Tangle - FULL EPISODE - Isaac interviews Jonah Platt about Zionism.

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

In todays special Friday edition, Isaac talks with Jonah Platt, host of the podcast "Being Jewish with Jonah Platt", in response to Isaac's "I think I’m leaving Zionism, or Zionism is leaving me." episode, which was published last Friday. In case you missed it, it is also available to stream in its entirety without a paid subscription.By the way: If you are not yet a podcast member, and you want to upgrade your newsletter subscription plan to include a podcast membership (which gets you ad-free podcasts, Friday editions, The Sunday podcast, bonus content), you can do that here. That page is a good resource for managing your Tangle subscription (just make sure you are logged in on the website!)Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here. You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place to get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and we are here today with Jonah Platt. Jonah is the host of the Being Jewish podcast, which you guys might remember. I went on last year. We promoted the episode a bit in Tangle and on our social channels and stuff. It was a really fun conversation. Huge fan of what Jonah is doing

and glad to have him on the show today. Jonah, welcome to the Tangle podcast. Isaac, thank you so much. Love switching seats here. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. I'm looking forward to it. Though I feel like this will end up like another Jonah interviewing Isaac episode.

We'll see how it goes. That's fair. I think it's worth setting the table here a little bit. So for people who are, you know, Tangle readers and listeners, I think they've been very in tune and in touch with what has happened over the last week or so. I published this piece almost a week ago today about grappling with my Zionism and questioning whether it was a movement or a political ideology I wanted to be a part of anymore and writing a lot about some of Israel's actions and how

I became a Zionist and this sort of personal story interwoven with the post-October 7th world. And not long after I published the piece, you reached out to me via text message and were like, I want to talk about this. Like, let's chat. I follow your work pretty extensively. So I have some assumptions about maybe where you land on some of the things that I wrote and some of the things I said. And I'm assuming that we have some disagreement, but I thought it would be very much in the Tangled spirit to just have that conversation publicly and have you on the show. I mean, something I said in the piece was that I wanted to invite criticism and feedback and thoughts

and sort of make this more of a dialogue because I'm grappling with this stuff publicly in real time. And you sort of created a very low friction way for me to do that by just inviting you on the show to talk about this stuff. So that's basically why you're here. For the fans of yours who are following and might not have read the piece, they can find it in the show notes or by going to readtangle.com.

The headline is, I think I'm leaving Zionism or maybe Zionism is leaving me. And yeah, I guess maybe I'll lob it to you to start with just like initial reactions or thoughts or questions that you feel like are worth picking at. Totally. So the place where I want to start really is how you define Zionism. Because I think that's super important and informs a lot of what you're talking about.

So I want to be perfectly clear just as a reader of what exactly in your mind Zionism is because unfortunately today there's like a thousand different meanings. Yeah, I mean, I think the definition that I sort of subscribe to is that Zionism is a political ideology or political movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, a Jewish state.

So the rub there for me is like, I believe in the necessity cause project of a Jewish state, a Jewish homeland, but the political movement is the thing that is Zionism. And I think what I'm struggling with a bit is like, whether that specific movement as it exists today, as we sit here in 2025, is something that I'm proud of still,

or want to be part of still, or feel like is connected to my views on the kind of present day, I guess. Okay, so then I guess the two things that I would sort of poke at with that are, the first is Israel exists, right? So like it has existed for almost 80 years. So, you know, I actually talked about this on my podcast.

I hate the word Zionism because I don't like the framing of should this place that exists exist or not? Because it already does and it has and it's not going to stop existing. However, whatever conversations anybody has, it's, you know, it's not gonna stop existing, however, whatever conversations anybody has, it's not going anywhere. So I already, like, I poke at that sort of definition of it of like, am I for or against the existence of this place?

But more importantly, really, for this conversation, the second part is it sounds to me, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you're sort of conflating the idea of let's have a Jewish state with the politics and policies and let's say looks like the path they're going on of Israel's current government, as opposed to necessarily the existence of a Jewish state

that has sovereignty in some piece of its ancestral homeland? Yeah, so two things. First of all, interesting, that's not what I would have expected you to say about Zionism thing. I actually very much relate to that view. I mean, one idea that I'm sort of playing with

or wrestling with right now is just like the usefulness or the utility of Zionism as a political movement or as a framework to talk about these conversations because it's like, yeah, Israel exists, it's not going to cease to exist. In many ways, Zionism achieved the goal. They created the Jewish state. It's here, it's durable. And so it's almost like, I had somebody say this to me,

I won't mention his name publicly, but he's a prominent Jewish writer who wrote into me after the piece came out and just said, I don't actually think that even talking about Zionism in the context that you are is useful because Zionism, it achieved its goal and we should just be talking about the policies of Israel and you should frame it that way, which I think is, yeah, interesting and helpful.

I guess in terms of the conflation, I think for me, I see Israeli politics today and the North Star of many Israeli policies being driven by Zionism, which, you know, I talked about this in the piece, I think, downstream of this idea of a Jewish homeland is the reality that you sort of need to build the ethnostate, the Jewish ethnostate, which is like ethnostate is obviously a nasty word in a lot of contexts, but a majority, like the population, they want to be majority Jews, the governing coalitions, for obvious reasons they want to be majority Jews, and the laws or the ethos of the country,

they want to be infiltrated with Judaism, which of course makes sense, it's a Jewish homeland. they want to be infiltrated with Judaism, which of course makes sense. It's a Jewish homeland. And so I'm not, I'm certainly not abandoning the idea of a Jewish homeland in this piece or like saying that my belief in the necessity or the cause of the project of a Jewish state is out the window. I think I'm struggling with the reality of like, are the things that we're seeing now in the present day a product of the pursuit of that goal? And if they are, then like, what does it tell us about this iteration of the political ideology, you know?

Like, no analogy is helpful here in a lot of ways because Zionism is such a unique pursuit and this moment in time that we're living in is so uniquely tense and awful in various ways. But to maybe strike a thought experiment, like Like, democracy produced slavery and segregation and this sort of, this awful period in American history that I think everybody accepts as being manifestly terrible. But like the democracy itself, that project, that ideology, that framework for running a country was not necessarily the problem.

So to sort of argue against myself here a little bit, I think like if you look at Zionism through the lens of, it's this political ideology that's producing a bad outcome. I think there is a good argument that like the same way democracy produced slavery, Zionism produced, you know, what might be an ethnic cleansing in Gaza, not Zionism in isolation, but as a result of all these other things that Zionism is interacting with, this thing happens.

