Distilled Knowledge

Follow-up conversation — 20 October 2026

Haviv Rettig Gur on The Breakfast Club - Zionism, Rescue and the Collapse of Trust is a separate Breakfast Club interview. It develops the Russian Jewish rescue story, an escalating Second Intifada hypothetical, and a contested conversation with the hosts about slogans and recognition. Historical detail is integrated into History of Israel and Jewish People by Haviv Gur; the shorter definition is in Zionism. Keep each episode’s wording and attribution separate.

Source contribution

Gur interprets political Zionism primarily as a response to Jewish vulnerability and state exclusion, while acknowledging that Zionists used colonization vocabulary and that Palestinian Arabs experienced the project as dispossession and demographic threat. The account helps distinguish rescue, national return, settlement practice, and imperial structure.

• Historical actors’ vocabulary must be read in its period and institutional setting.
• Refugeehood and lack of a Jewish metropole complicate—but do not automatically defeat—settler-colonial comparison.
• Humanizing national narratives improves explanation; it does not settle land, equality, sovereignty, or responsibility.

Routes: Colonizers · Narrative Recognition and Material Compromise

Evidence boundary

This is a participant-interpreter’s podcast argument. Verify historical statistics and quotations independently; do not convert explanatory empathy into acquittal or condemnation.

Summary

• The podcast episode features a discussion between Noam Weisman and Kiv RoR about the history, personal understanding, and education surrounding Zionism.
• Kiv argues it’s important to discuss Zionism because the world’s attention is focused on Israelis and Palestinians, with a Western elite and academic obsession often tied to post-colonial narratives.
• They dissect a Wikipedia definition of Zionism, criticizing it as biased and inaccurate, particularly its portrayal of Zionism as focused on colonizing a land outside Europe.
• The podcast references the Uganda Plan and Birobidzhan as alternative historical options for Jewish settlement, arguing that Jews, by and large, never thought that Zionism could go anywhere else.
• They discuss streams of Zionism, citing Yehuda Mirsky’s categorization (rescue, renewal, revolution, resurrection, redemption). Kiv emphasizes rescue as the core essence of Zionism.
• They debate whether Zionism is justified by the Holocaust, asserting it became necessary due to the lack of other options for Jewish survival.
• They address why Jews didn’t return to Israel earlier, noting that it wasn’t bad enough for all the Jews to rebuild their entire existence.
• The conversation explores Zionism as colonialism, examining historical population statistics in Ottoman Palestine and quotes from early Zionists using colonial language.
• Kiv argues that while colonizing occurred, Zionism wasn’t colonialism in the ideological sense but a rescue project undertaken by refugees. He argues it is essential to the peace process.
• Discuss mistakes Zionists have made, including settlements between Palestinian population centers, and war crimes like the Kafr Qasim massacre.
• They explore how to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a way that doesn’t reduce it to a team game of defending or attacking.
• In education, they emphasize humanizing the conflict by focusing on the lived experiences of ordinary people on both sides and challenge elites and ideologues.
• They stress “seeing” each other and acknowledging the other’s history, while criticizing the Palestinian resistance to the Jewish story.
• Conclude by questioning if Zionism is over and the podcast ends with a discussion on book recommendations.

---

Summary

Intro

• [00:00] Noam introduces the show Unpacking Israeli History and today’s different format: a deep-dive conversation with Kiv (frequent collaborator from Wondering Jews).
• Agenda:
  1. A historical overview of Zionism
  2. Personal understandings of Zionism
  3. Education: where discourse fails and where to go next
• Tone set: “Okay, yalla—let’s do this.”

---

Why does Zionism matter?

Framing the urgency

• [00:50] Noam: excited for a deep dive.
• [00:56] Question: Why talk about Zionism now?

Kiv’s answer: global attention and misframing

• [01:02] The world’s gaze is fixed on Israelis/Palestinians.
• [01:09] Long-running Arab-world discourse about Jews/Zionism/20th-century Jewish history was “adopted hook, line, and sinker” by Western elites/academia.
• [01:22] Western focus often ignores other crises (e.g., famine in Yemen) and centers Israel to tell Western stories about themselves (post-colonialism, imperialism, race, West good/bad).
• Core claim: The fascination is self-referential; Israel is used as a canvas for Western anxieties.

---

What is Zionism? (and why definitions are contested)

The charge around the word

• [02:11] Noam: “Zionism” triggers intense reactions; some Jews/Christians self-describe as Zionists, but meanings diverge. Language should communicate; here it doesn’t.

Wikipedia’s definition and critique

• [03:10] Noam reads Wikipedia: Zionism as an “ethnocultural nationalist movement” seeking a Jewish state via colonization “outside Europe,” ultimately in Palestine, after “rejecting alternatives.”
• [03:43] Kiv: The page was “rewritten by anti-Zionist ideologues.” Asks listeners to imagine the reverse (a Palestinian page written by a far-right Israeli).
• Key rebuttals:
  • [04:13] Zionists did not “randomly” consider places then “eventually” choose Palestine—Jewish attachment is ancient (Judah Halevi sailing for Jerusalem; Maimonides buried in Tiberias; Yemenite aliyah in 1880s).
  • [04:39] “Ethnocultural nationalist” is vague, pejorative, and selectively applied.
  • [05:02] The word “eventually” misleads: Palestine was always central.
  • [05:45] Wikipedia’s framing is “fake but footnoted”—an academic veneer to a distortion.

---

The Uganda Plan (1903): What it was and wasn’t

Context and deliberation

• [06:52] Noam: Overview—after pogroms (esp. Kishinev 1903; ~49 Jews murdered) and Bialik’s poem “In the City of Slaughter,” the Zionist Congress “voted” to consider Uganda (East Africa) as a temporary refuge. Eastern European delegates protested.
• [07:29] Kiv: Joseph Chamberlain (UK Colonial Sec.) floated a strip in today’s western Kenya. The Congress (Basel, 6th) voted to consider, sent an exploratory mission, and concluded it was a bad idea—people lived there and opposed it.
• [08:43] The motion to consider led many Russian Empire delegates to walk out; a tiny “territorialist” splinter formed, faded by 1925.

Takeaways

• Uganda wasn’t “seriously considered” as a replacement for Zion. It appeared due to great-power diplomacy; had it not been the British Empire, it wouldn’t have reached a vote.

---

Birobidzhan (Soviet “Jewish Autonomous Oblast”)

• [09:42] Kiv: USSR proposed a Yiddish cultural homeland in Far East (on China border) in the 1920s—Stalin’s answer to Zionism.
• [10:38] Yiddish still official in Birobidzhan; street signs exist.
• [11:04] Claim: It’s “simply a lie” that Zionists seriously considered “anywhere else” in numbers—migration to Palestine was the core.

---

Streams of Zionism (the “five R’s”) and Kiv’s thesis

The “five R’s”

• [11:44] Noam cites Yehuda Mirsky’s schema:
  • Herzl: Rescue
  • Ahad Ha’am: Renewal
  • Ber Borochov/Berl Katznelson (Noam conflates; also mentions “Berdichevsky” later): Revolution
  • Eliezer Ben-Yehuda: Resurrection (language)
  • Rav Kook: Redemption
• [13:09] Kiv: The alliteration is cute, but the only one that ultimately matters is Rescue. Others are intellectual overlays.

Bottom line

• [15:02] “There is one Zionism… the Zionism of rescue; the rest is elites writing.”
• [15:20] Rapid-fire reaction segment begins: Is Zionism justified by the Holocaust? Kiv reframes as “necessary due to the 20th century’s systemic danger,” not only the Shoah.

---

Why didn’t mass return happen earlier? (Yearning vs. modern danger)

Scriptural/halakhic roots of attachment

• [16:52] Noam cites:
  • Genesis 13:14–15 (promise of the land)
  • Deuteronomy / halakhic tradition: dwelling in Israel as tantamount to many commandments
  • Judah Halevi (“My heart is in the East…”)
  • Liturgical/synagogue orientation to Jerusalem.

Kiv’s answer: Technology + modern state power

• Many Jews did move across centuries (Safed’s mystical revival, students of the Vilna Gaon, etc.), but two conditions for mass movement were missing:
  1. The oppression, though recurrent and lethal (Crusades, etc.), wasn’t systemically total across the Jewish world;
  2. Only the modern nation-state with rail, bureaucracy, ideology enabled continent-scale persecution and extermination.
• Modernity produced danger on a new scale; hence Zionism became a mass movement in the 1920s–30s as quotas closed Western doors.

Yearning vs. political Zionism

• [21:12] Daily Jewish practice maintained continuous attachment.
• [22:26] Noam reads Moshe Halbertal’s definition: “deliver Jews from the historical disgrace of dependence.”
• [22:52] Kiv: Quibbles with “disgrace,” agrees with the core—Zionism is rescue for millions; ideologies are commentary on the social reality.

---

Cultural/Religious Zionisms vs. Rescue (Ahad Ha’am, Berdyczewski, Rav Kook)

The “New Jew” and cultural revolution

• [24:03] Noam (self-professed nerd) buys essays of Micha Josef Berdyczewski/Berdichevsky (here called “Berdy/beresh/beresi”), who argued for a revolution—shedding diaspora piety to create the tan, muscular, self-reliant “New Jew.”
• [25:31] Iconic Life Magazine image of a Suez soldier as archetype.

Kiv’s critique of intellectual grandiosity

• [26:03] Calls it “adorable,” pompous, and ultimately irrelevant to mass rescue.
• Claim: Had Zionism been only the intellectuals (left/right/religious), Israel would have lost 1948 in 4 hours.
• The decisive factor: Millions moved because there was nowhere else.

Variety of Zionisms and shattered diasporas

• [31:02] Noam: Tel Aviv aesthetic, Hebrew revival, and West Bank religious Zionism (Rav Kook’s redemptive lens) feel like different Zionisms.
• [33:06] Kiv: Modern Hebrew and Israeli culture required sacrifice of (and were built atop) Yiddish, Iraqi-Jewish, Arabic-Jewish civilizations destroyed by modern homogenizing forces; elites rebuilt after catastrophe.
• [35:26] Embraces plurality of Jewish life—“as many kinds of Jews as possible”—but as a function of rescue.

---

Is Zionism colonialism/imperialism?

The colonialism charge: population data + Zionist vocabulary

• [37:00] Noam presents Ottoman Palestine population snapshots (1800→1914): majority Muslim; Jerusalem as an outlier with a Jewish plurality/majority by the late 19th c.
• [39:00] Language evidence: Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall,” Herzl’s “colonization” references; Zionist institutions named with “colonization” (Jewish Colonization Association, etc.).
• Core anti-Zionist syllogism: More Muslims lived there, and Zionists used “colonize,” thus Zionism = colonialism/imperialism.

Kiv’s distinctions

• Colonizing (settling) ≠ Colonialism (an ism: metropole-directed expansion, supremacy ideology, economic/strategic domination).
• Zionism involved refugees without a metropole; reliance on great powers for leverage does not make it a colonial arm.
• Anti-Zionists prefer labels that are “defeatable” (anti-colonial struggle template), but misdiagnose the phenomenon.

45:36–49:29 — Strategic misdiagnosis and its costs

• Arab Revolt (1936–39): Palestinians targeted the British as imperialists, expecting Jewish power to collapse if Britain left. Britain left, Jews stayed, and Jewish militias—armed by Britain—became the IDF.
• Algeria analogy: PLO (1964) modeled on FLN vs. France; Palestinian terror strategy never expelled Jews because Jews had no metropole to return to.
• Intifadas:
  • First: helped create an Israeli left receptive to compromise.
  • Second (suicide bombings after Oslo withdrawals): destroyed that left.
• Bottom line: Seeing Zionism as colonialism led to failed strategies and missed openings.

Acknowledging partial truths and the missing elephant

• [51:01] Honest Palestinians can see Zionism leveraged British policy; Herzl courted Ottomans/Russians too—realpolitik, not imperial arm.
• [53:03] The elephant omitted: millions of Jewish refugees (DPs in Europe; mass expulsions from Arab lands). Zionism cannot pull Jews out of Baghdad (¼ Jewish) without mass push from persecution.
• [54:11] Ignoring the emptying of Moroccan, Iraqi Jewry distorts the story.
• [55:00] “Name another colonial movement whose houses of worship face the land, made of refugees, with nowhere to ‘go back’ to.”
• [55:20] Palestinians who accept mutual recognition exist; their voices matter for any path forward.

---

“Land without a people” and the morality contest

Zangwill’s slogan and quote-mining

• [58:15] Noam: Zangwill’s “a land without a people for a people without a land” erases Palestinian presence.
• [58:55] Kiv: Zangwill was marginal and later recanted. Warning against quote-mining—applies equally to Palestinians (e.g., Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s Nazi alliance; Hamas leaders’ statements).

Does morality matter under existential threat?

• [01:02:01] Kiv recounts IDF checkpoint bombing and the reality of suicide terror.
• [01:02:53] Palestinians told him candidly: “Everything’s at stake… you think I care about morality?”
• [01:03:24] He recognized the same logic in Israelis under threat.
• [01:04:05] Poll (Shikaki & Dalia Scheindlin): ~90% on both sides believe the other wants to kill them all.
• Claim: “Moral popularity contests” are a Western spectator sport; locals prioritize survival.

---

What mistakes have Zionists/Israel made?

• [01:05:40] Settlements:
  • Strategic belts around Jerusalem and holding the highlands (9-mile waist) are defensible for security.
  • Small, ideologically intense outposts interspersed among Palestinian population centers on the watershed(Nablus/Jenin/Hebron/Bethlehem corridor) undermine contiguity and drive moderates toward extremists.
• [01:07:53] War crimes: e.g., Kafr Qasim—taught in IDF basic training; Israeli Supreme Court rulings about illegal orders are part of military ethics education.
• [01:10:03] At micro level, many mistakes in every war/negotiation; but that doesn’t delegitimize state existence.
• [01:11:02] Specific 1948 cases (e.g., Tzfat flight under Yigal Allon’s operations) may be criticized without unraveling Israel’s legitimacy.

