Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Eiynah: Josh vs Anti-Zionism

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Eiynah: Josh vs Anti-Zionism · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Good A-Humans! Welcome to the Safe Space for dangerous ideas. I don't have anything much
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to say about the catastrophe in Sydney over the weekend. It's obviously heartbreaking.
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The only things I could say would be platitudes. It's interesting to notice one's emotional
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roller coaster as the facts come to light and the sense of relief that it's not ethnically
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motivated, that it's not evidence of some kind of problem with Australian multiculturalism,
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some kind of cultural schism, some sort of religious backlash, some kind of importation
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of foreign feuds, ancient rivalries onto Australian shores, that it's not an active
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jihadist terrorism or, I don't know, ultrazionist extremism. And yet, when all of that has been
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ruled out and all you're left with is a 40-year-old schizophrenic man who currently doesn't have a permanent
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address coming from Queensland into Sydney, renting a small storage locker and subsequently
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entering a shopping mall with a huge knife and slaughtering mostly women,
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injuring a nine-month-old baby, killing her mother, the mother threw the baby to a bystander to
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save its life. And then the incredible courage of a female police officer who ran into the melee
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and instructed the gentleman to drop his weapon and when he refused and apparently lunched at her,
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she shot him dead. When you strip a wilder, fear is about it being part of some grander plot,
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targeting specific communities. What are you left with then? Is it a more reassuring picture of the
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world that random psychotic barbarism just unleashes itself occasionally in these very normal
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safe spaces? Or is it less reassuring? There's been so much nonsensical chatter on social media
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about to all of you people who are expressing heartbreak at this. Where is your heartbreak about
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the garsens? And if you haven't been talking every day about gaza and now you're posting,
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now you're posting about white people, about white victims, or is that your attitude towards
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white victims? That only white bodies count today. It's so monumentally unempathetic and so
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clueless about human emotion as if there'd been a shooting in a shopping mall in Sri Lanka.
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Sri Lankans wouldn't also care more about that than they do about gaza.
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As if anyone anywhere of any color wouldn't care more about things that happen to their peers
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in their place than they do about things elsewhere.
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What does it have to do with color? I've also heard people on social media saying,
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oh these are white tears. This is what white people are so self-absorbed that the moment
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just six people are killed, they make it all about them. When this is the kind of violence that
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people of color have been enduring for decades, nay centuries. Similarly ridiculous. I mean,
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there are parts of the world which are prosperous and peaceful and are inhabited by majority people
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of color, where an event like this would be a bolt from the blue and completely catastrophic,
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and then there are other places which are majority white which are tearing each other apart,
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like Ukraine, where an event like this wouldn't even register a blip in their consciousness.
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What's relevant is the background level of violence and the assumption of peace,
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not the skin color of the people involved. I mean, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument
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incidentally that we should care a lot more about things that are happening abroad than we do
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about things that happen close to us. I remember my first journalism class at university. I was the
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contrarian who is arguing that local news is stupid. There's no point. Who cares that a baby fell
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out of a third-floor window in a neighborhood near mine. Like that's not news. Tell me about
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what's going on in the world. Tell me about things that are happening that are important. Tell me
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about scientific breakthroughs. Tell me about geopolitical crises. Why is something important
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just because it happened near me? I have some sympathy for that. But I'd have more sympathy for
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the online influencers who are chastising everybody in Australia for caring so much about the
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mass stabbing, the mass killing. If it wasn't also so obvious that the only things overseas
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they care about are the ones that happen to have been put right in front of them by an algorithm
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on their smartphone and which caring about gives them enormous credibility and status in the
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social justice ecosystem that they're part of. If one of them wanted to start caring deeply
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about the million Muslims who were being driven out of Pakistan into probable injury,
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possible starvation, possible death in Afghanistan, then I'd have some respect for that. I'd be like,
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oh, okay, that's an unusual thing for you to care about. Good for you. If they took up the
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plight of refugees in some benighted part of Africa, yeah, okay, that's great. Oh, no,
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it's not that is it. All your finger wagging about how self-absorbed we are for caring about
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the slaughter of our own is predicated on you making your appropriate social justice moves about
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the conflict to do sure which you happen to have noticed on your phone and are suddenly deeply
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interested in when you never gave a shit about garsens up until three minutes ago when Mark Zuckerberg
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popped it in front of your face. Anyway, all of that is perhaps a ranty prelude to today's conversation.
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I wanted to pick the brain of ideally an anti-zionist, although it sounds to me like Aina, our
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guest today, is somewhat conflicted about whether or not she is really an anti-zionist. But
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I suppose the uncomfortable conversation that we're considering or the uncomfortable idea is
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whether or not Israel's catastrophic conduct in Gaza, it's from my perspective morally inexcusable
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excesses, the horrendous cataclysm being wrought on innocent people in Gaza and the disregard for
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the dignity and sanctity of human life of Palestinians. Whether that calls into question the
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legitimacy of the state of Israel and whether it's Kosha, pardon the pun, Kosha or the term Kosha
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for people in the West to use the catastrophe in Gaza as a way of relentlessly focusing on
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the ills of Israel and talking about Zionism in a way that at least rhymes with anti-Semitic
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tropes of the past. So I wanted to find someone in the West who had been posting on social media
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relentlessly in a way that was supportive of garsens and critical of Israel, but who also had
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some understanding of the Middle East. Aina came to mind because she was a blogger, she's an
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illustrator, she's a podcaster, her podcast is called polite conversations in contrast to uncomfortable
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conversations, and she grew up in Saudi Arabia. So I figure someone who grew up in Saudi Arabia and
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is of Pakistani heritage and ancestry, but lives in Canada, lives in the West, lives in North America,
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has imbibed the leftist, well I should perhaps leftist is a pejorative, the progressive left
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social justice attitude towards Israel and Gaza would be a great person to talk to about this.
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I hope this is useful, it is something of a clash and yeah I'm grateful to Aina for having
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what I hand up and been this person, I want to have more conversations about this with a great
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variety of minds in the future. I hope you're well, I hope you're safe, I hope you're peaceful.