Then like, we don't have to tear down democracy because of slavery. You don't have to tear down Zionism because I disagree with Israel's policies. We have to reform it from the inside out or work to change the outcomes. I think that's a really compelling argument. And I'm grappling with that. I mean, candidly, I think it's a very good argument and I'm turning it over my head and trying to work my way through it, I guess,

is the best thing I can say. Yeah, even in sort of hearing you talk through that, just the idea of Zionism, it's sort of, again, it sounds like you're just ascribing like extra to it. Like what's happening in terms of, let's say the government wants to take over Gaza. Like that is not necessarily Zionism. I mean, Zionism is not the belief you have to take

over the entire land and kick everybody out of it. That's the policies of this far right government. And also, I think it's impossible to lay blame, even if it were Zionism, on just Israel and Zionism, when they're dealing with a neighbor who has tried to very literally genocide them over, genocide them over and over and over again for 80 years. There's, you know, it's just a way more complicated soup than it's bad that Israel is doing what it's doing now.

I mean, it's, yeah, it's just tough. Okay, let me give you a concrete example. And I'd be curious, like like to hear your thoughts on this. One of the things that alarmed me when I was looking through, or just like reading about the story and doing research for the piece and reading about stuff was one of these recent polls that came out

of Zionist Jews in Israel that I cited in the piece, where like something like north of 80% of them responded in this poll that they believed that Israel should clear out the population of Gaza and reoccupy it. I know there's all sorts of stuff that's messy about polling Israelis and polling people who self-identify as Zionist Jews, whatever it is, but let's just assume for the sake of this conversation that the polling is fairly accurate.

And eight in 10 Zionist Jews in Israel believe in what I think is definitionally an ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Like, doesn't that tell us that it's like corrupted in some way that's maybe not irredeemable, but like that is corrupted enough I might not wanna be a part of it? Well, let me, I'd say two things.

One is what is a Zionist Israeli? I mean, aren't all Israelis Zionists? They're living there. So, you know, it's- They categorize Zionist Jews. I don't think they were all Israelis. I think most of them were, I think the poll was taken in Israel.

So I guess they were all Israelis, but they were Zionist Jews as opposed to maybe, you know, Christians living in Israel or non, I mean, I presume there are non Zionists who live in Israel. I mean, I actually heard from some when I wrote my piece who were like, hey, I'm an Israeli and I've been struggling with my Zionism,

my identity as a Zionist and I hate this government, you know, that sort of thing. Like, you're still welcome here. There's more of us out there than you know. So I don't know. But that's what the poll described them as. So I mean, already to me, again, it's like, it's about that definition of Zionism.

Is Zionism the politics of this government or is Zionism simply the belief that there should be this Jewish homeland? If it's the politics one, that's not how I've ever really used it, but let's say it is. Even hearing that poll, it's hard for me as somebody who doesn't live in Israel to judge

it too harshly because I've never lived with a neighbor that tries to kill me every single day for 80 years. And I'm not saying that I approve of their opinion or not, But I'm saying it's very hard for me to judge because I have never been in any situation remotely like that where members of my family or my friends have been, you know, were blown up in the Intifada. Everybody knows somebody who was killed in a cafe or on a bus or in a public square

or, you know, killed on October 7th. I'm having, I'm going, every single day of my life, I'm spending interrupted by rocket fire going into bomb shelters. It's hard for me to judge somebody saying, you know what, I've had enough of these people. We've tried everything. It's not working. We're in the position of power now.

I think that these people need to just, we gave them the land. They used it to try to kill us. They don't deserve it anymore. And again, I'm not saying I ascribe to that, but I'm saying it's hard for me to, as an outsider to that experience, go, well, they are morally corrupt for that thinking.

I guess, I mean, you're not saying you ascribe to that, but do you ascribe to that? And if not, why not then, I guess is my question. Or if so, why? I don't know that I, again, like, I guess is my question. Or if so, why? I don't know that I, again, like I can't weigh in on that because that's not my lived experience. I don't know what I would feel like if, you know, Canada for the last 80 years was killing all my family

members and, you know, bombing me every day. I don't know what I would feel like. Okay. Yeah, I think it's a really fair point. I, you know, I stopped, like when I lived in Israel for a brief period of time, and there is tension that permeates the air, even for somebody who was there

basically on an extended vacation. I mean, I lived there for six months. So not like trying to pretend I was some Israeli resident, but You feel it it's tense. It's scary there. There's there's danger That's apparent and people talk about it and you hear the sirens to get into your shelter and it's real I Think like to your point or maybe to my point, I guess I should say about why I am Why I think this cycle is so devastating and why I feel like Israel has more agency and Zionists have more agency to help stop it

Is that the same thing you just said about like everybody everybody knows somebody who's been killed in the Intifada or, you know, I'm an American Jew and I knew people who were killed in October 7th. You know, not people I had really strong personal relationships, but like my mother-in-law's cousin, you know, like that kind of stuff. It was very real. But the same exact thing can be said

for basically everybody living in Gaza is like, especially now after post October 7th, but even more, even before then, like I'm watching these videos of these 16 year old kids standing over the bodies of their dead parents in an Israeli strike. And it's like, it is clear as day to me that the next generation of anti-Israel radicals

is being breeded right now, not just by the education they're getting from UNRWA in Gaza, not just by that kind of stuff that I think is we have to identify and root out and deal with, but by the reality of the war and the conflict in the back and forth. And the truth is, as uncomfortable as this makes me, like way more of them have died than us

in the last two years, in the last 10 years, in the last 20 years. I mean, there is a power dynamic here that's very real. And I think like, despite being empathetic to your point that I, like the psyche of living in that, I think can explain a poll like the one I'm talking about, or maybe the thing that I'm describing as the corruption of Zionism is just the reality

of living next to a neighbor like this. I think it's all the more reason to feel like the path toward peace that Israel is taking or the path toward deterrence that Israel is taking is so fundamentally broken. And it's so overwhelmingly supported by self-identified Zionists and Zionist Jews. And it's like, I think that's the distance in the space that I feel that makes me feel like unwelcome or out to sea or lonely or isolated inside the movement that I previously identified with.

I hear that. And again, it's like when I hear you talk about it, it's like it almost sounds like somebody talking about like, let's say the Democratic Party in America. Like I don't see I've been a Democrat my whole life, but now I'm looking at the party and I don't know if there's a place for me anymore. I feel isolated, I feel homeless because of the way they've handled antisemitism. Obviously that part's different,

but it sounds like you're talking about like a political party the way you talk about Zionism as opposed to the idea of a Jewish state existing for Jewish sovereignty. I feel like it's so important to distinguish those two things and to keep them separate because at some point Netanyahu's gonna go, I hope it's tomorrow, maybe it's not till 2026,

but I don't think that the should Israel exist or not should be contingent on who's leading them at the moment or not. I feel like we don't do that for any other country on the planet in any other circumstance where I don't like this government, we should scrap the whole place. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's sort of, it's interesting. It's kind of like this never-ending question about whether Jews are like a race or a religion. And it's like, ah, it's kind of somewhere in between. Like Zionism to me, it's not a political ideology like subscribing to the democratic party. But I also don't think that it is just the belief in a Jewish state, or just the belief in a Jewish state,

or just the belief that a Jewish homeland should exist. I think there is a very clear political movement that is kind of built around that idea. I mean, I think that is the core fundamental idea, but I think the movement as a whole sort of moves in these generalities. Like, I could say, for instance, But I think the movement as a whole sort of moves in these generalities. Like, you know, I could say, for instance, that the Zionist movement has become much

more religious over the last 20 or 30 years. I can't say the belief in a Jewish state existing has become much more religious over the last 20 or 30 years. There's a difference. I'm talking about like Zionism, the political movement, the political ideology. It is the sort of amorphous blob that exists the same way the democratic parties

or progressivism or something exists. So I agree with you that it's not quite that, and it's not exclusively that, but I also don't think it is just as simple as the belief in a Jewish homeland. I think that's a a fundamental tenant of it, but it has all these qualities that we identify at the same time.