---

How to talk about Israel (education, humanization)

The “team sport” trap

• [01:12:10] Noam: Debates collapse into partisan defense; each side fields propaganda during war. Diaspora Jews feel compelled to act as press secretaries for Israel.

Kiv’s response: from elites to lived experience

• Humanize; avoid “elites talking about themselves.”
• [01:16:46] Start 1948 with Bergen-Belsen survivor Hadassah Rosenshaft’s VE-Day memoir (no celebration—“nobody was waiting for us”) to grasp Jewish existential context.
• [01:18:27] Likewise, Palestinian diaries/letters (peasants and urban elites) reveal peoplehood and displacement—recognition builds empathy.
• [01:20:26] Kiv asserts Israelis have done more of this seeing, Palestinians less so—while conceding he speaks from an Israeli perspective.

---

“Seeing the Other” in practice; asymmetries and costs

• [01:21:49] Noam recounts Shabbat in East Jerusalem (Salah al-Din Street): hearing/seeing Palestinian daily life, contrasts within blocks (Haredi neighborhoods; Jaffa Street bombing site; Mahane Yehuda). His wife: “I sawthem.”
• [01:26:05] Notes PA textbooks (mid-2000s) that denied Jewish connection—not seeing.
• [01:26:39] Kiv: Sometimes we must bang down the door to force recognition.
  • [01:27:06] Example: Prof. Muhammad Dajani took students to Auschwitz, was fired, car bombed, forced into exile.
  • Israeli right-wing audiences can hear Palestinian narratives without silencing; violent rejectionists exist but are few.
• [01:30:03] A power/vulnerability dynamic helps explain Palestinian resistance to acknowledging Jewish story (fear acknowledgment weakens them).

---

Is Zionism over? (Rescue vs. Judaism; present relevance)

01:31:33–01:34:26 — Framing the question

• [01:32:28] Noam: If Zionism = rescue, and Jews are safer than ever in the liberal West, is Zionism “over”? Cites (footnote) philosopher Chaim Gans: Does Zionism solve the problem of Jews (safety) or Judaism (continuity)?

01:34:26–01:38:31 — Kiv’s answer

• Safety is uneven: Arab/Muslim worlds largely unsafe for Jews; French Jewry filing 4× more aliyah inquiries amid Islamist/far-right violence.
• Zionism isn’t cultural engineering; it’s rescue enabling plural Jewish futures (even Haredi revival flourished post-rescue).
• [01:37:20] Even Diaspora Jews live less anxiously knowing Israel exists; Zionism remains relevant as long as humans are human and antisemitism persists.

---

Book recommendations and closing cautions

• [01:39:07] Classics:
  • Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism
  • Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea (+ Gil Troy, The Zionist Ideas—expanded anthology)
  • Anita Shapira, history of Israel
  • Götz Aly, Europe Against the Jews (on Europe’s pre-Holocaust “emptying” of Jewry)
• [01:41:04] Caution: Don’t read only anti-Zionist histories: they cherry-pick mice and miss the elephant (mass refugee rescue).
• [01:41:49] Outro: Credits to team and researcher Alex Harris.

---

Important Quotes (verbatim)

• [15:02] “There is one Zionism… and it is the Zionism of rescue.”
• [45:05] “Colonialism is not just that people move somewhere… it’s a metropole… expansion by the powerful, not refugees.”
• [49:05] “The British left and the Jews stayed.”
• [55:00] “Name another colonialist movement where every single religious institution faces the land.”
• [01:03:04] “Everything is at stake… you think I care about morality?” (Palestinian perspective Kiv heard; recognized the same logic in Israelis.)
• [01:37:20] “Without Israel your life in America would be 10% more wary… there aren’t the bad endings there once were for Jews because of Zionism.”

---

Definitions & Jargon (inline where first used)

• Pogrom: state-tolerated/instigated mob violence (murder, rape, looting) against Jews (e.g., Kishinev 1903).
• Aliyah: immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel.
• Uganda Plan: 1903 British offer to consider Jewish settlement in East Africa; considered, rejected.
• Birobidzhan: USSR’s Yiddish “Jewish Autonomous Oblast” (1920s); Stalin’s non-Zionist alternative.
• Yishuv: pre-state Jewish community in Palestine under Ottoman/British rule.
• Colonizing vs. Colonialism: settling vs. a metropole-led imperialist ideology/structure.
• Revisionist Zionism: Jabotinsky’s current advocating firm security posture and defensible borders; “Iron Wall” doctrine.
• Intifada: Palestinian uprisings (1st: 1987–93; 2nd: 2000–05).
• Kafr Qasim: 1956 massacre of Arab citizens; Israeli Supreme Court precedent on illegal orders.
• Hasbara: “public diplomacy”/advocacy (often pejoratively used).

---

Visuals & Diagrams (descriptions)

• Life Magazine image (24:50–25:38): A muscular IDF soldier emerging from water, rifle in hand—used to illustrate the “New Jew” ideal.
• Population tables (37:11–38:41): No on-screen tables described, but Noam reads comparative figures (1800–1914 Palestine; Jerusalem 1806/1896/1922).
• Map concept: Watershed ridge (01:06:31–01:07:15) running north–south through the West Bank where major Palestinian cities sit; settlement placement along ridge impacts contiguity.

---

Extra Resources Mentioned

• Texts/Authors: Bialik (“In the City of Slaughter”), Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Ahad Ha’am, Rav Kook, Herzl (“Der Judenstaat”/“colonization” references), Jabotinsky (“The Iron Wall”), Prof. Muhammad Dajani.
• Books:
  • Walter Laqueur — A History of Zionism
  • Arthur Hertzberg — The Zionist Idea
  • Gil Troy — The Zionist Ideas
  • Götz Aly — Europe Against the Jews
  • Anita Shapira — (History of Israel; title unstated but likely Israel: A History)
  • Yehuda Mirsky — (on Zionist streams; title not named here)
  • Chaim Gans — A Just Zionism (footnote referenced in discussion)
• Pollsters: Khalil Shikaki; Dalia Scheindlin.

---

High-Level Summary (1 paragraph)

The episode argues that while Zionism has many intellectual “streams” (renewal, revolution, resurrection, redemption), the core of Zionism is rescue: a mass, modern-era movement enabling Jewish survival in the face of unprecedented state capacity for persecution and extermination. The conversation challenges reductionist labels like “colonialism,” distinguishing refugee settlement from metropole-driven imperialism, and contends that misdiagnosing Zionism has repeatedly led Palestinian politics toward failed anti-colonial strategies. It calls for humanizing education rooted in lived experience—seeing both Jews and Palestinians as real, historical peoples—while acknowledging Israeli mistakes (e.g., certain settlement placements, past war crimes adjudicated internally). The closing claim: Zionism is not over; it remains relevant so long as antisemitism and insecurity persist, and it undergirds both Israeli survival and Diaspora Jewish confidence that history’s worst endings are not inevitable.

---

Key Takeaways (10–15)

1. Zionism’s core is rescue, not abstract ideology; intellectual “R’s” are secondary lenses.
2. Attachment to the land predates political Zionism by millennia; liturgy and law encoded it continuously.
3. The Uganda Plan was briefly considered under British impetus, then rejected; it never rivaled Palestine in principle or practice.
4. Birobidzhan shows that alternatives existed on paper; they did not answer Jewish national or security needs.
5. Colonizing ≠ Colonialism: Refugee-driven settlement without a metropole differs from imperialist projects.
6. Misdiagnosis (treating Zionism as colonialism) steered Palestinian strategy toward anti-colonial terror, which failed to dislodge Jews and undermined Palestinian goals.
7. British policy mattered, but Zionism persisted after Britain left—evidence against the “imperial arm” thesis.
8. The Second Intifada devastated Israel’s peace camp; violence after withdrawals hardened Israeli public opinion.
9. Israeli mistakes exist: strategic settlement placement can hurt prospects for Palestinian contiguity; war crimes have been prosecuted and are taught as cautionary precedent.
10. Morality debates ring hollow locally when existential threat dominates; both sides prioritize survival.
11. Humanizing education—diaries, memoirs, lived experience—builds understanding better than elite polemics.
12. Seeing the Other (e.g., East Jerusalem walk) shifts perception from abstraction to people.
13. Zionism remains relevant: Jewish safety is uneven globally; Israel’s existence reduces Diaspora vulnerability.
14. Plurality of Jewish futures blossomed post-rescue; Zionism is not cultural uniformity.
15. Read broadly—Zionist and critical histories—but beware narratives that miss the “elephant” of mass refugee rescue.

---

Glossary of Technical Terms (from the episode)

• Aliyah: Jewish immigration to Israel.
• Birobidzhan: Soviet-era Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Far East; Yiddish-oriented cultural project.
• Hasbara: Israeli public diplomacy/advocacy (often used pejoratively).
• Intifada: Palestinian uprisings (1987–93; 2000–05).
• Iron Wall: Jabotinsky’s doctrine that Arabs would accept Jewish statehood only after realizing it cannot be destroyed. The full text also rejects expulsion and anticipates equal rights and negotiated guarantees, while still requiring non-consensual majority-building behind superior force.
• Kafr Qasim: 1956 massacre of Arab citizens by Israeli forces; Israeli Supreme Court landmark on illegal orders.
• Kishinev Pogrom (1903): Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire; catalyzed Zionist urgency (Bialik’s poem).
• Pogrom: Mob violence against Jews, often with state complicity.
• Revisionist Zionism: Jabotinsky’s current emphasizing strong defense and Jewish self-assertion.
• Safed (Tzfat): Galilean city; hub of 16th-century Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbalah).
• Territorialism: Minor Jewish movement seeking a homeland “anywhere” (splinter post-Uganda debate).
• Uganda Plan: 1903 British proposal to consider settlement in East Africa; not adopted.
• Yishuv: Pre-state Jewish community in Ottoman/British Palestine.
• Watershed Ridge: North–south highland spine of the West Bank where many Palestinian cities lie; crucial for contiguity/security debates.

---

Content

Transcript

Intro

0:00

hey I’m n Weisman and you’re listening to unpacking Israeli history the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the

0:05

most intense historically fascinating and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history today

0:13

it’s going to be a little bit different I have with me someone that you all know very well someone who’s been a friend of

0:19

this podcast and another podcast that I host wondering Jews with M Von kiv RoR I

0:25

am incredibly excited to have kiv with me to discuss Zionism we’re going to go through the history of Zionism we’re

0:31

going to then go into a personal understanding of Zionism and then we’re going to go into education and to ask

0:38

where have we failed and where do we go from here okay yala let’s do

0:45

this kiv what’s up I’m good I’m good n how are you how are things I’m doing

Why does Zionism matter?

0:50

well um and I’m excited to have a deep dive conversation with you about Zionism

0:56

me too why do you think it’s important to talk about Zionism why does this matter well the world’s attention seems to be

1:02

focused on um Israelis Palestinians there is a long running

1:09

discourse in the Arab world um on Jews and on Zionism and on the history of the

1:15

Jews in the 20th century that has been adopted hookline and sinker almost into

1:22

Western Elites and Academia and so they obsessively now talk about you know

1:27

there there may have been a quarter million people starve to death in Yemen which is so horrifying Academia and

1:33

journalism in the west don’t think about it and don’t talk about it they only think and talk about this place and so

1:38

there’s this Fascination and I think that Fascination has a lot more to do with the fact that we are a way for them

1:44

to tell stories about themselves as we fit into their stories about an postc colonialism post imperialism post this

1:52

post that whether the West is good or bad with white people or black people or good or bad and all of that discourse

1:58

that that is keeping them upnight their deep an anxieties about culture and

2:04

history we are a way to talk about it that’s reason enough and I’m not going to say something that different from you

What is Zionism?

