Ask Haviv Anything - 113: Will dumping Israel backfire on the Democrats? A conversation with Hussein Mansour

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).--The Democratic Party is choosing party unity on Israel by ceding ground almost entirely to the anti-Israel wing. Hussein Mansour returns to the podcast to break down how this retreat of the Democratic center mirrors the DEI takeover a decade ago and other historic leftist collapses in history to a more radical wing. His analysis suggests that the shift is irreversible, that centrist Democrats will soon find themselves conceding more, and that this could have very bad consequences for the party going forward. From Fanon to Hasan Piker, inter-elite power struggles to the future of American power projection — this is a must-listen warning about the high cost of feeding the tiger you hope to ride.--There are few if any publications like SAPIR, the quarterly journal of Jewish ideas edited by Bret Stephens from the New York Times. You might remember we've hosted a number of people on the show to talk about topics they've written about for SAPIR: Coleman Hughes, for instance, about antisemitism in the African-American community, Alana Newhouse about why Zionism is useful to all. It's a beautiful publication not only in its content but in its physical appearance, and if you live in the United States you can receive it in print absolutely free. They won't even ask for your payment information.If you sign up now you'll receive the forthcoming issue on the theme of America, in honor of this year's semiquincentennial (250th birthday). Lots of excellent stuff in this issue about the current political crises in both the Democratic and Republican parties, the decline of education, particularly history education, in the U.S., and tangible suggestions for America as it turns 250. If you want to start receiving this excellent publication 100% free, go to https://sapirjournal.org/AskHavivAnything.Thank you to SAPIR for sponsoring this episode.--If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Haviv Anything. I'm very excited to tell you that my guest today is Hussein Abu Bakr Mansour. It's his third time on the podcast. Hussein, as listeners will know, is originally from Egypt. He is now a fellow at Jinta, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. He's an expert in Arab political thought on shifts within Islamist movements and Islamist thought. His analyses, I have to tell you, run deep.

They deal with fundamental things about how the West, especially the United States, needs to think about the Middle East and about the Muslim world. He has a new article on his substack called the Abrahamic Metacritique. That's the name of the substack. This is a short article, and it's what we're going to talk about today, about the current state of the Democratic Party's stance on Israel, about how and why it chose to break with Israel totally. That is his argument. and he explains that the Democratic Party is breaking from Israel as a kind of structural surrender to a whole ideological movement coming in from the radical left,

and that it won't stop there. We're going to talk about it. It's really, really fascinating. Before we do that, I just want to tell you a word from our sponsor. Very grateful to Sopjeer, both as a subscriber and also for their sponsorship. There are a few, if any, publications like it. It's the quarterly Journal of Jewish Ideas, edited by Brett Stevens from the New York Times.

You might remember that we've hosted a number of people on the show to talk about topics they've written about, For Sopier, Colman Hughes, for example, about anti-Semitism in the African-American community, Alana Newhouse, about why Zionism is useful to everybody, why it's an interesting new way to frame the crises of modern life in the West. It's a beautiful publication, not just in content,

but also in physical appearance. If you live in the United States, you can get it in your hands, in print, absolutely free. And if you sign up now, you'll actually get the forthcoming issue on the theme of America. That's in honor of this year's semi-quincennial. How's that for a spelling B championship word? That's America's 250th birthday, which happens this year. Lots of excellent stuff in this issue about the political crises on the left, on the right, and the Democratic and Republican parties, the decline of education, especially history education in the U.S.,

And a lot of tangible suggestions for America as it turns 250. If you want to start getting this excellent publication, I highly recommend it 100% free. Go to Sapirjurnal.org slash ask-Hav-anything. That's S-A-P-I-R-Journal.org-S-C-R-Ev. Anything. They won't even ask you for credit card information. Finally, I want to invite everyone to join our Patreon and or subscribe to our substack. We have a new substack.

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Hussein, how are you? I'm good, glad to be here. Thank you, Chb. This was a fascinating piece, and I want to tackle the core thesis first. I want you to lay it out for us. Anti-Zionism isn't just another policy position. It's a worldview.

You call it a keystone of the decolonial mentality, rather than a negotiable policy preference. What do you mean? So let me explain the article in a simple way. Basically, that the democratic establishment or what sees itself as a moderate democratic establishment that obviously has been in crisis since, of course, the loss of the elections for the Harris-Waltz ticket, have decided. And it's a conscious decision.

As a matter of fact, this article is not based entirely on my analysis. It's also based on this being explained to me explicitly in these terms by a democratic figure who's actually privy and part of this decision-making mechanism. They have decided that they have to choose currently between party unity and party civil war around the issue of Israel. And if they are to compete seriously in 2028 and try to give back, to the White House, they must, or that's how they view, they must concede on Israel to the left. And that hopefully will allow the central establishment to proceed with a moderate

agenda on everything else, economy, affordability, and so on and AI, so on and so forth. And the thing they can do this, that is, they can manage the radical, the increasing power of the radical flank of the incur party. That's not really. You know, marginally more. We have Mamdani now governing the largest city and the largest Democratic city and the largest city in the United States. And Mamdadi is not just a leftist Democrat. He is a self-identifying a communist and, you know, third worldist ideology and so on and

so forth. So basically we'll concede this issue and that somehow will free us. Now the concession is not seen. They don't think that they are going anti-Israel. They wouldn't say that. Structurally, that's what they are doing. They don't know that this is basically just, this is actually what's happening. The entire party is turning anti-Israel.