And yeah, you're right that not having a very clear definition is sort of like, and maybe leads to my conflating it sometimes, but I don't buy that it's a simple, just cut and dry the belief in a Jewish homeland. I think there is a really identifiable movement and characters in the movement and leaders of the movement. You know, I don't know, I'd be curious

how you respond to that or think about that. I mean, I don't feel that way. When I see, you know see the far hard right, ultra religious, the Ben Gevers and Smotrich's guys, I don't think of them as like, oh, those are the leaders of the Zionist movement. I think of those are hard right racists who wanna take over all of the land

and don't treat Palestinians as sequel human beings that to me is not Zionism I don't know. I just I've never thought about I've never seen it framed that way I've always seen them framed as just these are the hard-right ultra religious dudes in the Israeli government Not these are this is the epitome of the Zionist movement I Don't I I wouldn't classify Smetrich as you know a Zionist movement? I don't, I wouldn't classify Smotrich as, you know, a Zionist leader. I agree.

I would like classify him as sort of a more extreme radical right-wing politician who is like espousing a radical vision for the future of Zionism. Total. And sorry, just to jump in, like going back to the, you know, and something I agree with you on, on your piece, you say, you know, at the very least, it's impossible to refute

that Bibi with the backing of the government is proposing an ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Like, clearly that's that plan. That's what's on the table is getting everybody out of there. That's ethnic cleansing. But I like, I don't think that the people, a lot of the people, the Israeli people who are advocating for that

are doing so in the name of Jewish supremacy. I think it's in the name of, I want these murderers to not live next to me anymore and I want them out of here. Not, yeah, not because I have some Zionist ideal to conquer these people. I don't think that's what it is at all. And I guess to respond directly to that,

I mean, I think one of the things that I'm seeing from where I'm sitting about what I would call like the Zionist movement or the political ideology is that the belief that these people all want to murder us and that we need to do something like this in the name of security, that that belief is informed by a lot of the sort of underlying principles or ideas in Zionism

or that sort of circulate in Zionism in a way that I don't think is actually like correlates to reality. I mean, I think there's obviously a ton of extremism in Gaza and in the West Bank and in Southern Lebanon. But like, I also think there's a lot of people, I mean, I've seen the videos of them in the streets protesting Hamas a lot of people who understand a lot of Gazans I think they're got most Gazans have a better grasp of

The threat Hamas poses their safety than a lot of American leftists do who commentate on total the conflict so Isaac I don't think it's monolithic, right? I think there are Israelis who see what you're talking about and those are the ones who are the peaceniks and who want to be working together and have always been and have always been a voice. And then there are the ones who are like,

I saw thousands of Palestinian civilians cross into Israel and murder my cousin and hold these Israelis hostage in their apartments. And I don't trust any of them. You know, it's, there's both kinds of people exist. And I think, you know, obviously the, the, the sitting from the outside, it's very easy with our values to support and say,

you know, we're in that peace-knit camp and as we should be, I think, as outsiders. But I, again, it's like, it's very hard for me to judge somebody who's experienced what they've experienced and go, you know, I have moral superiority. You guys are, you know, acting immorally right now when I have never felt what they have felt.

Yeah. I mean, and I guess, and maybe this is like the rub, but I suppose one of my core views is that in understanding that belief that a lot of Israelis have about, you know, the threat that they face and the anger they face from past atrocities and stuff, it's just so obvious to me that like the people of Gaza will have all those same feelings in the opposite direction based on all the actions that are happening now,

which is like, I mean, that's like- But here's the caveat. I mean, the difference, and again, like you're not wrong. I'm sure they feel those things too. I mean, especially post October 7th, obviously like that has changed the story. But I know for the Israelis, a lot of the stories look like you're talking Oslo Accords.

We had an incredible deal on the table that would have made everybody happy on papers perfect. And not only did Arafat tank it, he then launched the Intifada and started killing a bunch of innocent Israelis. Like that's how they dealt with the peace process. And then we unilaterally left Gaza and they responded by taking all their aid money

and building tunnels and rockets and trying to kill us every day since. So there's a little bit of that fed up-ness of like we have tried. I mean, we've really put our backs into it. Meanwhile, the Palestinians have never really tried to have peace, have only ever said no, no, no, and have not invested really in a state at all,

continue to be completely reliant on foreign aid to survive because their leaders take all of it and leave the people in squalor. So again, you're not wrong. Obviously, if I'm a person living in Gaza and my neighbor's whole building just got blown up, I'm going to feel a certain way about Israelis. I'm not going to judge that person for how he feels. But I also I understand how Israelis sort of feel or could feel.

We've kind of exhausted our options here. And I'm not sure what else there is left for us to try. I think I, I think I generally agree with like the broad strokes of, you know, your brief, like two sentence rehashing of the Oslo Accords and the Intifada. And, um, I mean, it's a hard story to summarize in 10 seconds but I'm not like, I don't have any major objections to that. I would complicate the story about leaving Gaza and Hamas's rise to power and what's kind of happened in the last 20 years that got us to this moment that we're now, where Israel is about to go back and reoccupy the strip all over again.

And I would complicate it like this. I would say Hamas won an incredibly close election that involved their need to sort of suppress and violently repress some of the opposition. And murder people. Yeah, and murder people. Violently repress being a the opposition. And murder people. Yeah, and murder people, violently repress, being a euphemism for everything, for hurting people to just like beating opposition

in the streets. Israel and Netanyahu in a lot of ways bet on Hamas, they prop them up as like a group that they thought maybe could be a long-term peace partner or, you know, if you're incredibly cynical about Netanyahu, which in some, I am and other people are, like did that in order to ensure that the Palestinian people never had a leadership group that would be respected by the global community and they, he wanted that outcome in order to undermine peace prospects long-term to get to this point.