2:11

I just think like it’s as simple as this I think there there is a lack of understanding of this term called

2:17

Zionism which either Sparks a very intense emotional reaction like did you

2:23

just out loud call yourself a Zionist like you could call yourself Jewish but calling yourself a Zionist is

2:29

problematic and then on the other hand it’s a very different perspective it’s I think a lot of Jewish people when they

2:34

talk about Zionism or when Christian people talk about themselves as zionists

2:40

um I I’m not sure that we’re using the word in the same way you know what I mean like I’m just not sure that when

2:46

we’re it’s a this strange phenomenon that the purpose of language is to be able to communicate that’s why we have a

2:53

language with and so we could communicate but when we have words that mean such different things to different

2:58

people oh you’re a you Zion that’s that’s ative but I am a Zionist

3:03

I’m a proud Zionist and then we’re having a different conversation I want to read to you this Wikipedia entry on

3:10

Zionism so Zionism according to Wikipedia is and there are citations here um so it makes it true of course

3:17

Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the

3:24

establishment of a Jewish State through the colonization of a land outside Europe with the rejection of alternate

3:29

prop for a Jewish state it eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine Aion I’m sorry

3:36

yeah can we already stop and take a look at that go go go yeah you’re you’re of course raising this because Wikipedia

3:43

Zionism uh article has been Rewritten by anti-zionist ideologues and Wikipedia

3:49

can’t find a way to write an article about Zionism that a Zionist might identify with and it still thinks it’s

3:55

serving its function as Wikipedia which it is not this is bigotry pure imagine

4:01

palestin Palestinian Life Society history article entirely written by the

4:06

most right-wing Israeli Jew that’s basically what the Zion article is Zionist did not randomly talk about

4:13

building a Jewish nation state in random places and then eventually get around to

4:19

Palestine that is simply a historical meaning your point kiv is like that’s not a fair retelling of what took place

4:26

in the early 20th century so it’s an ethnocultural nationalist movement movement that emerged in the late 19th century and and for the establishment of

4:32

a Jewish State through the colonization of a land outside Europe so first of all it was not an ethn cultural nationalist

4:39

movement because those words are gobbledygook they don’t mean they mean whatever you need them to mean but they

4:45

don’t sound nice they don’t sound nice the point is that they don’t sound nice in what sense is Palestinian nationalism

4:51

not ethnocultural nationalist movement but they’re okay because they’re allowed

4:56

right it’s it’s meaningless epithets B it wasn’t with the rejection of

5:02

alternate proposals for a Jewish state it eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish that word eventually as though look really they

5:09

could have gone anywhere I mean in the 12th century rabi Judah Hali his last

5:16

act as one of the great Poets of Spain is to get on a boat to Jerusalem and we

5:21

don’t even know if he ever made it my mes is buried in Tiberius his last act

5:27

Jews talked about the land thought about the land rabbis from the early 19th century talking about moving there’s a

5:33

Yemen Jewish Aliyah in the 1880s it wasn’t random it’s just completely fake

5:38

but it’s a special kind of fake you can put a footnote to and that’s how academics fake Academia and and it’s and

5:45

it’s tragic basically what happened just to go over the histories 1903 there was a major pgum that took place in 1903

5:52

there were many many many other pgrs that took place before 1903 pgrs are State sanctioned murders rapes um loot

6:00

of Jewish people and it typically came in the form of Eastern European Russian

6:05

uh control and what happened was in 1903 49 Jews or so were killed by in what’s

6:13

known as kishinev and uh someone by the name of Kim biik who was a tremendous

6:20

poet spent months thinking through what the reaction should be and he wrote a he wrote a a tragic and Brilliant and

6:28

beautiful and controversial provocative poem called in the city of Slaughter uh which describes what I think his

6:36

language might be the pathetic nature of the Jewish people that they can’t stand out for themselves which was such a

6:41

departure from how uh poetry and eulogies and elies were done throughout

6:46

Jewish history until then and then there was the Zionist Congress that took place

The Uganda Plan

6:52

in which they voted for they voted for the Uganda plan they voted for the move

6:58

to uh East Africa uh but my understanding of that was that they

7:04

voted for it um as a temporary measure and in reaction to the severe

7:09

anti-Semitism that took place that led to the desperation of East Africa and

7:16

then there were the Eastern Europeans who said we are this is not a reasonable thing um and they like saying and

7:24

protest against it is that right yeah Joe Chamberlain the father of Neville ch

7:29

amberin who wanted a peace with Hitler Joe Chamberlain was colonial secretary and he came to the Zionist in 1903 and

7:36

he said to them hey go for it take this little strip of uh basically a plateau

7:41

in what is today Western Kenya and what do you say and it was brought before the

7:47

Zionist Congress on account of how the British Empire was the British freaking Empire can we say that on this podcast

7:54

you can you can Abol you don’t turn them down you are still trying to negotiate with the leaders of Germany and the

8:00

leaders of the slowly you know imploding Ottoman Empire and the leaders of the Russian Empire and the leaders of the

8:06

British Empire and somewhere among all these leaders you are trying to build out a case for Jewish self-reliance and

8:13

Jewish safety and so they accept this they has a vote in the Zionist Congress

8:18

I think it’s the sixth Congress in basil they have a vote to agree to consider the motion and they take two years

8:25

somebody goes to visit the place and they decide that it is ridiculous idea

8:30

by the way you know why the zionists decided it was a ridiculous idea turns out there’s people living there and they

8:36

don’t want a bunch of Europeans showing up and that’s the Uganda PL and it was never seriously considered and the act

8:43

of making it come up for of the the the vote on whether to discuss it led all

8:50

East European delegations from the Russian Empire to leave the room in Anger it was a reason that all kinds of

8:56

others and not only that not only that the the Zionist movement’s rejection of

9:02

the Uganda plan caused a Schism in the Zionist movement sort of there was a

9:08

little group called territorialism instead of Zionism Jewish building a state anywhere doesn’t matter where

9:14

anywhere that abandoned the Zionist movement and it was made up of about four people all related to each other

9:20

who disbanded in 1925 so the whole idea the Zionism ever considered this it was

9:25

a motion at a meeting and and if it wasn’t the British Empire asking us to

9:30

colonize for it it would never even have been have been raised as a serious thing

9:36

there there was never you know the more much more successful alternative to um

Birobidzhan (Jewish Autonomous Oblast)

9:42

settling in the land of Israel was uh boban the Soviet idea what was ban what

9:48

was it bir bejan was the USSR in the 20s arguing that the Jews could have a

9:54

yiddish-speaking Jewish cultural country uh wasn’t its

9:59

own Republic within the republics of the USSR but it was this little autonomous Jewish place and it was sort of Stalin’s

10:05

answer to Zionism cuz you know everyone had this problem the Jews were fleeing on mass in their millions and everyone was murdering them in the 30s and the

10:12

20s long before the Holocaust and so um so the Soviets said no they’re you don’t

10:19

need Zionism you don’t need to learn Hebrew you don’t need to have a Jewish Collective you can have um an

10:24

old-fashioned uh Yiddish Collective like the palea settlement and uh that can be communist and Soviet and over scattered

10:32

in furthest furthest Siberia On the Border not even Siberia on the border with China and to this day Yiddish is

10:38

one of the official languages of this little Russian Province called Biro ban you can go there there’s street signs in

10:44

Yiddish and it’s adorable um but have you been I’ve never actually been no I’ve been to Moscow three times but I’ve

10:51

never actually been toan which matters to me more right but um class that was

10:57

more successful in the sense that there are many Jews who actually went or were sent to that place it’s simply a lie

11:04

that the Jews ever thought in any numbers that Zionism could ever go anywhere else and it’s a lie propagated

11:11

by ideologues who have now taken over the fifth biggest website in the world right and that’s why uh I think people

11:19

are upset about it I I want to I want to continue going on this because you don’t

11:25

like their definition on uh their entry definition on Wikipedia I don’t think

11:30

it’s good either one of the problems that I have with um with Zionism though

11:36

is the definition of Zionism the history of Zionism because if I were to say to you okay right now kiv your job is to

Streams of Zionism

11:44

create the opening sentence of Wikipedia because I have found that Zionism has

11:51

meant and means different things to different people I was reading this book that Yehuda mury wrote about this thing

11:57

called the different RS he said for Herzel Zionism is rescue for a the

12:02

Zionism is renewal and we’ll talk about this for berki Zionism is Revolution for

12:08

Ben Yehuda Zionism is resurrection for ruk Zionism is redemption you hear those

12:13

five hours rescue renewal Revolution Resurrection Redemption what do you think about that and do you think that

12:19

there’s a a through line to them well first of all I’m unimpressed uh I’m deeply impressed by uh mki and his book

12:26

uh he’s a wonderful scholar and it’s a wonderful book but I’m not impressed by finding a lot of English words that

12:32

begin with re because it’s just a function of English grammar I’m just saying it’s like in Hebrew because you

12:37

conjugate the end of a word based on gender rhyming is extremely easy um but

12:43

are you are you taking away from all are you taking away from like hadash and and and uh subliminal and their ability to

12:51

it is easy to rhyme in Hebrew I’m sorry if you want a language that was easy by the way it used to be easy to rhyme in

12:57

English because English used to have gendered ation as well but uh they lost it when the Vikings conquered England

13:02

anyway back to our topic look I think first of all mirki is exactly right in

13:09

ter terms of the sort of fundamental summary of the idea of renewal um that

13:15

wants to see a cultural renewal is absolutely true and beautiful and I think a would have signed off on it and

13:21

Redemption is is Rev Cook’s overarching theme and vision um but none of it

13:27

really matters because it’s all a kind of um it’s like a distraction these a

13:34

red herring what the heck is renewal what is the renewal of a culture by the way I just came up with another re red

13:41

herring yeah um red hering which which Zionist would that be um what you know

13:48

wants the renewal of a language he wants the renewal of a of of of a of a culture

13:54

of a Hebrew he thinks that things have gotten um degraded in some sense the we’ve lost a Vigor a cultural creative

14:01

power and and he thinks that coming together in our ancient Homeland with being inspired by that collectivism and

14:09

and the and the land itself and having all these factors of our identity all come together will create a new culture

14:16

what look he was talking about his own culture and he was saying my culture is bad now he was saying beautiful things

14:22

about it and he really wrote beautifully and respectfully and he had this V Grand Vision By the way of peace with the

14:28

Arabs which he felt deeply also people who follow in his footsteps today are deeply committed to um there’s a lot to

14:35

like in except for the part of it which is culture is good culture is bad let’s

14:40

have a renewal of culture I don’t even know what that means the only one of those that matters I’ll I’ll just say it

14:46

like this no do you think the Messiah is coming because Israel was founded because if you don’t yeah then if you

14:52

don’t then it’s then Redemption is also breathtaking beautiful rev cook wrote poetry that is astonishing and also what

15:02

there is one Zionism and it is the only Zionism and it is the Zionism of rescue and all the rest is a bunch of Elites

15:08

writing beautiful books trying to interpret the thing itself but really mostly just talking about

15:14

themselves there he said it and now half the Jews will be angry at him okay I’m playing a game right now here’s the game

15:20

I’m goingon to say a few statements and you’re G to tell me what your reaction is to them pithy ready I’m saying the

15:27

statement you react number one I just wrote this down as you were speaking Zionism is Justified uh by virtue of the

15:34

Holocaust I don’t know what Justified means Zionism is necessary became

15:40

desperately absolutely necessary when there was no other way for Jews to survive in the Eastern hemisphere in the 20th century if there was no Holocaust

15:47

does that mean that it is Zionism is not necessary hundreds of thousands were killed and millions were fleeing before

15:53

the Holocaust the 20th century is the bloodiest Century in Jewish history without the Holocaust so let’s just

15:59

instead of Holocaust talk about the 20th century as a whole um if there wasn’t a

16:04

20th century we’d be having a debate about Jewish rights and belonging and

16:10

justification and the costs but there was so there is no debate the the anti

16:15

zist view is that the Jews should have died and if you don’t realize that’s the anti Zionist view then you don’t know the history well enough and are ignorant

16:21

most people are ignorant most people are not genocidal but it is literally what’s what’s the alternative what’s the third option there was no third place to go to

16:28

nobody would let the Jews go anywhere number two in the 19th century is when Zionism was created a specific rescue

16:35

operation launched at basil but foreshadowed by some of the writings of people like pinsker 20 years earlier was

16:42

created in the 19th century if Zionism is the Jewish Bel sense of belonging to

16:47

the land of Israel it’s a little older than that right so that so that’s like where I get confused I’m going to read

Why didn’t Jews return to Israel earlier?

16:52

you some some verses I’m going to read you some scripture over here kiv bear with me I can handle it I’m the son of a

16:58

Rabbi you got this Stay With Me Genesis 13:14 to15 and God said to Abraham after

17:04

L had parted from him raise your eyes and look out from where you are to the North and South to the east and west for I give all the land that you see to you

17:11

and your Offspring forever next Source in the CRA in Deuteronomy which the pH was it’s mid meaning it is from a few

17:20

thousand years ago where the rabbis were like this is Jewish law pay close attention dwelling in the land of Israel

17:25

is equivalent to observing all of The torah’s Commandments uh this is uh and then Yehuda Hali who you quoted earlier

17:31

was a great great poet and he spoke about uh he said my heart is in the East

17:37

and I languish on the margins of the West H throughout the talid it goes through the laws of the land of Israel

17:43

uh throughout the Bible it goes through the demand the command for Jews to

17:49

settle the land of Israel and the narrative is always where you start the narrative is always where you start so

17:56

when people say Zionism started in the 19 Century I’m thrown off because on the one hand as a movement that’s true but

18:05

then why wasn’t it happening for 1800 years for 1700 years like what’s the history that if it is the case that the

18:12

Jewish people have had a yearning to return to their land and it’s one and

18:17

the same and it belongs to them and it is them so for 1,00 years why weren’t they going back it’s not like the Romans

18:23

had dominion over the Jews for all these 1800 years why not go back in the 1500s why not go back back in the 1200s why

18:30

not go back in the 900s why did it not emerge until the late 19th century for

18:35

the Jews to be like uh yeah we got to go back to our land even in the late 19th century it was a small um ideological

18:42

movement um when designis become a majority of Jews in terms of opinion and in terms of behavior 1920s and 30s when

18:50

the quotas came into force and the Western Hemisphere and cut off the West for the Jews and the Jews had to flee

18:56

growing persecution and only then did they go I I would say that there are two points one um a lot of Jews moved to the

19:03

land of Israel Over the generations um but it was always an act of deep ideological whether religious or

19:09

spiritual or um some other kind of you know historical consciousness um would

19:14

send them to the land of Israel they were small they would form these religious communities inat the mystical

19:21

communities of svat for example um that produced what is today essentially modern cabala right cabala is this old

19:28

mystical Jewish tradition that had many many versions and what we basically understand today is cabala was basically

19:33

invented in spat by this group um the students of the vagon and there there these other there are these religious

19:40

movements that that went but um two things were always lacking one the

19:47

bigots around which Jews live the oppression in which they live the their seconder status under Islam and under

19:54

Christianity that would um fairly regularly explode to some kind of

19:59

violence and oppression was never bad enough to completely rebuild their

20:05

existence it was for short moments it was for you know the the First Crusade the so-called people’s Crusade before

20:12

the first crusade that killed a third quarter or a third of the Jews of the Rin River on its way to the Holy Land um

20:18

that was bad but it was still a limited area and and it couldn’t expand and it couldn’t get all the Jews and then in

20:24

the 19th century with trains and industrialization and urbanization and rise of the bureaucratic Modern Nation

20:30

State there was a bureaucratic technology to the new nation state that for the first time could actually

20:37

destroy all the Jews it could destroy everything it could cause catastrophes

20:43

that’s a word Herzel himself used and at a scale that required self self-reliance