But what they would say is that, no, no, no, they are pro-Israel. Here is how what the new centrist democratic position is. We're pro-Israel, but we're against all aid to Israel, all military aid, whether for defensive or offensive weapons, systems. We will downgrade relationship from Israel from being this exceptional relationship to a normal relationship and centralized Palestinian human rights. So this will become, in effect,

it's actually becoming, it's already being voiced out by every single aspirant for the 2028, of all that major democratic figures. You had Wendy Sherman on TV the other day basically saying this position like that after my article came out,

but this is basically the new centrist democratic line. No, no, we're still pro-Israel, but no, no, no, military aid, downgrading a relationship, centralizing Palestinian human rights. And of course, Palestinian human rights here doesn't really mean Palestinian human rights means a whole gauzology that Matthew Friedman so brilliantly wrote about in his latest essay on the free press. But this is structurally, it's basically moving anti-Israel.

They are going to say it's not anti-Israel, but first of all, this, you're already normalized, completely and accepted, that anti-Zion is, particularly. position of the left, then it's going to steam roll into all the institutions of the party. So you're really not adopting a one position. You're going to adopt the entire framework of anti-Zionism. Now, when this comes to your second part of the question, that anti-Zionism is really anism. It's not a position on policy on the issue of Israel. It's really the core or the organizing principle of the entire intersectional, the colonial worldview that's been actually brewing in the universities for a very long time, as everybody needs.

knows. And it has multiple components that went into it. That's another conversation of, or perhaps another long essay of how this intellectual roots of this, but you have post-coloniality from underside, you have third worldism, but you have also postmodern and liberal components as well. But ultimately, it is now a framework that determines a lot of questions about policy, about institutions, about the entire worldview that that Democratic Party is going to have. Why are they wrong? In other words, what... Right.

It's political. I don't like it. I happen to be Israeli, but why are they wrong in terms of the Democratic Party's own electoral prospects and future? It's a great question. Very quickly, Ram Emanuel is a great example, because Ram Emanuel was an example, an embodiment of democratic establishment pro-Israel. He was Obama's chief of staff.

He overlooked the full funding of Iron Dome. He was very pro-Israel. And then now, he basically... He's voicing just that new centrist Democratic position that it just outlined. All right. Now whether they are wrong, this is not the first time the Democrats go through this, actually. This is the second step, and it's related to the first major step that they took, and already it made them slide, like they didn't think that they were going to slide this far, but

they already did. And that was that started happening a decade ago in the dry run that was DEI, the concession to the year. This is actually how this started. So DEI, the same thing, and it's very similar to anti-Zain. They are somewhat, of course, related because we come from the same universities. Both of them started in the academy. That is DEI as well, started in the universities.

The mainstream of the Democratic Party, it's not that they were enthusiastic ideologically about DEI. No, they adopted it piecemeal by piecemeal. They didn't believe in it deeply because I don't think a lot of people believe it deeply, but it seemed politically expedient. It was very inexpensive. And you had a carrot and stick tight. The carrot that this was actually was very popular.

So there was a leftist populism that supported DEI. And the stick, of course, was the whole cancellation regime that was starting to pull on people actually losing their jobs and so on and so forth. I don't think that anybody in the leadership level of the Democratic Party thought through that adopting the I is going to completely transform in institutional structure within a decade of the Democratic Party and of liberal institutions. And that's actually what happened and where we are today. And again, that's related also to the second step that's happened with anti-Zionism.

They thought, I think, that they were making concessions in very discreet limited issues. Diversity hiring. We're going to use equity language, right? We're going to start, okay, we're going to increase diversity in hiring. Then, okay, now the language, all the language that was speaking has to be equity-based language. Okay. And then, okay, inclusion. Inclusion has to be now the guiding principle of any.

institutional or any programming that we do. So they thought they were gradually piecemeal by, you know, piecemeal, discrete issues, conceding, but they actually ended up adopting a whole framework of DEI, which is also part of that decolonial intersectional worldview. And ultimately, and once you did that, you couldn't retreat from it. And it became the only language that the party can speak to the extent that even today in order to defend Israel, you have to put it in a DEI box inside the Mkirk Party. And you see this happened, like they surrendered entirely to the DEI worldview and ideology.

How do you mean? How do you see defending Israel within the DEI box? Oh, they are native, they are native indigenous people. This is what they do. No, no, no. They are also hurt by the same bigotry. This is a big misunderstanding. They are not, and we heard this, for example, Van Jones spoke this way, right? Oh, the problem is black people. are confused, they don't know that Jews are also like us. So they are also another DEI box who has been hurt by the same bigotry. That is even the question of Israel. That's how much surrender happened. They don't have any other language to talk about issues, to defend Israel with. So even Israel has to be a DEI. So this is an example of how this decision, thinking

that you're strategically concluding to concede in these narrow, discrete issues for this radical leftist, the radical left that came out of the universities ultimately overran of all of your institutions. So basically, yeah, that Israel represents like an oppressed minority, that anti-Semitism is really a form of the same structural bigotry that racism, the Bob Kraft advertisement, basically tried to also do this. But the rights, obligations, the old language of the Democratic Party that was. available will in the Clinton administration, somewhat till the Obama administration, all

of this is basically gone. So I want to say that this concession to the DEI transformed the institutions also, that you can't really go back on them. And that's it. You've stuck with the language. You've stuck in the institutions. This is what's happening again now with the second step. You think you're going to concede.