And the narrative that I think Israel just kind of let them be and wanted them to figure out what they wanted to do and gave them a path towards some sort of sovereignty or freedom. And that they chose to build tunnels and put all the money in the weapons and whatever. I mean, I think that is true of Hamas a bit as a leadership group. I think it's less true of the Gazan people. And I think the kind of narrative that Israel spent the last 20 years, just like, here's your piece of land

and do whatever you guys want with it. I would complicate that narrative a bit. I think the blockades, I think the restriction of movement, I think the restriction of trade, I think the tit for tat fights that have happened over those years where, again, even before October 7th, many, many more Palestinians were killed than Israelis since they left Gaza, which is not like,

it's not as simple as just numbers, but I think some sort of Palestinian attack happens and Israel responds disproportionately in a way that's supposed to be a deterrent and it never actually functions that way. And in the end, many more Palestinians are being killed. Like all these things to me kind of complicate that story. And so, you know, again, now we're like very much

in the weeds on what Israel has done. But I guess I can't shake the feeling that the kind of, yeah, that thing that I identify as the Zionist political movement has informed a lot of those decisions over time. We'll be right back after this quick break. It sounds to me like you equate Zionism with like Jewish supremacy over Palestinians. Would that be accurate to say that that's how you think of it?

I think that I don't really know. I don't really know. I don't really know how I answer that question right now. I think I'm feeling uncomfortable with the realization that it's hard to avoid a kind of implied Jewish supremacy when subscribing to like the baseline Zionist viewpoint. Like for instance, if we want a Jewish homeland, which I want, what do we do about

like the simple population question? Like if we are gonna decide that Israel must be populated by more Jews than any other group, then there are these things that are downstream of that choice that we would never accept in any other liberal or democratic or free society about population controls and who can have babies and who can immigrate in and all these things.

And yeah, like that's a question that makes me really uncomfortable. And like, I'm not in a spot where I'm gonna just say that Zionism equals Jewish supremacy, because like the idea of Jewish supremacy is tied to so much antisemitic bullshit about like what we think about ourselves and you know, like what our goals are for global order

and takeover or whatever. But like, there is something about the, there is something about the, there is something about the downstream cause of a full fledged like belief in the Zionist project that I think requires some sort of, I don't know, like not Jewish priority, maybe not Jewish supremacy, but like, and that like, is it, like, how do we do, how do you wrestle with that?

I don't know, I don't know. How do you deal with that? I don't know, I don't know. How do you deal with that? That seems uncomfortable to me. So let me, the first thing that I think is important to understand or at least come to an agreement on is like, what is a Jew, right? And you said, is it a religion? Is it a race?

To me, it is, I mean, the way that I understand Jews is it's all, I mean, Jews are a tribal social group, the likes of which don't really exist anymore. We're still kind of the only ones who are here from the ancient times where we shared a people, we shared a religion, we share oral tradition, we shared a homeland, we share customs, we share all this stuff.

And that's all part of what makes a Jew a Jew. And religion was never a separate piece from being a Jew until the Jews were emancipated in Europe in the 19th century. And some could finally, to their liking, assimilate and say, oh, I'm just, it's just the religious part, but I'm a, you know, I'm a Frenchman. But I, yes, I go to synagogue. Like that didn't even exist until 150 years ago. There was no, you were a Jew. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. You're just that person.

That is, it is a personhood. So I think it's really important when we're talking about like Jewish homeland, it's not like, oh, if you believe in Rosh Hashanah, this place is for you. It's no, it's this is the home of this tribe. It's like, you know, be like giving the Navajo a country. I mean, it's there, it is a group of people

who are bound together. You know, my DNA says a hundred percent Ashkenazi Jew. That's my DNA test. That's who I am. Whether I believe a single thing about the religious piece or not. So I think that's really important. We're talking about a people.

Then when you get to the question of should this people be able to maintain a majority, even if it's, you know, they need to put in machinations to do so, to me from, you know, obviously I'm, it'd be hard for me to say I'm not biased because I'm Jewish, but I try to be objective about it. And I'm like, this is a people who have, and it's without exaggeration,

anytime they've been a minority in any place on earth for thousands of years, they've been subjugated and persecuted and expelled and killed. Like literally all of them, Europe, North Africa, Asia, everywhere. So to me, I'm like, okay, let this little tiny group, like, be in charge of itself and be in a place where they can be the majority and they're not going to get killed and they can, you know, have sovereignty. And if, you know, if they have to do, you know, create an infrastructure to maintain that, as long as it's not a violent infrastructure,

but if we have rules so that we can maintain and make sure that we're safe and not being overrun and becoming a minority again in another country where we're gonna be subjugated, that kind of makes sense to me. And there's so many other places on earth where everybody else gets to live and not have to experience this. It feels like we can offer this group, this tiny little smaller than New

Jersey sliver where they're from, to live and not be persecuted. Yeah, no, and I think that's a great case for it. I mean, I identify with a lot of those feelings candidly. I mean, I think the obvious nature of like, what happens when the Jews are a minority in some place is, you know, you hear as a reformed Jew, you hear those stories your whole life growing up, even when you're not in the kind of religious context of it all and the biblical context of it all. I guess like, I look around at other states

that are defining themselves by their ethnicity. I mean, one of the common refrains is like, there's 20 whatever Muslim majority countries, like the Jews are asking for one. And I mean, those Muslim majority countries, like the result of them making that decision has been the expulsion of people like Jews, has been the result has been the subjugation of these other peoples. And so it's like that framework to me feels like,

uh-oh, like it could be a little icky, you know? And so I, like your point is really well taken. And I think that you articulated like a really strong case for it. It makes me feel obviously a little bit more motivated to defend the idea of like the Jewish state, but I don't think it makes me any less uncomfortable with the reality of what might happen

once you commit to that path. And then, and the harder question even on the other side of it is like, okay, well, if a Jewish state is in a place where, you know, Jews have control of the government or a majority of the people, then like, what is it? You know, like, what are you defining? I agree that Jews are an ethnicity for what it's worth.

Like, that's how I would qualify it, like, as an ethnicity. I mean, like, this sort of combination of, of people and religion and culture. Um, and I also agree that they have ancestral connections to the homeland. So I'm like, inherently there's a story there of like this indigenous people returning and reviving and, you know, doing it in a way that overcame so many obstacles. All that stuff- The great decolonization stories. Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is like one of the things

that always fascinates me about the left is like that in so many other contexts, I feel like they could see that story if it was like an indigenous native tribe taking North Dakota back or something, they would see that story if it was like an indigenous native tribe taking Dakota back or something. They would, they would love that. But in this context, they don't, which I find frustrating in some ways.

