnic group on top and the other at the
• 1:02:55
  bottom and i think that true justice in this land can only be achieved through a right to
• 1:03:01
  return of course because you know there are still people alive who were expelled here in 1948
• 1:03:09
  actually there it was one of the moments that you know affected me politically pretty
• 1:03:16
  pretty significant when i was standing with a friend of mine in in yapa in a in a cafe where i
• 1:03:24
  was working and he was telling he's Palestinian and he was telling me that he was going to visit
• 1:03:29
  his family in Jordan and say asked him like why and so on he started this planning and his family
• 1:03:34
  was expelled from yapa in 1948 and the his i think grandfather grand angle or somebody
• 1:03:43
  was actually one of those people physically expelled and now she cannot even visit his family
• 1:03:49
  his family house and so on they were i think the cleanse and so he needs to my friend needs to
• 1:03:57
  leave the country in order to visit the people who are from there and so until that is rectified
• 1:04:03
  until they able to come back and like you know for them it's not coming back to to the west bank
• 1:04:08
  whether they have nothing to do with Ramallah or Janina or whatever these people from yapa
• 1:04:13
  and they should have by by all i think like just basic rational morality and logic they should have
• 1:04:20
  the right to come back to where they're from uh and uh and in no way does this imply that they
• 1:04:27
  need to spell anybody something like that i've met people like this in in lebanon i made friends
• 1:04:35
  with a guy who you know still carried the the dream of a Palestinian guy of returning to the
• 1:04:43
  town not of his parents or grandparents but great grand parents who were expelled uh during the
• 1:04:49
  creation of israel and i don't disagree with the justness of that and if if any people should
• 1:04:58
  understand the yearning for a return to a homeland it's the Jews but i did feel i did feel that
• 1:05:07
  surely it's not optimal that a lot was going on in the forties you know a lot of populations
• 1:05:13
  were moving around Jews today can't go back to iraq where they were booted out of in the thirties
• 1:05:20
  and forties they would it would it be constructive for me to spend my whole life pining for
• 1:05:29
  the town where my grandmother was kicked out of in poland or is it better for me to get on with my
• 1:05:36
  life in a new place it strikes me that until we can accept that the problem is that there is no
• 1:05:44
  new place for the Palestinians because it's currently occupied we're not going to get anywhere if
• 1:05:50
  the solution is that israel has to stop being a Jewish homeland where farced
• 1:05:57
  i think that's uh if like israel has been sort of counting on this there are a lot of Zionist leaders
• 1:06:09
  who are talking about is like oh we just need to like kick them out we just need to get them to leave
• 1:06:13
  and then for like the time will pass and they will acquiesce and the people who are still in the
• 1:06:19
  borders will acquiesce to the fact that they're ruled by another ethnic group but with the state
• 1:06:24
  which is like based on ethnic supremacy of somebody else where they're like in we know where it seemed
• 1:06:28
  their own homelands uh and this is something that they've been counting on for the past the 100
• 1:06:33
  years more than a hundred years and if this is how they want in the end like all this has resulted in
• 1:06:39
  is permanent war and permanent resistance if the Zionist movement in these early states are
• 1:06:45
  counting on the fact that Palestinians will just leave i will forget about their homelands and will
• 1:06:51
  no no no sorry you misunderstand me i'm not i'm not saying i'm not saying the Palestinians should
• 1:06:55
  leave i'm saying that the problem is that the occupation of the west bank that if it has to be so
• 1:07:01
  if israel dismantles or pulls all the settlers out tomorrow and dismantles all the settlements
• 1:07:07
  and says all right you've got it you have your own state we announced that you now have a state
• 1:07:14
  if that would not be enough to satisfy Palestinian dreams then nothing would be short of the
• 1:07:25
  erasure of israel right israel has been trying to you know following the footsteps of
• 1:07:32
  Josef Shabotinsky and has the idea of the iron wall has been trying to beat the Palestinians since
• 1:07:37
  into submission but that's not going to work that it that didn't work in any of the projects of
• 1:07:44
  you know ethnic extremity that have existed before because for as long as you have this kind of
• 1:07:49
  suppression for as long as you don't have actual justice and equity and emancipation you will
• 1:07:54
  have resistance to that oppression and you will have people fighting back the only power as
• 1:08:02
  they need to decision making power in this land which is Israel realizes that they will be
• 1:08:05
  criminal's work i'm going to let you go because i know that we're losing our connection
• 1:08:13
  a little bit it makes me sad to hear you say that because i think that it would be music to the
• 1:08:19
  years of people like smote rich and bengaviere because to them it proves their point that nothing
• 1:08:26
  short of the annihilation of israel is going to be adequate for their enemies and that actually
• 1:08:31
  the settlements and the occupation are just distractions that the main game is for them not to
• 1:08:37
  be a homeland for Jews um are you do you worry about that about the fact that this worldview plays
• 1:08:47
  into it's it strikes me as similar to the worldview of the far right in the sense that the problem
• 1:08:53
  is not the i think there's a very fundamental difference between demanding a state of ethnic supremacy
• 1:08:59
  and demanding justice and equality for everyone for living this land i think there's a fundamental
• 1:09:05
  difference between those two worldviews on ray thanks again for your time it's lovely to talk to you
• 1:09:10
  thank you very much and now for an alternative perspective on the problems of
• 1:09:16
  the israeli occupation of the west bank or as it's historically known in israel judeia and samaria
• 1:09:22
  is the founder of the jirusalam education institute who educates people about
• 1:09:26
  israel's ionism and the jews the one the only charlotte court check
• 1:09:38
  i don't know if you had a chance to listen to i did i did i was literally leading up to this
• 1:09:42
  actually i was cleaning and i was listening so hmm were you just were you yelling at the half
• 1:09:47
  the time you were cleaning well mainly look i think it's really important to differentiate
• 1:09:53
  between someone who's a scholar on a topic versus somebody who is is coming at it from a lived
• 1:09:59
  experience of what he sees and what he hears versus research and i think the challenge that i had
• 1:10:06
  with him was just there was a lot of conflation of things like you would ask how's a settlement
• 1:10:11
  built and he jumped really quick from like what a approved settlement would would look like in terms
• 1:10:17
  of its construction immediately to like an outpost without showing any differentiation between the
• 1:10:22
  where like one is okay what's the difference between a settlement and an outpost okay so a settlement
• 1:10:27
  this is according to israeli language okay let's i'm going to be very clear about this because
• 1:10:31
  obviously broadly in international law there is a dispute on whether or not settlements are legal
• 1:10:36
  or illegal and we can get into that if we want to unpacking you know article 49 parts six of the
• 1:10:41
  Geneva fourth Geneva conventions we can get into it but according to israeli law a settlement would
• 1:10:48
  be a community in judand samaria in the west bank that's that's been approved by the government
• 1:10:54
  okay and that would be called a settlement versus an outpost in Hebrew it's called a majas an
• 1:10:59
  outpost is illegal under israeli law now i stress again under israeli law because somebody might say
• 1:11:05
  well all of them are illegal under international law and that's another argument to be had but under
• 1:11:09
  israeli law settlements are approved by the government outposts are not approved by the government
• 1:11:14
  and therefore outpost tend to end up on privately owned land or in the case that that he was
• 1:11:21
  describing of you know these people showing up to somebody's backyard and establishing something
• 1:11:26
  that's completely illegal under israeli law now whether those laws are enforced or not is another
• 1:11:33
  conversation but it is technically illegal under israeli law and that was also whether the laws
• 1:11:39
  whether the distinction is just would matter to him i mean i'm sure that the skeptic of you know
• 1:11:44
  israeli construction in the west bank would be like it doesn't really matter very much to the people
• 1:11:49
  who feel that their land is being settled by an occupying power that that you know i and israeli
• 1:11:56
  government in Jerusalem said that one was okay and another was not sure that's not so much the
• 1:12:02
  reason that i bring up that it's not so much how they feel about it it's that if you're trying to
• 1:12:07
  help people understand the situation going on there and then being able to make up their own
• 1:12:11
  minds about how they feel about it right i think there is a big difference between somebody going
• 1:12:17
  to a random place in the west bank right that could be on privately owned land or public land
• 1:12:22
  and randomly establishing a community which is illegal versus somebody who is immigrating to israel
• 1:12:30
  and is looking for a place to live and decides that this community that's on the outskirts of Jerusalem
• 1:12:35
  that is technically a settlement is where i'm going to live and i'm moving into an apartment that's
• 1:12:40
  already been built in a settlement that was legally approved by the government those are two wildly
• 1:12:45
  different realities and i just i'm not saying one's better i mean i would say one is better than
• 1:12:50
  the other because obviously illegally going and settling on somebody's land is i think i think
• 1:12:54
  pretty consensus we can all say is bad i think the the other example that i gave some might say
• 1:13:00
  well that's wrong as well but there's different scales i think of wrong and problematic when you're
• 1:13:06
  talking about the west bank and i think we need to be very careful and so it was a conflation of
• 1:13:11
  settlement and outposts it was a conflation of all settlers versus the very fringe radical
• 1:13:16
  settler movement which very much needs to be condemned and done with and then it was also the
• 1:13:21
  the conversation about the government and as as he spoke just the government supports this the
• 1:13:27
  government is expansionist and i just wish again just for the sake of accuracy that we
• 1:13:33
  get into the detail of well it's okay there are 120 members of the kinesa right and out of them
• 1:13:39
  a certain a certain number support the expansionist nature of the fringe settler movement at the moment
• 1:13:46
  and then other support the i don't know if they would call it expansionist but the idea of annexing
• 1:13:51
  the west bank and and then there's a whole chunk of them who wouldn't agree with either of those
• 1:13:56
  things and so i just think when you talk about the israeli government we need to be careful because
• 1:14:00
  there's a coalition and there's an opposition and when you're presenting that to the outside world
• 1:14:05
  you make it sound like the entire israeli government is pushing this when in fact there are
• 1:14:11
  members of the government that actively push against this and so i just think right but it isn't
• 1:14:15
  it up to it's up to israelis and their government to ensure that their government represents them
• 1:14:20
  i wonder if you know people are talking about whether or not the united states you know they say
• 1:14:25
  the united states deposed the venezraelan president and it did it's not you know it's you can't
• 1:14:31
  just turn around and say yeah but look at all the senators and members of the house of representatives
• 1:14:35
  who were opposed to that i mean no but i i think i i think that i think that is the government that
• 1:14:40
  did that but but i think that's an important distinction i again i just for me as i guess is an
• 1:14:46
  educator i command it from a place of i want more understanding and i don't want more people
• 1:14:51
  being driven by ideological rhetoric that doesn't help you develop an informed opinion
• 1:14:57
  that's really all it's not so much it's so funny because i was listening to that podcast
• 1:15:03
  and i felt it's like when i when i listened to Zionist Israelis or Jews i almost always i my gut
• 1:15:11
  reaction and what i have to do often is talk about the radical settlers and really push that this
• 1:15:16
  is happening and that these people need to be adjudicated appropriately arrested prosecuted
• 1:15:22
  and then in this case i felt the need to defend the settlers half the time and that's that's
• 1:15:27
  it where i sit you know where if somebody is on like one side or the other i always feel the need
• 1:15:32
  to almost play devil's advocate and really sometimes to defend because when you speak too broadly
• 1:15:37
  it creates this i mean again the way that he was speaking if i was somebody who knew nothing i would
• 1:15:42
  say wow settlers are awful but it's like hold on there are five hundred seven thousand
• 1:15:46
  settlers okay out of the five hundred thousand Israelis who live in the west bank june samaria