I'm going to concede on discrete isolated issues about Israel. Okay, no military aid. Okay, guys, we're with you on this. Then it's going to be, all right, we can't have a special relationship. We're not with it. We're not going to veto in the UN whenever, as you know, the resolutions come to make, condemn Israel because they are even worse than the Assad regime supposedly. Okay, we're not going to veto this.

Centralizing human rights. And now we're going to start tying our foreign policy to what we think is, that's it. is going to be a concrete, they will concede a little bit by bit, and you will end up with anti-Zionism becoming institutionalized the way the I has been institutionalized. And there's one more thing about the EI. The EI became unpopular at one point. With the electoral base, it became unpopular. Obviously, Colin Harris did not win for a reason.

Even with our financial systems turned against it. Now they're like, no, this was a mistake, ESG, all this was bad. So even after that even the wind shifted, they are still stuck with the, that's what I'm saying. The institutions still, their institutions still suck in this. Their ideology is still stuck in this. Their language is still stuck in this. And so it's really hard to change once you let that flood your party. So if you do that with anti-Zionism, it will be the same thing.

You're going to be stuck with this and you're not going to be able to get that out. And this will truly become the identity, the new identity of the Democratic Party. There's D-I anti-Zionism, intersectional post-decoloniality. And that's the direction in which it's heading. And I'm not sure. I'm actually almost positive that this is not going to be stopped. I want to drill down into the really fascinating historical analogies that you drew. And you drew them very, very briefly.

You talked about interwar European socialist parties that conceded on the Jewish question to all kinds of right-wingers and all kinds of nationalists. And they conceded and conceded and conceded. And they kept thinking, look, the Jewish question is this weird hang-up of, you know, of the right. We can build coalitions. We can do a lot on every other issue. In the end, the Jewish question cannibalized everything else, became the politics of the countries.

And the socialist had already conceded that ground totally. You talk about British labor eroding under what anti-colonial pressure. Explain to me that British labor arc. and the French left after Algeria. So lay off for those examples. There is a structural thing that you are identifying here, that you're seeing happen in front of you that has happened before, that is particular to the left, maybe,

particularly to sort of the inner dynamic and logic of left-wing ideas, maybe. And you think that that's happening now. So you're saying, dear Rahm Emanuel, dear Chuck Schumer, dear Wendy Sherman, we've done this before. there's only one way this ends. Right. To be fair, to be fair to Schumer, by the way, like Schumer was one of the very few,

Schumer now is a minority. He's a caucus, is a minority of a caucus of seven. In the Senate minority of 47, and in the seven who didn't vote to block the bulldozers, military bulldozers sailed to Israel. So in fairness to Schumer, Schumer now is a minority voice

who's, I hope he's not going entirely entirely. Yeah, I realize that named all Jews. Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom has shifted on this. I mean, there's just, it's the list is all of them, basically. Right. No, it's a, Kelly, Booker, Gallagall, you have, you have a dramatic, you have some, some are really dramatic like Roe Kana, who was like only five years ago, Gun Hoopro, Israel, signing letters for APAC. And today it's a mistake.

And it's very, he's not just. you know, military aid, no, he's straight out anti-Zionists. So, and this is happening everywhere. I mean, the about a circle analogy, yes, we've seen, of course, every time has its own specific. Also, I think America is very specific, so I don't want the darkness of the analogies, especially the first one, make people forget that this is also, this is the United States of America, we're not Europe, we're very unique in a lot of ways, and maybe I'll talk about

this. But yes, in the interval years, so you had exceptions from, the story that I told. And the story I told that basically you had steadily rising, steadily rising, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic populism in the interwar years, especially after World War I. Now, at the base of the socialist parties, this is a left-wing story specifically, at the base of the socialist parties, which is basically the workers, the distinction between really left-wing and right-wing is not really clear, right?

And socialism and nationalism really blur into each other and so on and so So that the nationals, the radical nationalism that was very anti-Semitic, that was rising at the time, especially in Germany and Austria and France, to some extent, it really could influence the base of the socialist parties as much as the rest of the countries. So you had a decision, a conscious decision, that was, there were mainly two exceptions to the SPD in Germany, which is the Social Democrat, and that actually ruined them, that they didn't make that concession. They really did get destroyed. and the Austrian, also their Austrian counterpart, the Social Democrats. But the rest of the socialists in the comments actually decided, especially with the guidance of Moscow, that the Jewish question is very costly, politically. You should just concede on it.

That is, you marginalize or remove Jews from the leadership entirely, and this often did happen, and really leave the anti-Semitic question and focus on basically trying to get to parliamentary quotas. and try to get to power. And that ultimately did not really allow them to reach power, but as a matter of fact, made them lose power, and they basically allowed the radical anti-Semitic nationalist factions to really streamroll through their political systems. That's the first.

