Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: An interview with Dr. Noam Weissman

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

Since Isaac is off coaching his frisbee team to a national championship, Ari and he couldn't record a Sunday podcast for you all. So to make up for that, we are releasing last week's special Friday edition interview for you all to enjoy. To listen to this and all our other podcasts ad-free, please go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. On today's Friday edition, Isaac talks with Dr. Noam Weissman, Executive Vice President of OpenDor Media. Noam is a recognized thought leader in innovative Israel and Jewish education. Leading a team of producers and educators for the Unpacked brand, he reaches millions of young Jews yearly through articles, videos, and social media. Noam is the host of the Unpacked podcast “Unpacking Israeli History,” which consistently trends as the #1 Jewish podcast. He is also an Aspen Institute Fellow and a Scholar in Residence at the Horace Mann School in NY. Isaac and Noam touch on current events and the challenges of navigating identity and perspectives in a polarized environment, the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the importance of hope, empathy, and education.Check out Episode 7 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Help share Tangle.I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it. Email Tangle to a friend here, share Tangle on X/Twitter here, or share Tangle on Facebook here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Hey everybody, Isaac here and welcome to our special Friday edition podcast. Few topics over the last few months have become more difficult to discuss than what's happening in Israel and Gaza right now. On the heels of the October 7th anniversary, I was looking for somebody to chat with about not just the state of the conflict,

but the psyche of where people on both sides, and especially people in Israel, is right now. Throughout this conflict, I've sat down with a wide range of commentators from Palestinian academics and writers to Israeli academics and former Israeli IDF soldiers. I've had people who are American and look at this conflict through an American lens talk to me about the different views here in the U.S. from the right and the left and the Jewish community and the Arab community. And today I'm talking to somebody who teaches about the history of Israel. He is a Jew, a Zionist, somebody who I think holds those things in his heart while also holding the complexity and the humanity and the nuance of a lot of the people who are involved in this conflict in his heart.

When I brought him on the show, I'll be honest with you, I did not expect the interview to go the way that it went. I was actually planning to talk to him about the history of the conflict and poke at some of the big historical moments, some of the contention and debate around those moments and try and contextualize what we've just lived through in the last year in the context of that history. Instead, though, our conversation took a bit of a detour, and one, frankly, that I was quite pleased about because I'm a little bit exhausted by the tit-for-tat of the historical debates around this conflict. Instead, my guest and I,

Noam Weissman, we discuss just how he was feeling about this conflict, how he was discussing the conflict with people on both sides of it, how he thinks about some of the really contentious moments, how he tries to humanize people that he disagrees with, and how he also feels like the Jewish community and the Zionist community are incorrectly teaching some of the history of Israel. And he advocates for an approach to the conflict that I think is resonant with me, which is one where we look plainly at the facts, where we look plainly at the historical record and we try and detach some of what we want or wish this to be and instead deal with what it actually is. And I think it was helpful for me to hear somebody talk through some of that. I found some of his answers incredibly thoughtful and

enlightening. I found other answers a little bit frustrating or left me wanting, and we chat about that a bit too. And I think, I hope you guys will enjoy the conversation and get something out of it just hearing from a new perspective today. So with that, I'd like to introduce Noam Weissman. And when you're done with the podcast, I encourage you to go check out his show where he talks about the history of Israel, and he will plug that show for you at the end. Enjoy. Noam Weissman, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. So before we get started, I mean, there's so many directions I think this conversation could go in, and a lot of things I'm curious to talk to you about. I would love if maybe you could just give our listeners a little bit of background on you and

your work. And I love giving guests a chance to kind of tell our audience about themselves in their own words a little bit at the top of the show. You got it. You got it. So thanks, Isaac. The background that I have is I come at all of this and I guess my life with education. I think when people ask my political perspective, I think my answer is I think educationally about things. Now that might, I'll just give my biases at the outset. I do identify in many ways as a political centrist, but I think that that is very much so my educational worldview as well. And so what I've done over the years is I used to, I was going to be a lawyer. I deferred law school, withdrew from law school, and then fell in love with education and became a principal of a high school at a pretty young age and out in

LA on the West Coast and did that for a number of years. And then I wrote my dissertation at USC on Israel education and identity development, which I was fascinated by how young people across really the United States really think about Israel, talk about Israel, how they're taught about Israel. And I then joined this organization called Open Door Media that I became their educational leader, then eventually their executive vice president, overseeing much of our work. It's been amazing. We launched a number of different products and platforms to teach about the story of Israel, the story of anti-Semitism, the story of Zionism, the story of Jewish history, Jewish identity, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all of that, through different YouTube channels,

the Unpacked YouTube channel, the Today Unpacked YouTube channel, the podcast I host is called Unpacking Israeli History, which goes through all of Israeli history. I shouldn't say all, but in 45-minute chunks, very clearly talks through the history of each of those moments and the good, the bad, the ugly, uh, shows a diversity of perspectives on it. And I really fell in love with this concept of showing a diversity of perspectives. And I think it's one of the reasons that like, I'm, I feel, um, a connection to you is I, I read this magazine called the week a number of years ago and I wonder, great magazine, such a number of years ago, and I wondered. Yeah, great magazine.

Such a good magazine. I got The Week Junior for my children, and I love the concept. And so what I did was, six and a half years ago, when I started out at Open Door Media, at Unpacked, I started writing this newsletter that showed, I could remember the lines I always used to say, it shows the wide contours of dispute that exist within Israeli society. That's the line. And showed, you know how like the week would have, it would have, here's what happened, you know, here's why it matters, diversity of perspectives. And you'd have from the, you know, I don't know, from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times and Washington Post.