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If you're an Australian listener who was in some way touched by
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what happened, I'm just tearing up a little because I knew
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one of I didn't know one of the people personally but that person is a friend of a friend and
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and that shopping center that mall is a place where I take my kids every few weeks and used to take
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them when there were little babies and the idea that that just normal background habit that part of
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your daily or weekly experience could be shattered so suddenly and so bloodily and so violently is
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it's shocking, it's traumatizing, it's absolutely nothing in comparison to what so many people
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around the world are going through, I know that, I understand the comparison but it just makes me
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feel so blessed, so grateful to live in the societies that we do, so I hope you're well and I
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hope all your loved ones are well, much love, enjoy this conversation with the one I don't mean, Aina.
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You're a riddle raptor, you know, nobody knows what you are, I don't even know what you look like.
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Yes, this is true, this is true, but why did you, why did you, I've forgotten about that, why did you
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make that choice? So why I started to do that is because I used to be a blogger, specifically
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about sex and sexuality in Pakistan and then yes, started to extend to generally, you know,
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talking about Islam and how that impacts sexuality and women, things like that, and I started
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getting a lot of, well, actually, I was anonymous before I started blogging about that, so I anticipated
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getting a lot of threats, and I think they could be a certain level of violent intolerance in
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the Muslim world. In a lot of the world, that's not the only place I get threats from, but yes,
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no, I wouldn't deny it. Look, I'm a critic of the religion I left behind. I will never, you'll
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never find me apologizing for places like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, which are the two countries
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that I'm connected to, which is why I'm having a particularly hard time understanding like this
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connection and defensiveness around Israel that a lot of people are feeling.
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Well, I mean, I think, yeah, I empathize with you on that because I mean, I'm in a similar boat
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being a grandson of Holocaust survivors. There's an expectation that I'm going to take a reflexively
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pro-Israel stance, and it's tricky, but I think that's what being a thinking person is,
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is to try to wrestle with complicated issues. I don't think there's anything contradictory
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about my believing that the right wing Israeli coalitions are catastrophic for everybody,
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and that Netanyahu is a corrupt little hack, and that the policy of building settlements in
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the West Bank is criminal and insane, and that Palestinians deserve a state, and that what's
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happening in Gaza is horrific, and then also feeling conflicted about like cause for a ceasefire
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at a point when you would just have jihadists back in control in an area. I think it's, I think if
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a person doesn't find the oldest and most intractable geopolitical problem in the world
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complicated, and if it doesn't raise ambulant feelings in them, then they probably don't know
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enough about it is my general instinct. I think it's getting less and less complicated by the day,
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though, like. Yeah, so tell me what's your framing? I mean, big picture because I'm less interested in
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like should they have bombed this hospital or should that person have been like, I mean, of course,
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like war is fucking catastrophic, so it's horrendous. But what's the big, what's your kind of picture?
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We're also, we're also involves two countries at least, right? Like that are actually
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warring with each other. I don't even accept that this is a war really. It's like a terrorist group
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that is being bombed by a well-funded military. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, I'm happy to make a
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semantic distinction there if you want. In that context, like, you know, the campaign against ISIS
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in Syria in 2015 would also not have been a war per se. It's just trying to get jihadists to stop
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jihadding. Sure. Yeah, but I think this is different because of the the type of control that
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Israel has over the population, the Palestinian population, and the kind of control that it's had
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over it for decades. So that's not exactly the same as how America had control over the
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populations that it was bombing. It awful, awful, just the same, but I find that this is unique
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in some in a lot of ways, actually. Can you articulate those ways?
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Yeah, let me just start with my basic framing. When you reached out to me, you said that you're
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looking for anti-Zionist perspectives in the coming of show. Yeah.
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So before October 7th, I never even thought about the term anti-Zionist very much to be honest
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with you. I still wouldn't really go around talking about how I'm this anti-Zionist because
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I'm still undecided on how useful that term is. However, I do think it's becoming easier
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to talk about it because there are so many left-wing Jewish voices that are making the distinction
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between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism very clear, which I think has been a very deliberate
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tactic for a long, long time to conflate the two and muddy the water and make people uncomfortable
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about criticizing Israel. And coming from the atheist scene, that's what's been most eye-opening
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to me because this is like a scene that has talked about weaponization of the word islamophobia.
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And I've always been like, on the side of, of course, I don't like when conservatives
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weaponize that term. I've always stood against it. I've always criticized it. So it's really
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shocking to me to see the same kinds of people that talked about how or are still talking about how
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is the Islamophobia is just not a real thing. Even when they know that it actually refers to
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anti-Muslim bigotry, it may be an imperfect term. And I've heard plenty of
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Jewish people describe anti-Semitism as an imperfect term. And also a homophobia as an imperfect
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term, right? So if we're going to get mudan take about the terms, we're just going to get bogged
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down in it. If we can understand it to mean anti-Muslim bigotry, then I don't see why someone would
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say that that's a fake thing. That's a very real thing. Similarly, anti-Semitism is a very real
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and concerning thing. I've used my platform to talk about it a lot. But what I really dislike
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is the conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. It's interesting that you say that
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because after in November I went on sky news after dark, which is like the evening programming
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in Australia is basically like Fox News. It's right wing. And they got me on to talk about anti-Semitism
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because I've done an episode of my podcast trying to wrestle with how conflicted I was about the
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whole situation and how conflicted I was about the ways in which I guess anti-Semitism was starting
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to be used in extremely aggressive ways that smelled a bit like anti-Semitism. And
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the host of the show, she was basically making the argument that anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism
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were the same thing. And that if you're anti-Semitism, you are an anti-Semite. And I pushed back
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firmly on her and took the side that you just articulated on that saying hang on, hang on,
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this always gets trotted out. But in a cynical way, by right wing Israeli governments to try to
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provide them with cover from any legitimate criticism. It has to be possible to criticize
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the policies of Israeli governments without this lazy slur of being an anti-Semite. And it actually
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makes it harder to fight real anti-Semitism when people feel like anti-Semitism is just a
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you know, an ask covering tactic that the most far right, you know, orthodox religious pandering,
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set pro-Sethler, liquid Nick, can try to out in order to absolve themselves of criticism.