Now, with Corbinism, or what happened with the British labor, is similar. I think America basically were having a condensed version of that, which, which is labor historically was actually sympathetic to Israel. I was sympathetic to Israel for a very important, you know, and clear reason. Remember Israel, you know, 50, 60, 70s was mostly a socialist, a lift-leaning state. It had a European socialist character. That was a major reason for sympathy. And also you have the moral weight of the Holocaust and the building, the institutionalization at the time of Holocaust memory and so on and so forth. So labor and this, And the Jewish vote in England was mostly labor.

Zionism was really at home labor in the UK. Then gradually, starting late 70s, but then 80s and 90s, and the story picks up, really post-colonial activists as well as new kinds of radical leftist activism, the under generations that these start to promote anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian, decolonial framework. The party gradually, same thing. Peacemeal adopts resolutions, adopts positions, condemns Israel here. and there's a story that gradually moves until it really culminates in Corbinism, straight out anti-Zionism, sympathy with Hamas, Hezbollah, relationships with terrorist organizations.

And even as that became a crisis in labor that ultimately led to the removal of Corbin and the rise of Kyr Starmer and so on, the party has not recovered. As a matter of fact, the change that happened in the party now seeped into all of its institutional network all over the UK. We're talking about unions. We're talking about activist base. We're talking about NGOs. That's how you hear the news today, especially from British Jews, about how deep this, even after Corbin, how deep this is now in the institutional infrastructure of the British left.

And it's clear that there is no going back from this. Now that the Algerian analogy is very important. It's different in a lot of ways, but it's actually mostly relevant because that's actually the origin story of all of this. It was actually the Algerian war that actually produced Phenon, the primary decolonial, he's the primary justification by the way of the left for the acts of Hamas of October 7th. That's why murdering Jews in this way is a heroic act. It's actually because France Fanon, and that came out of the, out of the Algerian, the French Algerian war. So what I want from that analogy is even the assumption, which I'm not going to give the anti-Zionist

a flank. But if the decision, if the position was right on merit, that is opposing France in Algeria, it was actually morally right on merit. The concession and the adoption of the leftist radicalism around that position did not end with the war. It actually produced an entire radical worldview that radicalized many components of the French left. It completely, by the way, it destroyed the popularity of the Communist Party.

The Communist Party was over after this, the French left got radicalized before there was a major pushback in the late 70 against that and a return of French conservatism in a way. But basically, the legacy left actually completely got marginalized with this new radical left. And he created a whole new radical worldview that ultimately got global. And now, by the what's happening here is related to it. So you have the story. The first story is much more explicit, specifically about Jews. This is something that really does repeat itself. on modern times, and conceding on this never ends there.

And also about Corbyn, the Algerian example specifically about the attempt to manage radicalism that also fails. I think these are instructive analogies because I think that's what's happening today is quite delusional. I understand the strategic calculus of the Democrats of doing this. I just think it's a catastrophe. They are basically feeding themselves. They think they are feeding Israel to this.

that tiger that they want to write, but they are actually ultimately feeding themselves to it as well. So Phelmeln's argument, the specific argument you're referring to, was that the oppressed don't, violence is important to liberation because the oppressed are oppressed in many ways psychologically, in addition to physically and politically. And violence is the... Therapeutic. is the theory right and Fanon himself as a psychiatrist

right. Violence is the internalizing of agency. Right. If I become violent, I have become from history's object that other people, you know, used to history's subject. I'm the one deciding where this goes. I'm the one deciding.

And so violence was the kind of redemptive. Now Fanon also warned that regimes established after liberation by these kinds of violent people, these kinds of violent movements, are not going to do well. And in fact, Algeria has done very, very poorly afterwards because these radicals who could only really do that and fought that way couldn't then build a competent modern Algeria.

Why does it matter? What could the left possibly take from me after I'd given them Israel? Why isn't this? What? Specifically? It will. What is the warning that you're issuing? What are they going to lose other than Israel?

Let's imagine that they say, yeah, I'm going to lose Israel. You know what? I'm Emmanuel. Real soft spot in his heart for the other half of the Jews. I think it really feels bad for him. I think he really – but getting America away from Trumpism is too important. I can sit with the guy and I can say, you know what? A, I think you're actually an ally.

B, I get it. I get it. I'm not going to ask you to lose an election for Israel. So if that's what his calculation and of all the policy issues that he's – sees on the Democratic agenda that he thinks from, you know, tariffs to immigration to a thousand other things. He's, you know, if I can concede Israel but preserve a democratic center that can still win elections, I can actually push back on universities over the long term in ways that I couldn't if I could never win an election ever again. I can see all the excuses. What, in

practical terms, is he going to lose if, if your, if your analysis is correct? Well, first of all, I have, I have many issues on the, and even on the calculation itself. Like, I'm not even sure that the calculation is right. Like, I'm going to lose an election. I'm not going to lose an election. If Israel, so I'm going to lose my entire party to not lose it. That's my next question. Let's talk about that next.

What in practical terms does he stand to lose other than the Israeli show? No, it's going to be, as I said, the structure of power is DIA. You concede, you start the train of concessions and it's really not going to stop. So gradually it's going to start with all of your foreign policy decisions and your foreign policy establishment. Now your foreign policy establishment is tied to an ideological commitment. And then you'll have to concede one point after the other. Now, what's you mean? What?