• 1:15:52
  a third of them are secular a third of them are ultra-orthodox who more often than not are not
• 1:15:58
  even Zionist okay let's clarify that and then you have a third who are of the religious Zionist
• 1:16:04
  community okay so out of that third that's the religious Zionist community now we're talking about
• 1:16:11
  minority of that minority of a broader minority which are Israelis right that is that is that are
• 1:16:18
  bad actors in the west bank but i think isn't he trying isn't he and the people who make this
• 1:16:25
  rhetorical move trying to link the bad actors to an overarching trend that he sees throughout
• 1:16:30
  Israeli history like yeah there are half a million settlers they're not all bad but they are
• 1:16:35
  all living on land that would become part of Palestine were a two-state solution theoretically
• 1:16:42
  to be drawn up along the lines of the 1967 border so you know there were there were lots of people
• 1:16:48
  in you know there were lots of nice white people in south africa under apartheid who were not
• 1:16:54
  bad people and they wouldn't have committed violence against black people but they were willingly
• 1:16:58
  complicit in defending a system that was unjust i think that would be i would say i would say
• 1:17:03
  there's that category of white people in south africa and then you have the category of white
• 1:17:06
  people in south africa who actively at sometimes risk of their lives fought against the regime right
• 1:17:14
  right very few people who have that attitude towards Zionism and Judea and Samaria would be living
• 1:17:19
  in settlements in the west bank so that's i think where we need to unpack who settlers are
• 1:17:25
  because i think the idea of like well they knew okay well what about a good portion of them who
• 1:17:30
  were born into a settlement who had zero choice right their family moved there in the 70s they
• 1:17:37
  were born in the 90s they're now in their 20s 30s and they have a family and that was just the
• 1:17:43
  neighborhood that i was born into this is where i grew up this is what i know so when i got married
• 1:17:48
  and i had a you know and i needed to build a life this is where i built my life because this is
• 1:17:52
  where i was born and for them the element of the expansionist nature of it or anything else and
• 1:17:57
  let's let's let's also go back right let's go back and really unpack how settlements came to be
• 1:18:02
  okay because it you know there was there was the conversation that you had about well Israel says
• 1:18:09
  that it was for security okay and there was this complete discarding of that everywhere always
• 1:18:14
  we're always just used as security as an excuse which first of all let me just say
• 1:18:19
  pretty valid i'm sorry to sometimes use security as an excuse i mean it's it's a little bit of a
• 1:18:24
  joke to say well as we're always falls off back on security well yet from the moment Israel was
• 1:18:29
  established they were attacked and then they were attacked multiple times after that and they were
• 1:18:33
  consistently attacked with terrorism pretty much from the founding of the state onwards and then
• 1:18:38
  they suffered one of the most horrific terror attacks that we've seen in the 21st century
• 1:18:43
  in on October 7th so yeah maybe security is sometimes a legitimate reason okay now when it
• 1:18:49
  comes to the settlements early on it was a reason and it was the primary reason because let's
• 1:18:56
  look at this expect let's look at the growth of the settlement movement settlements obviously
• 1:19:00
  began after 67 right when Israel captured the territory of today's very the West Bank and Gaza
• 1:19:05
  and the Sinai but we're not going to talk about those this was from 1967 until 1977 Israel had a
• 1:19:12
  left-wing government this was not a government that would have been as was described as expansionist
• 1:19:18
  or you know wanting to take more land if anything you had many people saying like
• 1:19:22
  these lands are full of Arabs like we can't absorb them into Israel right and so you had a left
• 1:19:29
  and even for people who don't know even conservatives i mean even you know hardline conservatives in
• 1:19:35
  the late 60s and 70s in Israel thought that it was inevitable that Israel wasn't going to keep the
• 1:19:41
  West Bank and that the settlements wouldn't be permanent like that everyone just assumed that
• 1:19:44
  they had to there would be a solution to this somehow because it was untenable for it to go if
• 1:19:49
  you told even right you know the most far right people that we'd be sitting here in 2026 and I mean
• 1:19:55
  they might be delighted but they wouldn't have expected it at all exactly and so it's really
• 1:20:00
  important to go back to the origins of the movement because so then you have this first 10 years
• 1:20:04
  right which is the left-wing government under what we had a year of levy ashkul you had gold
• 1:20:11
  you had yet stuck robbing right those three prime ministers you see the growth of settlements right
• 1:20:16
  you see the the initial settlement growth happens under the left-wing government and where do
• 1:20:22
  those settlements emerge predominantly in the Jordan Valley okay which was very much done for
• 1:20:28
  security reasons right that was that if the Jordanians were to invade again it would make it
• 1:20:33
  much harder for them to kind of railroad through the West Bank and up to the territory of Israel
• 1:20:38
  so that's that that's the Jordan Valley element and you could even see by the way that most
• 1:20:43
  Jordan Valley settlements are secular communities that were agricultural communities it was very
• 1:20:50
  much on the old labor Zionist ethos that people were moving there and so that wasn't right-wing
• 1:20:56
  ideological expansionism it was this is the the frontier and this is you know going to protect
• 1:21:01
  Israel from an enemy to our to our east right but isn't just just to jump in I mean the the
• 1:21:09
  critics of Israel would say well the fact that labor governments instantly presided over settlement
• 1:21:14
  building after the after Israel acquired the West Bank doesn't indicate that it was innocent it
• 1:21:21
  just indicates that expansionism is embedded in the very fabric of of the Israeli project and
• 1:21:26
  the both sides of guilty of it let me be clear just because I'm saying somebody doesn't mean I'm
• 1:21:31
  saying innocent or guilty I'm just trying to set the stage right you could still think that was
• 1:21:35
  wrong okay you could still think it's bad the idea that it was part of I guess what I mean by
• 1:21:39
  innocent just sorry just to clarify yeah I just mean there are there are a couple of alternative
• 1:21:44
  reasons why Israel might have done it might have built settlements in the first place right one
• 1:21:47
  would be what I'm calling innocent is the explanation that they'd just been invaded and they
• 1:21:53
  wanted to make sure that they it would be harder for Jordan to invade them again the less innocent
• 1:21:58
  explanation is old and if possible we'd like to acquire all of this land as well and create facts
• 1:22:04
  on the ground that make it impossible for a two-state solution to emerge right the innocent version
• 1:22:09
  is complicated because if you if it's just a military question why didn't they just build military
• 1:22:14
  outposts and put military assets in the West Bank without having people move there so there's
• 1:22:20
  actually a military philosophy that says that if you want to protect a territory it is much
• 1:22:24
  better to put civilians rather than just military you could look up this philosophy it's not like
• 1:22:30
  something that Israel just came up with it is a legitimate military theory of if you want to
• 1:22:35
  protect your homeland it's much better to have population rather than just military so that's
• 1:22:43
  there is a actual valid legitimate legitimate reason I mean when I think when I find interesting
• 1:22:48
  about the expansionist argument broadly and then we could go back to what we were just talking
• 1:22:52
  about is from Israel's founding onwards all we have seen is them give up territory after requiring
• 1:22:58
  it not the other way around so I'm just confused about that that argument broadly that was being made
• 1:23:04
  because Israel gained well I mean that that that just requires you to exclude the West Bank and Gaza
• 1:23:11
  from your calculus I know it will just the West Bank just the West Bank with all due respect wait
• 1:23:19
  they've given back more of the West Bank than they've taken since 1967 no no the only territory
• 1:23:26
  the okay after 1967 Israel gained the Sinai the Gaza Strip the West Bank and the Golan Heights right
• 1:23:33
  now the Golan Heights Israel annexed and that was very much you could argue for a security reason
• 1:23:38
  given the circumstances until today you could still argue there is a valid security reason for that
• 1:23:43
  yes for people who don't know it's a big Syrian hill that overlooks and can fire upon most of
• 1:23:48
  Israel so well I wouldn't say most of Israel bit of an exact but like all of the whole of
• 1:23:52
  all of the Israelis down below yes the Sinai Peninsula Israel withdrew from and at the same time
• 1:24:01
  that Israel withdrew Israel offered to have negotiations about Gaza because Egypt didn't want Gaza
• 1:24:06
  and so therefore Gaza ended up staying in Israeli hands but then in 2005 Israel fully withdrew from Gaza
• 1:24:13
  and the only territory in question is the West Bank and the idea of expansionism I mean you
• 1:24:19
  will just we'll just put a question mark over over you know what how much autonomy
• 1:24:24
  Gazans were provided after 2005 once I must have power with the blockade and so on because obviously
• 1:24:31
  that would say that's not a legitimate bestowing of independence if you're still controlling
• 1:24:36
  I mean I would say power is airspace fishing rights sure and I would say that's not complicated
• 1:24:41
  because if you had sat down to negotiate with us which was what was supposed to happen after
• 1:24:45
  the withdrawal from Gaza we could have seen a very different picture but instead you refused
• 1:24:49
  to negotiate with us four months later Hamas was elected and there were no negotiations
• 1:24:54
  and then Hamas takes over the Gaza Strip violently forcing Israel to then implement a blockade
• 1:25:00
  to prevent an enemy whose stated goal is your destruction from attaining weapons to be able to
• 1:25:07
  achieve said goal which obviously we see was a very legitimate thing that Israel did putting
• 1:25:13
  in place of blockade given what happened on October 7th and we see that if Hamas had been
• 1:25:18
  able to stockpile weapons starting in 2007 we would have been in a very different situation
• 1:25:23
  in October 7th would have happened probably significantly sooner so let's let's not act I mean
• 1:25:28
  they can argue no autonomy this that but if you would just sat down at the negotiating table
• 1:25:32
  every anything could have played out but Israel fully withdrew from that territory all of its
• 1:25:36
  military all of its citizens and the the really the the ball was in the Palestinians court
• 1:25:42
  to do what they wanted with it and I should add also certainly even if it wasn't even if
• 1:25:48
  what people want to infantilize Palestinians by saying that they didn't have a choice because
• 1:25:52
  they were victims in that scenario the ball was certainly in the Arab world's court because there's
• 1:25:55
  also a border with Egypt so the Arab world could have done via Egypt whatever it wanted to
• 1:25:59
  been Gaza as long as it wasn't completely offensive to the Israelis like giving them rockets
• 1:26:04
  or something like that but it could have you know rehabilitated Gaza in 2007.
• 1:26:09
  Yeah that's all I mean I just I think it's such like a misreading to say well but Israel
• 1:26:13
  in the language of blockade well of course we got after Hamas violently takes over and kills
• 1:26:18
  their own people you imagine that we're going to stop them from being able to import weapons
• 1:26:24
  to the territory that we just withdrew from I mean I I don't know anyone who would
• 1:26:27
  sit there and look at me I mean I know a lot of people who might look at me and say well you
• 1:26:31
  should have just let them do that and I'm going to say no like the whole point of a Jewish state
• 1:26:36
  is so that we can defend ourselves from these kind of threats and implement.
• 1:26:39
  Well I mean there would be people who would quibble with whether the blockade was exclusively
• 1:26:43
  about weapons or whether it was also intended to punish Palestinians for having elected Hamas
• 1:26:49
  and tried to make life difficult for them. I think that's fair and I think then we saw in 2010
• 1:26:53
  the loosening of the blockade demonstrated that that could have been done and that maybe there
• 1:26:57
  was more punitive elements to it in the early years and less punitive elements in the later years
• 1:27:02
  but the idea of whether or not a blockade needed to be implemented I think is anyone who tries to
• 1:27:07
  argue otherwise post October 7th I think is literally just telling me Israel should have just
• 1:27:11
  laid down and let them kill you which people have said that to me before so I wouldn't be surprised
• 1:27:15
  if people would say that to me now but I'm just saying that's ultimately the harshness of the blockade
• 1:27:21
  can absolutely be debated and disputed. The need for a blockade I think is I feel like that ship
• 1:27:27
  has sailed for any rational human being who doesn't want to see Israelis be killed by Hamas.