And I thought, what a healthy way to live our lives, to, like, see different perspectives. So I started doing that at Unpacked. And then we launched. And people, educators were so moved by this. Oh, my God, I've been waiting to see different perspectives on these topics. And so we launched into that and Un unpacked for educators, which was for Jewish schools. And then across, and people get this so wrong about the Jewish world. I think you know this, Isaac, but like, it's, there's not a political monolith at all within the Jewish world at all,

at all. And then over the years launched a new platform just this past year, actually called ConnectED for independent schools, for non-Jewish schools, which, you know, uses a lot of the same methodologies that we created over the years at Unpacking Israeli History and Unpack for Educators. So, and my story, just one more thing, you know, I think it's relevant to say I'm also a civil society fellow as part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. I don't just share that with you to share my resume. I share that with you because I think it points to this insane obsession and infatuation even, I would say, that I have

with getting together with people of different political and religious stripes and having very difficult conversations and seeing what we could do to uplift and elevate civil society in the US. So I've been an Aspen Fellow for the last year or so. Yeah, there's a lot there. Well, first of all, I'll just show you, I mean, I literally have a copy of The Week sitting on my desk next to me right now. So it's a magazine I appreciate. And at Tangle, I think we try and do basically a daily version of it that I actually think has maybe a bigger tent politically. I mean, if I had one criticism of the week, I would say they don't really represent the Trump right as well as they could. And they're sort of attached

to this old, I think now nearly diminished and extinct Republican Party. But it's fascinating. I mean, there's a question about these inclusions of perspectives that I feel is really relevant to sort of this moment we're living in. I want to talk to you about that, about what perspectives feel worth bringing into the conversation and including and how we make those decisions. But before I do that, it occurs to me that a lot of your work feels informed by this sense that maybe the perceptions and the ideas that exist around Israel and the story of Israel and the history of Israel that you feel is necessary to teach, that there's a gap between those two, that maybe the way certain people understand this history or the way certain

younger people in America maybe understand this history is somehow divorced or separate from a more holistic view of the history that you feel needs to be taught. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that gap or why you feel like the work that you're doing with your podcast and teaching this Israeli history is actually necessary right now? Yeah, I think it's crucial for lots of reasons. I'm just engaging in recency bias right now. So my apologies to all the listeners and to you. But I just watched last night searching for Bobby Fischer. Is that what it's called? Or In Search of Bobby Fischer? I haven't seen it, but yeah. Oh, you got to see it. It's like a flick i think it's that's when it's from i just

said flick um and um it's down like my parents and i i was watching with my 11 year old son and my wife last night and there's a great scene in in in bobby fisher and the searchers searching for bobby fisher where the chess is being played it's like a big competition and the parents are going nuts at each other, fighting, going back and forth. This isn't like, but I'm not ruining it. But, and I won't tell you, don't worry, I won't be that guy who tells you who Kaiser Sosa is either.

But it's passed, right? The statute of limitations passed in 93. But in this moment, the kids are playing against each other. The parents are yelling. And the referee, whoever's in charge of this chess competition, he goes, parents, all of you out. All of you out. All of you out.

And he kicks the parents out, and the kids just play chess. That's my feeling about what's needed for Israel education today, really. The parents' generation, I think we've done, I think I can include myself in this, I'm getting up there, I'm in my upper 30s at this point, so I'm getting there. But what I've seen is that the way people have been teaching about Israel is just so unhealthy and unfair and does a disservice to our children. And what's been done is there are methodologically, could I speak in methodology on your podcast? Is that like interesting to your

audience? Okay. So, methodologically, there's four different ways to teach about Israel, okay? Historically, there's what's called Israel advocacy, there's Israel studies, there's Israel branding, and there's Israel education. israel advocacy there's israel studies uh there's israel branding and there's israel education those are four different ways that people can teach about israel and this is research that's been done over the years to see the way it's been taught about in different contexts and each of those are different from each other okay the way the vast majority of the jewish world let's start with the jewish world has taught about israel is through the lens of israel advocacy and what that means is to say that I have the truth about everything,

and I'm here to bring you to my truth, and to help you advocate for a certain position, to say I have the truth about something, whatever that thing is, and I'm bringing you to that truth. So, like, for example, if you say 1948, Der Yassin, you say never happened, that that massacre never took place. And I'll prove to you how it never took place, right? And it comes from a place of defensiveness, it comes from a place of a posture that the Jewish people have had that says the entire world has been against us for so darn long, and I'm sick and tired of this. We are this, we are, it follows this Ben-Gurion sort of attitude of, I'll say it in Hebrew first for the authenticity of it, and then I'll say it in English.

It's not important what the non-Jews say about the world. It's important what Jews do to take matters into their own hand. And that's been a way that historically the Jewish world has felt. And that's been a way that historically the Jewish world has felt. We're against the wall. We're literally being pushed against the wall for a few thousand years. The Babylonians came and went. The Romans came and went. The Persians came and went. The Muslim conquerors came and city. Like, are you kidding me, world? We're going to advocate for Israel. But the problem is that education follows from that attitude, that defensive posture, okay? That's one way. The way that I have felt it's so important to teach about Israel is to say the following. We are not going to be defensive about this. We are going to learn our history, tell the story, ask the questions, show the different perspectives on this, engage with the different historians on this, look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Israeli history. And if you're Jewish to cultivate your Jewish identity within these stories, then what that does is it loosens your shoulders a

little bit. It says, okay, like, I don't have to defend every moment of Jewish history in modern Israeli history. I don't have to engage in that sort of behavior. If I think Israel's doing something wrong, then I'm allowed to say that Israel's doing something wrong. But it comes from the posture and the position that Jewish identity matters, that the state of Israel existing is a good thing. But within that, how do you see yourself? And then when I'm speaking to a broader world, there's a third approach called Israel studies. And this is what I wish was happening in left-wing academia and what I wish was happening in the universities, which is to view Israel not through – I saw this analogy recently that was given—not through if