20:49

and self-defense and and and collectivism to survive and so the

20:54

Zionism that turned you know a group of a you know always marginal groups of

21:00

various Elite ideologues um into a mass movement of the migration

21:06

of millions was danger and Desperation that was unique to the modern era and that’s why it never happened in the past

21:12

but if every Jew prays toward Jerusalem every time they pray and if you can’t finish the Passover seder without saying

21:18

next year in Jerusalem And if every synagogue is built facing Jerusalem for 2,000 years and if when the prgrams

21:25

begin in the southern Russian Empire the the Jewish press in the Russian Empire

21:31

in the pale of settlement calls it um storms in the negative and so this sense

21:37

of connection to the land of Israel was deep and it was always there and it was permanently there and you can never find

21:43

Jews who until the modern age for ideological reasons um who Tred to

21:49

excise it from Judaism you can’t excise it from Judaism I I challenge any Jew and any non-jew to pick up a Jewish

21:55

prayer book any traditional Jewish prayer book and even most traditional Jewish prayer books um and try to pray

22:02

without talking about Jerusalem and you will fail that’s true I think they would say that’s very different than Zionism

22:09

though well it doesn’t mean you have to be a modern political Zionist right in the sense of build a naan State now

22:16

urgently that you should be because all the other Jews are dead right emisphere

22:21

get back to my earlier question I asked you what would your Wikipedia entry of

Zionism as rescue

22:26

Zionism be I want to read you what mosha halbertal who is a Jewish philosopher’s definition of Zionism is this is what he

22:33

wrote halbert’s definition is it’s a movement that aimed to deliver the Jews

22:38

from the historical disgrace of dependence on other entities to determine their own fate it’s in this

22:44

book a Jewish State 75 perspectives I have no idea what disgrace means I I I’m sorry I’m a very simple person I I

22:52

most fancy people I don’t understand but otherwise I completely agree uh Zionism

22:58

the of Zionism the millions and there are a hundred ideologies that accompany

23:05

it and try to explain it from within from without anti-pr but the actual

23:10

thing itself is a rescue project undertaken at first by a small group of

23:16

Jews and then by most Jews um as they came to understand that Jewish life in

23:23

the 20th century could not survive because of profound changes in identity

23:29

profound changes in politics um and and that the Jews who would not be rescued

23:34

by Zionism stood a risk of extermination that is Zionism you’re Hur in it’s

23:40

rescue right it’s rescue so if it’s rescue uh for you and I do think it’s

23:45

important to make sure that we have the different approaches of Zionism that I keep coming back to whether it’s a h of

23:53

renewal of Hebrew and renewal of Jewish culture be dfy by the way I think one

23:58

second I am the nerdiest person you have ever met I went to Israel recently I

Zionism as renewal (the “New Jew”)

24:03

didn’t say hi to you K my apologies and I purchased Beres Hebrew I’m the only one I was told

24:10

to ever purchase this in the bookstore there um of his his essays of uh on all

24:18

topics around Israel and he was I mean he’s a fascinating guy beresi uh I find him fascinating but he was he was all

24:24

about Revolution he was all about the the the removal of the Jew from Judaism

24:30

essentially um and saying Judaism was a thing of the past I got to get away from

24:35

that I got to create something new and that something new is in contradistinction to what was and so

24:41

what that meant is I’m shedding my like to use like a cabalistic term my kipa my my external my external frame of this

24:50

like weak pale Jew who you know is at the service of others says yes master

24:57

Yes master and going to create my own identity Yes master by the way either being God or yes master either or being

25:03

the government or whomever that they were responding to or dealing with and sub and and submissive to and he said no

25:09

no I’m gonna I’m GNA revolutionize this whole thing I’m G to create the new Jew the tanw the Jew tanw yeah the tanw tan

25:18

he said the the guy in the in the magazine remember Life Magazine back in the day who’s like standing with his gun

25:24

and his and his and his guns his his biceps and he’s like out of the water and he’s got his he looks so good that’s

25:31

the first soldier in the Suz Canal yeah yeah exactly that picture I’m like that is what beresi had in mind boom that’s

25:38

it yeah it’s it’s adorable truly it’s adorable that guy by the way would become the chief armored armor officer

25:45

of the IDF um it it’s um what you just

25:50

confused me a lot I have no idea what you just said I you know let me just clarify for people listening I’m I’m not

25:57

ignorant I do know what bervy said I was forced to read some bervy in school it’s

26:03

adorable it’s cute he writes about Hegel a lot for some reason it is big and it

26:10

is pompous and it is silly uh I I don’t know what to tell you it’s like people

26:16

who believe in their religious world who who find deep meaning in it who are anchored in it as a source of culture

26:22

and language and are somehow subservient to something but Beres is going to liberate them all how always going to

26:28

write some stuff in German I I I look I just don’t have that much respect

26:34

for intellectuals I’m sorry truly I’m a street urchin tell me about the people

26:41

tell me about the people okay and by the way the anti-zionist and the people who

26:47

Wikipedia has allowed to take over in their deep bigotry um the Zionism article you will not learn this in the

26:53

Zionism article the anti-zionists are also these ideologues and they talk about these comp complex structure

27:00

bull you got it you got it you got it totally bull I’m trying to be polite total bull it’s not a thing millions of

27:08

people did not become Zionist except a great need if you don’t understand their great need you don’t understand Zionism

27:14

and if you do understand that great need you will not give so much space to all

27:20

this gobbledygook by intellectuals about other intellectuals talking about how intellectual they are that is not what

27:27

it is would never have succeeded if all the zionists okay had ever been had been

27:33

the intellectual zionists so the bskis of all the different camps the Lan blooms and hess’s and other Communists

27:39

all of the different camps the religious ones the rhus and cook and all these all the different camps had all and all

27:45

their followers and all their friends and all their buddies and everyone who Moved with them for fun had been in the land of Israel in 1948 they would have

27:52

lost the war in about four hours it is the hundreds of thousands it is the millions it is the people who came

27:58

because there was nowhere else on Earth and if you don’t know that you don’t know anything and you don’t just not know anything about now you about then

28:06

excuse me you don’t know anything about now there’s a reason Israeli left Wingers serve in the IDF at rates of 80%

28:14

the world that formed them was a world in which they could not live anywhere they know okay the Arab world pretends

28:20

to be anti-zionist it’s not anti Zionist if you understand Zionism as a rescue project Jews cannot live in Iraq Jews

28:27

cannot live in Yemen well that makes Iraq and Yemen Zionist I don’t know what to say about that if you can’t if Jews

28:34

can’t live happily and for a thousand years in safety in your land you’re a zus mazalov so you know it’s there’s

28:41

there’s this language there’s this discourse Anyway berki by the way he actually made alah he actually helped

28:48

Jews he had this whole role in Hebrew love the guy respect him the

28:54

intellectual projects around these people I don’t know what to tell you how relevant is he to you now you love him

29:01

because you’re a nerd by the way I read about these people I’m also a nerd but

29:06

is he relevant to you do you read him and say aha we have to now create a secular Jewish literature to free

29:13

ourselves from the yeah I’ll tell you why he is relevant to me but not not let’s we could speak about we could

29:19

speak about um we could speak about um Ben Yuda I’ll tell you why they’re

29:26

relevant to me I’m going to defend the intellectual class right now um not that I’m part of it as far as I know um but

29:32

um let me in let we don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me

29:38

exactly exactly so here’s what I think they do well what I think they do well is they provide language for almost

29:46

anthropologically describing something that is without people necessarily realizing that they are part of that

29:52

thinking so when you see a certain type of Jewish person I live in South Florida

29:57

and and I live in a pretty you know bubble in South Florida okay so um then

30:05

you go to Tel Aviv and you see Jews who look nothing like the Jews who you are

30:11

surrounded by and I don’t want to just insult my community too much here but their Judaism looks very different they

30:18

are aesthetically different their language is different what they care about religiously is radically different

30:25

and when I see that and some of them have such a disdain for you know a

30:31

galute Jew a Jew living outside of Israel they’re just like what are you what are you are you in a museum do you

30:37

eat bagels cream chees and locks you really like Deli don’t you it’s kind of like the spies when they go to Israel

30:43

Canan the way they perceive themselves as being seen and I’m like I’m going to do five more push-ups you know I’m going

30:49

to learn a little bit more Hebrew I’m going to have a little bit more disain for rabbis and then I am going to be

30:55

like you kind of Zionist right Tel Aviv Zionist and they don’t even necessarily call themselves a Zionist but that’s

31:02

that’s why and and you see this language this resurrection that took place and I feel like they have something that I

31:08

don’t have that maybe I’m a little jealous of but there’s this resurrection of Hebrew culture of Jewish

31:15

culture which is directly tied to being in the land and living the land and

31:20

activating culture and the land and technology and all of these sorts of things that is I think in the language

31:27

of berki a revolution that’s why I find it interesting not that I think people

31:32

are like reading barvi and then take let me do the formula I think that he is

31:37

describing something that is almost prophetic at his time but now when I

31:43

look at it I see it and then before you jump in on the other hand I then go

31:50

to I go to Judea Samar I go to the West Bank and I listen to them talk about

31:56

their vision of Zionism and you know ruk and you know um understanding that they

32:03

have a role to play in the Redemption of the Jewish people and that that we’re living in Messianic times and we have to

32:10

make sure that protect the Messianic era and that is a totally totally different

32:16

kind of Zionism also but it’s imbued with so much meaning and depth and provocation and so again I’m not saying

32:23

that they’re reading R cuk and therefore they’re coming up with their perspectives but they are living a life

32:29

that feels very different than my life as a self-described Zionist and I’m

32:34

wondering if we’re all saying the same thing or is it different and what the implication is look here’s here’s how I

32:41

think of it I like Jews that’s nice not too much but I do like them saying so

32:47

that’s so nice as a Jew that that felt warm yeah well good um and I am a little

32:53

sad I am deeply sad that there are today maybe six kinds of Jews

32:58

okay because they used to be 60 and my feeling is that um the the amazing

33:06

strength of Israeli culture and of the resurrection of Hebrew taking Hebrew out

33:11

of out of the study hall out of the synagogue and Herzel said you can’t we

33:16

can’t make Hebrew the language of the new state because you can’t buy a train ticket in Hebrew well now you can build

33:22

trains in Hebrew and you can design quantum physics experiments in Hebrew and and that that’s beautiful but the

33:28

reason Israelis can do that a small group of ideologues gave them that modern Hebrew but someone else had to

33:35

take away from them a Thousand-Year Yiddish civilization and someone had to take away from them a a a 1500 year 1400

33:43

year Arabic Iraqi civilization that was built on top of the Jewish community of

33:48

Iraq that had already been there 1500 years by then and so they are the

33:55

shattered remnants that these Elites that you’re talking about and whom I

34:00

love passionately I read ruk to be inspired by The Poetry by the mysticism

34:06

but ruk didn’t save millions of Jews what ruk did do and what benguan did do

34:11

and with bervy writing a Jewish Legends in Hebrew back in Germany in the 1910s

34:17

or whatever it was he writes Jewish Legends books right to avoid making it religious but he wants them to have that

34:23

the building of that culture to replace the shattering of of of so many Jewish

34:29

cultures biom modernizing world that could not contain minorities what happened to the Jews of Iraq happened to

34:35

other minorities of Iraq what happened to the Jews of Poland happened you know Europe in World War II we know the

34:41

Holocaust but Europe homogenized everywhere against everyone in in way

34:46

usually in ways that were much less violent because most people were deportable the Jews were not deportable so they had to be destroyed khant said

34:55

something like that and and that’s how the Nazis themselves talk um and so the the extermination of the

35:00

Jews functionally was part of a larger European homogeneization so that destroyed these ancient

35:07

civilizations and then you had these Elites that rebuilt it in these with these you know 15 different Zionist

35:13

movements that all have an adjective the cultural Zionism ofam and the religious Zionism of ruk and all of that and so I

35:19

love them that’s great that’s fantastic you will come to Israel you will meet 16 kinds of zionists and they will all have a different story and by the way you got

35:26

a bunch of different Zionism in Miami or wherever in South Florida you live yeah um and that’s also great and the fact

35:32

that they’re today is wonderful they were saved in the Eastern Hemisphere by Zionism and nobody else and thank God

35:39

there are old but also very new because they’ve really innovated profoundly to sustain the old ways kinds of Jewish

35:46

life so I say um there was a bottleneck in the 20th century in which most of the

35:52

old kinds of Jews were destroyed and the new kinds of Jews who could survive let’s build them out to be as many new

35:58

kinds of Jews as possible let’s have as big of a diversity of Jews as possible I basically think this about anti-zionist

36:04

Jews I think they’re adorable they only live in safe countries that’s not an accident that’s the only place you can be anti-zionist and not notice the lie

36:12

but I welcome it in other words you’re a different kind of Jew great let’s be that weird kind of Jew there used to be a b bundist communist until the

36:18

Communists did away with them well great that was a good thing let’s have as many kinds of Jews with different ideas

36:23

different cultures different languages let’s have as much variety as possible in the Jewish world but that’s ultimately a function of rescue that’s

36:29

all I’m saying right and so rescue and I want to transition to another thing that

36:36

I hear often um about the story of Zionism you VI Zionism as a rescue project I want to go back to the history

Zionism as colonialism

36:42

and I want to quote from you different parts different statements that were made and I I want to get your response

36:49

because the typical thing that I hear when people criticize Zionism broadly

36:54

from the left um though again there’s there’s critique from the right and from the religious world but it goes

37:00

something like this so here’s here’s the argument Zionism is colonialism it’s it’s colonialism and I and I could prove

37:06

it to you from two different ways way number one is very simple in and this is

37:11

thank you to our researcher Alex Harris who put this together for us in the year 1800 in the population of ottom and