So yeah, I don't like, I guess. I hear what you're saying. And it's obviously it's like, it's one of those like kick the can down the road kind of things, right? It's like, at this point, Israel is generally up until this war, let's like, it's one of those like kick the can down the road kind of things, right? It's like, at this point, Israel is generally up until this war, let's say, it's like, it's generally been making it work. I mean, it's the only place in the region with sort of full religious freedom, with 2 million Arab Muslim citizens who have full Israeli citizenship, there's Druze, there's Christians. I mean, they're doing for a place that's, you know,

trying to maintain a Jewish majority, they're certainly the most open and tolerant and welcoming of any state in that region. So again, that's part of what's like frustrating to me. It's like, we keep trying to like drill down on them while sort of everybody around them gets a little bit of a free pass for being the opposite, where it's completely homogenous all throughout that region.

And I don't have the answers. I don't know if it's like a percentage thing that they have to figure out. I have no idea. And you're right that there comes a point where it's kind of hard to assume it's not going to get messy at some point somewhere, but it feels like a something worth continuing to happen and like dealing with it when it comes as opposed to saying, well, someday might come where this might cause an issue. So I questioned this entire enterprise.

Yeah, I mean, I think like that, you know, more than questioning the idea of this homeland that exists for these people that we can define, my piece sought to sort of question the ramifications of, you know, a belief in that homeland in 2025 and the degree to sort of defend it or advance the Jewish supremacy or whatever you want to call it. I'm doing air quotes around Jewish supremacy for people just listening. Like the cause to advance that by any means almost.

Yeah, so this is- I'm sorry to interrupt you. That's the phrase that like, well, I'll get into a lot of conversations about because to me the concept of Zionism does not include that by any means necessary part. Like that is an addendum by a certain type of person who perhaps one can ascribe Zionism to, but like that is not a baked in feature.

Zionism does, the definition of Zionism is not Jewish homeland by any means necessary. That is not part of it and never has been. So I think it's important to again, sort of separate that out, that just because there may be some people who are sort of running in that direction does not mean the idea of it or the movement as a whole

is built around that. I guess the, I mean, this is sort of goes back to where we started the conversation, where it's like Zionism achieved its goal of creating this homeland. So when I say by any means necessary, I mean, I'm not saying that that's necessarily the view of every Zionist or the thing that's core

to the Zionist ideology, but like there are not many places further to go than the place that we're at in terms of what will Israel or Zionists do in order to defend Israel as the homeland, as the state in their mind. Because I mean, we are proposing, the Israeli government is proposing an ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip right now. So like, it, it, it, it, I guess it's just, it feels, it certainly feels that way.

Like I don't, I don't know that, um, you know, you could compel Netanyahu or even Smotrich or whatever to just like nuke Gaza. So maybe there's some like next level of thing that they could do that's horrific and whatever and would get the majority of the country to support it and Zionists around the world would defend it. I don't know. But it feels like we are at such an extreme point. And even if part of the extremist point where we're at is a product of the actions of Hamas and Iran and Hezbollah, it's like the ideology is still interacting with those things in a way that's producing this result that I like hate so much. And so that's like, that's the thing that makes me question

where it is and where the movement is. And, you know, it's like, again, I know that you don't agree with this framework or this definition or that it is, that there is this sort of like political ideology attached to it. Again, I think that we can identify characteristics of Zionism, which is proof of my point. But like, if the Democratic Party is just, you know, 80% of the party or 90% of the party is pro-choice,

and I'm a pro-life Democrat, like there might come a point where I just say like, oh, this party isn't representative of my views anymore. This ideology isn't representative of my views anymore. Like I need to go somewhere else to find that, or I need to like leave it to find that. Right. So I, that's, you know, that's, I mentioned when I was reading, especially like the last line of your piece, it made me think of sort of myself

with the Democratic Party. And that's something I'm grappling with. But what I sort of try to tell myself is what I've heard moderate Democratic politicians say to me. Folks like Alma Hernandez of Arizona and Richie Torres, the congressman from New York, who have said like, don't abandon shit. Like, if you leave the party,

you're handing it over to the elements that you don't like and don't want to see it become. You've got to stay and keep your seat at the table and try to make it the version of it that you want to see. And so I feel like that would also apply to you in this case, where I would hope instead of sort of saying, I'm out, you would say, I'm in, but I don't like what I'm seeing and we need to steer the

ship back in the right direction. Yeah. I mean, I will say I've gotten one of the pieces of feedback or the recurring themes of feedback that I've gotten that surprised me and that I thought was gracious and kind is a lot of people Writing in saying like I'm a Zionist. I share your views on all this stuff Please don't abandon the movement or don't say that you're leaving Zion like what we need is people like you Sort of shaping the ideology and pulling us back towards the center, right?

of shaping the ideology and pulling us back towards the center. Right. Yeah, there's some guy, Adam Sherman, who has a substack with some kind of following wrote about it and a few people sent it to me and he was like, he was like hat in hand making a plea. Like I share your views on all these things yet I'm still a staunch Zionist and I want you to stay here with us to help us sort of recapture. And that's, again, that's appealing. Like I find that an appealing,

I mean, in part because it's sort of, it's appealing to like my ego and better nature and like, oh, we need you, we value, whatever. But also just because it's a reminder that there's maybe more diversity of thought amongst this political movement I'm identifying than maybe I gave credit for in my piece and we just don't hear from those people enough or a lot.

I'm sure you've seen the polling in terms of, you know, the favorability of Netanyahu's government. I mean, he is overwhelmingly unpopular. If there was an election today, he'd be gone. I mean, 70% of the country wants the war to end. They want a ceasefire and hostages home and war over. So I think a lot of the population, it's like anywhere else, right?

It's a democracy. Of course there's diversity of thought. And I think to sort of put the entire thing under the prism of that one poll about that they don't want, you know, they'd be okay with the Gazans being relocated, I think is missing a lot of these people and the way they're feeling about the situation.

To be fair, I did also cite a poll that was about how, you know, 70% of Israelis doubted the reasoning Netanyahu put forward for the war. They viewed it as political, not like the security. A lot of Israelis understand that he is trying to keep his right wing coalition together so he can maintain power. He's not necessarily taking all of his actions

in the best interest of the Israeli people. The guy's been protested every day for years. Yeah, even before the war. Yeah, I have every day for years. Yeah, even before the war. Yes, yes. I have a question for you. Yeah, yeah. I guess I'm curious, like accepting the premise that

so much needs to change in Gaza and like the way that, you know, we have to change the leadership. Hamas obviously is not a legitimate partner to have in terms of peace. And also there's a lot of like hatred towards Israel and Jews amongst the Gazan population. And I think like as we're sort of fleshing out here, it's you can relate to some of that the same way you could relate to Jews who have these impassioned feelings because of

living through the Intifada or whatever else. But just like putting that aside from accepting all that. I'm curious like from your view, do you think that there are ways in which the psyche of your average Zionist could or should change in like the current dynamic in a way that would be more productive toward finding a solution for peace. I mean, I think maybe that's something that I'm sort of like a thesis I'm putting forward a little bit in my piece. It's just like if I pluck a random Zionist off the street, there's really good odds that like the two of us see the framework and the world really differently and that's what makes me feel so separate and different. And I guess I'm just curious like how you view that question.