Israel education is a mirror, like it's how Jewish people should see themselves in the story of Israel. Israel studies should be a window where you're looking outside of your room and you see the state of Israel and you say, okay, let's analyze it, let's be a little bit Archimedean about it, perhaps, a little dispassionate, to understand it, to analyze it, to be critically thoughtful about it. That's the ideal, and what's happening very often in left-wing academia is this dismantling of Israel. We just saw what Ta-Nehisi Coates just came out, and his book, Getting Out There. And I love Ta-Nehisi Coates. I really, like, I looked up to him in many ways. Like, I really love his writing. And then to see the really incomplete telling of the story of Israel on the platform that you have,

have, it's dangerous. And so, and it made me sad. And so, that is what I and we are trying to do, which is I tell people my bias. My bias is believing that the Jewish state should exist. My bias is I believe that the Palestinians have a distinct national identity. Within those two biases, I'm going to teach you my thoughts and the history that I've learned and the people that I've gotten to know. But those are my biases, and I'll show you the diversity of perspectives within that. And if those biases are uncomfortable for you, then this content and podcast and the way I teach isn't for you. But if it is comfortable for you and there are many perspectives within that, then I think there's a lot we can learn together on this journey. I'm curious. The code saying is an interesting example, both because, I mean, we're recording this on Thursday, October 11th. This story is all over the media right now. I mean, I think since his CBS interview, people have been talking

a lot about it. I'm seeing that it's really penetrating not just Jewish circles that I exist in, but also media circles, the Palestinian movement circles. I mean, everybody's kind of talking about his book and this interview and how it's all playing out in the media. And I think Coates' defense, interestingly enough, is sort of similar to your broad view of how this has been taught, which is he would say, well, we've only looked at this issue through the lens of Israel advocacy for so long, and so it's not my responsibility to give more lip service to Israel advocacy. I'm trying to write a part of the story that isn't talked about by mainstream writers enough, which is very distinctly through maybe

the Palestinian or Arab lens. I'm curious to hear how you think about that and the room for that in the debate and the discussion. Because yeah, it just strikes me that you are both sort of seeing the same problem, but addressing it in different ways, I feel like. Yeah. I just want to clarify, though, first of all, it's Friday, October 11th, same problem, but addressing it in different ways, I feel like. Yeah, I just want to clarify, though, first of all, it's Friday, October 11th, not Thursday, October 11th. Sorry, thanks. Secondly, and definitely more substantively importantly, what I was saying historically went on within the Jewish world.

From an Israel advocacy perspective, from without the Jewish world, the way Israel has been taught is from the academia and from the universities and from this perspective that I think is more typically one-sided, antagonistic towards Israel, against Israel. And in the high schools, and I'm starting to work with many, many independent schools, my team is independent schools, either they're pretty silent about it, or there's a discomfort around Israel. What I would say about Coates, about how we're trying to address this, and we see a similar problem, it's a very interesting framing, Isaac, and addressing it differently. I just heard him say, he was just on Ezra Klein's podcast this morning, where he said something that was disarmingly honest and incredibly problematic.

And I'll tell you why I thought it was disarmingly honest. He said he went to Israel, he went to Israel-Palestine, I think as he calls it, and he spoke to anyone that was from the liberal Zionist world all the way to anti-Zionist world. Now, and then he didn't want to hear the perspectives of the Jewish people in Israel who don't represent, you know, progressive Zionism and or anti-Zionism. Now, if you look at the statistics, I thought that that was like really honest, and I appreciated that honesty. And then I said, okay, I really hope the listener has the smoothness of intelligence, I would describe it, to be able to decipher what he said and what he didn't say there. 95% of world Jewry is supportive of the existence of a Jewish to one degree or another, okay? 95%. So, okay. So, and within Israel, within Israel, I'd say something like, I'm making up this statistic, I don't have it offhand, but, as you know, I won't make up a statistic. The vast majority of Israelis, the vast majority

of Israelis would identify as either center-left, center, center-right, or to the right. He's trying to tell the story of Israel-Palestine without incorporating the viewpoint of 90% to 95% of world Jewry. And for someone of his stature, again, I keep on saying, like, I love his writings. I've been so influenced by them. Letter to My Son, for example, so incredibly impactful in my life. I actually just wrote a piece called Letter to My Daughter. You know, like, he's really made a huge impact on my life.

And so, to only include and incorporate those percentages, those stories, I think it's just, it's incomplete. So I just went to Israel, and I went for a week to Israel, and I went about it in a very different way. I met with Israelis on the right, settlers, people identify as settlers, who are, you know, who don't have their stories told enough. People from the West Bank, they like to be called West Bank Jews or Judeans or something like that. I met with Palestinians from Bethlehem, from East Jerusalem. I met with Samir Sanjulawi.

I met with Lana Aikulan. I met with Nour. I met with this amazing organization called Roots that has Israelis and Palestinians working together. And I met with all of these different people and I heard all of their stories. And what happens with American journalism sometimes is that they go to Israel-Palestine, and they go to meet with people on the, where they see a very small slice of what's going on. They map on their American understanding of

the world onto the Middle East, which is in some ways Orientalist, maybe, or in some ways neoconservative, ironically enough. And then they try to understand and say, here's what's going on because I saw this terrible thing happening. And I just think, like, we could do better than that. We could do better than that. We could see the Western thought and the liberal ideology and the progressive worldview of Tel Avivians, and we could understand the deep connection that Jewish people have to

Judea and Samaria, to the West Bank, which is the place that the Jewish people have more connection to than any other place in the world. It's like Jew, it means from Judea. That doesn't mean I agree with the policies of the Israeli government. That doesn't mean I think that there should be settlements and growing settlements. It doesn't mean I don't think that. But what it means is I want to get people's stories. And I just think that we have a responsibility as educators, as journalists, to see the broad swath of the stories and to hear from Palestinians. Yeah, great Palestinian thinkers like Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, who writes for The Atlantic, and Mohamed Dajani Doudi, who wrote an amazing book on empathy.