The alliance with Japan, our relationship with South Korea. so on and so forth. How much of that will now have pressure, and the Chinese is going to play into this, because now that's also a colonial endeavor and what applies to Israel will also apply in the U.S. military prisons. How about our business in the Middle East, especially in light of everybody, no, protecting our Gulf allies from Iran? Now this is also a colonial endeavor, just like the Israelis.

The hour we have America, oh, you know, my progressive friend, you were angry about Israel Israel's colonialismality. Let me tell you about the American soldiers' coloniality who has a base in the Middle East and confronting terrorism and Iran or East Africa and so on and so forth. So even just American capacity for power projection abroad, you will find a lot of this ideology migrating to undermine our own power projection capabilities, our own and our own capacity to defund themselves. Imam Dhani, you know, not an hour dime, basically preventing taxpayer money for ultimately, this will also translate to other framework or other policy

questions in which, you know what, okay, I don't want my taxpaying money to go to fund American relationship with some regime that supposedly is colonial and things. Just to clarify, you think the Democratic Party is capable of ever reaching a point where the United States Navy does not have the mission of protecting the oil shipping lanes of the world? Yes. I mean, things that are foundationally in America's own. Definitely. That's the opinion. That's what the left want. That's what the Mamdani flank,

the Mamdani AOC flank of the left want. And they already are getting the centers of the party, who are actually used to be much more reasonable in these issues. But they are now pulling those. And those are pulling the mainstream establishment. And that's basically going to be the trickle down that you will actually get to these discussions. And this way of talking that was dominant for the activist base is actually going to gradually, first of all, it's going to be normalized. inside the party itself, the establishment will not go with it immediately and will try, but it will placate it. And before you know, it's just what happened with DEI.

This will be the way that the entire party talks. And once this is the way the party talks, every policy question has to be answered. Through the unideological framework. Right, right. You talk in the piece about a power struggle, whether to understand the turn on Israel, the anti-Zionist movement within the Democratic Party as a moral movement, a movement concerned primarily with a more specific moral argument or whether to understand it as a kind of rallying

concept for what is essentially inter-elite power struggle. I want you to walk us through your thesis that there's an inter-elite power struggle for essentially institutional control within the left. And I just want to add to that. I completely agree that there's an inter-elite. power struggle. Maybe there's also an authentic debate on morality, especially among young people, young people I have meant, maybe because they don't know all that much. They just think of it

in simple moral terms. And so there's a complexity here. I don't think you're saying it's one or the other. But nevertheless, tell us about this elite inter-elite war. It is complex, and both things are true at the same time. Like, this is a real ideology, but also real ideologies and acquire, become power, because they are real, because they actually command real belief, that's why they attract power agents. I want to just add one thing to our last question, how this can migrate to other things. This will also migrate to the conditions of Jews inside the North Party,

inside American institutions, once you have the oppressing oppress, and the only way you can defend anything is to put it in a DEI box and say Jews are non-white. Ultimately, this is also going to break down, and then what applies to the colonialismality in Israel and oppressor, is going to be applied to Jews in America. That's also have to be, have to be put in perspective. Now, about this question. So there are, the ideology, of course, of anti-Zionism is an old ideology, it has a lot of different roots, you know, Soviet propaganda, Marxist, Leninist analysis of Zionism, Arab nationalism, of course, and the past, and a lot of different

things that ultimately kind of were downstream from all of this, all of this today. Now, because of how powerful it became, especially in the universities, that means, that it's a useful, a useful instrument of power. This is true, if any, powerful idea. And that means that it can be used to delegitimize opponents to consolidate positions, to make alliances and to acquire power. And it is exactly what's happening. Both within the right and the left, by the way, this elite competition is happening

in multiple layers and multiple places. I wrote about it extensively before. Like one way to see what's happening with the whole Carlson flank that's now, that's It's now indistinguishable in its position from the radical left. Like if no one Tromsky was still, we still acted, he would be on the Carson show every other day now. Indistinguishable. They are basically competing for positionality.

Who's going to lead the MAGA after Trump? That's really what the competition, the war in the right. Who's going to come? And this is the wage issue of Israel. And so that's a perfect foil for a new power composition in order to do. try to get there first. Now this has been happening actually for a longer time on the left and started even in the academy with the rise of the post-colonial professor.

That is somebody with my profile, an intellectual from the third world who has to make his way into elite Western institutions and elite Western culture. And one of the central, the central non-white figure who occupied the central place in this until the late 70s was the Jewish professor, was the Jewish academic, the Jewish professor that was central to the post-war liberal moral foundation that was based on the Holocaust and the Jewish experience, otherness, so on and so forth. I mean, who's the most important literary, if we're talking about more conservative kind of, not leftist kind of criticism, the most important literary critic in the United States

in the last century, so it was Harold Bloom from. instance, who was Jewish, and he's not the only one. So the post-colonial anti-Zionist ideology, as it wrote specifically, it's mean at the time the emblem is Edward Said, was primarily a tool for that new figure, the post-colonian professor, to actually replace the Jewish professor as the central moral authority for higher education or for liberal education in the American university. And that war has been happened. It started in the academy.