• 1:27:32
  Yeah and also I should just reiterate on the Egypt question if you really object to the blockade
• 1:27:36
  of Gaza prior to 2023 then you should blame the Arab state that was also blockading Gaza
• 1:27:43
  that had much less to lose from loosening the blockade than the Jewish state that obviously had
• 1:27:48
  reasons to be more paranoid about Hamas in Gaza. So back to the West Bank sorry finished that
• 1:27:55
  thought. Well we were talking about the creation of settlement so when I was when I teach about the
• 1:28:00
  West Bank there's three reasons that we that settlements emerge three driving forces okay one
• 1:28:05
  is security okay and that was the early years that was not just the Jordan Valley it was the
• 1:28:09
  helltops of the West Bank right over the green line that looked down on the coastal plain
• 1:28:18
  and and again you could argue was that was security just an excuse this that but you had people
• 1:28:25
  in the government who were ideologically opposed to this idea I also want people to look up the
• 1:28:29
  Alon plan right because if you look at the Alon plan which was proposed right after 67 right after
• 1:28:34
  the war the plan was for Israel to withdraw from most of the West Bank but but remain in the Jordan
• 1:28:41
  Valley with a corridor to Jerusalem which is if you look at where the settlements were constructed
• 1:28:45
  it really fit that plan and again the idea was pull out of most of the West Bank but maintain
• 1:28:51
  that that border area just for the sake of security so it aligns with that plan if you look at it
• 1:28:58
  and so that was one reason the next reason and and the driving force for a lot of those people
• 1:29:04
  was ideological but not religious ideological it was Zionist it was labor Zionism it was that
• 1:29:09
  element of it the next reason is religious okay and that's where at the same exact time that you
• 1:29:17
  had the security settlements going up you also had the push for the chevron Jews who wanted to
• 1:29:23
  go back to chevron right who owned the land who were kicked out in 29 who returned but did it
• 1:29:28
  without approval from the government right they kind of just went into buildings and and squatted
• 1:29:33
  and then eventually the government had to pay attention to them but the government didn't walk
• 1:29:37
  to that's really interesting at the time the government wasn't approving any construction in chevron
• 1:29:42
  for example the same in Gouschitzion right in Kharitzion you had the orphans of Kharitzion
• 1:29:49
  who were evacuated in 48 during the war of independence their fathers and some of their mothers
• 1:29:55
  were almost were slaughtered by the Jordanian Legion and they were never able to return but they
• 1:30:00
  owned that land it was privately owned Jewish land that had been bought by a guy named Holtzman
• 1:30:05
  in the 1930s in Kharitzion his name after him because Holtz in German is Wood and it's
• 1:30:10
  on his wood and it beautifully comes together but so there was also this element of people who
• 1:30:16
  owned land in Judea and Samaria saying to the government we own this land and we want to go
• 1:30:20
  back to land that we own that's a legal complication already that we throw in there and right so just
• 1:30:25
  just to clarify this for people when Israel was founded of course there were Jews who were living
• 1:30:32
  in the portion of the Palestinian mandate that would have gone to an Arab state yeah had the
• 1:30:38
  Palestinians accepted the partition as the Jews did yeah and so those people have some I mean
• 1:30:45
  it's funny when we talk about the right of return it always only runs one way doesn't it's the
• 1:30:49
  right of Palestinians to come back and live in Tel Aviv you know because their great-grandparents
• 1:30:54
  were kicked out of Tel Aviv but it's never the right of any Jews to go back and live in the West
• 1:30:58
  Bank although you know their great-grandparents were living there prior to the founding of the state
• 1:31:04
  yeah and that's actually the first settlement to be approved by the government in September of 1967
• 1:31:10
  was Alon Chout which was the community that was that was starting to essentially rebuild the
• 1:31:18
  community that was Clarency on now Clarency on eventually emerges as a separate community on its own
• 1:31:23
  but that was privately owned Jewish land and it was approved by the government in September of 67
• 1:31:28
  because it was literally the people who had lived there prior coming back saying we lived there
• 1:31:33
  and you say the right of return only goes one way you know what other what other term only goes
• 1:31:37
  one way is ethnic cleansing because we throw that term out a lot when it comes to what happened
• 1:31:42
  to the Palestinians and I completely disagree with that characterization I absolutely believe people
• 1:31:47
  were displaced I believe Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes in 1948 I do not think
• 1:31:52
  that it was part of a policy of ethnic cleansing I believe it was part of war but there was a policy
• 1:31:59
  to remove every Jew from the territory that Jordan captured and conquered during that war which
• 1:32:06
  was the territory of Judeans America and they actively went and removed every single Jew from the
• 1:32:11
  old city of Jerusalem from Clarency on I mean they they just slaughtered everyone but there was an
• 1:32:17
  active removal to ensure that when Jordan ended up having full control and the war ended in 49
• 1:32:23
  there were no Jews left in Judeans America in the west and this was nothing unusual in the Arab world
• 1:32:27
  I mean throughout the lead up to the creation of the Israeli state the Jews were being kicked out of
• 1:32:33
  Israel out of Iraq and Syria and you know all over the joint yeah I mean not Iraq Iraq really they
• 1:32:39
  were the edict came down in 1950 that they needed to leave or they wouldn't be let it was like leave
• 1:32:44
  now or you'll never be able or like we'll see what happens and the Jews were like yeah they see
• 1:32:48
  what happens part we're not so big on so we're going to leave so it was really an edict that came
• 1:32:52
  down later but obviously as a result there had already been many Jews leaving Iraq because of the
• 1:32:57
  farhood in 41 and and what was going on there but most really wanted to stay I mean the Iraqi
• 1:33:02
  Jewish community have been there for 25 hundred years but yes we've gone on a tangent again
• 1:33:05
  so back to the reasons one security two religious people just returning to land that they owned
• 1:33:11
  and wanted to live in because they had once lived there before now that's a tiny tiny tiny portion
• 1:33:15
  let's be very honest and then you have the religious idea locks okay now let's let's lay the
• 1:33:20
  foundation go back to the origin origins of modern Zionism can I say modern Zionism not Zionism
• 1:33:26
  because Zionism let's be honest as an ancient idea but modern Zionism 19th century the idea
• 1:33:30
  of a Jewish state with that emerges religious Zionism that comes predominantly from a rabbi named
• 1:33:35
  Rav Avraham Cook right who says well actually returning to the land is going to be the the beginning
• 1:33:41
  of our redemption right and so we need to do that we need to encourage that let's never confuse
• 1:33:47
  Rav Avraham Cook with his son Rav Yehuda Cook a mistake I always make Charlotte I honestly I'm
• 1:33:55
  joking I've never I'm sure but I need to make sure that nobody else listening makes this mistake
• 1:34:01
  because they were two very different people not very different but his son took that ideology
• 1:34:08
  of returning to the land and redemption and he took it to a bit more of an extreme and and then
• 1:34:14
  you have other kind of individuals who will bring their religious rhetoric member people like
• 1:34:21
  Rav Kahana and others who starting post 67 we start to see the growth of a more
• 1:34:31
  violent religious ideological fringe of the settler movement and I think that's really important
• 1:34:38
  because that doesn't mean all of the religious be set a third of the settlers today are religious
• 1:34:43
  Zionists the vast majority of them are not violent the vast majority of them live it have lived
• 1:34:50
  and and treat their Palestinian neighbors with respect they they chop in the same stores I'm not
• 1:34:55
  trying to say everybody but I look I've spent so much time in settlements I lived in a settlement
• 1:35:02
  myself from age 9 to 10 and I know that's really young but that means I I still have friends there
• 1:35:07
  and I I've visited so many of these communities and I don't go to the radical communities I go to
• 1:35:13
  the average community and I don't hear the rhetoric of violently taking over Palestinian communities
• 1:35:22
  of course I hear no but if there are I mean isn't there isn't there a isn't the claim that there
• 1:35:28
  are going to be concentric circles of I guess prejudice and violence in any occupation and
• 1:35:35
  that what Andre and people like him are looking at is the extreme end of the spear but that when
• 1:35:40
  you say that there are you know pleasant settlements where the Jews and the Palestinians get along
• 1:35:47
  they're getting along the claim would be in the context of one having ethnic privilege and the
• 1:35:54
  other having being discriminated against they're getting along the way that white and black people
• 1:35:59
  got along in the deep south you know under Jim Crow that would be the claim that if if a white
• 1:36:04
  person in those settlements shoplifts or if a Palestinian shoplifts there are very different
• 1:36:08
  consequences and I would say to that fight there are very different consequences. I would say to
• 1:36:12
  that person if you went to the grocery store in Guixitillon that both Palestinians and Israeli
• 1:36:23
  Israelis who live in the West Bank and shop at you will see no supremacy of any kind okay you will
• 1:36:29
  see both Jews and Palestinians working in the store side by side getting paid the exact same salary
• 1:36:35
  you will see people shopping in the store getting the exact same products and the exact same
• 1:36:39
  treatment I understand that broadly there is a system set up in the West Bank that has different
• 1:36:48
  rights for different people now hold on let's explain that system because the way that Andre goes
• 1:36:55
  to the extreme and says it's apartheid is problematic if you actually look at the history of how
• 1:37:03
  this system was set up and where it came from okay so let's go back 1967 Israel captures a territory
• 1:37:10
  we're now in the stage of international law that you're not allowed to capture you're not allowed
• 1:37:14
  to conquer territory and war anymore okay and so Israel has to decide what to do and their initial
• 1:37:21
  decision is let's offer the land back for peace right for negotiation for recognition
• 1:37:27
  and the response that they get from the Arab world is no no no now let's understand they're also
• 1:37:32
  not negotiating with the Palestinians at this point the Palestinians are literally still in the
• 1:37:36
  process of developing their identity and their nationalism the territory they took the territory
• 1:37:41
  from Jordan who wasn't the legitimate sovereign of that territory given that they had captured it
• 1:37:47
  in an offensive war in 48 that they were never meant to be involved in and claimed it as their
• 1:37:53
  own which the world said no you're not allowed to do that anymore so Israel captures it from Jordan
• 1:37:58
  and offers it back for peace they say no Israel says okay we have to set up an administration in
• 1:38:06
  this territory the government looked at the Geneva conventions right and looked at the laws
• 1:38:12
  of occupation and set up a system of occupation of military administration military occupation
• 1:38:17
  over the territory now according to that international law it says that the people who live in that
• 1:38:22
  territory what would be known as protected persons okay which are the Palestinians
• 1:38:28
  that they have to be given their rights come from international law right here are the rights
• 1:38:33
  upon which you have to that you have to uphold for the protected persons and one of those things
• 1:38:39
  is also that you have to set up a military court for that population they cannot be tried in your
• 1:38:44
  civil court right that would be that would be de facto annexation you can't do that right they're
• 1:38:49
  not citizens of your country so you have to set up a military court system right and that's what
• 1:38:54
  Israel did right now add in the element that starting in September of 1967 Israelis start to move
• 1:39:01
  into the territory right and that's again gray area of international law and Israel to be able to
• 1:39:10
  how am I going to say to be able to have those Israelis remain under Israeli law okay because they
• 1:39:21
  can't be under military law there is really citizens so what they did was they passed an emergency
• 1:39:26
  law that extends Israeli civil law over the citizens of Israel that live in the West Bank temporarily
• 1:39:35
  now temporarily because 60 years on hindsight's 2020 but it's a five-year law that has to be re-upped
• 1:39:43
  every five years okay and that's the idea like it was temporary but who knew what was going to unfold
• 1:39:49
  right by the way just as a total side note but this was the law that brought down of Tully Bennett's
• 1:39:56
  government the reason of Tully Bennett ended his government was because this law needed to be
• 1:40:02
  reupped at the end of June of that year and the right was even though the right obviously it would
• 1:40:09
  be in their favor to pass this law because they want locks then do know for the settlements because
• 1:40:14
  the right supports the settlements they were using they were holding it hostage and they were
• 1:40:18
  basically say that's a terrible term to use nowadays but they were they were holding it and basically
• 1:40:23
  saying we're not going to pass this law which will ultimately lead to chaos in the West Bank and
• 1:40:27
  Bennett who obviously has been supportive of this settlement movement said I can't let this happen
• 1:40:33
  and he dissolved his government just so we understand like it was actually that law that actually led
• 1:40:39
  to the to the dissolution of the panic government and so every five years it has to be reupped
• 1:40:44
  and so what ended up happening was is that created a system where an Israeli who lives in the
• 1:40:48
  West Bank is under Israeli civil law Palestinians who are the protected persons under international law
• 1:40:54
  cannot be tried under Israeli civil law it would be a violation of international law so the idea
• 1:40:59
  of having two separate court systems it just it it it wasn't like let's set up this system where
• 1:41:05
  Israelis will have different rights from Palestinians it was just Israelis are Israeli citizens so
• 1:41:09
  naturally they have different rights from Palestinians because they're Israeli citizens yes and Palestinians
• 1:41:13
  now I mean that makes sense but the but all of those laws that those UN those international laws
• 1:41:19
  were written in the context of assuming that there was a power which was temporarily occupying
• 1:41:26
  you know a little region during war and then that would be a short term thing and there would be a
• 1:41:32
  negotiated settlement to the end to end the war it was it was a it's a wartime
• 1:41:37
  ideal if you if you implement that and then fail to I mean the critics of Israel would say
• 1:41:45
  fail to seriously attempt a negotiation over the course of the next 60 years and don't keep
• 1:41:51
  going back when you get rebuffed and you know there's a lot of blame to go around and so on at some
• 1:41:55
  point you have to recognize that that initial excuse of having a temporary emergency in which a
• 1:42:02
  few people were going to be you know imagine the scenario of an American GI going into occupied
• 1:42:09
  France or Germany in World War II you know obviously the local populations are subject to different
• 1:42:15
  laws under the American administration then the American servicemen and women are that's supposed
• 1:42:24
  to be temporary the American servicemen and women are supposed to leave the locals are supposed
• 1:42:28
  to set up their own thing if you fast forward 60 years later and the Americans are still in Germany
• 1:42:34
  and the Germans are still under American military law and half a million Americans are living in
• 1:42:42
  Germany like that becomes that is that that has somehow become nonsense.