I actually have it right here, teaching empathy and reconciliation in the midst of conflict. What Ta-Nehisi Coates did is, I don't think it's going to do anything to advance peace. I think it's just going to make Jewish people significantly more defensive, maybe the way I'm sounding right now. And that's not what I want. I want a world that shows the broad swaths of perspectives and that could tell the story of Israel in good faith. It could tell the story of Palestinians in good faith and activate a more positive future as a result of that. Oh, that coffee smells good. Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? positive future as a result of that. If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank. The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of brings us to this moment that we're sort of living through right now. And, you know, I guess I'll show my cards here a bit and just say, I think I've struggled a lot in the last year. I mean, I am an American Jew. I lived in Israel. I lived in the Yeshiva, Baal Tshuvi Yeshiva in East Jerusalem for about six months after college. six months after college. And I mean, I have no idea in American politics in which I'm fluent how to describe myself anymore. And so it's hard to describe myself in Israeli Zionist politics, but I think I fall into sort of what people identify as like this liberal Zionist bucket

where I have Pollyannish hopes of a two-state solution or coexistence inside Israel that looks much different than it does today, but I also fundamentally want Israel to exist and believe in the right of Israel to exist. And it creates all these really difficult conversations for me where I publish pieces and I write stories and I seem to alienate myself both from the American left and the Palestinian movement and a lot of my Arab Muslim readers. And then I am just eviscerated by my sort of more pro-Israel, conservative Jewish readers who call me a self-hating Jew if I say that Netanyahu deserves some blame for the current state of Israel right now and don't properly call out Hamas or whatever it is. I mean, it feels to me like right now

is one of the most tenuous, unproductive moments in the so-called peace process or the push for peace, I guess. And this is all a big lead up to a question, I think, that I'd like to hear you answer about where we are in that moment and what your sense is from the conversations that you're experiencing in Israel, but also just the historical context of this moment, how you would frame it. Because it feels to me like in some ways things have never been worse and I feel more hopeless about a positive version of the future than I ever really have. And I have, thankfully, people in my life, both Jews and Zionists and Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who are encouraging me to have more hope than I've been expressing publicly and that I do. But I'd be

interested to hear kind of how you think about this moment in the larger historical context of where we are in maybe some kind of reconciliation process. Is this a door open because things are so traumatic and difficult and hard? Or is this like the two sides have never been further apart and we have more work to do than we've ever had. You said so many things, Isaac. First of all, I have so many questions. When you went to yeshiva, meaning you spent some time learning Torah, studying Torah in East Jerusalem, did you think of it at the time as East Jerusalem? I mean, that's how I heard people call it, just like where it was located. I was certainly cognizant of the fact that in the immediate area of the yeshiva and where I spent my time, there were many more Arabs and Palestinians, and it felt like a more diverse part of the city and the neighborhood than I would see in other places that I would go in Jerusalem.

I don't know if that totally answers your question, but it felt like something on the, it certainly felt like I was, I mean, I loved being there because I, from traveling elsewhere in Israel and going to other places, and it felt like there was some tension and diversity in a way that didn't exist in some other spaces in Israel that I spent time in. And I appreciated that and really enjoyed kind of being in that space. That's cool. That's cool. Now, I was just there two weeks ago, East Jerusalem, and I went with my wife, and she had never been there before. And what we did is we went with a friend of mine, a colleague, Itai Flesher, and we did a stroll through East Jerusalem. What I find fascinating about it, and this is part of the education, I think, is just we got to widen the lens, just widen the lens.

And, you know, you're staying in a hotel in, I guess, the western part of Jerusalem, and two blocks away, you think you're in one area, and then two blocks away, you are all of a sudden passing through one gate, and it's like, not a gate, it's like, actually, there's no gate, there's just walking down the street, and now you're in a Christian Palestinian area that's Saturday, and it's totally open, and it looks nothing different than, which is the Jewish day of rest, Shabbat. And with two blocks away, there's just like, it's a very different world. It's very different. It's much quieter. And then a block away from that is Salah al-Din Street, which, you know, might as well be Ramallah the way it looks.

It's like this bustling, incredibly fun street that has got bookshops and restaurants and suites. And it looks like Machane Yehuda, which is just this great marketplace in the western part of Jerusalem. And it's all Arabic, no Hebrew. And then you go down a few blocks away, and all of a sudden you're transported back to Poland, to Lithuania, where there's this, like, I don't know how to describe it, Haredi Judaism. I don't like the term ultra-Orthodox, so I just tried to stay away from it. But, you know, a different form of Judaism, perhaps, than what I practice. And then you go another block, and all of a sudden you're in the more Western part of Jerusalem, which is Western and liberal and, you know, where there's a gay pride march near there. And you're like, this is all happening within five to six blocks.

So you're like, what is going on? And I want your listeners to get that because all of our tour experiences and all of our, you know, like what we see on the TV and on TikTok and Instagram, it's so curated. And the ability to just walk around six blocks is, you know, you learn a lot. You learn a heck of a lot. So I was just interested in that. In terms of your question, what do I think reasonable solutions are for long-term peace? Do I think we're in the most tenuous place we've ever been? Yeah, let me answer the tenuous place. It's really tenuous. It's really, really tenuous. And from a Palestinian I spoke to named Abu Awad, I believe his name is, a couple months ago,

who lives in Bethlehem. He said to me, Noam, this is worse than what he called the Nakba of 1948. This is worse than the Naksa of 1967. This is worse, meaning the setback of 1967. This is worse. this is worse, meaning the setback of 1967, this is worse. And the reason it's worse is that he believes that Hamas put the Middle East on the brink of a possibility that we couldn't come back from, a possibility for any forward movement, because the prospects of Israelis and Jews getting together and thinking that, oh, this is going, Israelis, sorry, Israelis and Palestinians getting together and thinking that, oh, we're going to have a possible future, he said it's so unlikely.