37:18

Palestine there were 7,000 Jews 22,000 Christians 246,000 Muslims almost 90% of

37:25

the population ottoman Palestine was Muslim in 1890 43,000 were Jews 57,000

37:32

were Christians and 432,000 were Muslims now went down from 90% to 81% 1914

37:39

94,000 Jews 70,000 Christians 525,000 Muslims down to

37:45

76% and over the next you know let’s say 30 to 40 years until the partition plan

37:51

was decided in 1947 or voted upon in 1947 um it was dwindling and dwindling

37:58

what’s interesting about these numbers is that I’m going to give you different numbers on the population of Jerusalem that people don’t typically know in the

38:04

year 1806 2,000 Jews lived there 2,700 Christians and 4,000 Muslims 23% were

38:11

Jewish of Jerusalem in 1896 that that population percentage becomes

38:18

62% of Jerusalem is Jewish 28,000 uh 19% were Christian 8,700 and 19% Muslim

38:26

8,500 and then 1922 it goes down a little bit 54% were Jewish 34,000 23% were Christian

38:36

14,700 and 21% were Muslim 13,000 with a

38:41

total of 62,5 78 and so it seems as though while Jerusalem is the outlier in the land of

38:48

Israel it seems as though it is a case that uh that over time the fewer and

38:54

fewer Muslims and more and more Jews were colonizing the land I’m going to complicate this kiv the complication is

39:00

that the argument goes that in the Zionist own language they use the terms

39:05

of colonialism jabotinsky in the Iron Wall who was he really should be viewed

39:11

as a disciple of Herzel but he had a revised approach to Zionism called revision of Zionism which believed that

39:17

the Jewish people should be settling the land not just on the West Bank of the Jordan River but the East Bank of the Jordan River as well uh and for security

39:25

purposes and for probably for you know National homeland of Jewish people purposes I’m reading this to you in the

39:31

Iron Wall the zionists want only one thing Jewish immigration and this Jewish immigration is what the Arabs do not

39:37

want it does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonizing ases Herzel or sir Herbert

39:46

Samuels colonization carries its own explanation the only possible explanation unalterable and as clear as

39:53

daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab colonization can have only

39:58

one aim and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim and then D Juden from uh

40:05

Herzel your Reby he says in both countries meaning he’s talking about

40:10

Palestine and Argentine in both countries important experiments in colonization have been made though on

40:16

the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews and then there were like organizations like Jewish

40:21

colonization Association Jewish Colonial trust Zionist colonization Department let’s interpret charitable for a second

40:27

I know your your blood is probably either boiling or curdling one or the other something is happening here

40:35

um um when someone hears this what I just described is it possible that they

40:42

could say whoa you well zionists described themselves as colonizers and

40:48

um there were many more Muslims there than Jews so whether or not you have a very good reason to need to leave the

40:55

Eastern European Central European and Western European countries because they are rabidly and and vociferously

41:02

anti-semitic and let’s remember Iraq as well and other North African countries

41:08

that weren’t just saying Jews please you have an equal seat at the table that is

41:13

not the case but you know what with due respect to what was going on in North Africa and Iraq and Syria and other

41:19

parts that doesn’t mean that you coming to this land isn’t a form of uh

41:25

colonialism isn’t a form of imperialism so uh I said a lot what do you think

41:31

well um well you said imperialism at the end okay fine I’ll stick with colonialism um well they they argue also

41:38

that it’s that we’re imperialism um look on the one hand yeah completely

41:44

absolutely in every way there’s a difference between colonizing and colonialism colonialism is an ism it’s a

41:51

theory it’s a in it’s a super structure it’s a architecture of power it’s a an

41:58

ideology it’s many many things that it it was a great many different kinds of things over a great many different

42:04

periods and parts of the world it is not just white people do it it is a particular kind of argument that um is

42:12

usually viewed by Scholars as something that is accompanied by Supremacy ideology Etc um that’s not the same as

42:19

the word colonizing which is just a description of people moving somewhere to settle down there and the idea that

42:27

the Zionist use the word to colonize to describe moving somewhere to settle down there is somehow a Smoking Gun that it

42:35

is colonialism um I don’t know what they say about that yes Zionism colonized

42:41

what else did it do what other word should we give it if we call it Zionism made orange juice that’s the new term

42:47

for what it did say in Hebrew word for so what did they use right

42:54

right it was called the yes right the Jewish it wasn’t yet a state it was under

42:59

British and before that under the Ottomans it was called the yesu the I guess that would be translated settlement but it didn’t mean a specific

43:06

town or specific Village it meant the very extent whether it was 30,000 people

43:12

or 150,000 people it was the Jewish um living in and that was colonizing and so

43:18

the if you want to say colonizing and then you want to um do a quick word search on the Zionist Library which is

43:26

what people like Rashid KH and the anti-zionists always do and more power to them why leave you know lwh hanging

43:32

fruit on the tree um and you want to do a word search for the word colonize you’ll do it and you’ll discover that in

43:38

fact um Zionism advocated you’re not going to believe this um it advocated

43:43

Jews moving to the land of Israel in large numbers and settling there um and

43:48

you will first be shocked and dismayed and you’ll fall off your chair and then you’ll begin to realize that you haven’t

43:54

that you haven’t discovered much there’s we have not yet accused Zionism of something now then the question becomes

44:01

colonialism okay fine colonialism is something that just by discovering that they’re colonizing doesn’t mean they’re

44:13

colonialized by these people is really important because what they basically want to say is first the Jews decided to

44:19

colonialized not to colonize it’s not just that they got up and moved they got up and moved as refugees it’s that they

44:25

decided to implement and and that’s why in the Wikipedia article you’ll also see that long before you get to

44:31

anti-Semitism the Deep driver that created the first Zionist thinkers and the Deep driver that drove millions of

44:36

Jews to actually move there’s a whole section on some Zionist geneticists or

44:42

some garbage silliness like that from the 19th century and Wikipedia has succumbed to that by now deciding that

44:49

Zionism is somehow some eugenic project um so the our enemies have argued about

44:57

about Zionism that we are colonialist um in other words colonialism is not simple

45:05

colonization colonialism is a Metropole a country that’s powerful because it’s

45:11

sending itself outward that sends for usually economic gain for um Imperial

45:18

gain the British took over many places to serve the Empire the French settled

45:23

many places to serve the Empire it’s a kind of ideological expansionism not by the weak but by the powerful not by

45:30

refugees with no sending country and nowhere else to go that is not what colonialism refers to but that is what

45:36

Zionism actually is goes the argument and Zionism is also imperialism Zionism

45:42

Palestinian thinkers have been arguing since the 1910s is the arm of British imperialism or German imperialism or

45:49

Russian imperialism or even Soviet imperialism Zionism is all these bad words and why do they say Zionism is all

45:56

these bad words because they are all defeatable you can defeat colonialism

46:01

the algerians kicked the French out of Algeria the Mau Rebellion in Kenya we talked about Kenya well thank God we

46:07

didn’t take that British Kenya option because then we would have been colonialist at the at the at the bayonet of an Empire we would have taken a place

46:14

that then would have fallen in the ma Mau Rebellion and that’s what happened to the British settlement in colonialist

46:22

settlement in Kenya but I’ll tell you a dark secret Noom that please don’t don’t share this with them with our enemies

46:28

please only keep this Among Us Zionist Jews done and if you’re an anti- Zionist Jew listening to this you got to have

46:34

our back on this one all these theories of Zionism that didn’t take into account the social reality of Zionism the

46:40

millions of desperate refugees all those theories that are an attempt to actually avoid grappling with the social reality

46:47

of what Zionism actually was they have shattered the Palestinian cause for

46:52

generations for like six Generations they thought we were the arm of the British Empire and so when they rebelled

47:00

against the British Empire in the 30s 1936 to39 the Arab Revolt they thought that if they could kick the British out

47:05

they would kick the Jews out the British left and the Jews stayed and the Jews stayed after the British to face down

47:12

this Revol crushed the Arab Revolt brutally and armed the Jews to help them

47:18

crush the Arab Revolt all the powerful Jewish militias that are built out in the 1930s and that serve as the IDF of

47:26

1948 were built by the British as part of the attempt to crush the Arab Revolt of the 30s in other words the misunderstanding

47:33

of who the enemy is that view of us as as as as imperialism therefore if you attack imperialism you attack us the

47:38

attack on imperialism left them unable to Grapple with us and you see this a

47:43

thousand times in the course of their history and you know I could name all those times but just one other time um

47:50

French colonialism in Algeria ended after an 8-year Terror War by the fln

47:55

the National Liberation front in 1962 the French just got up and left after 130 years a real pivot of world history

48:03

and the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded by Palestinian activists in response to that they saw

48:09

what the fln did to the great powerful French coloni colonialist project and they said we could do that to the Jews

48:15

and then began this Mass campaign of organized systematic anti-colonial Terror what has that campaign done for

48:22

Palestinians it begins in 1964 the PLO is founded on the model of the 62

48:27

victory of the fln not in ’ 67 it’s not about the West Bank it’s not about Gaza it’s about the success of the algerians

48:34

against the French colonialist if the Palestinian cause had understood that the first antifa created an Israeli left

48:41

that wants peace because these children were throwing rocks at soldiers and the second antifa destroyed that Israeli

48:47

left because after all the Israeli soldiers had left all the Palestinian cities and they were negotiating shared sovereignty on the Temple Mount 140

48:53

suicide bombings blow up in our cities if they understand terrorism meant to destroy us to kick us out to some other

48:59

imagined Metropole that we don’t have will fail but that a moral argument

49:05

might succeed might shift our politics profoundly it completely reshaped Israeli politics this first intifa

49:10

demand for independence from military rule if they stop understanding us as colonialist and imperialists and start

49:16

to understand us on our terms with our own historical experience what it actually was and not what they pretend

49:22

and have now warped Wikipedia into claiming about us they’ll stop failing failing they will stop catastrophically

49:29

failing their Liberation might actually be possible kiv I think it’s really important for people to remember that

49:35

the PLO was created in 1964 3 years before there was the quadrupling of the

49:42

state of Israel I think that really matters and and and also looking at the

49:47

France fenon would write about this also about Algeria and throwing off the colonialists from France because the

49:54

argument I think was that France doesn’t have a multi- Thousand-Year history of

49:59

praying towards this place you know it’s it’s a bit it’s a bit different it doesn’t have a uh thousands of years of

50:06

law about how to think about uh Algerian land it’s it’s obviously quite different

50:11

but um I’m wondering if on the Palestinian side of things here or let’s

50:17

call it the those who aside with uh the Palestinian uh plight against Israel

50:22

there are many Palestinians I I deeply believe that work with Israel that think that the future is together I’ve met

50:29

many of them and I and I want to always platform them because even though they are opposed to Israeli policy they

50:35

strongly really identify with the Palestinian national cause and they should be platformed more but I’m

50:41

wondering if even they are do they disagree with your assessment about the

50:47

relationship between Jews and the British and western colonialist imperialist or do they view it as a

50:54

misdiagnosis meaning do they see the Zionist living in Israel as an extension

51:01

of of Western imperialists and they disagree with you like they just or if they were just told and explained no no

51:08

no we have a totally different history from them we have no interest in extending their hegemony we have no

51:13

interest in extending their power it’s a misdiagnosis which one is it look there are a lot of honest people on the other

51:20

side and when they say things like the the Zionist project is um you know an

51:27

extension the arm of British imperialism in the Middle East the fact is the British Empire was deeply Zionist

51:34

inicial policy from balur through Sano in 1920 which gave the Jews the land the

51:40

Arabs were not invited to the conference um through people can look that up uh

51:45

but not on Wikipedia go to the unpacked YouTube channel yeah exactly and unpacking isra history you know through

51:50

through the arming of the Jews in the 30s um that’s all British that’s British

51:56

policy and so their great grandparents who came up with this idea that Zionism

52:01

was the outstretched arm of British imperialism they weren’t stupid and even

52:06

today if I look back I have to say well Zionism sure as heck used British

52:12

imperialism every chance it got Herzel tried to meet the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to get the land from him he tried

52:18

to use ottoman policy and to convince the sultanates in the ottoman interests he tried to meet with the government of

52:23

the Russian Empire Zionism always used the powers that be and therefore always looked a little bit like when the when

52:30

Arab um politicians were arguing that Israel was the in 4849 that Israel was

52:37

the Vanguard of world communism uh Israel was being armed by Stalin through the checks it was and they’re all a

52:44

bunch of commies right beneran the kibuts right I mean it was never stupid

52:49

and honest people can look at us and say ah I know what you are you’re what you look like which is all these things but

52:55

always always always it’s missing the one big fact and it’s the big fact is a

53:03

sun cost problem you have to come to grips with just how disastrous your own policy has been you can’t miss the

53:10

millions of refugees you just can’t miss them so nobody here is an idiot and a

53:15

lot of honest people came to believe that Zionism was colonialism and imperialism and all these other things but they just missed the millions of

53:21

refugees and they missed all the the quotas and the closed doors that didn’t allow the refugees to go anywhere else

53:27

you mean the Jewish refugees the Jewish refugees the DPS of Europe after the war is a quarter million of them they’re

53:32

still in Bergen bellson and buen Val three years after the war when do they

53:38

leave when does anyone on Earth give them a place to go when Israel is founded how can you miss that and still

53:45

think you understand Zionism if every single Jew in Iraq is in Israeli that’s

53:51

not Zionism there’s no Zionism is not capable of emptying New York of every single sing Le Jew why am I saying New

53:57

York City cuz Baghdad was a quarter Jewish in the 30s something pushed them out Zionism is incapable of pulling at

54:04

that level and that’s what happened in the Arab R and how do you miss that how do you miss the emptying of 99% of

54:11

Moroccan jewelry how do you miss it and they miss it and so a none of the

54:16

arguments about us are stupid none of them are without footnotes or without a case but it’s about what they ignore

54:23

history throws at you 500 million facts you can only really grapple with a thousand and you take the Thousand that

54:29

tell the story you think is the best approximation of the truth and they choose a thousand that is a it’s like a