I know it's a little bit squishy, but like it seems, yeah, I don't know. I'll leave it at that. Huh. You know, what I come back to a lot in my head is this, like if you were able to snap your fingers and say there's gonna be an Israel, there's gonna be a Palestine

with a peaceful, moderate government that's gonna wanna live side by side with Israel, and I could snap my fingers and that would be true, I think the majority of Israel's would go, okay, that's great, let's do that. And I just don't, the problem is I don't, I don't know if I can say the same for Palestinians, not because I'm racist against them,

but because that's been their position all this time is no, no, no. I mean, literally they have the three nos of we will not negotiate, there will be no Jewish state, we will never recognize these people. And so I think at the end of the day, under a different circumstance, what I mean to say is like the Israeli mindset,

the Zionist mindset, I think is very open to a change in situation. It's just that the hand that they've been dealt at the moment is so scary and violent and seems so hopeless to so many of them that it's a bad spot to be in. But God willing, if not sooner, the Netanyahu government, it might collapse now because the Heratium are threatening to pull out

because they're drafting more ultra-orthodox into the army. And if they don't get that exemption, some of these guys are saying they're gonna collapse the government. So maybe it'll collapse. But if it doesn't, there's gonna be elections in 2026. And somebody different's gonna come to power. I just can't see a scenario where it's nuts on Yahoo.

And I have to imagine, no matter who it is, there's gonna be a shift somewhere. Something different's going to happen. Nope, there's nobody except for the hard, hard right extremists in the government who like 100% of the path that Israel is on right now. So something is going to be different. So it's a little bit for me less about like,

I need to change the Zionist mind right now and more about like things I have no control over, which is the Netanyahu government and how this war is gonna resolve itself. And once he's gone, who's gonna actually, you know, be a big boy and make a plan and pick up the pieces and put together a livable future for all the people in this region,

because it's obviously there to be had. There are regional partners kind of ready to go and help make this thing happen that, you outlined in your piece, Israel could have done this, this, this, and this. And a lot of that, I think, many of them I thought were kind of unreasonable. And you said yourself, there's varying degrees

of reasonableness in these things that I put out. But one thing that certainly is true is like, there are partners who, you know, we know that October 7th happened when it did because they wanted to sabotage Saudi Israel normalization. So, I mean, there are powerful, moderate partners ready to help in a certain way, but they have to, unfortunately, like they have their own politics and people

that they have to cater to and move carefully around. And Israel hasn't, their government has not made the choices that make it easy for the Saudis and Emiratis or whoever to be able to jump in and do the things they kind of wish they could be doing. So I guess again, it's all to say that with different leadership, I think this would look very different. And that's again, sort of why I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I want to throw the BB out with the bath water, but not the whole thing. Thanks. I guess, okay, this is, I mean, going back to the beginning a little bit, the beginning

of Israel a little bit, I'm interested in hearing you talk about that, or hearing you frame that, it occurs to me that, you know, we're sort of living through this moment, a kind of an ends justify the means moment in a lot of ways from, I think, the Zionist Israeli perspective, which is just like, we're preserving our future and this nation's future. And we have people on the other side of this barrier,

this wall that wanna kill us, and this is what we need to do. I'm wondering, like, when you think about the history of Israel, the formation of Israel, how you grapple with or think about what your framework is for the pain, the loss, the suffering of the Palestinian people in the creation of Israel.

I mean, like this is something I've been thinking about a lot as I wrote this piece and I didn't touch a ton on the history because I, you know, as relevant as it is, I wanted to focus a lot on like the present day issues, but you know, there's a, we tell ourselves a story as Jews about the success of Zionism and what happened and the post Holocaust world and realizing that we couldn't exist in Eastern Europe and the global community realizing that everywhere we went,

we had basically, as you said, become a minority and been subjugated and it built this sort of support and empathy for the plight of the Jews that I think helped accelerate the success of Zionism, which is like this really horrible thing. Like we had to go through this horrible thing in order to get what we wanted or for the vision to be achieved.

But there's a story that the Palestinians tell themselves about the Nakba and the displacement and the sort of the global community turning against them and not caring about what it meant to introduce these people into their homelands or reintroduce these people into their homelands. And it was always kind of like from this perspective I grew up on, just like the end sort of justified the means.

I guess I'm just interested like what your framework or context is for that because though it's now feels like ancient history in a lot of ways, I think the Palestinian people are telling themselves a really similar story right now. And Zion people are telling themselves a really similar story right now, and the Zionists are telling themselves a really similar story right now, and it feels relevant to me, I guess.

Sure, I'm glad you mentioned the Nakba, because that was something that I noticed in your piece that I wanted to talk about. The first time that word Nakba is used was by, I believe it was a Syrian writer. And the reference of Nakba, the catastrophe, was not, oh, this catastrophe befell us at the hand of the Jews.

The way it was used was our handling of this situation was a disaster because we thought we could leave, these guys would all get killed, we would destroy them all, and then we'd just come back once the war was over and take our houses back. And it didn't work out that way, we kind of blew it. That is what Nakba means by the person

who introduced that term. And it's only in more recent years that it's sort of been taken up and, dare I say, distorted to be like, oh, the Jews massacred us all. That's not what it was. And it's also not what happened. They, first of all, if we step back even further,

again, it's Jews repeatedly saying, we'll take anything. We don't care who we have to live next to. We've been here. We've had a continuous presence in this land. It's not like we just showed up here out of the to. We've been here, we've had a continuous presence in this land. It's not like we just showed up here out of the blue. We've been here for thousands of years. It's our indigenous homeland.

We'll take a sliver. I mean, I think it's called the Peel Commission from like the, even before the partition plan in the 30s. It was like Jews basically got like Tel Aviv and the Arabs get everything else. And the Arabs said, no, like we're not doing anything that allows Jews any kind of sovereignty anywhere. Israel declares independence

and in their declaration of independence, they don't even have a constitution, they just have this declaration. It says, we wanna be friends with our Arab neighbors and we welcome peace. It says we wanna have freedom of religion. It says all that stuff. And the day that they declare their independence,

they're attacked by every single Arab country that surrounds them all at once, who want to literally genocide them and kill them all and take over the land entirely. So of course, if you're a regular run of the mill Palestinian who, and your story of that is, I got kicked out of my house, like a couple hundred thousand of them did.