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And yet at the same time as that, there's been since October 7th, I've also had like a
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sort of shifting relationship with Zionism. There are times in my life when I've said that I'm
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not a Zionist, it just feels like that- I was going to say Josh, I looked at some of your old tweets
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on Israel. And you know, I found them completely in line with what I would think now, you know.
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Do you remember what they were? I mean, I'd be fascinated. I haven't done an archaeology of my
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opinions. I have already exact words, but you were like, oh, this is, you know, this is
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the obvious racism and this is not a country for me or something. Like some of that.
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Yeah, I mean, I feel like since 2008, since the country's rightward lurch and the abandonment
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of any pretense of peace and the cynicism of the Netanyahu government, it has just become a
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estate that I feel no sympathy for in the way that it's enacting its governments. And yet,
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even as I say that, I feel like a little twinge in my belly of discomfort because my country
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of Australia has done all kinds of things that I object to. And the United States of America has
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done all kinds of things that I object to. So what's happened since October 7th that has, I guess,
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rudely awakened me to becoming more of a Zionist, I guess, is that the anti-Zionist coalition has
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started emerging in ways that sound quite bloodthirsty against Jews. There's a lot of rhetoric about.
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Now, do you mean by that? Because I've heard people say that and then you ask them what it is,
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and they're like, oh, it's people that are saying from the river to the sea.
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No, I don't just mean that. I mean, there was quite a lot of activity on social media around
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like, you know, the Zionist colonial settlers will stop it nothing to satisfy their bloodlust.
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You know, there's nothing Zionists love more than, you know, bombing babies and killing women.
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You know, the Zionist campaign, the power-hungry Zionists won't stop until they've
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decimated every village. But they are decimating places and things. Well, of course.
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But I mean, if you said, you know, the Arabs will stop it nothing before they've raped
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it. Well, let me know with a callashnikov. That's different. That's more like saying Jew, right?
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Arab? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I'm saying that Zionist is getting used in way,
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like there are timeless tropes about Jews that they're bloodthirsty, that they like drinking the blood
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of babies, that they're power-hungry, that they're shadowy sinister figures behind the scenes,
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that they're at once supremely powerful, but also groveling, sniveling, rat-eating,
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porpoise, you know, they're communist, but they're also capitalists, like they're all these things.
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And I'm not saying that the people who say this stuff on social media have any clue about that,
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but it is just interesting that every half century or so, we see an uprising in particular
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characteristics, like there with, yeah, war is terrible. So you're gonna bomb buildings in a war.
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That doesn't mean that you have to say that the project of giving Jews a homeland is intrinsically
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linked with the lust that, quote unquote, Zionists, which I feel is sort of coded as Jew, have for blood.
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I mean, I don't think, I don't think it's fair to say that people who want an Israeli state to
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exist are motivated by their delight in what's going on in Gaza. Okay, let me respond to that.
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So I agree with you that some of the people that use Zionists use it in this very kind of coded way,
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which is why I say to you that I'm not entirely sure about the usefulness of the term,
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but it's like not everyone uses it that way, right? You also have people who are using that as a cover,
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like you say, to say that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and you can't criticize this rule.
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So you have like the whole spectrum of people that are masquerading as simply anti-Zionists,
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but they're hiding their anti-Semitism. And, you know, I think it's important for people that are
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on the pro-Palestine side to call that out repeatedly. I have done that in every conversation that I've
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had about Israel. I think it's very important to couple your criticism of Israel with your
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dislike of anti-Semitism to show that there's no space for anti-Semitism in my preferred type of
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movement that is criticizing Israel. It's completely separate. Now, when you say it's just war
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and war is bad and you're going to bomb things, there's some unique things about this war, right? So
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first of all, the death toll and the children, I think within five months, there was like over
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10,000 children. Whereas in comparison, if you look at Ukraine, obviously any single child dying is
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horrific, but it by comparison, I think the death toll of children in Ukraine over two years was
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like 500. And then there are reports coming from doctors, from Israeli doctors and human rights
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organizations that there's evidence that the IDF is deliberately targeting and shooting at children.
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Now, I know that there are tropes and awful things like that, but when you like a force that
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has this kind of impunity to act in ways that are crazy makingly, yes, they sound sometimes like
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the tropes like, yes, killing babies and things like that, but they're actually killing babies
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at a rate that is higher than a lot of what we've seen. So I mean, but one of the, I mean,
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anti-semitism is a tricky thing because I think what a lot of Jews feel is also a type of
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anti-semitism is the habitual double standard that is applied to Jews and Israel that isn't applied
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to other places. So parking for a moment, whatever that anecdotal report is about the IDF
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shooting children, that's not anecdotal. That's not a verifiable. If there is an Israeli soldier
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who is shooting an unarmed child, that soldier is going to be hauled before a tribunal,
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and they're not going to be a soldier anymore, and they will probably do to each other.
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No, not necessarily. That has not been verified by it. I mean, you can send me whatever you've
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got on it, but I've been following it reasonably closely. And I mean, if you want to do a what about
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game like how each side treats the other side, you know, you do have a population who voted in a
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jihadist group that then broke into Israel and like sliced apart women and raped their corpses.
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So that's also not a good thing. Absolutely not. And as I said, they're a terrorist group,
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but like most of them, they're a terrorist group who the population voted for and they've been
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functioning as a government. But most of that population is underage currently, like they're not
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adult. So no, no, it's terrible. Yeah, it's fucking awful. I mean, but this is why I don't want to
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sort of get into like, well, how are they doing particularly too much or are they being
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particularly careless? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there are ways in which there should be more aid
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getting in. I'm sure that there are catastrophes in the in the fog of war. I don't quite what I
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don't quite understand is why right now this particular conflict, which just as an aside, when
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we talk about the civilian casualties of the conflict, the civilian casualty ratio is not terrible
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in Gaza because there are so many jihadists. I mean, it's a weird and cruel thing to say. But
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even if you accept like Hamas's Gaza health ministry figures, the civilian ratio is something
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like two to one, meaning that for every competent who's killed, two civilians have died. That's
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Hamas numbers. Israel's numbers are like, you know, one point two to one. And our civilian casualty
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in World War Two was about the same. It was like two to one. And in the Iraq war, it was like
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four and a half to one or something in terms of the Iraq war was much more deadly for civilians
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in comparison to the number of baddies who we were killing. But you have not a mention like the
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fire burning of Dresden in World War Two or like what was Hiroshima? I mean, like completely
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different scales of targeting. Again, Dresden was how many years ago now like our moral standards
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also shift according to the time they do because I don't think we do think of World War Two as being
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about barric war on our part. No, I think a lot of people have talked about the civilian casualty
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is like we certainly don't operate at those standards now. Well, we certainly don't think about
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World War Two through the prism of the conflict, you know, the total disregard for civilian life
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on the part of the Allies means that their project was flawed. The way we do with Israel.