All of this started in the university. The E.I started in the university. All of this started in the university. It happened in the university. And then it started to migrate out into the civil society. And you saw that gradually by this kind of, again, like new types of liftist activists. And now you have others too. It's not just post-colonial people.

You have minorities from the United States that joined in this new coalition. You have even, you know, white lifters. from various parts of society. Now, started to make that coalition that basically then acquired the name of the intersectional or woke or whatever and started to replace either build new presence institutions,

for example, the entire DEI bureaucratic infrastructure that acquired immense power and financial liquidity, just they siphoned in a lot of resources, major universities, cooperations and so on. That's a huge bureaucracy that was built with a lot of authority, and power, or replaced a course of power already established institutions.

And you see this is actually what's happening within the Democrats. So the Democrats, the direct establishment might, you know, those old establishment liberals think that we are conceding to a new moral constituency, some sort of a new moral position that the base developed. But that's not really what's going on. What you are actually doing is that you're handing the keys to a new, a new, a new ideological elite. No, it's a new elite, really.

I mean, they are using the ideology. Many times I doubt that if these people actually believe in anything. A new elite that's leading this new ideological movement that will ultimately replace and ultimately means actually much quicker than we think. I mean, again, it's happening in many places already. It's not generational in academia. It's two, three election cycles. Yeah.

It's happening. You're going to see it in this election cycle. You can see it in a lot of rates. that are happening all over the country. I mean, the squad was really the beginning of this. But now even the squad is kind of old news. Now we're talking about fast-paced replacement of what would have been your old democratic type. And then what would that force, so forget about this alliance of the intersectional people.

What would that force the contenders that are running? They will force everyone else to become the same. And that's exactly what we're seeing. what we're seeing. So you see what would be otherwise a typical democratic runner. So, so maybe white man, white woman coming from a, some sort of professional background, running in the race, speaking in this, you already see it around the country, speaking in the same decolonial language, because that's now that the ground on which the competition happens. you end in the last paragraph on a pretty stark note

you are unsure the situation admits of remedy the leadership believes they are seeing a reality they can't change okay Rahm Emanuel Chuck Schumer Obama himself have come out in rhetoric that tries to accommodate Zoran Mamdani and voices like that Is it irreversible? And if it's irreversible, are the Jews going to be, essentially are we going to see the kind

of displacement from the Democratic Party in its institutions of Jews that we saw, frankly, in the Ivy League's over the last 20 years? Systematic, measurable. Right. And by the way, it's happening in their mainstream liberal media, too. Let's remember the episode of Hassan Piker, the ongoing episode of Hassan Piker, who used to be just this streamer, right, some following the familian people, but nobody

take him seriously, especially that the man is both inarticulate, really not that intelligent at all. He just spouses this ideological... I'm glad he said he's not that bright. I feel bad. He's dumb. Surely communists can do better than that. I've met communist. They're pretty clever people.

He used to be the smartest people. You know, I'm glad I wasn't born 70 years ago. I likely would have been a communist because all the smartest people were communists at one point. It's the best parties. Yeah, it used to be. But now this is communism. This is Hassan Piker.

Complete fraud. Just an influencer online. Inarticulate at all. I'm not sure actually he read anything. He just spouses these things. And now he's being mainstreamed by... He got picked up, basically. Literally.

He just got picked up as the Joe Rogan of the live because he don't have a Joe Rogan. So they need someone who looks masculine, which I guess that means. to be have some muscle and facial hair I don't know I thought I was a contender but I know I but you're Israeli so that's that's also I obviously am not in the running I'm just saying I it's really that pathetic it is it is it is Ezra Klein mainstreaming Hassan Piker the New York Times mainstreaming on by it's

that empty it's literally just a tactical the current elite trying to co-opped the up-and-coming elite with these people who are essentially symbols, cartoons, little puppets meant to, but they don't understand that these cartoons are actually serious stress. Hassam Piker is a terrible theoretician and economist. Right. But he is not bad at the kinds of campaigns that this new elite is trying to mount. Right. That's that, I mean, he's not actually an idiot.

It's just his skill set is over here, not in the place where we're looking for it for some kind of, you know, idea leadership. Right. He should have been managing a marketing. for some clothing brand for some cool hipster. But yes, by the way, the essay of the New York Times about him that's kind of pumping him up, it's old title that they changed was a woke mind in a mega body. Like that's how pathetic it is.

That's what they are looking for. It's all aesthetics. It's all appearance. It's just, it's pathetic. But to go back now to your question, is it irreversible? I believe it is. I sadly believe that this is not going to be stopped. It's gone.

They have nothing. They already conceded. I mean, again, the only thing they can do is like try to say that that Israel is like the Avatar people. It's really a Wakanda and they are native people. Just not going to work. In other words, the frame it through DEI. They have nothing else.

And that ultimately, that's not your ground, really. That's the ground of the other ideology. They will just obliterate you easily and they will take over. Now, having said that, I don't think it should happen without a fight. I know that there are a lot of Jewish Democrats who probably are extremely distressed. I am shocked that there is no resistance. That's honestly the thing that bothers me the most. Other than us and other people talking about it, inside the party, it doesn't seem the resistance.