Lots of them left of their own free will because they were told to by the leadership, leave, we'll kill them, then you can come back. A lot of them stayed and then in their, you know, offspring are now Israeli citizens. Those are the Israeli Arabs. Some of them left because there was a war and it was scary and they just wanted to get out of this scary war zone. And then some were kicked out forcibly by Jews, by the Israeli defense or the Israeli forces. But to sort of, so again, to come back to what I was just saying, yes, if you're if a run of the mail person and you were moved by the Israeli military out of your place, like I get being pissed off and thinking that sucks. But I don't

know. This was a time when there were nationalist movements all over the world, all over countries are being partitioned. This sort of thing happened throughout history. And especially in that time, all over the place. And there's no other place that has spent every day since just trying to be angry about it, not build anything new and just try to sort of go back in time

and kill everybody next door. At a certain point, you have to say, okay, this is what happened, it is what it is. And, you know, we've been offered so many other opportunities to have a state, if that's what we say we want, on the land that we say that we kind of want to have it. And we keep saying no, because we're holding out hope

that the world's going to support us in wiping these people out entirely and turning back the clock. And so that's a tough one for me. It's hard for me to empathize with that point of view. Like when you have the kind of peace offering that was on the table for the partition, original partition agreement, you said no. And the one that was on the table for the partition, original partition agreement, you said no.

And the one that was on the table, you know, Camp David Accords, where they got basically everything that they wanted, including, you know, splitting Jerusalem and all this stuff. And they said no to that. They literally don't want to play ball. And so it's really, that's really tough, even if and on the human level, obviously,

for the people who are not the politicians and not the leadership, that I can empathize with. And there's a cost to that. And there's a story there and there's a pain there. And that I totally get. But, you know, it's the leadership, unfortunately, who's been making all the calls for these people for the last however many decades.

And they've been leading them into ruin. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, before we get out of here, the last thing I've been saving for last, I just wanted to ask you and I guess give you space. I mean, I wrote a 6,000 word piece that I shoved down my readers' throats about Zionism and my views on in the current state of it. And I promised people I would invite some dissenting views and the criticism and the

feedback. And so I think I'll close by asking how you define Zionism. I mean, I answered the question and, you know, maybe you can make your case about why you feel like it's still a valuable project to present. I mean, I think you've been doing a little bit of that throughout this conversation, but I wanted to put it to you directly just to ensure that that opinion was aired here.

Sure. To me, the way that I have learned to define Zionism, I didn't make this up, but this is how I've learned to define it, is the belief that the Jewish people, who are a people or who are a nation, deserve the right to sovereignty, self-determination in some part of the homeland to which they are indigenous.

That to me is Zionism. That's the whole thing. It's that Jews deserve their own state somewhere on the ancestral indigenous land. And to me, A, like I said, like, you know, mission accomplished, we have that, which is sort of why I don't like to,, A, like I said, like, you know, mission accomplished. We have that, which is sort of why I don't like to, you know, I think I don't honestly think this will ever happen, but I wish we would stop using the term because I don't,

I don't think it's necessary anymore. I wish we called them either for talking about the politicians, let's call them whatever their political, let's call it Likud, or if we're talking about, you know, supporters of Israel, let's call them Israeli patriots or supporters of Israel, and not people who believe Israel should exist or people who believe there should be a Jewish homeland, because Israel does exist, then there is a Jewish homeland.

So that's sort of where I land on the Zionist of it all. And then, you know, that's why to me, you know, you said in your piece, anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. To me, I think it automatically is, because if you're saying, if the definition of Zionism is Jewish sovereignty and safety in their own homeland, and you're anti that idea, even if you have no malice and it's just intellectual,

that's an anti-Jewish idea, that Jews of all the peoples on Earth should not have sovereignty, should not be able to rule themselves, should not be able to live in their own indigenous homeland. That's, I mean, that's very, I don't know how else you would categorize that other than an anti-Jewish idea.

It's certainly not a pro-Jewish idea. I can't believe you're opening this can of worms at the end of the show. You're gonna do this to me. Uh, yeah, I totally disagree. I can't believe you're opening this can of worms at the end of the show. You're going to do this to me. Yeah, I totally disagree. And it's worth sparing a few minutes, I think. I mean, look, first of all, I don't think it's true.

I mean, there's indigenous groups in America right now who we don't grant a right to live on their indigenous homeland. So like, if that were true of the Jews, they wouldn't be the only peoples who were being rejected the right to return or just, you know, I think that happens. But we don't think that's a good thing. It's not good that the native tribes

are like pushed onto random reservations, right? I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I don't think any but I think plenty of Americans who believe that we shouldn't return South Dakota to some Native American tribe, they're not anti-Native American. That doesn't make them hateful towards Native Americans. Same way, not believing that Jews can return to Israel

doesn't make them hateful of Jews. If you were anti-Indian reservations right now, I think that would make you anti-Indian. You said they shouldn't have reservations. They should just have to, we should be able to take that land. That should be part of American normal and anyone should be able to live there. I mean, what if your view is that not,

that the reservations were a deleterious, you know, having a deleterious impact on the Native American people and that it seemed to you like, they're not integrating with American society and their economic prospects aren't great and these reservations are, I mean, that's a real view.

These reservations are rife with corruption and addiction and all these things, the poverty, and that it'd be better if like they were just Americans. I mean, that's a, I think that's a reasonable viewpoint to have. That's not, there's no malice there. It's not, it's not an anti-native viewpoint. I mean, I think it's, I actually think that, I think the conflation between antisemitism and anti Zionism is a little bit dangerous. And one of the reasons why is because the people

who are most anti-Semitic often want to conflate all Jews with all Zionists. That mean that's just like a reality that they want to hold Jews responsible for the actions of any Zionists anywhere, any Jew anywhere. And then the other part of it is just like, there are a lot of Jews who understand this situation, you know, in similar terms that you and I do,

or they know the similar history that you and I do, and they come out on the other end where they, I mean, I wouldn't call myself anti-Zionist, so a lot of people accuse me of doing that in the piece, which I explicitly never did and definitely never did. But like there are anti-Zionist Jews. I don't think they're like self-hating anti-Semitic Jews. I think they view the project of a Jewish homeland

as being dangerous or negative for some reason. There are anti Zionists that like insane, I mean, I don't want to whatever disparage them, but that very intense small group of ultra Orthodox Jews whose name is- The Neutrina Carter or something like that? Yeah, the Neutrina Carter who are like, you know, they be on religious tenants.

They believe that like taking the land of Israel back forcefully is explicitly prohibited and they're anti-Zionist. So I don't know, I don't buy that they're the same or that you can put them in the same bucket. So how would you respond to like the argument that if you are against Jews having sovereignty, that is somehow not an anti-Jewish position. Because Jews can have sovereignty

without the existence of Israel. I don't, I have, if Israel didn't exist, I'd be living a perfectly sovereign life here. I've, there are countries that allow Jews to exist and proliferate and, you know, participate in So maybe the word self-determination instead of sovereignty. Yeah, I mean, if you're... I mean, that's an interesting question. If you are you certain that if you took the entire global jury and really all gave them a voice in their own self-determination that like knowing everything we know now in this

present world, they would still choose Israel? I'm not 100% sure. I think probably, but I think there's a there's a strong current and definitely a rising tide of Jews globally who are like, this is a failing project. I mean, they're, again, it's not the thing that I subscribe to. I have not gone that far in my evolution of questioning the efficacy of this. But yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I guess self-determination makes it a little bit more, a little bit stickier.