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Sorry, the implication. Yeah, the implication at the moment seems to be, Israel is killing a
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shit ton of civilians. Therefore, it's in the wrong in the war. It shouldn't be allowed to win
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the war and its whole status as a state should be questioned. We don't use that logic with
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the Allies in World War Two. No, but it's not a comparable situation and I'm not talking about
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its status as a state in general. I'm talking really about the way that it functions right now as a
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as a state that has besieged a population is controlling their caloric intake, controls even
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outside of anything that happened before October 7th, controlled who could collect rainwater,
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how they fish, like every aspect of their lives, where they go when they come, when they go
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back home, these are not like aspects of the normal society. No, I mean, it was cruel and it
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would have totally sucked to live in in Gaza. But does Israel do that to Palestinians in the West Bank?
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You know, Israel holds their children without charge in the West Bank.
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Wait, does Israel impose the kind of like, if you want to call it, you know, caloric restriction,
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intense embargo, checking everything that goes in and out of the West Bank?
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I believe that they don't, so they weren't doing it to Gaza because they're Palestinians.
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They were doing it to Gaza because Gaza was run by jihadists.
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Yeah, but you can't, that's collective punishment though, right?
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Yeah, the Palestinians voted for a government that was so bad that it, like, does October 7th
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give you any reason to think that the Israelis might have had a point about why they wanted to
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be careful about what went in and out of Gaza? No, because you're talking about millions of people.
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It's tragic. You're talking about millions of people who are run, who are basically hostages
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to a terrorist group of jihadists who have said even since October 7th, again and again,
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that they will kill as many Jews as they can and when they had a chance, they did. So you'd
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want to make sure that you sort of know what's going on now. If we're talking about rhetoric,
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let's talk about what Israeli officials have said, right? And they're not terrorists.
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Yeah, they sound no better than Hamas, right? Talking about flattening Gaza,
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Palestinian children have brought this upon themselves to annihilate Gaza.
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Yeah, as I've said, I'm a fan of Hamilat.
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You know, I'm a feminist government and I'm even less of a fan of his right-wing coalition partners.
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They've even, you know, it's like completely, I think, morally insane, like even just a couple
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of weeks ago, the hard-right finance minister, Smotrish, said that he was annexing another
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two and a half thousand acres of the West Bank for settlements. And he said that, from the,
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he basically said, from the river to the sea, like Israel is going to control everything, because he
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said, yeah, he said today in Somalia, yeah, yeah, totally. However, we know what happens when Israel
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controls all of the Palestinian territories, because it's been doing so. It's not nice.
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But what's the counter-vision if the Palestinians control all that territory? Would it be nicer or
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less nice? But you can't frame it like that, because why not? They both wanted from the river to
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the sea. Well, we don't know what the Palestinians would be like. Had they been allowed to thrive?
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Had they been allowed to exist a normal life? Like, can't hold a population off?
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No, we do. And then hold them savage. I understand what you're saying.
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I understand what you're saying. Yes, it's like, of course, a population that has been so
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traumatized is going to be dysfunctional in many ways. I completely take that. But it's not like
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they had suffered that in 1948 when they also didn't take a state and decided to invade Israel.
32:04
And it's not like they'd been occupied in 1967 when they tried to wipe all the Jews out of the
32:10
Middle East again. And it's not like they'd been occupied for six years when they tried to get
32:15
in 1973. Before that, that Jews and Muslims and Christians in the region have
32:21
coexisted centuries. But I want to go back to the West Bank. That's sort of a nice myth that
32:26
people who favor a one-state solution pedal. Yeah, they were there. I mean, there were
32:32
there were almost a million Jews. I mean, you've all know our Ferrari said that on on Sam Harris's
32:36
side. Look, it's true. They were there for a very long time. There were almost a million
32:44
Jews across like living in one of currently Arab countries prior to 1948. But through the 30s
32:50
and 40s, they were increasingly subjected to pogroms and, you know, having their shops and houses.
32:57
But when they got to Israel, we should also talk about how the Arab Jews were treated there,
33:04
how they were sprayed with pesticide, how they were, you know, de-errorized, so to say,
33:09
what happened to the Yemeni Jews' children? Things like that. And also to go back to the West Bank,
33:17
you were saying, right, they don't do this to the Palestinians in the West Bank. What you
33:21
know what they do in the West Bank is that they hold their children, they kidnap them without
33:29
charge and they hold them and they live under Israeli military law. They are officially the only
33:37
children in the world who are systematically prosecuted in military courts. And over 10,000
33:44
have been held in the Israeli military detention system, just over charges like stone throwing
33:53
for which they get sentences like 20 years. It's awful. Is that better or worse than
34:00
what would happen to Jewish children if Hamas or the Palestinian Authority controlled?
34:05
I'm done. That's not a fair principle. But that's the reality of what we're actually dealing with.