The only positive thing that could happen, and I'm not sure that this will happen. Again, I think this is irreversible. But one last battle, some charismatic figure that rises inside the party and try, to lead a dissenting view against this, and this is not happening. I mean, you have Josh Shapiro who has the potential, but

I don't know if he's, because he's really going to be sacrificing, I mean, I think it's really, he doesn't have that much of chance to be getting with. Sorry to interrupt you. I'm sorry. At this point, I, what would his ideology be?

What would his, what would his, they don't come with an ideology so much as a kind of organizing framework of human beings that sort of lumps everybody into silos and then everything is the silos. And it's, you know, racist. But, you know, it comes from some good places in various times in history.

But wow, has it kind of gone off the deep end? And, you know, the Jews are the first to experience that. Pretty soon it's going to get to the rest of you. But what's the alternative in the democratic space? What other idea is there? What other magazine of ideas is there? Who's even talking about it? The anti-DEI with backlash, is it expressed within the Democratic Party in any way?

Is there anybody saying, guys, okay, we might win an election cycle or two, but this takeover, this is not going to deliver jobs. This is not going to deliver. This isn't even going to be recognizable to huge amounts of Americans in the middle of the political space. Fewer and fewer and fewer Americans actually identify as Democrats or Republicans. Independence are growing. This is going to appeal to independence. This is a Democratic Party that is going to create, that's going to shrink. itself into a corner.

Israel's already been thrown to the dogs. It's been blown up by an Iranian nuke. It's gone. Ignore Israel. What the hell is the Democratic Party doing to itself? There's nobody who can even mount that intellectual campaign? I don't know if there is anyone. I don't know if you want to. Because the cost will be, it's just things that they have already kind of undermine their

chances of doing. I mean, they will have to sound somewhat like Republicans, right? Like old Republicans. Like talk about how American power is actually a good thing. thing. Israel is actually our really good ally. They can add with this, of course, some Clinton centurism, New Deal, the economic populism that's always been part of the Democratic Party.

But they will have to say, they will have to lid themselves and accept that these things are not a bad thing, and they can start sounding like Republicans. When they're talking about some patriotic liberalism, civic loyalty to the country, republicanism whatsoever. But I'm not sure that this is really. This is really, truly will happen or where they are. As you said, it's just a very questionable if there is a possibility for any other ideological content at the moment that the party can offer itself or its base.

Will the Republican version of this, the Tucker Carlson war inside the Republican Party, the Candace Owens, whatever the hell J.D. Vance is, he'll decide that based on polls in three years, will they push Israel out on the right while the Democrats are pushing Israel out on the left? And then the American-Israeli alliance is gone and Israel should be preparing for it now, quickly and significantly? I think Israel should be preparing for the potential. I don't think it's imminent. First of all, Trump, to his credit...

But you think it's unavoidable? What, sorry? But you think it's unavoidable? You think that's the future? Not necessarily. That part... Okay. And that's what the uniqueness of the United States that I wanted to talk about.

about that we're not really Europe. By the way, the Candace Owen stuff, for example, on the Takar Koso and stuff, I look at the views rates and it's just like terrifying. Like millions are watching this. Really, all of these people believe, I think no, I think it's just Americans. I think there's an exaggeration and there is a misunderstanding. A lot of this is entertainment for Americans. Like Candace Owen is actually, that's American TV.

Like reality show that you get crazy people, I don't know, prisoners or dating. Like it's the stuff that America does on TV. I think a lot of Americans really don't actually care about this issue, as they shouldn't and doesn't really touch their life that much. And a lot of them have still positive views towards Israel. And I think just like Candace, and this is really TV entertaining. Moreover, to Trump's credit, no matter how you feel about Trump, no matter how you can have all the criticism you want, Trump went to his truth social and he wrote long posts

about how crazy and unreliable and stupid and all the stuff. And he called him names, Tucker Carlson and Candiceau. And I wish somebody in the Democrats, the democratic establishment did this about Hassan Piker and that cabal. But it's in the right. Of course, there is a battle. And this battle is about the future of US foreign policy. And Israel is central to this. And you have this anti-Semitic wave that's happening in the right.

That's, as I said, hopefully it will be stopped. Trump is very clear about his position from it. None of this, I think, makes the victory of this and the right avoidable. I think the right as it stands, again, no matter how you feel, I truly believe it has a bitter chance than the Democratic Party to actually stop this movement. That is, there is a much more fighting chance in the Republican Party than it is in the Democratic Party. And it's not unavoidable. America is different. Ultimately, America is an extremely big country where remains, we are in the strongest

and most powerful and most prosperous country in the world. That really means a lot. That means that people don't have the level of grievance required. I mean, unless you're totally brainwashed ideologically and captured by these new hostile ideological forces. But most people don't have the level of grievance that, really can feed a major ideological movement or mass movement, like early 20th century anti-Semitic era.

I mean, you talk, this World War I had to happen. Massive economic downturns had to happen. God forbid if we go into a confrontation, China, we end up losing. Then that changes everything, obviously. But as long as we are who we are, I actually trust that the American people are, most of the people want to just take care of their lives. They want to go to their jobs.