54:35

gerrymandering a district in America where you create these weird Oddball shapes trying to work around a

54:42

population you don’t want to vote for that congressional seat that is how they talk about Zionism by missing the big

54:49

giant elephant in the room of history and look colonialism you said it exactly

54:54

right name another colonialist movement where every single religious institution

55:00

faces the the land that they’re colonialized name another colonialist movement made up of refugees name

55:07

another colonialist movement with nowhere to return to the word is meant as an epith that the word is meant as a

55:14

strategic argument that we are removable by anti-colonialist means and the Palestinians were then allowed

55:20

themselves to be Hoodwinked by their leadership to be convinced that the anti-colonialist means this ter

55:26

terrorism that kicked out the French that kicked out the British that it would kick us out and it hasn’t those

55:32

Palestinians that you’re talking about they’re they’re the Redemption of us all they do know and they are willing to be

55:38

critical and they are willing to live with us in this land some of them want one state I think most of them still

55:44

want two states I don’t know who really believes two states are possible and I happen to I’m the idiot nobody listens

55:49

to me but I I think that they they do exist they are serious they are good people they are honest people the

55:55

Jordanian foreign minister agrees with you he just he just got out there there you go I can’t be wrong then how could I

56:01

possibly be wrong um so they do exist and I have to tell you I have taken my

56:06

Spiel talking about these mistakes that Palestinians have made in their interpretation of us over the decades

56:12

and over the generation to them to serious people there historians and

56:18

thinkers and sociologists and activists now it’s a self- selecting group it’s the ones who will talk to me so it’s not a whole lot of Kamas guys but I have yet

56:24

to meet someone who says to me nope you’re totally wrong that’s crazy they say to me you have a real good point and

56:30

we really have to deal with this and I and and you’re right and then they have certain concerns but they they they get

56:35

it and they know it and now the question is what do we do with the fact that they misinterpreted Us in certain ways and

56:41

that created a bad strategy and if they had a better strategy they could actually influence us in ways that are

56:46

helpful and not just tell us all day long we’re going to murder you and then you’re all going to leave which is a

56:52

great way to keep the Israeli left out of power for a generation so yes this is the fundamental question and I they do

56:59

exist we need to have this serious honest historical conversation and the Wikipedia thing isn’t small because it

57:06

tells us that the pro Palestinian campaign abroad doesn’t want them to wake up from these mistakes and so they

57:13

are enemies of this Palestinian future that we could have I think it’s such an important point kiv it’s it really is so

Zionism as essential to the peace process

57:19

important to think about how if you’re trying to eliminate the Zionist project

57:25

then that will just further entrench the Israeli Palestinian conflict it’s so

57:31

unwise and will lead to so many more deaths and uh you know like I I just been thinking a lot more throughout this

57:36

conversation how dangerous just how how dangerous it is for Wikipedia we’re

57:42

picking up Wikipedia But many others who just Define Zionism in a way Zionism is colonialism Zionism is imperialism

57:48

Zionism is the negation of the other doing that sort of thing I think has this ironic entrenchment of Zion across

57:56

the world who will say go harder do more entrench deeper and it’s a

58:02

misdiagnosis of what designist project has been for I was going to say either hundreds of years or thousands of years

58:08

depending on how again how we go through the history but I I want to I want to ask you about this now which is um Lord

Zionism as negation of Palestinian identity

58:15

zenil declared I think that the land of Israel is a land without a people for people without a land again very poetic

58:23

um but I just read you the statistics of how many Jews were there and how many

58:29

Muslims were there and how many Christians were there like when Palestinian intellectuals hear a comment

58:34

like that from Lord zenil and they read the numbers of the Muslims who were there they have the same smirk as you

58:40

they have the same like all right that that’s quite the propagandistic line um that’s quite the negation of my identity

58:47

I urge people to look up Israel’s zville because not only did he he said it he did say it he was not a mainstream

58:55

Centrist you know Zionist figure who drove the movement he was a marginal figure but more importantly than that um

59:03

he grew very skeptical about Zionism because he very quickly realized that was a silly thing to say and he himself

59:09

said that is simply not true and we all do it all of us I was on Twitter today I

59:14

think it was Ralph nater he tweeted something about how look here’s a general in 1973 who said we attack

59:21

civilians don’t ever forget that an Israeli General in 1973 said Israeli generals is a group of many many

59:26

thousands of people over the course of multiple Generations you know all the Israeli generals um all the major peace

59:34

moves all the major withdrawals were carried out by also Israeli generals also uh some of the biggest lefties in

59:40

this country are the generals also there are radical right-wingers who talked about forcing the Palestinians out in

59:47

one massive Act of ethnic cleansing generals um likei so you have you know the idea that

59:55

you could find someone and then quote mine them and then say aha a general said this this is Zionism and when Ralph

1:00:01

nater does it you can sort of shrug and you can say um you know just a little ideologue and and liar that’s okay but

1:00:07

my point was also look at what happens when I do it to Palestinians because on October

1:00:12

206 just before the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza um is hania said we

1:00:20

need the women children and elderly to die to awaken our revolutionary spirit and and his whole vision is and redeem

1:00:27

Islam on the altar of this destruction of Gaza that Kamas engineered well well

1:00:32

why can’t I quote mine that why can’t I pull that out and say hey look at that that’s not even quote mining that’s his fundamental Vision

1:00:39

umus the Muti of Jerusalem the driving force of the great Revolt of the 30s

1:00:45

spent the War years in Berlin and raised battalions among Muslims in the Balkans for the Nazi war effort and desperately

1:00:52

hope that the Nazis would win at lamain against the British make it to Palestine and kill every last Jew can we talk

1:00:58

about the Nazism of the Palestinian national movement or can’t we is that quote mining or isn’t it’s these

1:01:04

ideological bobles this popularity contest that we’re all engaged in in which we try and prove to the world that

1:01:11

we’re more or less moral usually that the other side is so horrific you can ignore my mistakes um is usually how it

1:01:17

goes it’s also silly and and meaningless I have met Palestinians all my life I

1:01:23

grew up in Jerusalem you can’t avoid pales Ians in Jerusalem and they can’t avoid Jews in Jerusalem and I have never

1:01:31

met a Palestinian as stupid as the depiction of Palestinians by Pro Palestinian people in the West for

Does morality matter?

1:01:38

example I have often asked Palestinians during the secondat when I was a soldier

1:01:43

and my literally I was at a checkpoint where um a car with five kilos of um TNT

1:01:50

blew up and the car itself was destroyed and um wounded guy from my company um I

1:01:56

kept a little bag of the shrapnel we were supposed to gather all the shrapnel and also little bits of body parts of

1:02:01

the bomber um for the um CSI you know the crime scene investigators who would

1:02:07

rebuild the bomb and build intelligence out of that bomb and um for a few years

1:02:12

I kept a little bag of that trapnel which I probably shouldn’t have kept till my wife one day threw it out and

1:02:18

didn’t tell me um that experience of being that Soldier stopping bombings

1:02:24

into Jerusalem sitting um with my Drew’s com uh platoon Commander um on the

1:02:30

mountain sides of the West Bank trying to catch suicide bombers as they sneak through the dark valleys in the night

1:02:36

that experience I would take it to Palestinians and I would say to them how do you countenance this immorality here

1:02:41

we are you me were sitting I I you know was a guy who was as a student involved in all kinds of Think Tank projects of

1:02:48

national narrative conversations between Jews and Palestinians how can you justify the morality and you know what

1:02:53

Palestinians said to me when I said to them how can you justify the morality of another bus bombing in Jerusalem in the

1:02:58

morning where school kids were killed do you know what they said to me they said to me every single thing is at stake

1:03:04

everything our life our land our future our kids lives everything’s at stake you think I give a about morality

1:03:10

that’s what they say when they’re being honest and you know what that’s a moral Point that’s a good moral argument and

1:03:17

when I heard it from Palestinians I went to Jews and I started hearing it from Jews Jews had always been saying it I had always been feeling it but when a

1:03:24

Palestinian articulated it I realized I think it as well you think I as an Israeli Jew they’re coming for my kids

1:03:30

everywhere I withdraw from Kamas will use to murder my kids they say it they want it they hunger for it they think

1:03:36

Redemption of the Redemption of the world depends on it you think you’re going to tell me something about

1:03:41

morality that I’m going to care when I think my kids are in danger what the hell is this moral popularity contest

1:03:47

neither Israelis nor Palestinians think morality matters why because there’s one great overarching morality and that is

1:03:53

the other side wants to murder me we have a poll out just just this month wonderful poll by the Palestinian

1:03:59

pollster KH shikaki and an Israeli pollster Dalia shinin from Tel Aviv University um and they asked Israelis

1:04:05

and Palestinians both do you think the other side wants to kill us all 90% of both sides said yes and so there is no

1:04:12

moral popularity contest I don’t want to talk to Palestinians about their morality and I don’t want to talk about my morality because nobody gives a

1:04:19

none of the people who actually live here and who for whom it matters and whose lives will be shaped by it this is

1:04:24

a conversation happening in the western moral imagination of a bunch of people who think that their moral emotions are

1:04:31

the story of the world and they’re not the story of the world that’s dehumanizing and racist and and Western

1:04:36

mental imperialism if not actual right that’s I want to come to Palestinians and say you can you need to learn this

1:04:44

about me so that the war ends cuz you will continue to fail if you don’t that’s my only justification that’s the

1:04:50

only thing that matters and what do you need to learn about them we spent a lot of time going through the history of

1:04:56

um these tremendous moments that the Palestinians as have as a group as a

1:05:03

leadership and probably maybe it comes from the West have been utilized by the West in order to um in order to

1:05:10

propagate a myth that is destructive towards Israel and Zionism to follow in the footsteps of Algeria to to Really um

1:05:20

to to Really shrink the the point are there mistakes that the Zionist have made throughout history when you go

What mistakes have Zionists made?

1:05:26

through the history of of Israel and Zionism are there mistakes that you’re like H this is something that we could

1:05:33

have done different that we could have done better over the last hundred years let’s say huge mistakes huge mistakes I

1:05:40

would say that for example the idea that

1:05:46

settlements have to be placed around the mountains of Jerusalem to protect Jerusalem an idea born in the experience

1:05:51

of 49 of trying to hold that road open to Jerusalem the idea that settlements have to push us back from the coastal

1:05:58

plane where we’re 9 miles wide right in the middle of the country till we hold the highlands that I find completely

1:06:05

reasonable again I don’t care about lines I don’t care about borders I don’t care about anything except my own children’s safety I find that completely

1:06:12

reasonable the idea that we need to place small ideologically intense

1:06:19

settlements of people who are capable not all of them not most of them but some of them and they’re not reigned in

1:06:25

by their own leadership and so the leadership is culpable even if it doesn’t agree place them between major

1:06:31

Palestinian population centers on the Watershed of the West Bank right that big line of mountaintops that goes north

1:06:38

south right down the middle of the West Bank in which most of the Palestinian population actually lives this is a

1:06:44

population this is the Watershed line um is the cities of nablo it’s the cities

1:06:50

of of of Janine of of Hebron of of um of Bethlehem basically e Jerusalem um the

1:06:57

idea that we need to place east Jerusalem is different it’s profoundly different for important reasons it does

1:07:03

need to be somehow shared but it is nevertheless different from the rest to place small settlements in places

1:07:09

adjacent to them so that they cannot have any kind of territorial contiguity is a mistake it’s something most people

1:07:15

don’t want it’s something that drives Palestinians who don’t believe in the ideologies of the major Palestinian

1:07:23

ideological Elites and factions like Hamas to the arms of those factions because they look at the Israelis and

1:07:28

say they’re just going to take take everything and take me and um and so those are two for me morally very

1:07:34

different things and historically very different things um we need to hold the Highland for the same reason we hold a

1:07:40

third of the Golan Plateau right now because otherwise they would shell us and kill us and murder us but that

1:07:45

doesn’t mean we need to hold sh or naus you know the Arabic name or doesn’t mean we need to hold rala and so that is a

1:07:53

big point there have been war crimes in the history of Israel outright war crimes they went to the Israeli court

1:07:58

system the Israeli court system ruled them war crimes we learn about them in basic training in the Israeli Army which on um the kar Kasa Massacre I learned in

1:08:06

my first week as an infantryman I wasn’t even an infantryman it was my first week in basic training I only got my rifle my

1:08:13

second week um before I got my rifle they taught me about an Israeli Massacre of Civilian Palestinian Israeli citizen

1:08:21

civilians um and we read or we we learned went through part of the Supreme

1:08:28

Court decision that beautifully just lays out what it means because the order was uh technically a legal order and yet

1:08:34

it’s not a legal order and the Supreme Court explains why and they want all the soldiers to know that the idea that the

1:08:40

Israelis made mistakes huge mistakes so those are those are two well uh settlements that are not strategic war

1:08:48

crimes such as Kar kasum uh have a podcast on that I did a 30 minute

1:08:53

articulation exploration of that that moment that tragic moment and uh

1:08:58

anything else like policy-wise when you look at the history of Zionism um the history of State creation

1:09:06

was there something that should have been done differently in I’m not trying to lead you I’m wondering in

1:09:12

1948 prior to the Israeli Arab war of

1:09:17

1948 but the Civil War within Israel is there something that could have been

1:09:24

done differently for the Palestinian Arabs is there something that um through

1:09:31

when you look at the history in’ 67 that Israel could have done differently after

1:09:36

quadrupling in size is there something different in Zionist history that could have been done differently uh with Oslo

1:09:44

in the mid early to mid90s is is you know anything there I

1:09:50

mean I mean I uh there something that stands out I’m not I’m really not looking to lead you anyway my day job is

1:09:57

um is reporting on Israeli politics and analyzing Israeli politics and when you

1:10:03

drill down into the weeds in that way and you get into the minutia of the day-to-day handling of a war the day-to-day handling of a of a of a