34:10
Like that is the reason why I think Israelis get frustrated with the double standard is like,
34:17
yes, okay. So the double standard, Josh, it seems to be an Israel's favorite. I don't think anyone
34:23
is allowed to offer the double standard. The double standard is people like you spend all their time
34:28
talking about how bad what Israel is doing is. And none of that. None of that. Well, when you talk
34:37
about what a terrible situation the Palestinians in, it's implicit because of course they're in
34:42
that situation by implication because of Israel. I talk about Israel plenty now because what I'm
34:48
seeing is shocking beyond belief. And I tell you why it's disorienting to me because if anything,
34:56
I was biased in favor of Israel because being an ex-Muslim, you can get kind of angry. Like I have
35:07
now over the years become very critical of what the ex-Muslim movement has become of what the
35:13
atheist movement has become to me that is like just a right-wing cesspit. But I am not like some kind of
35:25
fan of Islam and defender of Islam. So anything, I grew up in Saudi Arabia. The state, you know,
35:34
I have experienced all those injustices. The what they do with women, how they treat minorities,
35:40
all of that. I won't be apologizing to that. But what's shocking to me is that I grew up thinking
35:46
this is the worst that it, the worst kind of impression, right? Like what a woman might experience
35:52
in Iran or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. But then the more I read about what Israel is doing and how
35:59
it frames itself as a liberal democracy, it just does not match up. Like this is not,
36:08
this is not how a liberal democracy operates. Saudi Arabia sucks, but you'll never find it
36:18
pretending to be inclusive and a liberal democracy, right? Yeah, I mean, I think this is part of the
36:25
challenge, right? Yeah, Israel, to some extent, brings on itself the double standard by, you know,
36:32
it's participation in the club of progressive liberal democratic countries. So it gets judged
36:40
by that standard. If you actually look at the neighborhood that it's in, then of course,
36:46
if you had a choice of living, of moving back to Saudi Arabia or moving to Tel Aviv, I mean,
36:52
I assume you'd choose Tel Aviv. No, not from what I've heard. I don't, I don't know what kind of
37:00
prejudice I'm going to face as a person. Are you serious? Yeah, I mean, Saudi Arabia sucks,
37:06
but I know what what it is, right? Well, maybe you should do more research then. No, no, no,
37:12
I have, maybe you should go to Israel. I mean, you're aware that there, I don't want to go to a place
37:18
that has such horrific records on human rights. Like they have, since October 7th,
37:25
arrested dozens of Israeli citizens, Arabs, for posting any solidarity.
37:34
I mean, I'm literally speechless. Like, the Tel Aviv gay parade is one of the biggest
37:42
gay parties in the world. It is a town that is full of Arabs and Jews and gays and feminists.
37:50
It is a progressive part of the world. Well, yeah, it's the impression because you don't,
37:56
you just say that it's the impression because you don't know anything about it. I mean,
37:59
there are Arabs who are on the Supreme Court of Israel. There are Arabs. There's an Arab party that
38:04
is part of the democratic process. There are Arabs in the parliament. The idea that you would go to
38:09
Tel Aviv and feel potentially more oppressed and more constrained and less free. No, I said,
38:15
I don't know. I said, I don't know. Yeah, then I'm saying you probably should know
38:19
where if you're going to comment on this issue. No, I can't know how I'm going to be treated
38:24
if I go there because from what I see Palestinians being treated. Well, talk to some other
38:30
you could talk to Arabs who live in Tel Aviv. I have. And I'm telling you, they have been arrested
38:36
for simply posting. This is a Saudi Arabia type of Orwellian oppression where you can't just say
38:42
solidarity with Palestinians and Gaza right now. You're going to go to prison for that. Like,
38:47
it's ridiculous. I mean, there I would expect from Saudi Arabia. There are hate speech rules in
38:52
Scotland where you can't misgender somebody and you'll go to jail. Every country has its weird
38:57
quirks about ways in which it overreaches. Like I could say, well, I don't know. I haven't. Yeah,
39:03
I'm telling you that's not what happens in Israel. It's like, I could say, well, I don't know.
39:08
I haven't been to Glasgow. I don't know what it's like in Glasgow. I've made me know. Maybe I'd
39:12
rather move to Yemen than to Glasgow because no, the police arrest people for just saying things
39:20
are putting up posters because I am from Canada. I have heard Jordan Peterson do this bit and
39:26
not a single person has been arrested for misgendering someone. That's just how he
39:31
grifted his way to fame. But like, you know, you can think about these things objectively,
39:39
is that does that sound like having your children taken away for stones rolling for
39:46
possibly 20 years and then being tried in military court? That sounds to me like the kind of
39:52
stuff that morality police would do in Saudi Arabia. Like they were terrifying. That's in the West
39:59
Bank. But I mean, the the question of, I just, I don't know how you don't see that it's a double
40:05
standard when you're talking about a conflict between a jihadist group and a country that is
40:12
behaving in the way that you're talking about. That country needs to secure itself somehow,
40:18
presumably if you, if you believe in that country's, you know, we used to talk about the right to
40:23
exist. But if you believe that it's there and people live there and they've been living there for
40:27
generations, their people have been there for thousands of years since the Kingdom of King David.
40:33
They're now doing something really awful to the neighbors who tried to kill them repeatedly
40:40
because they don't know what to do about. What has Israel tried to do before that? Like they've
40:45
also done the same, you know what I'm saying? No, Israel isn't. What do you mean? Israel hasn't tried
40:52
demolition to annihilate Palestine. I mean, Israel is Israel. Israel tried to give Palestine back
41:00
to the palace. It was happy to have a Palestinian state next to it in 1948. We've had the Oslo
41:06
Accords. You know, we had various peace processes. We had Camp David. The Palestinians do not want
41:12
what the majority of Israelis had traditionally wanted, which was two states. The Palestinians want
41:16
the whole pie. That's the core of the problem. I just don't think that they've been given a fair shot
41:22
at a reasonable two states. Like this is not how two states operate, where one population is a
41:30
hostage and on the other. No, of course not. And so, okay. Of course not. But I mean, in 1993, they tried
41:37
in 1999. They tried in 2008. Omar tried. It's always comes down to basically. Yeah, but they've always
41:45
been trying to keep Palestine not from succeeding. They have admitted as much. They have admitted
41:52
as much repeatedly. Well, if succeeding means becoming militarized so that they can try,
41:58
you know, rockets into Israel, yes, economically, economic strangulation. They have talked about that.
42:05
They don't want it to not in the plans that they're offering. Not when they're talking about
42:10
the two states. No, they're not going to be like, hey, look, let's economically struggle you.