They watch internet stuff as entertainment and so on and so forth. And they think we still need to talk about culture and try to give people better culture and better entertainment than a lot of the slop that we're now having. But I don't think that I think that the United States is a unique country. Our relationship with Jews has been one of the characteristic and unique feature of American history and of American identity. No other nation in history. Certainly no other mass of superpower like that. the United States had such a positive relationship for so long with the Jewish people in which they prospered as much as they prospered, if not more, in their own homeland in

Israel to the extent that, you know, a lot of American Jews don't want to go to Israel because they really are comfortable and they really feel free. And this is a fundamental feature and part of the identity of the United States. And I think there are a lot of wise and smart people who are not Jews, like me, they recognize this. And they know that they do not, whatever that America that the left imagines or that the Tucker Cawson's imagine, that's not America. That's not, and we do not want to live in that place. We like this country the way it is. I have a strong view about the Israeli capacity to go it alone

and I even see a silver lining if America does turn on Israel which is that many of our enemies as you well know have been arguing that they have lost war after war to us only because we have America's backing and I wish they would stop thinking that and I wish they would understand that we are actually inherently competent powerful and they should not fight wars against us, even when America wouldn't back us. Like

fighting wars against us is bad and maybe we should all make peace. And then I become a super lefty and annoy everybody. But if America turns on us, that's the silver lining. I think our enemies will come for us in the Middle East. I think it'll be a bad time for Israel. And I think Israel will nevertheless come through, will nevertheless defeat any enemy that comes for it now that the great excuse of America's backing is no longer there. And they have to show that now they can defeat this Israel, and they will not have that excuse. And I know that's a weird thing to say in English to an American audience, but if you're living in the whirlpool of Arab discourse on Israel for your entire life, basically,

the world looks very different. And so if the Democrats and the Republicans drop Israel like a lead balloon, Israel will thrive. It'll thrive differently. will face a more desperate Israel, therefore a much more, I think, you know, much more of Israeli firepower. But maybe that'll be the final war that will mean that we can stop with all the wars because the ideas and the excuses that drive new dictators, new movements, new organizations into these endless wars will have to answer for all the destruction that they've reached. I agree with you. Israel has to prepare for the worst regardless. And I think Israel is in many ways.

They're spending now on their own defense industry and so on and so forth. However, however, I think, first of all, the priority is winning. Winning matters because winning for Israel has to do with survival. It's not winning. So it doesn't matter what the Iranian AI swap is going to say. what really matters is for the Israelis to win. Israel winning matters for the United States, immensely, for the security of the United States,

for the future of the United States. The world is becoming a dangerous place. And we are turning a major corner with the development of AI. I went to some retreat that AI pilled me recently, which I kind of understood what's actually kind of development and changes that are happening to the world economy and defense and security, medical research with AI. The world is turning a major corner in AI.

A lot of things are going to shuffle, a lot of things are going to shift. It's already happening to a lot of international institutions that we saw just things are changing profoundly. Europe already screwed itself on its energy policy, on us a lot of things. We don't know what's going to happen with Europe. We saw their behavior during the Iran War. Israel is reliable.

It's in an extremely strategic and crucial neighborhood. That's also, by the way, is going to be extremely strategic and crucial as we enter the era of the AI further, given the amount of investment in data center for American AI companies. That will need security chips that Israel has a leading edge on. Israel matters profoundly for American prosperity. Again, no values. I'm not going to talk about shared values like Jews and none of that. For our prosperity and for our security and for our increasing race in the AI field with China,

Israel matters a lot. So I hope this is why turning against Israel, for me, it's not just for me about, it's a lot. I have a strong personal relationship with the Jewish people in Israel, so it matters to me, obviously, personally, those who know me. But also this is about the country that I'm living in. It's not going to be, it's going to be bad for everyone. And even for Israelis, this is the last sentence. A world in which America is not the dominant power is really, is really an extreme, a terrifying idea in many ways.

Let me finish by agreeing with that. That is scarier for me by far. Israel fought its most significant, most successful, most existentially important wars. 48, 67, the wars that decided whether it lives or dies, without any American support and sometimes with literal American arms embargoes against it. The world that America built has been the most important thing, even when America itself was set against Israel. The world it built of prosperity, of safe ocean. and safe trade and the institutions and the protection of those institutions with American power,

it has been the safest, the happiest, the most prosperous time in all of human history. Democracies have spread in places nobody ever expected 30, 40 years ago. Everybody thinks about that one example in the Arab world that didn't pan out. All of Latin America is democratic today, practically, with a couple exceptions. But it used to be that the exceptions were the democracies.

if America is fundamentally changing, not to the point of an Israel alliance or non-aliance, the beautiful thing that America is existed, even when America and Israel were not friends. If America is no longer that beautiful thing, it's going to be a very dark world, and it's going to be a dark world for everyone on it. And we will be fairly well prepared for it in the sense that when you go into the apocalypse, you want to be the guy with good training and good guns and competent management of your food supply. We're going to be okay. but everybody's going to suffer, including us.

That is the scariest prospect. I don't want to decide American elections, but if Jews don't feel safe in your movement, then you might not be the movement that should lead the global superpower. Hussein, thank you so much for joining me. This was a little bit scary, absolutely fascinating. And it's classic you. I don't 100% know that you're right.

I will never be able not to see it. So thank you for that. I don't know either, but thank you. I appreciate Javiv. It's always a pleasure to be here.