1:10:10

political policy or diplomatic negotiation then the answer is millions of mistakes at every level and at all

1:10:17

and at every period and in every incident it’s it’s not but that doesn’t mean that the whole is a mistake um

1:10:25

there there are uh events in uh the 48 war that are just absolutely wrong um

1:10:31

the founding of Israel is not wrong and the Jews had no choice and I don’t I and

1:10:38

I refuse to be asked to relitigate it by people who want to destroy me you’re

1:10:43

asking for me to dismantle and leave and you’re starting it by saying in this war where we were willing to exterminate you

1:10:50

you pushed 700,000 of us out um I’m I refuse to play that moral it game does

1:10:56

that mean that igal alone when he surrounded spat and told the Arab Community were coming in in the morning

1:11:02

and by morning they had all fled does that mean that he behaved right or well I don’t have to accept that I don’t have

1:11:08

to look at Israeli history and say everything’s perfect so the idea that we don’t make mistakes is very silly

1:11:14

obviously and and nevertheless I’m I refuse to play this game where we’re going to walk this path of Israeli

1:11:20

mistakes down into the questioning of Israeli existence if I did that with Palestinians uh they would come out

1:11:27

really bad and if I did that with any Nation on Earth they would come out really bad great points I I got it I’m

1:11:33

transitioning us talking we went through the history we went through different moments in Zionism we got you to laugh

1:11:39

about uh bar Chevy’s um poetic flourish and R Cook’s um equally poetic flourish

1:11:47

I love by the way could you imagine this the two of them were in Yeshiva together in vagan um which is unbelievable to

1:11:53

think about the two of them being together it tells you how they are yeah that’s how Elite they are right but also

1:12:00

it is unbelievable it’s pretty cool but now we start talking about something else we started talking about

How to talk about Israel

1:12:05

educationally um how to talk about Israel and I want to frame this in in a

1:12:10

a very specific way over here kiv I think a lot of people think about the

1:12:16

Israeli Palestinian conflict and the Israel Palestine story as a team game of

1:12:23

baseball basketball football whatever you want and so what ends up happening is um in a time of War goes the argument

1:12:30

you can’t possibly move an inch you know one side is very clear says the other

1:12:35

side one side is so good at their propaganda is so good at their hbar as

1:12:41

it’s called in Hebrew so good at dispelling myths about the other side so the other side then has to do exactly

1:12:49

that but on the other side and if Israel is at war with Palestinians and withal

1:12:54

in the North and with hu in the Southeast I guess and with Iran in the East and the Mediterranean Seas on the

1:13:00

west uh so and Hamas obviously in the southwest you know it’s not time to do

1:13:08

anything other than defend Israel’s moves to defend Israel’s history and the

1:13:14

supporters of the Palestinian cause do the exact same thing in this game of

1:13:20

Israel versus Palestine Israelis vers Palestinians I’m not willing to move move an inch and I’m going to tell you

1:13:27

why every single thing that Israel has done has been terrible or everything the Palestinians have done has been terrible

1:13:34

and that and that is why it’s so different than talking about other issues and again it’s not it’s not

1:13:40

exactly like Western Civilization is so good at being uh nonpartisan and so good

1:13:45

at seeing different sides and colors and textures of issues whether it’s you know gun control or whether it’s questions

1:13:52

around gender identity and those sorts of things it’s not like uh we’re so phenomenal at these conversations some

1:13:58

one of the goals of this podcast is to actually get a little bit better at these conversations that’s what’s going

1:14:03

on here it turns into a sport of of sorts so how do we talk and I get it if

1:14:10

I’m a Jew in America you you you’ve said in the past you said this to me you said no you’re jealous of me this isn’t the

1:14:15

first time you told me you’re jealous of me for being this Jew and this American a Jewish American a Jew who has all the

1:14:20

positive things and I could shed my identity when it comes to the Terrible things of what sometimes the United

1:14:27

States of America does but it’s also true that what happens in Israel is very

1:14:32

much so felt by me and it’s also true that people just call me Israeli and

1:14:38

call me and assume that every single thing that Israel does is identified

1:14:43

with me and vice versa even though I’m a Jew living in South Florida living outside of Israel and then there comes

1:14:49

this huge problem of well if that’s the case then it’s my job to go out there go

1:14:55

out to the world and defend Israel and I’m like I’m not the press secretary but on the other hand there’s that

1:15:02

defensiveness of the Jewish people who are going through a war of annihilation

1:15:07

from the south from the north from the East and then again the Palestinians feeling very much so like they have this

1:15:14

war of extermination against them and so they’re they so they therefore have such

1:15:20

an inability to do anything other than fantasize and propagandize what do we do

1:15:25

about this um yeah first of all I share your

1:15:30

frustration it’s so it’s so difficult and it’s so um let me start by the two sides are not

1:15:38

equal in that particular regard when you say we feel defensive and therefore we

1:15:43

have to defend the other side what it argues about us and about our story it’s

1:15:49

attempt to Rob us of our story it’s attempt to to Define for us our story um

1:15:55

is what it is the fundamental point is that we should not exist and it’s a shame that we do how do we talk about

1:16:02

this I think we humanize we stop letting Elites talk to us about themselves

1:16:09

because that’s what they do and we start going to the lived Human Experience um

1:16:14

you want to understand Israelis in 48 you can’t go to ideologues writing silly

1:16:22

ideological things um in 194 48 you have to go to the Ordinary People the more

1:16:29

the more ordinary the better and you have to get their life story and then you will understand big things um when I

1:16:35

tell people the story of 48 I don’t start 48 um in the first battle between

1:16:41

Arabs and Jews in the land but if you want to understand the Israeli experience of that War I started in a

1:16:46

letter in a in an entry in a memoir actually by a woman named hadasa Rosen shaft who survived Bergen bellson and

1:16:54

was liberated by the British army when it took Bergen bellson and she writes in

1:16:59

her Memoir um on May 8th that’s victory in Europe day she’s writing a few years later the war in Europe ended I’ve often

1:17:07

been asked how we felt on that day of course we were glad to hear the news of the Allied Victory but we and bellson

1:17:13

did not celebrate on that day for years I’ve seen a film on television showing the world’s reaction to the end of the

1:17:19

war in Time Square New York in the Streets of London and Paris people were

1:17:24

dancing ing singing Crying embracing each other they were filled with joy that their dear ones would soon come

1:17:30

home whenever I see that film I cry we and bellson did not dance on that day we

1:17:36

had nothing to be hopeful for nobody was waiting for us anywhere we were alone

1:17:42

and abandoned the survivors are still stuck in bson 3 years later when the state of Israel’s declared and they

1:17:47

finally have somewhere to go the 48 war is experienced they are a quarter of the IDF in that war it’s experienced by the

1:17:53

Israeli Jews in the brand new Israel as the first time they could defend themselves and if you don’t understand

1:18:00

that you will not understand why they could stick it out for 76 more years and if you do understand it you won’t waste

1:18:07

blood and treasure and generations trying to destroy them in ways that you

1:18:12

just cannot possibly threaten them because they already know what awaits them if they don’t have this place and

1:18:18

so that’s social history by the way it does work in the other direction you can’t read the Memoirs the Diaries of

1:18:27

families of Palestinians from Villages or from big cities these are very different it’s a very stratified Society

1:18:33

it’s are very different lived experiences but you can’t read them and not understand that there was a people

1:18:39

and there was a displacement and it’s it’s true that the northern Palestinian

1:18:45

culture is very similar to Syrian and Southern Palestinian culture is very similar to Egyptian that doesn’t mean they’re not a people that that doesn’t

1:18:52

mean they didn’t come to Define themselves and experience themselves as a people people in history made them feel as like a collective and that’s how

1:18:58

the German people came to be it’s not a it’s not an argument they don’t exist argue that they formed as a national

1:19:03

identity at one point in history that’s exactly what happened to you know European nations as well they’re still a

1:19:10

people and they exist and they went through deep experiences and painful experiences and a lot of them caused by

1:19:15

the encounter with us but that doesn’t take away from their actual suffering and when you go back to the debates

1:19:21

among Palestinians back in 1910 you go go back to the debates in Palestinians 1908 there’s this Young Turk uh

1:19:28

revolution in turkey and the Ottoman Empire and suddenly the censorship is lifted and you start to get this this

1:19:34

Rich press that starts writing and talking and discussing and you have a lot of Zionist um um agents um a lot of

1:19:42

them Jews from the Arab world from places like Damascus who who are fluent in the Arabic and are walking around

1:19:48

either buying land or talking to the people or writing basically intelligence reports from these from the Zionist

1:19:53

office in Jaffa um so that the movement understands what’s happening on the ground as it plans as It prepares as it

1:19:59

starts to build as it fundraises um and you read their encounters and their writings about what the Arab even just

1:20:05

peasantry illiterate peasants are saying and then you read the Diaries and letters of the urban Elites who are

1:20:12

anything but illiterate these are people who know seven languages and um there’s a people there there is a people there

1:20:18

and that people had an experience and a history and we have to see it and we have to acknowledge it I feel and I have

1:20:26

to say you know I’m an Israeli Jew I feel like we have done a lot more work seeing them than they have ever done on

1:20:33

seeing us and never mind the moral claim understanding us in a way that would actually give them options rather than

1:20:39

destroy everything they ever wanted so I think we’ve done a lot more work I think their Elites have proven to be a

1:20:45

catastrophe for them and refus to do that work and M mainly just destroy um

1:20:50

but that’s my perspective as an Israeli Jew obviously I’m probably missing a few things but nevertheless yes it’s on both

1:20:56

sides and and we if we humanize if we go to that Human Experience of the lived experience of millions of people and we

1:21:03

shy away from Elites we shy away from ideologues who scream and shout

1:21:09

and vent and when people start dying all they can see is their super structures of ideology if if we can escape the grip

1:21:17

of of these awful evil stupid Elites especially the intellectual ones and

1:21:23

just look at the lived experience of millions of people there’s no such thing as an anti-zionist and there’s no way to

1:21:28

avoid deep empathy with the Palestinians so for you it’s very much so about humanizing about I circled seeing them

1:21:37

and you said that as an Israeli Jew you think that uh Israelis have done a bit more of that than perhaps Palestinians

1:21:43

uh I’m I’m going to be the American now not the Jewish um not the I’m shedding

Seeing the Other

1:21:49

my Jewish part of my identity in honor of you um and just being the American

1:21:55

and I do that to a lot of Jews and I want to talk about where we’ve failed and where we go because I

1:22:03

actually am not sure that I see it the exact same way as you but it’s because we situate ourselves a bit differently

1:22:09

so I was just in Israel a couple weeks ago and uh I was in Jerusalem and on Shabbat afternoon I said to my wife who

1:22:17

was with me um who is a proud Jewish American um I said to R why don’t we uh

1:22:23

do something different in Jerusalem I have a buddy named e flesher think I don’t see ey eye with him on everything

1:22:29

but why don’t we uh just go on a walk with him we went to East Jerusalem so we went to East Jerusalem um middle of the

1:22:35

day Shabbat afternoon and we went a half a block past the Jaffa gate and we were

1:22:44

in a very Christian part of Jerusalem and it was open on Shabbat and it was

1:22:51

Lively and it was happening a block past that we saw different buses that were in East Jerusalem um different buses than

1:22:59

the eged buses then we went to Damascus gate and we hung out there for a little

1:23:04

bit just a block away and then we went to Salah Alin Street and Salah aldin

1:23:09

Street was so interesting because we saw them we saw the Palestinians living

1:23:14

there there’s no Hebrew there um it’s all in Palestinian Arab and we went down

1:23:20

the street we um spoke to a few Palestinians um got to know uh a restaurant owner a

1:23:29

Bookshop uh and then we went back towards where we were staying a block

1:23:35

west and we were in we were shipped to Poland we were shipped to Lithuania and

1:23:41

there was the ultra Orthodox Jews the Ki Jews and it was a block away from each

1:23:47

other and then another block away from there was a more western part of Jerusalem where sabaro used to be

1:23:55

uh and it’s just another block away in where there was a suicide bombing right there on J on uh on the on jafa street

1:24:02

and then we walked uh we walked back to our hotel and it was as simple as seeing

1:24:09

each other I said to my wife what did you like I said like and then you know whatever then we partied Saturday night

1:24:14

in uh in uh in the shook in M Huda but I said you know what what was that like

1:24:21

and and she used the imagery of what you just said she just said I saw them I saw them I I I I’ve spent years coming to

1:24:28

Israel and Jerusalem and I was always never moved past that one block and so

1:24:33

when I look at the history of education about the Israeli Palestinian conflict I think there is a lot that we aren’t

1:24:41

seeing I’m being literal here um there’s also a line from the great um medieval

1:24:48

commentator it’s my favorite line in medieval comment commentary about the story of The Exodus where Moses is

1:24:54

described as seeing uh the Jewish people and Rashi who is Rabbi shaki in the 11th

1:25:01

century says about Moses a lot of people saw the the Jews like they saw they saw they saw they saw the slavery but in

1:25:08

Hebrew he says Natan meaning what does it mean to see it means to give your eyes and your

1:25:15

heart and to to to feel with you to feel the empathy with you to like be part of

1:25:20

there is an intransigence to see each other and do do I think it is to to do I

1:25:26

think it is incredibly Pro problematic and provocative within the Palestinian world oh my God so much so I I in 2006

1:25:33

let’s do unpacking his early history this way in 2006 I was a Hebrew youth student and I wrote a paper on the

1:25:39

Palestinian miseducation in the PA system as Hamas was coming into power and as PA was fighting against the Hamas

1:25:47

and the PA was the the PA not the Hamas but the pa the education that was in

1:25:52

there was and agonistic towards the Jewish people was um indoctrinating

1:25:58

about the lack of the Jewish connection to the land of Israel like just not there the desire to reclaim the entire