42:15
And will you accept that? No, that's not how it works. But that is why, like, that is why they have,
42:22
that is why Netanyahu has funded and helped Hamas out because he does not want Palestine to succeed.
42:32
But I mean, the bulk of Hamas' funding comes from international aid, which instead of spending on
42:38
the Palestinian people, it spends on rockets and tunnels. I agree with you that Netanyahu has
42:43
been cynical in playing off Hamas against the Palestinian Authority in order to drive a wedge
42:48
between Palestinians and make Palestinian statehood less likely. And I've always been critical
42:53
of that. I think it's shameful. But the idea that, you know, the only impediment to Palestinian
43:00
statehood has been Israeli intransigence rather than a coalition of Israeli intransigence and
43:05
Palestinian refusal to accept anything less than all of Israel, which I mean, but I think
43:12
that Palestinians haven't really had a shot at it because of the way that they have been living
43:18
for decades. They hadn't been living that way in 1948 or 1967 or 1973 or 1993 when they rejected
43:27
the peace overture or 2000 when they rejected the peace process, which 2008 when they rejected
43:32
the peace process, like what? They, no, when was the number? 1948. Right. So then what happened then?
43:40
They were offered a state. They were given a state. And they just chose to leave instead?
43:46
No, they chose to invade Israel and try to destroy Israel.
43:51
I don't think it would, but look, so the idea was that it was a land for people
43:57
uh, what, what's the slogan? A land for people? A land, a land without people for a people without a land
44:04
was the Zionist slogan. That's just not what it was, right? So if you're just living there and
44:09
then suddenly you're like, hey, how about you have this portion of it? You're not going to accept that.
44:14
Yeah, of course. I understand that psychologically it feels like it sucks because like, you know,
44:18
it's like someone comes into your country, says, all right, you get this half of it, you get that
44:23
half of it. But I mean, to be fair, Jews were also there, right? I mean, I think there's this
44:27
illusion that Israel is a colonial settler. Some got certainly worse. Some certainly are. The majority
44:33
of the majority of Jewish Israelis are descended from people who were in the Middle East. They haven't
44:38
been parachuted in from like Orthodox Russia. No, yes, they're from, they're from the Middle East,
44:42
but not specifically from there. Not that exact. Well, do you want to discuss why they're from
44:49
the rest of the Middle East? I'm not denying it, right? We've already. It's because 800,000 Jews
44:55
in 1948 were living in the Arab world and were driven out and persecuted. I mean, they weren't even
45:01
allowed to leave Syria. If you were caught trying to flee Syria as a Jew to go to Israel,
45:06
then you were in a shot or sent to a slave labor camp. If you listen to some Mizrahi Jews like
45:14
Abish Lim, I believe, who's a rocky background, you will say that there were centuries of harmony
45:23
and this history of European Jewish persecution, as awful as it is, was not the history of
45:32
Middle Eastern Jews. That's true. That sounds to me a little bit like saying the history of Palestinians
45:40
is not one of violent struggle. They're only violent now because of all of the oppression
45:46
that they've gone through. It's a sort of abstract academic claim that doesn't really relate to
45:51
the world as it now stands. So yes, I'm sure that in the 1700s, there were fantastic suks and
45:57
bazaars across the Arab world where Jews and Arabs shopped together. But the reality is that in
46:05
the 20th century, there was rising anti-Semitism, rising conflict. In part because of Jews,
46:12
in part because of the whole Zionist movement in the late 1800s, driving more and more Jews to have
46:17
this sense that this will be a homeland one day. And so terrible things were done to the Arabs
46:23
who were living in what is now Israel. And even more terrible things were done to even more Jews
46:28
across the whole Arab world. And the 800,000 Jews who were living in the Arab world, there were
46:34
150,000 in Iraq. They were driven out to Israel. There were 15,000 in Syria. They were driven out to
46:40
Israel. But do you think that that gives people a reason to do what they're doing right now to
46:48
the Palestinians? Like I would never say that you should eliminate Israel or drive out the people
46:57
that live there and they should go back to I don't know where. Like I don't think that's a
47:01
practical solution. There are people that already live there. There are people that have been living
47:06
there and driving more people out as well as what the Palestinians have gone through. I don't think
47:12
that's going to help anything. But strategically, do you think it makes sense to achieve peace? Like
47:22
Israel was supposed to be this project that provided Jews a safe haven. And it seems to have not
47:29
succeeded in that. So I don't think indiscriminately bombing an entire
47:39
besieged population starving them. I don't think that that is good for the safety of anybody.
47:49
Even those of us who are not in that region at all.
47:54
No, I agree. I mean, I don't think it's good for the safety of Jews anywhere in the diaspora
48:00
for this conflict to be going on. And I don't think it's been good for the future prospects of Israel
48:06
to be ruled by right wingers for the past 15 years. However, just in looking at the landscape
48:17
of reaction to this current conflict, the reason I raised things like the 800,000 Jews who were
48:22
driven out of Arab countries and into Israel is not to say that they should be able to go back.
48:29
But to say that if the claim is that Palestinians should be able to return to Israel proper,
48:36
and that's actually the sticking point that has generally prevented any of these peace deals
48:40
from coming through the right of return. They call it that all across the Palestinian world.
48:47
They'll seem to have to Israel, random people that are not connected to the region.
48:57
Let me just finish the thought about the right of return. I was in Lebanon in Beirut
49:05
and was talking to a lovely Palestinian guy. This poor guy all he wanted to do was
49:11
was travel the world and he had places he wanted to see any kind because he has a he's a Palestinian
49:17
refugee and Lebanon doesn't give him any rights. Now, when I say he's a refugee, I mean he's a guy
49:23
in his early 20s like teens. He's never been to Palestine or Israel. His grandparents were driven
49:31
out of Israel and he's treated by Lebanon as a Palestinian refugee. The poor Palestinian diaspora
49:38
is shatter upon by Arab countries in most cool ways. If you wanted to be humane about Palestinians,
49:49
then we'd spend as much time prior to October 7th at least criticizing Lebanon and Egypt
49:57
and the Gulf states. I think a lot of Muslims do do that.