I will say this. I'm a student, I like to, she doesn't view me as her student, but I'm a student of Rachel Goldberg-Pollin, who is the mother of Hirsch Goldberg-Pollin, who was taken hostage by Hamas and then subsequently murdered by Hamas. And she says that hope is mandatory and it's not an option. You don't have a right to be cynical. And that's what she's building towards. And so, I view myself as a student of hers. And seeing that the next era of thinking less about the fate of the Jewish people and more about the destiny of the Jewish people and the destiny of the Jewish people is very much so in Israel, and the destiny of the Palestinian people is also very much so in that land of Israel. And so, the destiny of the Israelis and Palestinians will be together,

and that's the next level in terms of relationship building, recognizing that, as Muhammad Ajani Daoudi has said to me, we have to give up a little bit of our dreams, like our dreams of what could be if only there were no Jews in the world. How amazing it would be. And like, if for Jewish people to say, how amazing it would be for like,

you know, for the land of Israel, like to be all of ours, to give up our big dreams and to start entering into what he calls our small hopes, right? And that is from Mohamed Adjani Dudi. That's from Rachel Goldberg-Polin. I'm not making a political statement here, because I actually think the mistake that so many of us make is talking about what our goals are, as opposed to thinking about what our systems are. Put aside, have you read Atomic Habits by James Clear? No, I haven't. I mean, I know James Clear. I love his newsletter, but yeah. Okay, so Atomic Habits, you got to read. What he said

is that we have to stop solving problems at the results level because what you do is what you're going to solve them temporarily. Instead, what you should do is solve them at the results level, because what you do is what you're going to solve them temporarily. Instead, what you should do is solve them at the systems level. And you should basically say, how do you want to live your life? What will your day-to-day, what will your habits be? And stop talking about what the end results are, what the end goals should be, or what the end situation will be, but start saying, well, what will your day-to-day life look like differently? So I have a question. I don't know what the solution will be, but start saying, well, what will your day-to-day life look like differently? So I have a question. I don't know what the solution will be, but is it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to learn each other's languages, to actually have Israelis learn Hebrew and Palestinians

learn Arabic and Palestinians learn Hebrew? That would be awesome. Can they learn each other's histories and each other's stories and each other's narratives? That would be awesome. In the U.S., can we start actually learning the history of Israel? Can we actually start understanding how we got to this moment instead of just, like, letting young people start protesting on college campuses without having any knowledge of Israeli history? Like, can we do that? Is that something that can be done as part of the systems? And if you change the systems, then you change the way people perceive each other, then you change the humanity of the other, and then who knows what the goal will be. So I'm not a politician, I'm not a diplomat, I'm an educator. And that's the way I think about it. And we should change the systems and think about the systems and less so about the goals. I guess to that end, I mean, I'm curious, like, you know, you have an audience that

I presume is prominently Jewish. I think it's 49%, 51%, I think, total. Interesting. And so a lot of people are coming to you to get this education on Israel that I think you're offering in a more holistic and less sort of, as you said, kind of like, let the defenses down. Let's just talk about the things that have actually happened. What do you hope people leave that with?

Or what perception of Israelis and Palestinians do you hope people leave this education with? Or I guess, in learning it yourself, what are the perceptions that you've left with? Because it seems like you're saying the way we view this now, the way American liberals view Israelis now is not the way that they should view them if they really truly understood the history. The way many Israelis or Jews perceive Palestinians is probably not the way they should be perceiving them if they really understood the history. So I'd be curious to hear how you would expect people's perceptions to shift if they had this fuller picture or better understanding of the histories that you hope to be offering. Very simple. It's the humanizing of

the other. It's to stop viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in some abstract way, as though Israelis are an abstract conceptual individual and the Palestinians are some conceptual abstract people to victims to be defended, and Israelis are some oppressors to be denounced. Like, it's just, we could do better. I'm going to keep on saying that we could do better. And so what the result of a good education is that you see the humanity in the people. You understand you have empathy. You have empathy of different people's stories that they tell, of the histories that they tell and they learn with each other. And they're much more knowledgeable. I think that one of the things that I am obsessed with talking about, so I think it will change the landscape if we think of this concept differently,

is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which I love talking about. The Dunning-Kruger effect is where people who are, if you know a lot about something and you're an expert in it, so for me, Michael Jordan's 1990s statistics, I'm an expert. Don, don't mess with me on that. And I feel good about it. If you, you know, ask me about something that I know nothing about, let's say, Calc BC, I used to be a principal, so I still remember that. I would be like, I don't know how to opine on that. But if you ask me about a topic that I know a little bit about, but not a lot about, what happens very often is that you suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is that you have an overconfidence and underconfidence.

I'm trying to, and you get out there and you just imagine, and who do you think suffers the most from overconfidence and underconfidence? Well, the answer is people who go to college and are freshmen, and they take a Western Civ course, and all of a sudden, they know everything, right? They suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. Now, one of the authors of the Dunning-Kruger effect said, kind of like Fight Club, the number one thing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is you don't know if you suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. So, like, you don't know if you have it. But I'm trying to, I'm really, my mission in the world is to help solve that challenge of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And what happens is that people, like, again, like, Coates will go to see a sliver.