• 1:42:49
  Okay so now let's unpack the last 60 years because it's very important the content you said
• 1:42:54
  you know is really critics would say but Israel's made no effort in the last six okay well that's
• 1:42:59
  patently false and and the way in which Andre I think that that was his name yeah yeah
• 1:43:06
  the way I think I said no I think it's a no sustained effort to come back to the table after being
• 1:43:11
  rebuffed yeah I mean the way that he just I mean I I I found it very difficult to hear him try to
• 1:43:19
  bend over backwards to make the argument that Israel made no real good faith offers to the Palestinians
• 1:43:26
  with all due respect look there's always been a portion of the Israeli population that has been
• 1:43:33
  against the two state solution that has been against any offers being made to the Palestinians
• 1:43:37
  that have been the greater Israel type or just the from the river to the sea this is Jewish land
• 1:43:42
  and it needs to be Jewish land but they were never the majority and when the government was making
• 1:43:48
  offers they were making offers with the support of the majority of Israelis behind them so the idea
• 1:43:54
  of they were never made in good faith with all to respect what I would love to ask him is show me one
• 1:43:59
  offer made from the Palestinians not even in good faith just an offer and he will not be able to
• 1:44:05
  give me one because you said it to him at the end which was well it kind of sounds like what you're
• 1:44:10
  saying is the only end to this conflict is for Israel to not exist anymore now he didn't frame it
• 1:44:14
  that way he said oh the system of ethnic supremacy blah blah blah as if like an ethnic state doesn't
• 1:44:19
  exist anywhere else in the world as if the idea that Japan can't be a state for the Japanese people
• 1:44:24
  which it is in a very strict fashion but can also be a democratic state for anybody else who lives
• 1:44:30
  in that country is a ridiculous notion and it's it's it's it's the the line of the anti Zionist
• 1:44:37
  movement which is oh an ethno state bro you're just describing a nation state I'm sorry with all
• 1:44:43
  to respect and the only country that gets this supposed slur thrown at it is Israel oh the ethno
• 1:44:49
  state of Israel it is literally just a nation state is a state for the Jewish people but it is
• 1:44:54
  democratic Jews do not have supremacy in Israel Jews do not have more rights than a citizen another
• 1:45:00
  citizen of the state of Israel I'm sorry I'm not going to let that fly okay and the idea that Israel
• 1:45:06
  on this ethno supremacist foundation has made no legitimate offer to the Palestinians is ridiculous
• 1:45:11
  because half the reason that Israel is that some is really support the idea of a two state
• 1:45:16
  solution is because they're not ethnically supremacist they don't they understand demographics they
• 1:45:22
  understand that there are too many Palestinians in the West Bank to absorb into the Jewish state
• 1:45:27
  for it to remain a Jewish state democratically it's such a a twisting of the reality that most Jews
• 1:45:36
  when I talk to them and I say and they say well we should annex the West Bank and I say well
• 1:45:40
  there's three million Palestinians there who are now going to become citizens of the state of
• 1:45:43
  Israel they go oh wait no we can't do that it's it's it's just it's it's such a misunderstanding
• 1:45:51
  of Zionists and of the Zionist movement and how it's in no way ethnically supremacist it's just
• 1:45:56
  an ethnic state for the Jewish people so that they can be safe in this world and be able to develop
• 1:46:00
  their culture and so again but hold on I think what's really important is he conflicts the Jewish
• 1:46:06
  state of Israel proper with what's going on in the West Bank yeah and the people so now let's get
• 1:46:12
  back the fringe in the West Bank they are absolutely supremacists I'm sorry there's no I'm not
• 1:46:18
  going to sit here and try to defend them I have no defense of the radical settlers in the West Bank
• 1:46:23
  okay what I was trying to initially do is make sure that people understand how this movement
• 1:46:29
  grew and that this is a fringe and they and now let's talk about that fringe because that's all
• 1:46:34
  he focused on but I wanted people to understand that there was a huge portion of the settler population
• 1:46:40
  that not only don't support not only don't or not violent themselves but they absolutely don't
• 1:46:44
  support what's going on okay and more just before we get to the fringe Charlotte can I just ask
• 1:46:49
  you one more thing about the history of the settlements and I'll just concur with every the
• 1:46:54
  with all of your exasperation and frustration about the conflation of we like West Bank settlement
• 1:46:59
  occupation with the existence of Israel as like an ethno state I think in fact you know you'll probably
• 1:47:05
  disagree with this but I think the greatest harm that Israel has inflicted upon itself by its
• 1:47:11
  inability to grapple properly with how to deal with the West Bank and its insistence on continuing
• 1:47:16
  the settlements is to make it harder for people to make that delineation and certainly since the
• 1:47:22
  Gaza war it's become much much worse where people who would ordinarily previously have been
• 1:47:27
  critics of Israel's behavior in the West Bank and Gaza now just see the whole thing as being one
• 1:47:33
  big grab bag of Jewish supremacy and you know it's led them to rethink the the legitimacy of Zionism
• 1:47:41
  as a movement and of Israel as a state because you know successive Israeli governments have not made
• 1:47:47
  it have not done terribly good job in my opinion of actively providing us with evidence that we can
• 1:47:52
  use to counter that misapprehension but on the history of the settlements why did we go from
• 1:47:59
  this these I understand those initial settlements that you're explaining how you know some of it
• 1:48:04
  was just people Jews who are land in the West Bank some of it was military strategy and some of it
• 1:48:09
  was religious fanaticism but how do you get from that over the course of decade after decade after
• 1:48:15
  decade after decade after decade of persistent swelling of the Israeli population on what is
• 1:48:21
  supposed to be at some point Palestinian territory up to the half million that we have today how does
• 1:48:28
  that not vindicate the Andres of the world view that everything else is window dressing and all
• 1:48:34
  of the details are actually excuse making because the grand trend is obviously towards just taking
• 1:48:40
  over the territory so well if we look throughout those 60 years okay we had the initial growth okay
• 1:48:49
  in 1977 Minachem Began wins the election this is the first white wing leader that Israel's going to
• 1:48:55
  have from 1948 until 1977 Israel only had left wing governments so kamiz Minachem Began he's not
• 1:49:00
  only the first right wing leader he's also the first religious leader that Israel has and so when the
• 1:49:05
  religious you called them fanatics I'm just going to call them religious ideologues when they come
• 1:49:10
  and say well we want to we want to continue to build but specifically what we want to do is we
• 1:49:14
  want to build settlements on the land where biblical Jewish communities existed right and that's
• 1:49:22
  what we start to see even more growth of settlements not just on the periphery but really in the center
• 1:49:27
  part of the West Bank right so you have you know the growth of you know Alon Mure emerges you know
• 1:49:34
  above Shremm above Nablus because in the Torah it says Alon Mure and that's where Nablus was and
• 1:49:39
  here's where and this is how we know and and so from then what you start to see is just more
• 1:49:44
  more people moving into the West Bank and then they start to have kids by the way fall of the iron
• 1:49:51
  curtain in 91 you had an immigration of Russians who moved into like the city of REL for example
• 1:49:56
  which is a settlement not because they were religious ideologues just because they wanted to live
• 1:50:00
  in Tel Aviv but it they couldn't because it was too expensive so they moved to a cheaper area
• 1:50:04
  that was within trucking distance right like there's very different reasons what you're going to
• 1:50:09
  see happen actually Oslo hits in the 90s and Oslo actually you start to see a massive decrease in
• 1:50:17
  settlement approvals and you actually see the halting of settlement construction in certain areas
• 1:50:23
  because they're not getting approval from the government right because that peace process is
• 1:50:27
  underway exactly exactly which again this is going to be my first argument towards people who say
• 1:50:32
  Israel's made no effort because in Oslo Israel with true from area A and B which is area A is 17
• 1:50:41
  percent and area B is 24 percent of the West Bank so you end up with Israel withdrawing from
• 1:50:47
  41 percent of the West Bank okay not entirely really withdrawing from 17 percent
• 1:50:53
  handing that over to the PA that's area A and then not fully withdrawing we don't fully withdraw
• 1:50:57
  from area B but we give over civil rights we give over excuse me civil administration to the
• 1:51:02
  Palestinian Authority again the idea of well Israel just wants to maintain their occupation and
• 1:51:07
  eventually just want to annex well not that government like again it all depends on what
• 1:51:11
  government's in power Robin was not about expansionism he wasn't about constant occupation he was
• 1:51:16
  trying to figure out a way to hand control over to a Palestinian government which is why part of
• 1:51:22
  Oslo was to create the Palestinian Authority so there would be a civil government that Israel
• 1:51:26
  could hand territory over to for them to be able to govern by the way that also included 80%
• 1:51:31
  of Gaza which most people forget that was also part of Oslo that Israel withdrew from 80% of Gaza
• 1:51:35
  and 41% of the West Bank so like where's the expansionism but again it's a who's in power
• 1:51:42
  so Robin does that right settlement settlement construction slows down by the way and really
• 1:51:48
  remains relatively slow all the way through until like 2015 and I'm not kidding like I remember
• 1:51:57
  teaching this early on in BBs in BBs second reign right which started in 2009 and people saying
• 1:52:04
  well he's all about settlements and I was like actually if you look at the stats settlements are
• 1:52:08
  growing really slowly right now then you start to see a massive term now again at that point
• 1:52:16
  most of the growth that you're seeing is natural growth it's just kids and there's a there's
• 1:52:20
  actually a tangent very short sidebar which is we have to remember that a third of the population is
• 1:52:26
  ultra orthodox these people expand rapidly they're having 10 12 kids a pop okay the fastest growing
• 1:52:34
  community in the West Bank is Baytar elite and the funniest part is that it doesn't grow rapidly
• 1:52:40
  physically it grows in population meaning it's the same three-bedroom apartment it's just now 12
• 1:52:47
  people are living in and instead of eight people so when we hear when we hear people complain about
• 1:52:52
  the the growth of Israeli settlement so I was under the impression that they were talking about
• 1:52:57
  the growth of permits being issued to approve new settlements in the West Bank yeah you're saying
• 1:53:04
  it's actually that people are having lots of kids so their families are getting bigger is it that
• 1:53:08
  the kids are getting the families are getting bigger and therefore the settlements need to
• 1:53:12
  swell and therefore there are permits which need to be issued to allow those settlements to grow
• 1:53:16
  or is it also that they're just approving brand new towns so first of all Oslo there was a complete
• 1:53:25
  end to the idea that new settlements could be approved and that didn't happen actually new
• 1:53:30
  settlements were not being approved from Oslo onwards now there was a caveat to this two things one
• 1:53:36
  existing settlements were growing okay and again it's important to point out that natural growth
• 1:53:41
  is part of the growth it's it's it's not just a bunch of like immigrants from America who are moving
• 1:53:46
  into these communities now that is also part of the growth don't get me wrong so we have to remember
• 1:53:51
  both there's immigration and then there's also natural growth of having kids and I think it's
• 1:53:55
  important to note the altruirton ox because they're a third of the population which means again when
• 1:53:59
  they how they grow they grow exponentially and so that's an important understanding of how we got
• 1:54:04
  to 500,000 it's not even it's we're not at 500,000 yet but we're close and I think that's
• 1:54:09
  also important to note it's been 60 years and there's less than 500,000 people I mean if you were
• 1:54:14
  trying to really do this you could imagine that more people could have been pushed in there and
• 1:54:19
  we could have grown that population much more quickly if you imagine that in Gaza the population
• 1:54:25
  doubled between 2003 and 2023 from a million to two million so just to get understanding and
• 1:54:32
  that's just the Palestinian population obviously in Gaza that doubled you know of of its own
• 1:54:37
  accord so you could easily yeah yeah it's the same thing in the West Bank so when we think of like
• 1:54:42
  rapid growth it's not rapid growth and then also when you think of the amount of territory that
• 1:54:46
  settlements take up settlements take up less than 10% of all of West Bank territory so also the
• 1:54:53
  argument is land grabs land is not all the good bits in the sense that it's the bit like
• 1:54:58
  when you fly over the West Bank no okay no that's the idea of quality land versus not
• 1:55:04
  almost most of the West Bank north of Clarcyon the north of where Jerusalem is is plush land I
• 1:55:13
  mean it's not you're not no that is I don't know I've never maybe people when maybe when people
• 1:55:18
  talk about it being desirable they just mean that it's close to Israel could be so it's easy to
• 1:55:22
  commute to economic dynamism if you yeah I mean let's realize a lot of the settlements that