1:26:05

land of Israel and that is an act of not seeeing that is an act of not seeing so

1:26:11

when I look back at the history of Israel and we talk about how to talk about the failures of everything it’s

1:26:18

just about are we willing are we willing to see each other more and and I I I

1:26:27

think that that will radically change everything I think it would I really do I think it will radically change

1:26:32

everything for us to see each other more um and we’ll see what happens from that yeah but I also think it’s okay to you

1:26:39

know to respect each other enough to um bang down that door um in other words do

1:26:45

mean to bang down the door to force the other side to see you to yell at it in its own terms to come at it with a

1:26:52

demand and to come at it on on on its terms in other words to come to the other side and to say um you’re screwing

1:26:59

up for yourself and you’re screwing up for me the refusal to see on the Palestinian side is profound and active

1:27:06

and what do I mean by that Professor Muhammad D Jani someone I think you know very well a professor at luds University

1:27:13

in Jerusalem taught his kids his students about um the Jewish experience

1:27:20

of the 20th century for a Palestinian historian scholar thinker to teach his students about the Jewish experience of

1:27:26

the 20th century is for him to teach them about their own history and about its complexity and about its causes and

1:27:34

he uh took them on a trip to alitz and he was fired from luds University for

1:27:40

taking them on a trip to alitz he didn’t turn Zionist he didn’t turn pro-israel he didn’t turn Centrist he’s very much

1:27:49

on the Palestinian nationalist side and in the Palestinian nationalist story but you’re not going to get any where if you

1:27:54

don’t know the story of the Jews and so you should know the story of the Jews and for that he was fired from elu

1:27:59

University his car was blown up and he was forced basically into Exile now

1:28:05

there are sections of Israeli society that will go violent rather than have a conversation about but they are

1:28:11

exceedingly small there are very few people I have gone on podcast to talk about um Palestinian uh Israeli mistakes

1:28:19

and Palestinian rights and what do we do about the future of the West Bank um

1:28:24

with just I’ve gone in front of religious Zionist audiences I have gone in front of religious Zionist audiences in settlements and there were some

1:28:31

people who were a little bit perturbed and some people who asked questions and interrogated very strongly and and I

1:28:37

would tell them about these you know Palestinian debates about Jews and 1910s and my point was they’re not

1:28:42

understanding that they’re refugees but also here they are talking about them and afraid they’re people talking about

1:28:48

um this Zionist trickle it’s a thousand people a year in the first 40 Years of Zionist immigration design is trickle

1:28:55

that’s going to turn into a river and overwhelm us and we are a nation going to its death and you read that in a

1:29:00

diary from 1912 and you’re like wait a second they are human beings three-dimensional as clever as you and

1:29:05

they know exactly what’s happening to them and they have the sense of self they have the sense of peoplehood that

1:29:11

that that a nation has and and all of it and and right-wing religious Zionist

1:29:17

Israeli audiences hear that and a can handle it some of them will challenge

1:29:23

you but they will not then say you made it up you lied you could show it to them and their world

1:29:29

expands there isn’t that active resistance to the other side having a story that there is on the Palestinian

1:29:36

side and I think that the Gap if I’m being very um benefit of the doubt sort of empathetic as much as I can and we

1:29:45

are in a war and I’m having a little trouble when Kamas is the number one political faction in Palestine by every

1:29:51

poll but nevertheless there you know when they look at that um the there’s a

1:29:57

gap in power and a sense of vulnerability on their side in which they believe that if they give any room

1:30:03

to the Jewish story then the Jewish story is empowered and can destroy them

1:30:08

and so they cannot give that room that space to the Jewish story and I think that drives some of it among Ordinary

1:30:14

People not among intellectuals where you have all this intellectual gobbledygook but among Ordinary People there’s a there’s a resistance to the Jewish story

1:30:21

we don’t even tell our own story to ourselves we have ideological Elites who are committed absolutely to telling

1:30:27

Israeli young people that the story of Zionism is that there was a Great Awakening of national feeling and that

1:30:33

Awakening drove people to suddenly finally after 2,000 years of what

1:30:38

confusion drunken stuper whatever it was that kept us from coming just like you said at the beginning what kept us from

1:30:44

coming suddenly they awoke and they came and they right that’s not what happened but that’s what we tell our kids there’s

1:30:51

that old song right um one morning a man stood up felt

1:30:58

he was a a nation and began to walk it’s this sense of like the sudden ideological Awakening um that’s not what

1:31:05

happened what happened was that millions of refugees had no other choice they would never have arrived at that ideological Redemptive experience

1:31:11

without the desperate need and so if we we need to teach that to Israelis so that Israelis start talking about it

1:31:18

amongst themselves so that Palestinians start hearing it from them so it enters the zist so that it’s not a new thing

1:31:23

that some wackadoodle Israelis trying to tell Palestinians so that it’s part of the story and the discussion I want to

1:31:29

do this this is my last and most important question really think it’s the most important question this podcast

1:31:35

unpacking Israel history is all about the history of Israel the Nuance different perspectives making sure that we teach the the heroic moments of of

1:31:43

the modern jeur story The Salty moments the problematic moments of modern isra history trying to really figure out how

1:31:49

to understand today like that’s that’s the goal of it and and not doing it in a hbar way you know the same day I got a

1:31:56

criticism it was awesome I got an email saying dear Noam you have become an

1:32:01

arabist you become an apologist for the Arab people and shame on you next email

1:32:08

dear Noom it’s sad to see that you claim to be an educator but really you are a a

1:32:14

wolf in sheep’s clothes and uh really what you are is a hasb baraz for Israel

1:32:20

not an educator so the same day lot of fun uh didn’t go to my wife crying don’t worry it’s it’s all good but um the real

Is Zionism still relevant?

1:32:28

question that I have the most important question that is that’s how we got to the present but is Zionism over what

1:32:35

like is it over if it’s the great rescue project of the Jewish people then well I

1:32:41

have two comments on that one is in modern liberal Western countries whether

1:32:47

it’s Australia or the UK or Canada not to mention the United States of America

1:32:53

broadly speaking it’s probably the best time ever to be a Jew um living across

1:32:58

the world so is it the case that Zionism is over because this is where I will

1:33:04

challenge your earlier point about what is the goal of Zionism I read this in a

1:33:10

book called adjust Zionism by Kim Gans in a footnote that’s how good this is

1:33:15

it’s in a footnote he says that’s always the best stuff it’s the best it’s the best stuff he says the following maybe

1:33:22

I’m going to misquote this I hope not but basically he argues oh here it is he

1:33:29

argues that the role of Zionism was either to solve the problem of Jews or

1:33:37

is it to solve the problem of Judaism that’s what he says meaning is the goal

1:33:43

of Z of Zionism to solve the problem of Jews economic social hardships

1:33:49

anti-Semitism or is it to solve the problem of Judaism meaning that Jewish identity and the continued existence of

1:33:55

the Jews as a people it’s not going to just happen in these other countries without the land of Israel without

1:34:02

Israel so what is the goal and maybe you you’ll say no um stop with your flowery

1:34:07

intellectual elitism stuff but what is the goal of Zionism now if

1:34:13

it’s the rescue project well good job Israel you did it you did it in 48 you did it in ’ 67 you did it in 76 with

1:34:21

anbi you did it you did it um it’s over it’s over it’s over it’s done what would

1:34:26

you say well you said it’s now safe to be a Jew in the world of course you’re referring to your world it’s safe to be

1:34:33

a Jew in the English-speaking world that didn’t actually impose on its Jews the

1:34:38

20th century that the rest of the Jews of the world experienced and that’s a great and immense and profound

1:34:45

compliment to the English-speaking World an English-speaking civilization um not

1:34:51

all Jews come from there not all Jews went there um it is extraordinarily unsafe to be a Jew um in the Arab world

1:34:59

in quite a few parts of the Muslim World RIT large um and there was a 400%

1:35:07

increase this year in opening files for Aliyah among French Jews um four times

1:35:13

as many this year are exploring have actually have actually um gotten in

1:35:18

touch with the Israeli bureaucracy to talk about immigrating to Israel from France then last year and that has a lot

1:35:24

to do with the fact that there is a massive campaign of islamist terrorism against French Jews that the French

1:35:30

authorities are doing everything they can to pretend isn’t happening but there’s terror attack after terror

1:35:35

attack after terror attack a stabbing a rape a murder a shooting it’s already more than a dozen incidents that I know

1:35:41

of no I I I my Zionism is very simple um my Zionism is not some some imposition

1:35:49

of my problem with all these intellectual versions of Zionism and with this question of of of is a problem

1:35:55

is it a problem of Judaism you’re exactly right to hear me to predict that I’ll have a problem with it zionism’s

1:36:01

job is not to build a particular cultural content zionism’s job is not to say this is what Jews are and there

1:36:07

shouldn’t be any other kinds of Jews that is a stupid elitist um silly

1:36:13

shallow empty Zionism Zionism is a rescue project and Jews will then having been rescued build Jewish life and

1:36:19

cultures all over the place in all of their diversity that’s that’s the vision that’s the only thing that really

1:36:24

matters it’s what actually is happening it’s what actually did happen in the past Zionism accidentally saved kism and

1:36:31

now look at kism it’s gone off and flourished and built a thousand different kinds of Judaism maybe that’s

1:36:37

hard for people to see from the outside who don’t know it but within it’s an incredibly diverse World um so is

1:36:43

Zionism relevant as long as Jews need to be protected Zionism is relevant the

1:36:49

very fact that Jews are so safe now has a lot to do with Zionism French Jews are

1:36:55

safer in France facing a Muslim Community some of which is incredibly

1:37:01

integrated and Incredibly um liberal and modern and a lot of which isn’t and they

1:37:07

face an onslaught of islamist hate and they face um just regular old European

1:37:14

far-right anti-Semitism and they face it with the knowledge that there’s in Israel and that’s a whole different kind

1:37:20

of facing it and so I submit to you that with without Israel your life in America

1:37:25

would be 10% more wary 10% more worried about the nature of America and the

1:37:32

promise of liberalism and whether it’s being kept and whether it’s collapsing and what every single political movement

1:37:37

means you’re never going to become Israeli you’re not going to move to Israel 99.8% of American Jews don’t but you

1:37:45

know that there aren’t the Bad Endings there once were for Jews because of Zionism so no Zionism is as relevant

1:37:52

real Zionism actual Zionism rescue Zionism is as relevant As It Ever Was

1:37:58

Zionism will remain relevant um as long as humans are human Zionism solved the

1:38:03

great problem of the anti-semite of the anti-semites imagination of the anti-semites belief that we our rightful

1:38:11

place is to serve as characters in the melodrama going on in their own heads now our rightful place is to live on our

1:38:17

own um cognizance and and and self-reliant and and masters of our own fate and until that is no longer

1:38:25

relevant or useful uh Zionism will be relevant and useful kiv that was uh as a

1:38:32

sweeping few hours going through the history of Zionism um going through the

Book recommendations

1:38:37

different flavors of adjective Zionism um to an extent lamenting the flavors of

1:38:44

Zionism um and then going through I think pedagogically and

1:38:50

educationally what we can be doing uh a bit differently uh when we’re talking about Israel when we’re talking about

1:38:56

Zionism when we’re talking about the Israeli Palestinian conflict um when we’re talking about the modern je story

1:39:01

um so thank you and um I don’t know is there one book that you recommend is

1:39:07

there besides the this podcast and ping the history but is there another book that you recommend classic histories of

1:39:13

Zionism um Walter lur is that a good one yeah Walter lur is great history of

1:39:18

Zionism where you just you you’ll meet the characters you’ll meet the history you’ll meet the basic um there’s um uh

1:39:25

the Zionist idea which is a just a a great sort of exploration of Zionism

1:39:30

from the intellectual side of things and Gil Troy did an additional uh volume on that right the Zionist ideas which is

1:39:38

the next volume which where you know 50 years later he really tries to tackle sort of the very big diversity of

1:39:45

Zionist ideas um and that’s really the intellectual uh world of Zionism but

1:39:50

here’s what I was going to say I thought I was teeing you up for this you failed I thought you were going to

1:39:55

say it’s been a long conversation if you if you want to understand the

1:40:01

Zionism it’s not through reading books but it’s about seeing the social experience of Israel and then you will

1:40:08

understand Zionism yes you could also read about the social lived there’s just the lived experience of of the past that

1:40:15

created the Zionism wonderful book by a non-jewish historian named gos Ali gootz

1:40:22

is his first name last name Al y called Europe against the Jews and it is a history of the emptying of Europe of

1:40:28

Jews before the Holocaust and uh it’ll break your heart and it will make you

1:40:34

understand and if you then think Israel behaved wrongly and there’s something wrong and we need to have a one-state

1:40:39

future you will be a serious person who understands the lived social history of millions of people when you make that

1:40:45

argument and not an unserious person talking about your own morality um

1:40:50

there’s a thousand books Anita shapira uh her sort of fundamental history of Israel is also a history in the ear part

1:40:59

right here right here got it the yeah I mean again there are hundreds there are

1:41:04

hundreds do me a favor um yeah don’t just read anti-zionist histories of

1:41:11

Zionism because they will intentionally miss the elephant in favor of the mouse

1:41:18

in favor of a whole bunch of mice some of which look make Zionism look very bad some of which are very bad not

1:41:24

everything Zionist has always been great we’re talking about Millions upon millions of people over the course of 40

1:41:31

years it’s not all great and people who cherry-pick only the bad stuff aren’t

1:41:37

teaching you history they’re teaching you ideology so just you know read a Zionist history of Zionism among among

1:41:44

the others thank you so much thanks for

Outro

1:41:49

joining unpacking Israeli history unpacking Israeli history is is part of unpacked which is a division of Open

1:41:55

Door media I want to thank jaiv for joining us I want to thank our producer

1:42:01

riy Stern I want to thank our editor Rob Pera and I want to thank our researcher for this episode Alex Harris thank you

1:42:08

all for joining and see you next week thank you no

---