They know a little bit about Israel, and they know a little bit about the West Bank. And, like, they know that. They really know that. But people like Cass Sunstein pointed out that what happens when you go to extremes, when you know a lot about a little, you have a one narrow, and this is, I guess, what you're doing in your newsletter and your YouTube channel and your podcast. When people know a lot about, like from a very narrow slice of the perspective, what they end up doing is they end up going to extremes, and that's dangerous.

So I want to actually create a moderating force for the world. I want to create that shows these diverse perspectives. I want to bust the bubble of the Dunning-Kruger effect and let people be a little bit less confident about what they know until they're a bit more competent about what they know. Have more empathy. I think more empathy in the world is so important. And for me, as a Jewish person, I do want people to understand where the Jewish people are coming from, what the history is, and be able to say, okay, I understand the history and how we got to this moment. And I think that hopefully, you know, education solves most of the problems in the world.

I'm curious. solves most of the problems in the world. I'm curious. I mean, I want to push on this a little bit because I certainly share some of, I think, your worldviews and perceptions that I'm picking up on a little bit. And I try and step out of those a lot in my work. And sometimes I lean into them and I express them as clearly and thoughtfully as I can. And other times I try and leave them at the door. And I've written a lot about something like the college student protesters, which you've referenced a few times now. And I think one of the really strong arguments sort of in favor of some of these college movements and college protesters that we've seen is that they're

kind of doing exactly what you're begging them to do. They're having empathy and humanizing Palestinians. And I actually am quite sympathetic to a 19-year-old kid who goes on Instagram and sees a bunch of videos of three-year-old toddlers in Gaza covered in blood and trembling, and their parents are buried in a building, and they feel moved to do something about that. So how do you as an educator talk to those people about the history of Israel in a way that kind of gives them space to do the thing you're asking, which is like, they're having this empathy. I think a lot of them which is like they're having this empathy. I think a lot of them are turning out not because they're anti-Semitic or they hate Jews. Maybe they have feelings about Israel, but I think a lot of them are coming from a position of empathy, of seeing war and being like, this is horrific and

I want this to stop. So how do you talk to those people, educate those kinds of students, or just think about them more broadly? I'm curious how they fit into that call from you. To that, it's really important to go into this. Yeah, I deeply believe in empathy, but I believe in empathy without a rider, meaning that if you're going to be extending empathy to the Palestinian people, which I think really the Palestinian people deserve the world's compassion, very much so. I also think that the Israelis deserve the world's compassion and empathy. and empathy. And I think that what's going to happen if people, and this is what I talk to people about, if you're going to delegitimize the project of Zionism, if you're going to say that the problem is Israel, the problem is Zionism, the problem is the Jewish state existing, what you're going to do is you're going to harden people more and more and more on the other side. I deeply believe in Newton's third law of thermodynamics, that every, I think that's what it is, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

test and say Israel shouldn't exist from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, then what Israelis are going to do and what the vast majority of the Jewish world is going to do is to say, okay, it's us against the world. We're back into a corner again. Here we go. World, do you not see that you're just another example of just another generation figuring out another way to talk about your anti-Semitism? But like, it's impolite to be an anti-Semite, Isaac. It's impolite. So, I'm not an anti-Semite, I'm anti-Zionist. That's not impolite. That's like, that's derogor. That's like fighting for the oppressed people, and so I'm anti-Zionist. The Jewish people will, across the world, broadly speaking, certainly Israelis, which represent like 45% of world Jewry, will not take proudly

to that. As a matter of fact, I remind people this in the mid 70s, the settlement movement expanded the most in Israel. And it expanded the most under a labor government, under a left-wing government, because in the mid 70s, the world had decided that Zionism is racism. So essentially, what Israelis said was, okay, the whole project is racist. Game on. We don't care what you have to say, world. We really, really don't. Because if you're going to delegitimize my existence, then there's not much I could do about that. When speaking to people, what I find to be most effective is the ability to talk about the pain, the challenges of the hostages, the pain, the challenges of what it looks like to be under Hamas's rule. If you're Palestinian, if you hear Palestinians,

if you hear Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, if you hear Samir Sinzawi, if you hear Lana Aykolan, if you hear Mohamed Dejanidoudi, and you hear Palestinian stories of how Hamas has really upended the system, and you understand the plight of the hostages, and you speak to them,

not trying to persuade them, not trying to persuade them, not trying to convince them. I never, I really don't, but you speak to them on their terms and have empathy for their perspectives. It's very, it's much more reasonable to then ask for empathy for the other side. But if you attack and you fight and you yell, and I was at this protest in LA on Pico where it was disgusting. There was like, I don't even want to go into it, but it was yelling. There was no world peace was going to go on. I promise you, no world peace was going to happen at this protest. It was just, everyone's yelling at each other and everyone's tribal. And I'm too, again, I like to talk about my biases. I'm tribal. I want the Jewish people to survive and thrive.

Of course I am. And I'm universal. I want to make sure that the world is a good, healthy place. I want to make sure that the downtrodden are taken care of, that there's empathy for people who are oppressed. And I would love for Palestinian leadership to show up. I would love for the Palestinians to cultivate a leadership that is going to guide them and be heroic and have what I call their Alta Lena moment of 1948 and be able to say that

we are going to suppress one movement and we're going to uplift and elevate another movement that is going to be deeply peaceful and hopeful and make sure that we know that the Jewish people, Israelis, are never going to leave. They're not going anywhere. And within that reality, I'm going to make peace with these people. But we have to allow ourselves to entertain these truths and understand each other and speak to each other from this perspective of Newton's third law. So that's what I do when I engage with people. I'm not trying to convince. I'm not trying to persuade. I want people to understand where I'm coming from, the way I think about this as a Jewish American, as an American Jew, whatever it's called, as an American.