• 1:55:28
  were built not the Jordan Valley ones but the ones that were built on the hilltops most of them
• 1:55:33
  are in agricultural settlements now there are some in the in the middle that are the olive orchards
• 1:55:38
  and and and wineries that are that exists there but Palestinians have equal amount of that they
• 1:55:43
  that's that's a lot of their industry is is is from agriculture and they they've they've been
• 1:55:48
  they've been on that land for centuries so I think that's a that's a misnomer in this case
• 1:55:54
  so the growth really came from just natural expansion and then some people immigrating in
• 1:56:01
  now let's get to today and I should say one more thing in the interim of what we all just talked
• 1:56:07
  about we also not only had Oslo but we had Camp David of 2000 and we had the old mayor
• 1:56:13
  doffer of 2008 both would have withdrawn from the west bank between 90 and a hundred percent
• 1:56:19
  with landspots so again like I I have to and and the idea of well those weren't genuine with all
• 1:56:24
  to respect these were not like right wing leaders who were like oh yeah let's just get them but
• 1:56:28
  this was ahood baroque and it was ahood omurts these are two guys who right now actively speak out
• 1:56:32
  against the Israeli government you can google their names these are not like fake peace sticks these
• 1:56:37
  are legitimate people who were trying to actually make peace and didn't have a partner on the other
• 1:56:42
  side yeah I mean I always feel like I will also always feel like when you know critics of
• 1:56:47
  Israel say that you know they weren't serious offers well then why not just call Israel's bluff
• 1:56:54
  and accept like want to make a counteroffer that would be suitable for you in order to just engage
• 1:56:59
  like what yeah it's it doesn't really work for someone to begin a bargaining process with an offer
• 1:57:05
  and then you to claim that it's not a serious offer without ever testing it and even making
• 1:57:10
  a counter offer yeah well by making counteroffer I mean yeah by starting to actually engage in
• 1:57:15
  the process yeah I will say for the Zionist listening to this call because I hear so much from
• 1:57:19
  Zionist being like we've offered them everything they always say no and I I think what I tend to
• 1:57:25
  also do is I want to try to flip it and help them see it from the Palestinian perspective which
• 1:57:29
  actually I think Andre kind of helped sharpen which is look as far as the Palestinians are concerned
• 1:57:35
  according to their narrative we came and we stole their whole house okay and they've been
• 1:57:42
  told for seven years that we stole their whole house okay and that it was unjust and that they
• 1:57:47
  deserve their whole house back and so then imagine some the person who stole your whole house comes
• 1:57:52
  to you and says hey I have a great offer for you here's like a really nice bedroom and the garage
• 1:57:57
  like would you think that that's a good offer no you wouldn't and so I just again
• 1:58:04
  the narrative is false the idea of we came and we stole your whole house is false but if that's
• 1:58:09
  the foundation upon which you are debating these offers then we might see the offer is great
• 1:58:15
  because we believe that it was both of our houses right the house belonged to both of us
• 1:58:20
  and we were both living in it and and and then you wanted to kick me out and I there's a better
• 1:58:26
  there's there's a there's a more accurate story there but if you're basing it on the original
• 1:58:30
  story of you stole my whole house why would I accept an offer of a bedroom and a garage those
• 1:58:34
  aren't good offers the good offers for you to go away and give me my whole house back which is
• 1:58:39
  essentially what Andre said at the end of that podcast I mean it depends whether you're going to be
• 1:58:44
  an idealist or a or a pragmatist about things I mean even if you believe in the whole house analogy
• 1:58:50
  which as you say is not true because they were Jews banging around there for thousands of years
• 1:58:55
  as well even if you believed in it then you might just be pragmatic and say I mean the tragedy of
• 1:59:01
  the Palestinian situation is that there has never been a genuine insistence by the international
• 1:59:08
  community that that it's going to be a dead end for Palestinians to take everything back there's
• 1:59:14
  always this kind of placating of that narrative which makes it much harder for obviously them to
• 1:59:20
  cop what they see as the bedroom and the garage and even more so now with the anti-colonialist
• 1:59:27
  movement that has emerged which I mean I again I think we should all be anti-colonialists I'm not
• 1:59:32
  take otherwise I just think it's misplaced when you're calling an indigenous population colonialist
• 1:59:38
  but with that narrative also being driven it's not just they came into your house but these people
• 1:59:43
  come from another place and they have another house and they have plenty of other houses and they
• 1:59:47
  came in they stole your house which means that if you just wait if you just have enough patience
• 1:59:52
  suburb right as they say an Arabic suburb just have enough patience just like the French left
• 1:59:56
  Algeria the Jews will leave here because they're colonialists and this isn't their home and all of
• 2:00:03
  that leads to no pragmatism whatsoever out of the Palestinian leadership and pure ideology and
• 2:00:10
  so here we are I think the Algerian analogy is fascinating and I think there was I think it was
• 2:00:15
  Havif ready good who had an amazing podcast with it was either where they not or it was
• 2:00:25
  no I think it was down on Dan Sino's show October 7th I think he was talking to Havif and it was
• 2:00:31
  like a two hour long explanation of the what the Palestinian resistance movement learned from
• 2:00:38
  the expulsion of the French from Algeria and how devastating that is because the anti-colonial
• 2:00:46
  instinct is that if you just make it painful enough for the colonizer then the colonizer will
• 2:00:51
  eventually leave because they don't care about the place as much as you care about the place because
• 2:00:54
  you're indigenous and that worked in Algeria and it worked all throughout the the post-colonial
• 2:00:59
  world the reason of course it doesn't work in the case of Palestine and Israel is that Jews don't
• 2:01:04
  have it the other where is the France if if Israel is the Algeria where is the France for the Jews
• 2:01:11
  to retreat to so they will fight to the death and they will cling on especially now to that strip of
• 2:01:18
  land well especially now right because half of the Israelis now really don't have a place to go to
• 2:01:23
  like you could argue I mean I'm sure there's somebody listening who's like well you know you're
• 2:01:27
  an Australian I'm sure you have Australian friends you can come back to Australia or like Charlottes
• 2:01:31
  and American who could go back to America but what about the Yemenite Jew in Israel who had to
• 2:01:37
  flee Yemen right or the Iraqi or I mean half the Israeli population today are from the Arab
• 2:01:43
  world or descendants of people from the Arab world who absolutely do not have anywhere else that
• 2:01:47
  they can go and that I think is also a real a real misnomer out there there's so many people are
• 2:01:52
  like oh there are so many Europeans they all have like a second European passport they can all just
• 2:01:55
  go back to whatever European country they came from and it's like a huge ignorance of half the
• 2:02:02
  Israeli population who are not that sure but I mean also when a French Algerian went back to France
• 2:02:08
  they were going back to a place that was built for them that had their interests at heart that was
• 2:02:12
  committed to their well-being you know when a Jew leaves Israel to go back to another country there
• 2:02:16
  is no country which is dedicated to giving a shit about them the way that France is built to give
• 2:02:23
  a shit about French people I mean you just you just made the simplest argument for Zionism right
• 2:02:28
  I mean that's why we're Zionists we we understand and we believe that the Jews not only have the
• 2:02:33
  right to self-determination but have the need for self-determination and the only logical place for
• 2:02:38
  them to do it is in their ancestral homeland the question is there's another people there and how do
• 2:02:43
  we figure out how both of us can achieve self-determination on that land now let's get to now the
• 2:02:48
  French settlers because this is this is really where it comes down to right is you have this huge
• 2:02:53
  portion of the Israeli population have been people who have been so willing to compromise who
• 2:02:57
  will have been pragmatists they're not religious ideologues they're very pragmatic and they say
• 2:03:01
  we just want this conflict to end and if that means sacrificing parts of you know historic
• 2:03:05
  biblical Israel to be able to do it then that's what we're going to do funny enough those same
• 2:03:10
  pragmatic Israelis would now say from a pragmatic place it would not make sense for us to withdraw
• 2:03:16
  from the West Bank from the West Bank Judeans America right now because of security like and and
• 2:03:20
  that you can argue post-docs over something because a lot of sense especially given that
• 2:03:24
  the popularity for Hamas is significantly higher in the West Bank than it is in Gaza so and that's
• 2:03:30
  of course probably simply because they never had to live under Hamas like the people in Gaza who
• 2:03:33
  had to live under Hamas but when you get so then when you jump then to the radical fringe settlers okay
• 2:03:42
  first of all they are predominantly religious ideological which means pragmatism doesn't really
• 2:03:47
  play a role in their thinking okay their ultimate belief is that returning and taking control
• 2:03:56
  over the land of Israel and I want you to notice I said the land of Israel not the state of Israel
• 2:04:00
  but the land of Israel is a must if we are going to bring about redemption if we're going to bring
• 2:04:06
  about the Messiah as we say the Messiah and and specifically and this is where it gets really
• 2:04:12
  problematic is that withdrawing from any territory giving up any territory of the land of Israel is
• 2:04:18
  hindering reduction okay and that's a big piece okay so for them they're literally engaged in
• 2:04:26
  religious conquest of this land and so for them it's by any means necessary and now by name
• 2:04:33
  why are they being emboldened and tolerated by the government that's the question I mean every
• 2:04:39
  country has you know has whack jobs what you know Andrei's claim was that the that you know
• 2:04:44
  disadvantage to youth of being recruited off the streets of Israel and pushed into these
• 2:04:49
  tip of the spear operations where they can supposedly go on like farming you know sort of peace
• 2:04:55
  court things but they end up getting essentially turned into child soldiers who can go on her
• 2:04:59
  harass Palestinians so I think a bit of an exaggeration but let's understand obviously there
• 2:05:05
  are at risk youth in Israel and there are different programs to take care of at risk youth to
• 2:05:10
  to give them ways to get on the straight narrow if you will and one of them was going and working
• 2:05:16
  on a farm now I don't I don't know the specific what he was talking about specifically in the
• 2:05:21
  West Bank of that I highly doubt that the vast majority of the radical fringe are coming from
• 2:05:26
  that community but maybe listen at risk youth unfortunately we're also recruited into the unit
• 2:05:33
  in the army that was meant for the ultra orthodox which was called nacho charadi it was transformed
• 2:05:38
  into a unit called Netza Chihuda and Netza Chihuda it wasn't just charadi ultra orthodox but it was
• 2:05:45
  at risk ultra orthodox youth or at risk religious youth who were then put into this unit and then it
• 2:05:50
  slowly became not a unit for just ultra orthodox but it became a unit of almost criminals and
• 2:05:57
  sometimes just criminals by the way if you look at the Biden administration where they sanctioned
• 2:06:01
  of some soldiers they all came out of Netza Chihuda this was and so and so there's different ways
• 2:06:08
  that Israel tries to deal with at risk youth and one of them could be go work on a farm okay now
• 2:06:15
  I want to go back for a second because 2005 was a very important moment for this movement
• 2:06:20
  okay because again they believe you withdraw from land you're hindering redemption we're going to be
• 2:06:26
  punished we withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and they very much believe that the last 17 years has
• 2:06:35
  demonstrated last 18 19 years has demonstrated exactly why you don't pull out of land because look
• 2:06:40
  God is punishing us with October 7th now let's remember who was part of that movement Ben Ver was
• 2:06:47
  part of that movement to prevent us from withdrawing from Gaza so it's it's all a small
• 2:06:51
  glitch and these guys were traumatized by what happened in in Gushka Teef in Gaza the which
• 2:06:59
  role of this now to far right cabinet ministers yes sorry I should stress each of our Ben Ver I
• 2:07:06
  mean I'm going to I'm going to talk about them a lot so let's each of our Ben Ver is the head of
• 2:07:09
  the Jewish power party what's Mayu Houdite and or Jewish might however you want to and then
• 2:07:14
  Bitsala small glitch is the head of the religious scientist party and he's more Ben Ver everyone
• 2:07:21
  would pretty much argue is more extreme than Bitsala small glitch in terms of his support for violence
• 2:07:27
  he himself had been indicted on many occasions for violence by the way violence specifically directed
• 2:07:33
  at the police which will become an important point in just a second and well let me just make it
• 2:07:40
  when he got into government to get him into the coalition BB had to give him the portfolio
• 2:07:48
  of minister of internal security which means that he is basically responsible for the police
• 2:07:55
  this is a man who again had been indicted on a number of occasions for violence against the police