50:02
What certainly doesn't get the Muslim street inflamed the same way that when you talk about the
50:05
Jewish Zionist state does not get the same marches. Not well because look at the difference in
50:12
well, they're not letting their being mean and not letting the Palestinian refugees in. Okay,
50:19
that's awful. But what Israel is doing is completely on a different scale. I said,
50:26
prior to October 7th. Even then. Even then. Like it's controlling their
50:36
calories and rainwater and fishing and building and whether they have access to chocolate and
50:42
cilantro. Do you think that the people who are the moment you talk about the Zionist fascist
50:48
state in I don't know Malaysia and Muslims come out and march and chant and burn Zionist flags?
50:55
Do you think they know the difference between the policy of embargo in Gaza versus the settlement
51:02
policy in the West Bank versus Lebanon's attitude towards not giving citizenship to a policy in
51:09
refugees? Do you think they care about any of that? I'm sure many of them do, but what you're
51:15
implying is that they're just like bloodthirsty anti-Semite. No, I'm arguing that they're
51:24
sort of victims of a narrative that's very easy to understand, which is a very long-standing
51:31
hatred of Jews and suspicion of the Jewish state that gets applied in a way that's totally
51:38
different. I mean, you can go to Somalia and talk to a pick a random Muslim in Somalia and ask
51:43
them what they think of the Jews and that person won't have even met anyone who's ever met anyone
51:48
who's ever met anyone who's ever met a Jew and they'll have quite strong opinions that they've
51:52
learned about in their mask about Jews. I don't believe that that doesn't feed into the excitement
51:58
about Israel. Listen, I have talked about anti-Semitism in the Muslim world specifically on my own
52:07
platform. I have written about it. I have podcasted about it. I'm well aware of it, but I also
52:15
would like you to think about the fact that maybe it is the actions of Israel that are enraging
52:23
and they reach for this like a scripture-backed anti-Semitism. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry,
52:33
certainly doesn't help. It is not helping right now. I will grant you that, whether or not the
52:40
anger predates. Not everything is just about like this unique hatred of specifically Israel for no
52:51
reason at all. There's a good reason. There's a good reason, but I mean, the fundamental,
52:58
but I'm trying to tease out how much of the good reason is what Israel is doing right now,
53:04
and how much of the good reason is that they just basically don't think there should be Jews in the
53:10
Middle East. Yeah, but then you look at like states like Saudi Arabia which are trying to normalize,
53:18
you know what I'm saying? I think that they would be perfectly fine if it benefited them.
53:30
Well, it depends who you're talking about. I mean, the MBS, like the Crown Prince,
53:35
would be fine because he has his own interests that the royal family has its own interests,
53:43
but the Arab street in Saudi Arabia, I dare say, is probably not as keen on normalization with
53:48
Israel as he is. I don't know, I haven't seen polling, but that would be my hunch.
53:53
But I mean, that's because of the way situation the situation has been and is now and is getting
54:00
worse. Like, we can't speculate on what it would be like if Israel actually treated Palestine.
54:12
You know, you talk about this anti-Semitism that is coming from arrows, but you have to also acknowledge
54:18
that the deep-seated anti-Muslim hate and anti-Arab hate that is spread throughout Israeli society.
54:28
Like, I don't know if you've seen any of these TikToks that were they're dressing up as like Palestinians,
54:34
just like have experienced explosions. I mean, you know how how deranging a social media is when
54:40
you cherry pick incidents of like, you see, you see, oh come on, you see 15 incidents of some crazy
54:46
Israeli, you know, deranged religious Jew talking about how all Muslims are animals and that
54:53
becomes a proxy for Israel. It's all across the political spectrum. Well, again, I suggest you go
54:59
to Israel and sit in a cafe. So just you go and sit in a cafe in Tel Aviv and see how you feel
55:04
and see whether you feel oppressed or afraid or whether you feel liberated. Well, I just, you know,
55:08
I just, this, this, what I'm saying right now is anecdotal. A lot of what I was saying before
55:13
is not anecdotal because these are actual reports. I mean, if you want to know the difference
55:18
in a between the attitudes towards Muslims in Israel and the attitudes towards Jews in Palestine,
55:27
you only have to look at the way that each country and each people behave when they have
55:33
the other in their midst. I mean, in Israel, there are Muslims and Arabs who are living there
55:39
peacefully and you're pointing, you're pointing to some example of how, you know, there's a free
55:44
speech breed for, they're being, I don't know what you're talking about in that example,
55:48
you can send it to me later, but I'm sure it's going to have something to do with like,
55:51
seditious speech against the state because they're opposing the war or something like that. I'm
55:55
sure it's some bullshit overreach that the Israeli right is pulling off. No, it's not because it's
55:59
not because the quote was, the quote was that civil rights lawyers say that Israel is now
56:07
interpreting any solidarity expressed with Palestinians and Gaza as incitement to terrorism.
56:14
Okay. How do you think that if the shoe was on the other foot and you had Jews doing that in
56:19
Palestine, they'd be treated? Perhaps arrested. I mean, like, this is the kind of stuff,
56:27
you think a Jew in Rafa would be merely arrested. If Rafa was a thriving economic hub
56:39
and, well, of course, I mean, if I had a toilet made of solid gold, then my ass would be nice
56:45
out. Like, it's not the Palestinians have not created like, no, no, of course not. I'm saying that
56:50
you're creating a hypothetical in your mind about, yeah, if Rafa was not Rafa, then it would
56:58
then it wouldn't be Rafa. Well, congratulations. I'm talking about what is it like to be a Jew
57:04
in Palestine and what is it like in your basement and then you open the door and they like
57:12
attack you and you'd be like, well, look, they're just not as civilized as me.
57:17
Well, it depends, look, it depends why the hostage is there and how many times I've tried to get
57:21
the hostage out of my basement and they refuse without taking out of my house.
57:27
Well, what if they what if they broke into my house in 1948 and tried to kill me?
57:33
And then I and what if you did the same?