And frankly, I really view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a flashpoint for much broader conflicts of how to talk about partisanship in general, how to talk about polarizing topics in general. And when we don't do the Israeli-Palestinian conflict story well, it's very likely that we're not going to do any other issue well. Got a mortgage? Chances are you're thinking about your payments right now.

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and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. I think, I mean, this is, I appreciate this conversation because I think a lot of the

conversations that I have about this issue sort of get mired in the tit-for-tat of the Israeli-Palestinian history. And it's fascinating to me because I, you know, given your show and your credentials, I was sort of expecting to have a conversation about all these historical moments and the different way they've changed. I'm happy to do that. I think it's a good history. a different way they've changed. I'm happy to do that. I think it's a good history. No, I mean, I'm almost less interested in it because I feel like it's such a common thing. And I mean, I think what you're doing is unique, but I think it sort of opens the door to just end up being mired in some of the details that I'm less convinced matter than the push for the kind of openings that you're talking about. What I will say, and in some way to pivot a little bit to the history,

I'm curious to hear how the history of this conflict informs your opinion about the potential solutions or the potential ways out. I mean, I think, you know, depending on what factions of the conflict you're talking to, Israelis or Palestinians, and who people are and what their backgrounds are, I hear a lot of things like the history has shown us that there's, you know, no reliable peace partner on the, you know, in Gaza, or the history has taught us that Israel will always be the oppressor and always work to... When we're on the one-yard line of the peace process, they'll do something to damage it. That's kind of how people frame it. I guess I'm interested to hear you talk a little bit about how the history of this conflict informs your view on the future of the conflict and the potential solutions that we might work towards. I mean, I know that's a really big question, but I imagine you have some takeaways.

Again, I'm not a politician, and that really matters, and I'm not an academic that is here to guide people on, you know, what the solutions should be. I think what we have to do a lot more of is actually, a little differently than what you just said, is to understand each other's histories, to understand each other's stories. because my goal is really for people to see one another, to actually see each other. And seeing is, what it means to see each other is not like a physical thing. It's an observation of people's stories and history. So for me, like, I want people to understand the history of big questions, which I think as a result of understanding these big questions, will shed light on the current moment. So, I mentioned the Adelena affair. I think it's a really interesting question for how to think about when Israel, I'll just mention it briefly, in June of 1948, right when the state of Israel was being created a month later, it was in a very precarious position.

Would Israel have multiple armies? Would it be Etzel, which was led by their gun, which was led by Menachem Begin, together with David Ben-Gurion? Would there be multiple factions? How would this go? What would happen? And David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin at the time made a pretty, pretty bold decision, which is quite controversial, which was to shoot down that ship and kill 20 Israelis, 20 Jews. But that ended this possibility of having multiple Israels within Israel. So, let's look at that story and ask, can Palestinians do that? Can the Palestinian people have their Al-Talina moment? Another example of a really just fascinating story is to understand the first Intifada and how it's different than the second Intifada. And when people use the

terms Intifada, what does it mean? Like, if you're going to be calling for an Intifada, I want you to understand what happened during these Intifadas. And is that what you're calling for? Well, that will help people understand what it is that they are doing. Like I said earlier, another fascinating historical moment is Zionism racism, UN Resolution 3379. When you look at that moment in the mid-70s, and you ask when the United Nations declared that Zionism was racism only to rescind it 16 years later in 1991, You know, what was the history of that? How did it get to that moment? And then what was the result of that moment? And then I go to things like Sabra Shatila, which is one of the black eyes of Israeli history

in which many Muslims were massacred in Lebanon in the early 1980s by the Christian phalanges, and Israel was on the doorsteps, essentially passively allowing it to happen. To what extent they know and don't know is of historical debate. But, you know, the Israelis held their people accountable for what happened in sovereign Shatila, and that led to 18 years or so there until, you know, they left. And Lebanon, within Lebanon, the extreme Shia Hezbollah was developing there even before that, influenced by Iran before 1982, before Sovereign Shatila. Then Sovereign Shatila becomes this moment that people say, ah, this helped lead to Hezbollah. 18 years, Israel's there. Israel leaves in 2000. 2006, Israel then goes back for 30 or so days. And back and forth we go.

Well, you can't understand now if you don't understand what happened and the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah and Shia Islam and the regional debate there. So, like, I'm not interested. I don't have—I want to call— sorry to use this term, but this American arrogance to tell Israelis and Palestinians what their solution should be to solving this crisis. I don't have that arrogance, and I'm proud to not have that arrogance. quite significantly from teaching about it for a number of years and from going to Israel and to the West Bank and to seeing it live in action and seeing the mosaic that is there, and then helping Americans, helping Canadians understand the story. And I think, again, the result of it will be significantly greater understanding of each other, of the

history of how we got to this moment. And I think it will have a positive impact on how people perceive Israel and how people perceive Israelis and a plight for the Palestinian people. And maybe, maybe this is my one political, like, really focused political statement, is that the Palestinian leadership should have leaders that are going to be their next, their generation's Ben-Gurion, their generation's Yitzhak Rabin, their generation's Menachem Begin, which they haven't had. And they deserve to have that. And if they don't have that, then the Palestinian people are going to be in a really difficult, precarious position. And I'm hoping this next generation will bring it. I'm hoping people like Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib will bring it.

I'm hoping it. Let's see what happens. I've said some, especially about that last part, the one political statement, I think I've echoed that sentiment before, like a desire to see that kind of leadership on the Palestinian side. And one of the responses that I think is really common to that sentiment is, well, Israel has, you know, imprisoned or killed a lot of the more progressive and peaceful leaders that have popped up in the Palestinian world or the Arab world.