• 2:08:02
  okay so let's eat him our Ben Ver eat him our Ben Ver is a man who had a photo of Baruch Goldstein
• 2:08:07
  hanging up in this living room for those who might not be familiar Baruch Goldstein is probably the
• 2:08:11
  most well-known Jewish terrorists there aren't very many of us out there so it's not a long list
• 2:08:17
  but he's definitely at the top of it he on Purim in 1994 went into the cave of the patriarchs when
• 2:08:23
  both the Moss portion and the and the synagogue portion were not separated and he brought a gun
• 2:08:28
  and he shot and murdered 29 innocent Palestinians while they were praying and injured over a hundred
• 2:08:34
  others and those who weren't too injured beat him to death to me a great end for somebody like
• 2:08:42
  that but he had a photo of him up in his living room and when Israeli reporters came to his house
• 2:08:51
  to interview him and saw the photo they asked him you know what do you tell your kids about this
• 2:08:54
  this photo and this individual and he said well I teach my kids that he was a hero
• 2:09:00
  now let's understand that within the far right circles of eat him our Ben Ver there's a whole conspiracy
• 2:09:07
  theory behind Baruch Goldstein and that he actually was preventing another a massive attack that
• 2:09:13
  was about to happen which I'm sorry I don't know how you walk into a mosque and shoot up randomly
• 2:09:18
  but somehow you've targeted the 29 people who were planning an attack like it's just it's the notion
• 2:09:23
  is absolutely asinine and you have to be so knee deep in your ideological bullshit to believe
• 2:09:29
  something like that and I'm gonna there's no excuse for Baruch Goldstein he was a terrorist
• 2:09:35
  and if he hadn't been beaten to death he should have wrought in his Rayleigh jail for the rest of his
• 2:09:40
  life it's not complicated but this is the photo that he had up and if you talk to people now who
• 2:09:46
  voted for him they'll say but he took the photo down yeah he took the photo down when he was
• 2:09:51
  getting into politics and he realized that having a photo of a terrorist on his wall is not going
• 2:09:55
  to play well in politics that's eat him our Ben Ver and if you notice you hear my disdain for him
• 2:10:01
  it's simply because I'm against people who support terrorism I'm against people who believe the Jews
• 2:10:06
  are somehow better than any other group of people in this world I'm against people who support
• 2:10:11
  violence against Palestinians period end of discussion and the vast majority of Israelis do too which
• 2:10:17
  is why Ben Gavir is not the prime minister but is the leader of a small party that Netanyahu
• 2:10:21
  had to make a deal with great and not only by the way a small party a small party that had to join
• 2:10:26
  up with another party to be able to break the threshold of 3.25% to get into the government okay his
• 2:10:32
  partner the other person is but it's all a small glitch by the way they've split since the the
• 2:10:36
  election so they're now two separate parties but they had to to merge during the election and
• 2:10:41
  that was BB sitting them down in the room saying you better figure this out get together because
• 2:10:44
  we're not going to win the next election if you don't and he was right and it all played out
• 2:10:48
  the way that he had planned it's all as much which leads to religious science party different
• 2:10:53
  in the sense that the religious science party was pretty much the only party in the government that
• 2:10:56
  represented the settlement movement at the time and so if you are a settler okay who wanted your
• 2:11:01
  interest as a settler to be represented in the government you were kind of stuck between a rock
• 2:11:05
  and a hard place if you were somebody who wasn't racist if you were somebody who doesn't support
• 2:11:09
  violence towards the Palestinians who doesn't believe necessarily in massive expansion who might still
• 2:11:13
  believe in a two-state solution just with some redrawing of lines and and adjustments and I know
• 2:11:17
  these sellers and and some of those people had to literally go to the elections holding their
• 2:11:23
  nose and vote for small glitch because they felt like he was the only person who would represent
• 2:11:27
  their broader interests even though they knew he was racist and that's not me saying it by the way
• 2:11:31
  he himself says that he's racist he he doesn't hide that fact and he's just to clarify what would
• 2:11:38
  the broader interests of the settler's be the non-racist like benign
• 2:11:44
  version again not not dismantling settlements that are consensus that's a big one consensus
• 2:11:51
  settlements are settlements that are pretty much accepted by the vast majority of the
• 2:11:54
  Israeli population and that includes people on the left then that are never going to be dismantled
• 2:11:59
  in a sense that they're just too big and it would cause just absolute torment and it wouldn't
• 2:12:04
  really lead to a more peaceful resolution the the communities like Gushat Sion which are right
• 2:12:09
  over the green line but why do you need to vote for smotrish to do that like isn't that just
• 2:12:13
  well no one's going to be ripping up ripping out whole cities from the West Bank anytime soon
• 2:12:18
  well I mean you might say that those people would then vote for Lee Kud but again the interest
• 2:12:23
  of the of the settlements making sure that they continue to get funding making sure that
• 2:12:27
  they're supported militarily all of those things come from having somebody in the government
• 2:12:31
  who is has your back right and and that is their top priority and that was his top priority
• 2:12:37
  Lee Kud you could argue has a lot of different priorities right that's not going to be their
• 2:12:40
  number one it's not their anti said they're not anti settlement okay okay okay so let's get back
• 2:12:43
  to the tip of the spear like what you know these these instances so you have these two guys who
• 2:12:48
  are totally traumatized by what happened in 2005 and they very much believe we cannot give up
• 2:12:53
  any more land this is the worst idea ever and whatever we need to do to get more land we're
• 2:12:58
  going to get more land and this radical fringe movement starts to grow of more young religious
• 2:13:04
  ideological and now more violent settlers okay now for the early period from 2005 onwards and
• 2:13:13
  before that we had small instances of violence but again they were very rare I'm sorry I'm going
• 2:13:16
  to stress they were very rare I think this is the second anti fought like people aren't running
• 2:13:20
  wild this is like but 2005 onwards we do start to see growth of the hilltop youth which are
• 2:13:26
  predominantly who we're talking about the hilltop youth are the radical fringe violent settlers
• 2:13:32
  who will go to a hilltop and settle a hilltop they how do they do it either with caravans or
• 2:13:37
  what they've done more and more now is they set up farms and and then what they'll do is they'll
• 2:13:43
  take territory by grazing their their flock this is also where they will come face to face with
• 2:13:49
  Palestinians more often than not intentionally and then skirmishes break out between them now
• 2:13:56
  we've seen this growth of that kind of of of expansionism we've seen the assaults against
• 2:14:03
  Palestinians grow from vandalism towards maybe storefronts vehicles to the and then vandalism
• 2:14:13
  of orchards chopping down olive trees chopping down you know winery wine vineyards I don't know
• 2:14:20
  vineyards vineyards not my expertise as you can tell and and then it's evolved into actual
• 2:14:29
  direct violence actual assaults abuse and then we started to see just recently we've started to
• 2:14:38
  see more actual murder and I don't know if I want to go as far as murder man slaughter it happens
• 2:14:47
  in the middle of I mean Audrey was talking about people dying yes I mean I think it's important
• 2:14:52
  that I say killing though that they were killed they didn't just die I didn't want to I don't
• 2:14:55
  want to minimize it to the point of just dying you know what happened to Andre's friend was awful
• 2:14:59
  and that settler that he was talking about should absolutely be sticking jail I mean I so what
• 2:15:05
  happened right but the fact that he's not is evidence of something that Andre is pointing to good
• 2:15:10
  but good which is tricky to evade yeah I'm not and I'm not going to evade it let's get into it I'm
• 2:15:15
  just I guess I'm an educator and so I'm somebody who just needs to provide so much context before
• 2:15:20
  we get into the worst because when you just jump into the worst then you think this is the whole
• 2:15:25
  reality and it's not the whole reality but let's understand how it evolved so for a while the army
• 2:15:32
  kind of just let it happen it was just like we don't want to deal with it we don't like it's
• 2:15:37
  it's just they would show up and they maybe push the Palestinians away and you know they wouldn't
• 2:15:42
  arrest anyone and and and there was no deterrent and that kept happening for so long and the only
• 2:15:49
  time that the army would really get involved was when something really severe happened right like
• 2:15:53
  somebody was killed so Amram Benuziel goes to Duma and he sets a home on fire right and the
• 2:16:00
  Diwab Shea family is killed in his home and burned to death by the way in a horrific fashion
• 2:16:07
  and they they find him they hunt him down and they find him and they arrest him and he is charged
• 2:16:12
  and he is currently sitting serving life sentences in Israeli jail and so it's not like this doesn't
• 2:16:18
  happen but it's it has to be the extreme for it to happen at least back then then what happened
• 2:16:28
  they got more emboldened because there wasn't enough enforcement now hold on the enforcement
• 2:16:32
  thing is really obnoxiously problematic remember that whole civil law military law thing yeah well
• 2:16:39
  the military arrests Palestinians the military can arrest Israeli citizens they can
• 2:16:46
  detain them and then call the police and Israeli police have to come and arrest them okay and
• 2:16:52
  what's happened for a long time is like the police and the army just kept like blaming each other
• 2:16:57
  like oh well the army's not calling us or well oh but we can't it there was always like a pushback
• 2:17:02
  of it with somebody else's responsibility now jump to the last two years okay two three years
• 2:17:10
  where we've seen a massive massive growth first of all in just settlements okay and we've seen
• 2:17:17
  approval of new settlements we've seen massive increase in permits being given out for homes to be
• 2:17:24
  built in existing settlements I mean we have seen more in the last two years than we had seen in
• 2:17:29
  the 15 years prior and I'm not exaggerating and that very very clearly demonstrates the power
• 2:17:37
  of Bitsala Smotlich any tomorrow Ben Bitsala Smotlich what he was given to join the coalition
• 2:17:45
  was two things one finance minister huge obviously important role in the Israeli government
• 2:17:51
  and two the head of the civil administration in Judea and Samaria and the West Bank which means
• 2:17:56
  that he is ultimately the ultimate arbitra on permits this man is ra ra pro settlement ra ra
• 2:18:06
  annex applies sovereignty to the West Bank this man obviously from an ideological place is not
• 2:18:11
  about to like give out permits even lay between Palestinians and Israelis and the increase the massive
• 2:18:16
  increase obviously goes back to his control or the civil administration not even the question
• 2:18:22
  the policing well e-tomar bennivir was given head of police so if the police have to arrest them
• 2:18:29
  but you have a head of police who is supportive of their actions we can understand why enforcement
• 2:18:35
  has dropped significantly now there's another piece to this that's not just Ben Vier being
• 2:18:40
  Ben Vier post October 7th we had a huge problem one we had a massive lack of soldiers right so many
• 2:18:49
  of the soldiers that were on regular duty meaning their their their normal three years of service
• 2:18:55
  were sent to Gaza and so reservists were called up to then be on the northern border with Lebanon
• 2:19:01
  and the West Bank some of the people who were called up are of the radical settler movement
• 2:19:08
  and they were given uniforms to then police the West Bank but so that's that's one piece of it
• 2:19:18
  do you know whether or not constructs conscripts get to request particular postings they don't
• 2:19:23
  when the reserve is called up so it's not like there could be a self-selecting phenomenon where
• 2:19:27
  people who are intentionally antithetical towards Palestinians want to be in the West Bank no you cannot
• 2:19:33
  okay but in this case most were put there because that's where they lived like it just made sense
• 2:19:39
  right right i see yes so you're coming from settler families anyway you know kind of
• 2:19:43
  exactly to the other side of the country hmm exactly um and then you and then you had just so much
• 2:19:51
  focus on Gaza that it everyone was turning a blind eye to what was happening in the West Bank even
• 2:19:58
  more than the blind eye that they were turning prior and i really want it i really want to stress this
• 2:20:02
  i speak to Israelis all the time the vast majority of them are totally ignorant of how common settler
• 2:20:12
  violence has become in the West Bank it's just again because it's it's the focus has so been on Gaza
• 2:20:17
  on the hostages on the war that it's it's i mean i'm not you can't even say like oh well
• 2:20:23
  the Israeli media is complicit because these have these really many is on the left they're not
• 2:20:28
  supportive of this they're not supportive of bender and spots like so they're not and so it's not
• 2:20:31
  like they're intentionally trying to hide it it's just every journalist has you know x amount of
• 2:20:36
  hours and they're going to fill it with what's the most important thing on the minds of the people
• 2:20:41
  and that wasn't what was going on in the West Bank in the last year so it also enabled
• 2:20:45