57:36
No, there were there were two states offered. I know that it's like it's it's just rewriting
57:41
history to suggest that a Palestinian state has never been on the on the cards. It was created
57:46
in 1948. It just wasn't created on 100% of the land. There was a Jewish state and then
57:50
these are people that were living on 100% of the land and then from their perspective someone comes
57:57
and says now you can have a portion of it. Yes, and from the hostage in my basement's perspective
58:02
they're entitled to my entire house, but like shit happens and sometimes you countries get carved
58:08
up and sometimes there are wars. It's like Israel is the only country in the world that's expected
58:13
to get repeatedly invaded and then just go back to a truth. No, but it was repeatedly invaded
58:20
and now the expectation is it was because it's not doing what it should do which is
58:27
try to live in equality with pal I think if they tried that then perhaps if you had thriving
58:36
populations on both sides you wouldn't be breeding this extremism and nihilism and hatred, right?
58:45
But okay, let's talk about our grant. I'll grant you. Let's then talk about the thriving. Where is
58:51
the thriving democratic Arab Muslim population in the Middle East that you think the Palestinians
58:58
would be like? No, if it wasn't for Israel. I am not here to say no. Well, you're saying it's
59:06
within reach. You're saying the only reason why Palestinians are dysfunctional is because of
59:10
Israeli oppressions. So point to the other part of the Middle East where Arab Muslims have
59:16
a great democracy. Why are you bringing other Arab Muslims into that? Because you're saying that
59:24
Israel is the fundamental reason why there's Palestinian dysfunction. So what would the Palestinians
59:30
look like? No, I'm not saying anything. I'm asking you. You're saying that Palestine would be
59:37
flourishing if it wasn't for Israel. What's the other sport in the Middle East that's a democratic
59:41
Arab thing that they are not flourishing because they've been deliberately economically
59:47
strangulated. They've been arrested. What would they be like? They would be in a much better
59:53
situation than they are now. But I don't have a crystal ball. How can you ask me to predict that?
59:59
Like how am I supposed to predict their future? Come on. Like Yemen?
1:00:03
No, like I cannot predict what the specific Palestinian people would be looking like if they had
1:00:13
well, then it's a little bit and it's a little bit rich for the world to say that Israel has to
1:00:18
essentially gamble its future security on a state that you can't even say is going to
1:00:26
look like anything other than a dysfunctional terrorist. How can I say anything? How can I predict
1:00:31
the future? But you have to try something that you haven't, like you can't try the same thing
1:00:36
again and again. And we have already agreed that what it's doing right now is not safe for anyone.
1:00:46
Yeah. And we agreed that there should be two states. And we agree that the right is terrible.
1:00:52
I mean, we just disagree, I think, about some sort of some basic facts. We agree that the right
1:00:59
is terrible though, because like, where would you place yourself? No, just generally.
1:01:06
No, I'm talking about the, I mean, generally I regard myself as a progressive. I
1:01:09
regard myself as on the left. Yeah. Yeah. That's very surprising to me. Why? Because I mean,
1:01:19
you're on tour with Douglas Murray, who I think is not just on the right. I think he's like,
1:01:25
yeah, he's conservative. He's going to be extreme, extreme. Like he talks about the war on,
1:01:33
and he talks about the war on white people. He writes books that are recommended by like white
1:01:39
supremacist groups like generation identity. Well, you can't control what crazies are going to
1:01:44
like what you write. Anyway, I'm talking about Douglas, I'm talking about the right wing in Israel.
1:01:52
And the fact that places on the political step from in general, because I just find it very
1:01:59
intriguing that you identify as a progressive yet. But what does, what does the like, what does
1:02:03
a label achieve other than, you know, I mean, like a label doesn't get it anywhere in terms of
1:02:08
actual truth. It helps to add some bearing to the situation. Well, so that you can,
1:02:15
only so that you can judge people on the basis of a tribe instead of actually wrestling with
1:02:19
the rational. I don't know. What do you like, do you think the IDW is progressive?
1:02:28
I mean, I don't even know what the IDW is. It was a brief thing that Eric Weinstein came up with
1:02:35
to try to group together people who now are completely all over the ideological spectrum. I mean,
1:02:41
I think, I don't know what I would call Brett Weinstein. I mean, a conspiracy theorist and a
1:02:46
cracker. Sure. Yeah. We can agree on that. Dave Rubin is a solid conservative.
1:02:52
Who are the others? Margin Nawaz is a, I mean, sorry, but you're a conspiracy theorist,
1:02:57
crackpot as well. I think Sam Harris is a centrist, depending on the issue.
1:03:03
I would call him a conspiracy theorist. Eric Weinstein claims, I mean, Eric Weinstein and Brett
1:03:07
Weinstein politically speaking claim to be of the left. I mean, Brett Weinstein voted for Bernie
1:03:11
Sanders. I don't know if a right winger does that. I don't, I'm not sure why right and left
1:03:15
in necessarily that helpful. I regard myself as being committed to the traditional left wing
1:03:20
principles of egalitarianism, equality, civil rights, the Martin Luther King Jr.
1:03:25
vision of the world, the Gandhiite vision of the world. So you can see the problem with civil rights
1:03:30
and Israel, you can see the problem. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, of course.
1:03:35
Boundary castles to not allow aid in, I mean, what I'm interested in is the, is the way that we
1:03:44
talk about this, the way that we and the rest of the world talk about this and the way that we
1:03:48
live together as Jews and Arabs and find some common terrain on which we sort of apply roughly equal.
1:03:57
So do you agree that Zionism is a form of nationalism?
1:04:05
Yeah, Zionism is a form of nationalism. Yeah, but I definition. A religion based nationalism.
1:04:10
Well, it's not really religion now. The Jews are a weird people. They're sort of like
1:04:15
they're halfway between non people and a religion. Sure.
1:04:19
Well, I mean, I'm not religious, but I, you know, I'm Jewish enough that Hitler still would have
1:04:24
shoveled me into an oven. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I mean, like I have some atheist
1:04:30
friends that are now quite Zionist and realizing.
1:04:35
Um, but yeah, they do. The basic question about Zionism, I suppose, is should Jews ever have been
1:04:42
given a sliver of land to be safe in? I think after a question, to hear the rest of this conversation,
1:04:50
go to uncomfortable conversations.substac.com slash listen and you will get your own personal premium
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