Yeah, it's still hard for me because it's like the, I don't know that self-determination necessitates a Jewish state, you know? Like I think this, the thing that matters is that you believe that Jews should be able to live freely and without violence and without oppression. Like, that's the, like, if you don't believe in those things, I think that's antisemitic.

But I think it's possible to want Jews to live freely, to want individual Jews to have their own self-determination and to have liberty and sovereignty and whatever else. But to think that like the project of Israel is something that has morphed into a separate issue that you can oppose. I mean, I do think that that's possible. Doesn't it sound a little Pollyanna-ish to believe that, this is gonna be the one time in the last thousands and thousands of years where if we leave Jews as minorities

in other countries without Israel, they're gonna be totally fine. Pollyanna-ish, I don't know. Like maybe optimistic, maybe. Cause it's never happened, right? I mean, it's never, America is sort of the, you know, the closest and best example, but we were discriminated against here for a long time.

And now Jews are getting, you know, fire bombed on the street. It's never happened, but it's also never happened that we've lived through a period of history for 200 years where like the vast majority of the global population has, you know, rights, freedom of speech. There, we know we don't live in an era of segregation. We don't live in an era of monarchies. I mean, this is a fundamentally different time in world history than the thousands of years that preceded it in a way where like

in world history than the thousands of years that preceded it in a way where like, there's some reliance on the goodness of humans. Like I don't, I don't, and just the advancement of society as a whole. Like I don't think Jews would be any better off in some of the places that exist in the world today. Like there are European countries still rife with antisemitism, there are Arab states still rife

with antisemitism. There's some scary shit happening here in America. I'm not gonna lie. And it's Israel that keeps those Jews safe if they have to leave those places. It's to some degree, I mean, like, do you really feel that? Like that your backstop, if things go haywire, is going to Israel?

Is that how you view it? I do view it. I mean, I don't think we're there and I don't think we're gonna be there. I don't think America is suddenly gonna become, you know, 1939 Germany and I'm gonna have to flee to Israel for my life. But other people have had to do that all over the place

from a lot of countries, from Russia, from North Africa, from the Middle East, they very literally have had to flee for their lives and would be dead if they weren't able to go to Israel and be welcomed there as part of that safe majority. And so I don't take that for granted just because that's not in my or my family's experience. I think it's smart not to take that for granted.

I 100% can see that. I can't remember if I wrote this in my piece. I think I did, or maybe it was in a follow-up, but I don't think you would mind me saying this. Javiv Rediger, who I respect a lot, who I've had on the show here. Super smart guy. Yeah, really smart guy.

He wrote me something about the piece, and just to share a tiny bit of what he said, was like that, I think I did, I included that towards the end of the piece, but I didn't name him again. I don't think he would mind, but he just said like anti-Zionism, the existence of anti-Zionism is a very strong signal of like a healthy, good, safe period of time in history for Jews, basically, which I thought was really interesting. I mean, he was basically just saying like,

it is a privilege to be able to hold in a space where you are anti-Zionist, because that's just a sign that there's enough security for the Jewish people that like the moral collapse has not happened. But like when it does, because it always does and it will, then Zionism is the thing that will protect us and defend us.

So like, he was like, I wish much anti-Zionism because that is just to me a signal that we're living in an era of really good times for Jews. If people feel comfortable enough to believe in that or Jews feel comfortable enough to believe in that, it means that it's not so obvious to them that we are in this like dangerous period of time. And I thought that was kind of an interesting,

again, I didn't love the, I wasn't characterizing myself as being Andy Zionist, so I didn't really love that characterization, but it struck me that there was like some wisdom there. And I think that kind of dovetails nicely into what you're saying where it's like, I don't feel like I need this thing right now or I'm going to need this thing in my lifetime

to flee to Israel. But that doesn't mean that that isn't gonna happen at some point in the future or that it definitely won't happen or that it isn't a solution that's viable for other people living in different circumstances. So, yeah, despite all that, I still believe, I still like, I very much struggle

to make it synonymous with antisemitism. I just like- I also, let me, I know we need to get close to the end here, but just, one of the biggest issues about it, Isaac, is that the majority of people who speak on this are not doing so the way that you are. So I can, I can, I can concede that there are certain people

and discussions and situations who are able to talk about anti-Zionism, perhaps, in a way that is not anti-Semitic. But that is, at least in my experience, by far the minority and the majority of people who attempt to do this are far ill-equipped to do so and instantly sort of the two things are synonymous. Well, I think it's a good place to just say cheers to trying to elevate the dialogue and the discourse a little bit.

I very much appreciate you coming on the show today and sitting down with me. I think you've given me more to chew on. And there's a weird thing that happens when you're in a position like I think people like you and I are in. I won't speak for you. When you're in a position like I'm in, I think I am publicly and out loud, evolving and changing and having my thoughts sort of dissected and learning as I go and kind of building the plane of my own ideology

as I fly it. And it's scary and hard and fun and exhilarating and fascinating. I think like you've given me some more stuff today to kind of think on and chew on and incorporate and stress test in some of my views in a way that I find really helpful. So I appreciate you coming on.

I appreciate you having me and having these, thank you for having these kinds of conversations. You know, I got two messages or three messages from followers of mine who had been reading Tangle since you were on my show. And there was, they sent me your article and they're like, I can't believe this guy. I can't believe I'm paying for this.

And I'm like, I'm like, what are you guys doing here if you're not trying to have conversations like this and you're not willing to listen to thoughtful people like Isaac think through stuff. Like to me, I'm not threatened by that at all. And it bothers me when people are. And I don't see how, first of all, I don't see if there's anything wrong

with thinking things through and thinking out loud. And if anything, I find it so positive and such a productive way to approach things. And so I just, I appreciate you continuing to do what you do. And I could care less if we disagree or not. I just appreciate you being thoughtful and that we're having these kinds of conversations. Thanks, Jonah. Jonah Platt, he's the host of the Being Jewish podcast.

I highly recommend it. You can also follow him on Instagram where that's one of the places I keep up with a lot of his work. Any other things you're working on or promoting right now that you want to shout out before you let you go? We're going to be starting another edition of the podcast this summer called 30 Minute Menches. That's going to be just more.

It's kind of more of the same but a little more streamlined sort of different kinds of guests a little bit to try some new things out. But otherwise it's the same old same old on YouTube, on audio platforms and on Jewish Broadcasting Service on TV. Awesome. Jonah, thanks so much for being here, man. I appreciate it. Thanks Isaac. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul.

And our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor, Ari Weitzman with senior editor, Will K. Back and associate editors, Hunter Kaspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Dian 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership,

please visit our website at retangle.com