  this these actions to just get so much worse with little to no enforcement with them also feeling
• 2:20:51
  like if i do this if i'm a radical settler and i do this i have the guy who's controlling the police
• 2:20:57
  in my in my court and so i'll be fine and so all of that has led to the circumstances getting
• 2:21:07
  so much worse and if you if when i start to explain this to Israelis and i tell them how frequent
• 2:21:13
  and what type of attacks are happening they're gobsmacked they just are what how do i not know
• 2:21:21
  about this that's totally unacceptable why are we not doing more that's usually the response
• 2:21:25
  so i think it's really important also for listeners to understand that this isn't something that
• 2:21:29
  Israelis know about and are ignoring it's it's something that they genuinely don't know about
• 2:21:34
  and there needs to be no i mean i think we get i think they get that but it's still it will land
• 2:21:38
  for a lot of people like the the very nice polite ladies in the antebellum south who were having
• 2:21:46
  you know crumpets and tea and were horrified just horrified to learn about the poor conditions
• 2:21:52
  under which those poor Negroes were being kept on the slaves it's on the slave plantations it's
• 2:21:56
  like it's not really an excuse if you the the argument would be if you set up a system
• 2:22:01
  in which you have a an ongoing military occupation with no proposed end with no plan for how it's
• 2:22:08
  going to end and you have a military law and then you have you're so if you some people ethnically
• 2:22:13
  under a military law some people ethnically under a civil law and then you expect everything to be
• 2:22:20
  peachy no that's naive there's gonna be conflicts in the yes in the settlements but i think Israelis
• 2:22:27
  would say that's not the truth it's not exactly how this all played out and i think Israelis would
• 2:22:35
  know to you but wait a second after 20 years right 25 years Israel sat down tried to negotiate
• 2:22:42
  and by the way in those 25 years right what it Israel do they were building the major roads in the
• 2:22:47
  West Bank and they were building the hospitals and the clinics and the schools and the universities
• 2:22:51
  and developing the area to make it what it is today i'm sorry these are the 25 years after the after
• 2:22:58
  nine 67 from 67 until the 90s yeah and so it's not like also the idea of like oh they were just
• 2:23:03
  treating them poorly and we just know like we actually built up that area and and quality of life
• 2:23:08
  for Palestinians other than a very important piece of quality of life which is freedom
• 2:23:13
  was was increasing health care education infrastructure all of these things
• 2:23:18
  but then came the time where it was like okay let's negotiate and Israelis did they withdrew
• 2:23:23
  they they remember this then they remember camp david and they remember all merits offer and they say
• 2:23:28
  what are we supposed to do like you say we're supposed to have a realistic path and we did have
• 2:23:32
  a realistic path from the moment that we took control of the territory we said we're willing to
• 2:23:37
  withdraw just stop trying to kill us just give us peace and the response was now we're going to
• 2:23:43
  keep trying to kill you and so it's like the idea of like Israel just went on this path without
• 2:23:48
  any idea of how to move forward it's just ridiculous they made agreements they tried every step of
• 2:23:53
  the way and then came the rejection of 2008 then you ended up with a more right leaning government
• 2:24:00
  and a more right leaning populist in Israel who's saying we don't know what else we can give
• 2:24:05
  we don't know what else we can offer and so is railies our I moved to Israel in 2013
• 2:24:11
  and I remember Israelis have gotten into a place of just like status quo they had just become
• 2:24:16
  status powers it wasn't like they were anti-peace you remember that famous time time magazine cover
• 2:24:23
  and it was a Jewish star made out of flowers and in the middle it said why Israelis don't care
• 2:24:28
  about peace anymore I really no longer care about peace and I was so livid because I was like it's
• 2:24:34
  not that they don't care about peace it's just that they just don't believe in it anymore they don't
• 2:24:38
  think that it's possible they've made offer after offer they get rejection after rejection they
• 2:24:42
  usually follows with rounds of violence like why should we what more can we do and so and well I
• 2:24:49
  mean I know I have Israeli friends who are on the left who you know would say the more that you
• 2:24:54
  could do is stop building settlements you know give more light more rights to people in the West
• 2:25:00
  bank and keep coming back to the table and trying over and over again try to foster grassroots
• 2:25:06
  initiatives in Palestine that are likely to lead to greater engagement with civil society try to
• 2:25:11
  decore up to the PA try to you know like they're great they don't feel that is that successive
• 2:25:17
  Israeli governments have done enough to care and tend for a totally dysfunctional and broken
• 2:25:24
  society and culture in the form of the Palestinian people I agree okay I'm not I agree that there's
• 2:25:33
  more small things that could be done okay now I also think that people are somewhat ignorant of
• 2:25:38
  the small things that that were being done in that interim period I think we see the big agreements
• 2:25:43
  and we miss the the smaller things we miss the extra roads that were being built to help Palestinians
• 2:25:49
  we miss the the push by I mean I know it was only one year but Bennett's adoption of
• 2:25:55
  Mecha Goodman shrinking the conflict idea of trying to implement policies that would help do what
• 2:26:01
  you just said foster you know better um relationship between Israel and the Palestinians and make
• 2:26:06
  them feel like more is being done on their behalf a corrupt Palestinian authority is a whole
• 2:26:13
  big problem what's fascinating is you have a part of the Israeli government that would say they
• 2:26:17
  need to stay there because they're the only option and then you have the far right which are saying
• 2:26:22
  we need to dismantle the PA right and just get rid of them all together which makes total
• 2:26:25
  sense if you want to annex the territory because then there's no other government to get in the middle
• 2:26:28
  of your annexation but I'm just but to say that there was no effort made at all I think is is a bit
• 2:26:34
  of a misnomer especially given the massive reduction again I would say in settlement graph for
• 2:26:39
  for a huge period of time I mean we we kind of ignore all of those small things because they were
• 2:26:43
  small things but in the last let me ten eight years nine seven years when BB really started to
• 2:26:50
  get into his legal troubles and the government started to shift more right we started to see
• 2:26:58
  really zero effort made to try to an anyway end the conflict right or and obviously the West Bank
• 2:27:05
  is going to be a key role in ending the conflict ending the conflict I would say in a two-state
• 2:27:09
  solution and in the conflict with any kind of giving up land to the Palestinians which again you can
• 2:27:15
  make you can very much understand why nobody's pushing that because we withdrawn from Gaza and that
• 2:27:19
  didn't go well and so the argument it wasn't popular in Israel at the time to do anything big like
• 2:27:24
  that but small things sure when you had really the elections in 2022 that was it I mean you had
• 2:27:33
  the Bennett government that was trying and then you had a BB government that is trying the opposite
• 2:27:38
  they're going the opposite direction because that's their ideology I mean it's not even just
• 2:27:42
  his entire government it's the too far right wing parties and then the core right wing party
• 2:27:46
  Lee Koot is just like again status quo like what are we supposed to do we can't make big changes right
• 2:27:51
  now after what just happened in Gaza like we just have to ride it out but you also don't hear a lot
• 2:27:56
  of them being like annexation like that's not the rallying cry right now so I think people really
• 2:28:01
  need to give a little bit more credit to the status quoers out there who are like make the small things
• 2:28:06
  do the small things that will minimize tension that will increase cooperation but we can't do big
• 2:28:14
  so status quo and eventually maybe if we have new leadership if the ideology starts to shift then
• 2:28:22
  we can get back to the conversation about a withdrawal of some kind handing over more control to the
• 2:28:28
  PA but with the corrupt PA and with the current reality that's just not it's not realistic now
• 2:28:35
  in my mind I'll tell you I think one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest obstacles
• 2:28:41
  to any kind of change in ideology which to me is the only way we're ending this conflict
• 2:28:45
  is the radical settler violence and most of you would say you're crazy come on it's but
• 2:28:50
  but if I'm a Palestinian and I'm being taught the Palestinian narrative which is
• 2:28:55
  designers came in they've always wanted to take all of our land they took look how much they
• 2:29:00
  took in 48 they took even more in 67 now even the West Bank they're trying to expand and grow look
• 2:29:05
  at these radical look at what they're doing us like and then you point at the radical settler and
• 2:29:10
  you're like see it's it's validating it it's verifying it right and now the narrative is
• 2:29:16
  factually incorrect sure these individuals are expansionist and there's always been some of them
• 2:29:22
  amongst the Zionists but they've never been the majority and so it's like everyone has their
• 2:29:27
  fringe I mean you look at America and there's like yeah the KKK's here but they don't represent
• 2:29:31
  America in any way and could more be done to crack down maybe but like again they're there they're
• 2:29:37
  the fringe that's the same idea but if I came to America and the KKK was wanting if I if I was
• 2:29:44
  an American and the KKK was wanting running rampant I've been told the KKK is America and I'm
• 2:29:48
  now in some place in the South where the KKK is still doing their thing I'm going to think oh
• 2:29:53
  everything I've been told is is true the KKK does run America and the KKK you know right but I
• 2:29:58
  mean look if the Department of Justice was led by a person who used to have a picture of the you
• 2:30:03
  know the KKK on his wall and if the KKK really was operating with impunity then you would have
• 2:30:10
  right to be concerned about the hundred and ten percent whether or not America is or is not a racist
• 2:30:14
  place a hundred and ten percent and that's why but again so for but why I'm why I'm saying that
• 2:30:21
  I think they're the biggest problem right now is because if I'm a Palestinian and that's all
• 2:30:28
  I'm seeing well I'm not getting the right representation because the reality is is less than
• 2:30:32
  half a million Israelis voted for Ben there a around half a million voted for Ben there and
• 2:30:36
  small to each together which again means like some of them might have just voted for small to each
• 2:30:40
  and Ben there happened to be on the ticket and I don't believe anything I don't believe this guy
• 2:30:43
  was a terrorist but like what was I we all vote in you know with different priorities and so
• 2:30:50
  if a Palestinian was meeting you know me the Israeli who again condemns the actions of radical
• 2:30:59
  settlers whenever I can give me the opportunity I mean I was so glad when this was the topic because
• 2:31:05
  I said right now especially but the last two years especially for the last five years especially
• 2:31:10
  because I want to see a peaceful I want to see reconciliation I want to see an end to this conflict
• 2:31:15
  and I I don't care who the violence is coming from violence should never be acceptable the idea
• 2:31:20
  of supremacy should never be acceptable we need a Jewish state we need a Jewish state we're not
• 2:31:25
  we're supreme but that we're equal and that we all have rights and that Jewish rights are protected
• 2:31:29
  and Jewish Jewish existence is protected but not because I'm better than anybody else
• 2:31:35
  not because I'm chosen as everyone likes to say that we say we are when I you never hear Jews
• 2:31:40
  talking about our chosenness if anything what was I chosen for was I chosen for to have to do
• 2:31:45
  613 commandments instead of the seven that the average non-Jew gets to do like what was I chosen for
• 2:31:51
  only when Jews are doing stand-up comedy did I talk about the fact that they're the chosen people
• 2:31:54
  yeah it's only a punchline yeah it's not I just want to I want to let you go because I know you know
• 2:32:00
  I appreciate that you're probably hungry at this point in the evening the the I mean what is your
• 2:32:06
  vision do you have one for the future because I mean forget about you were just saying it's very
• 2:32:10
  difficult to articulate a realistic or measured view that is positive towards Israel and Zionism
• 2:32:19
  to the perspective from the perspective of a Palestinian who is confronted by settler violence I
• 2:32:23
  mean I would say forget about the Palestinian just think about the average citizen of the world
• 2:32:27
  and the average of person in Western Europe or Australia who you know some years ago would have been
• 2:32:36
  broadly sympathetic towards the Israeli worldview at the same time as they felt like it was they
• 2:32:42
  probably didn't agree with everything that Israel was doing in the West Bank and that has now flipped
• 2:32:48
  to questioning the very existence of the state and the very ideal of Zionism as a result of what they
• 2:32:55
  see as ethnic supremacy and callousness and disregard for non-Jewish life in the region you know
• 2:33:03
  if I make you grand poop hour of the world with your magic wand to resurrect kind of global faith in
• 2:33:11
  yeah the purpose of the state well what do you do first of all my country doesn't need a purpose
• 2:33:19
  and I'm sorry I'm going to say to all the Europeans and the Westerners who have decided to
• 2:33:22
  helicopter into a conflict that they don't understand that it really doesn't matter what Israel does
• 2:33:27
  Israel has a right to exist period and a discussion okay I don't understand why it's even a
• 2:33:32
  conversation North Korea exists and nobody's like it shouldn't exist anymore everyone's just like
• 2:33:36
  change the regime and we're nothing like North Korea I'm just I'm so over it let me just be very
• 2:33:42
  clear if you say that Israel doesn't have a right to exist your anti-Semitic it's not complicated
• 2:33:46
  you're targeting the only Jewish country in the world and you're targeting its existence and you
• 2:33:50
  don't target any other countries in the world existence so that's the first thing that I would say is
• 2:33:55
  my country doesn't need a purpose okay it has by the way a serious purpose which is to protect Jews
• 2:34:00
  in Israel around the world okay and if that's not enough of a purpose for the people in Europe
• 2:34:05
  who should know a little something or two about the need for Jewish protection in the world like
• 2:34:10
  I have nothing to say to you if the last two years has pushed you to a place where you don't
• 2:34:15
  understand Israel's existence like I have little to nothing to say to you because if anything the
• 2:34:19
  last two years is demonstrated exactly why Israel should exist okay you could be against Israeli
• 2:34:25
  policies you could be vocally against this government what's the future well first of all if you
• 2:34:31
  continue to say that Israel doesn't have a right to exist what you're going to do is you're
• 2:34:34
  going to embolden people on the right in Israel okay so you're going to do exactly the opposite
• 2:34:39
  of what you're trying to achieve so stop because all you're doing is giving credence to the people
• 2:34:44
  on the far right who are saying see we have to take everything see everyone hates us see no matter
• 2:34:49
  what you're emboldening them so you're literally shooting yourself in the foot if that's what you
• 2:34:53
  actually care about if you actually care about Palestinians you actually care about ending this conflict
• 2:34:58
  then enough with the rhetoric that Israel doesn't have a right to exist okay because all you're doing
• 2:35:03
  is you're entrenching the conflict further okay you want to talk about real progress great let's talk
• 2:35:09
  about making sure that Israel abides by their own laws abides by international law making sure
• 2:35:15
  that if you disagree with something that Benveer is doing or smart glitches doing or the government
• 2:35:20
  speak out against it it's not complicated I don't know why it has to end with Israel shouldn't
• 2:35:24
  exist doesn't make any logical to be fair just because you keep saying Israel just shouldn't
• 2:35:29
  exist very few people say that that's a little bit like the Jews calling themselves the chosen
• 2:35:32
  people I'm sorry Josh I don't know I think you live in in Australia I literally am on campuses
• 2:35:39
  almost every day and on a daily basis I'm told that Israel shouldn't exist well let me
• 2:35:43
  phrase it this way that I think that there's a much less of a threat from people who are openly
• 2:35:47
  saying that Israel shouldn't exist because I think that's a much easier argument to knock down
• 2:35:51
  than there is from people who smuggle the assumption that there's something just unseemly about
• 2:35:56
  the existence of Israel into a bunch of other assumptions and the way that they articulated is
• 2:36:00
  something like you know there should be an end to ethnic supremacy and there should be one
• 2:36:04
  Israel for all people who live in the land or the Israel can exist but it should the Palestinians should
• 2:36:10
  have a right of return back into all of the Palestinians right all of those are just sort of proxy
• 2:36:15
  wise of saying that they shouldn't be a Jewish site great great so for all those people they have
• 2:36:20
  to be taught like how to do basic math and demographics and what all of that would mean which
• 2:36:25
  would essentially mean no Jewish day right if you want a prescription for the future look I believe
• 2:36:34
  that Israel needs to exist I believe that Israel needs to remain a Jewish and democratic state
• 2:36:39
  there are three million Palestinians in the West Bank and there's two million Palestinians in Gaza
• 2:36:44
  and there's two point two million Arabs who live inside of the state of Israel there are seven
• 2:36:48
  point seven million Jews who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea alongside
• 2:36:52
  those two those seven point three million Arabs okay so we can all do math if it's one state and
• 2:37:01
  we have the right of return we understand what that looks like so what do we need to do um
• 2:37:06
  lamin educator so you're asking me the easiest question possible which is we need to change the
• 2:37:10
  education we need to change the education in Israel Israelis need to learn what Palestinians are
• 2:37:16
  who they are what their history is what their connection to that land is they're not just being
• 2:37:20
  stubborn Arabs who don't want to go back to whatever Arab country they came from that's a
• 2:37:23
  ridiculous notion a lot of these people have lived in that land for hundreds of years this is their
• 2:37:27
  home and even if they've only lived there for a hundred years it is their home and thinking that
• 2:37:31
  they're just going to go somewhere else and somehow now you're going to be safe is a ridiculous
• 2:37:35
  notion we have to educate ourselves on their history and on why and how they're connected to the
• 2:37:40
  land we are also connected to and then on the flip side Palestinians have to be educated of who I am
• 2:37:46
  what does it mean that I'm a Jew and what does it mean that I'm a Zionist and what's my connection
• 2:37:49
  to this land and why am I not going to go anywhere else and why do I also have legitimate claims
• 2:37:54
  and that to me is the the beginning because once that happens that's it that's the solid foundation
• 2:38:00
  upon which let's be honest any negotiation could really we could figure it out it's all just logistics
• 2:38:05
  at that point okay all it takes is a few brilliant minds which we have plenty between the two groups
• 2:38:10
  to sit down and work out the logistics of it all once we accept the fact that we're both from
• 2:38:15
  this land and that neither side is better than the other and if somebody thinks so and is violent
• 2:38:20
  they need to be locked up it's not complicated so what Israel needs to be doing right now in the
• 2:38:24
  West Bank is they need to enforce laws that already exist okay they need to enforce laws not just
• 2:38:30
  against Palestinians but against Israelis and they shouldn't be different and I know we're wrapping
• 2:38:34
  up but one of my I still cannot believe that Israel did this but and this is where when people
• 2:38:40
  throw out discriminatory laws I I will absolutely say this is one of them but administrative
• 2:38:46
  detention which is something Andre talked about but never actually named administrative detention
• 2:38:51
  it is not it doesn't have no legal basis you have to go to a judge and a judge has to look at
• 2:38:56
  evidence that gives you an administrative detention order for an individual and you have to keep
• 2:39:00
  going back to a judge to show that there's enough evidence for that person to remain in
• 2:39:04
  administrative detention and I'm not saying that they're not legal issues and do process and other
• 2:39:07
  things involved in that but it used to be that they would use it for both Israelis and Palestinians
• 2:39:14
  and in last year they stopped using it they got rid of it for Israelis and that to me
• 2:39:20
  says everything about what this government what these individuals within the government feel
• 2:39:26
  and that is a very very dangerous precedent just to clarify for people the administrative
• 2:39:32
  detention this is just locking people up without they're being convicted of a crime without them
• 2:39:36
  being convicted of a crime because they're military style of yeah security lock up and it is
• 2:39:42
  considered legal as long as again you get a judge order okay and you can extend it based on judges
• 2:39:47
  orders but of course there's problems there because the intelligence that's shown to the judges
• 2:39:51
  not shown publicly because it can't be shown publicly because it would expose sources and
• 2:39:57
  and informants and I could risk their lives like there's there's good reasons for it but of
• 2:40:02
  course there are legal issues within I'm not saying otherwise but to me now my biggest problem is
• 2:40:07
  it should be used if you're going to use it you have to you can't use it discriminately you have
• 2:40:10
  to use it if there's a reason if you have suspicion of a Jewish terrorist who might go and commit a
• 2:40:14
  crime and hasn't yet they should also be locked up more I mean in a lot of countries it'll be a
• 2:40:20
  three-day window or a five-day window or a seven-day window in which you have to come back and
• 2:40:24
  then present more evidence you can't just leave the person after years because you say that
• 2:40:27
  they're a threat right I mean again it's not just say there's evidence but I get it I get all the
• 2:40:32
  issues within I'm not going to sit here but going back look the next election in Israel
• 2:40:41
  is going to I think be a serious inflection point in Israeli history and I am very very worried
• 2:40:55
  that if we end up with these two individuals and their parties not maybe their parties but these
• 2:41:02
  two individuals being in the coalition I don't know what the future of Israel is going to look like
• 2:41:08
  and and I don't think it'll be an Israel that we would be okay with me and you okay I fear greatly
• 2:41:21
  for the future given the state of Israelis right now who are in trauma and very angry and very
• 2:41:32
  and in so much pain and then the big one is there in so much fear and those are all terrible emotions
• 2:41:40
  to base policy on and right now we have leadership that unfortunately I would argue especially
• 2:41:49
  Ben Fear is taking advantage of those emotions rather than trying to lead us a different direction
• 2:41:58
  and we need better leadership that is going to say the unpopular things that need to be said which is
• 2:42:07
  yes we were hurt and a horrible thing happened to us let's try to take steps that will prevent it
• 2:42:17
  from ever happening again but also can create that better future that we want to see in a Jewish
• 2:42:23
  democratic state that we can all be proud of and and so first and foremost what we need is we need
• 2:42:31
  better leadership and that doesn't mean right or left by the way it's just better leadership
• 2:42:35
  leadership that's willing to say the difficult things that's willing to maybe be a little bit
• 2:42:39
  unpopular but slowly the message will become more palpable the reality is as long as we allow
• 2:42:46
  lawlessness as long as we allow this violence to continue and to go unchecked basically
• 2:42:54
  the conflict will be more entrenched and these individuals will be more involved in
• 2:42:59
  and I'm somebody who very much believes that the Palestinians have a connection to this land
• 2:43:06
  and they have legitimate claims to that land and while I don't think they've done anything to
• 2:43:11
  deserve a a sovereign state they have a right to it and the question is how do we get there how do
• 2:43:19
  we get to the point that they can exercise that right without me being scared that their of them
• 2:43:27
  exercising that right is ultimately going to mean mean not being able to exercise my own right
• 2:43:32
  to self-determination and I think people talk a lot about the Palestinians and how the Palestinians
• 2:43:37
  feel and what it's been like to live under occupation for almost 60 years and I can understand
• 2:43:42
  how difficult I genuinely genuinely have sat in their homes and listened to their very genuine
• 2:43:48
  grievances of what it's like to live under occupation but I think not enough people talk about
• 2:43:53
  Israelis they look at us as the privileged side of this conflict and they I think deeply have
• 2:43:59
  forgotten have forgotten what the last two years has done to Israelis and the trauma that
• 2:44:08
  is transgenerational that has re-emerged and the fear of being wiped out is so palpable today in
• 2:44:15
  Israel that people are reacting from fear and not from logic and not from pragmatism and I'm
• 2:44:21
  hoping now that all of our hostages live hostages are home hope that Ron Vili's body comes back soon
• 2:44:29
  but I already feel Israel starting to heal and I genuinely believe that the more healing that's
• 2:44:35
  done we will see pushes towards better policies towards policies that will push us forward and not
• 2:44:45
  take us backwards maybe that's maybe hopeful maybe that's all the effort that I make trying to
• 2:44:51
  talk to Israelis to plant these in there. Hey let's leave it at that quit while you're ahead by me
• 2:44:55
  I mean that was great like if the purpose is educating then I think you've done a great job today
• 2:45:01
  and I'm delighted you could come back on the show and I'm really honored to have made your acquaintance
• 2:45:05
  and to hopefully become friends I think you're an incredible voice in the world Charlotte. Thank you
• 2:45:10
  you too I really honestly I feel like you're a lot like me when I was listening to you and Andre
• 2:45:14
  I felt like every time I wanted to say something you kind of said it almost every time but I would
• 2:45:20
  say at least maybe 75% of the time and I was like good that's the right pushback I appreciate that
• 2:45:25
  because I try to do the same right I try to yeah I mean look I just try to play a bit of a
• 2:45:29
  devil devil advocate with whoever I'm talking to obviously yeah push people and change people
• 2:45:33
  and and that's that's what it should be and I I try to base everything I say on facts and on
• 2:45:38
  on the information that I know and on not just facts that support what I believe but just facts
• 2:45:42
  across the board okay so I hope people thanks Charlotte my pleasure thanks go and eat a go and
• 2:45:48
  eat a pig with an apple in his mouth.