I'm interested how you think about that or talk about that or respond to that response in the context of, you know, Israeli history and what has and hasn't happened and, you know, how Israel might navigate whatever this next Palestinian movement is that comes to fruition. Yeah, I think you're talking about people like Marwan Barghouti, who's a Palestinian political leader who is in prison because he was a leader who helped make sure that the first and second intifada has happened. So maybe people like him. So I would say that's a good point, meaning interesting. Good point. Interesting. Marwan Bagudi would be an interesting example of

that. And then after that, I would say, I really want to ask a question. How long are we going to go through the future and blame others for our challenges? How long will that, how much longer is that going to take place? There's internal locus of control and external locus of control. If I'm Israeli, this is the way I'm thinking about this. If I'm Jewish, I'm saying to myself, there are a lot of things we could do better. And like, it's our job to hold our leaders accountable and make sure that they do better and bring in leadership that's going to make good things happen. Let's do that. And Israel's had leaders over the years who have done great things, leaders who have done not great things, leaders who have done both.

over the years who have done great things, leaders who have done not great things, leaders who have done both. But they didn't say, it's the rest of the world's fault, and I'm going to blame everyone, blame... That happened for a very long time, by the way, until the early Zionist movement basically said, we're not going to rely on the liberal West in order to forge our future. We're going to rely on ourselves, and we're going to hold ourselves accountable, and we're going to have what's called in the world of stoicism, really, an internal locus of control, and stop saying that I can't get things done because of others. Are others always at fault to some degree? Of course, of course. Do Israelis make things really, really problematic for Palestinians at times? Of course, of course. Is there a reason sometimes?

Of course as well. Yes. Yes. And Palestinians, develop your leaders. Stop telling the world that there's nothing we can do because of Israelis. Don't have a charter like Hamas's charter of 1987, 1988 that calls for the dismantling of the Jewish state. Don't do that. Don't allow yourselves to live under this tyrannical regime in Gaza.

Don't allow for that. Demonstrate to the world that you are willing to live side by side with Jews and Israelis. Demonstrate that. You got this. Demonstrate that. You got this. Demonstrate that. If you don't, if you don't, and if that sounded patronizing and ped productive view of the future. And I think that there are Palestinians that would, many Palestinians, the ones I'm mentioning, that would agree with me on this front and say, you know, we can do better. We really do better.

And I'm hoping this next generation of Palestinians will think of Israel as it will always exist. The Jewish state will always exist. If you think that the Jewish state will not exist at some point in time, then you're doing what Israelis call chai basaret. You're living in a fantasy land. And if you want to live in that fantasy land, then you're going to be the victims of your own dreams and your own nightmares. But if you don't want to live in a fantasy land, in a land in which there will be a Jewish state, it will always be there, then what are you going to do within that reality? And if there were more and more Palestinians that were marching and the march said something like, from the river to the sea, Palestinians and Israelis will live with dignity, then that would be amazing. And, you know, I will be at that march. I will be at that protest.

Together. Together. But we have to mean it. And until that point in time, until that recognition, that realization, you know, like people ask, why do the Palestinians, it's not the same thing as the civil rights issues in America. It's not the same thing as apartheid South Africa. And people like Micha Goodman, a great, brilliant thinker within Israel, explained the very simple reason why. And the very simple reason why it's not the same thing is that blacks in America wanted to be part of the United States in America. South African black people wanted to be part of South Africa. Palestinians don't want as a leadership, as a movement, to be part of South Africa. Palestinians don't want as a leadership, as a movement, to be part of Israel.

They want to be a part from Israel. They don't recognize the Jewish state's right to exist and continued right to exist. And the second they turn it into a civil rights movement, as opposed to a dismantling of Israel movement, well, then you know what? Israel's in trouble. But they don't, because they don't want the Jewish state to exist, broadly speaking. And they got to give that up

because the Jewish state exists. It will always exist. It will continue to exist. And Jewish people around the world will advocate for that. Not just Jewish people, Christian people, many Muslim people

who have like great relationships with Israel. The Abraham Accords exist for a reason, because there is a realization and recognition that the Jewish state is contributing something positive to this world, is increasing revenue in this world, is doing something for technology and for peace and for resources and for so many different areas that the world is going to benefit from. And that has always been one of the goals of Zionism. It's one of the reasons, for example, a lot of people don't know this, that Golda Meir was such an advocate for building up African countries because she said that the goal of Zionism is not merely to be another country on the map, but the goal of Zionism is to cultivate Jewish identity.

And part of Jewish identity is to help out the rest of the world and do good things for other oppressed people. And the irony has become that the mired Israel-Palestinian debate and conflict has led to a lack of seeing what the Jewish community has always been about, which is to be both prophets and guardians the Jewish community has always been about, which is to be both prophets and guardians, as many people have written about, which is to be guardians of the Jewish future and secure Jewish future, and to be prophets about how to improve the world,

to bring social justice to the world, to bring beauty to the world, to bring equality to the world. And I think that that's possible. I do think that that's possible. And it starts with an education where people see each other, learn from each other, hear each other's stories, look at each other's narratives, and say, we're both here. We're both here, and we will continue to be here. Let's accept that reality. And that's the future, if we want it to be. Noam Weissman, we're going to have to do it maybe like five or six or 10 more times because I have a million more questions and I know there's so much more to unpack. But

I really appreciate the time. If people want to keep up with your work and check out some of the education projects that you're working on, where's the best place for them to do it? Yeah, definitely check out if you want Israeli history to see, you know, the way I tell the story of all the moments, go to Unpacking Israeli History, check out the podcast. If you want to understand like an internal Jewish conversation, check out Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam. I think that you'll definitely appreciate that podcast. If you're a YouTube person, go to Unpacked and today Unpacked. We have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And I think that hopefully that'll give you a

sense of the story. We have a website, jewishimpact.com that you should check out and TikTok and Instagram, Jewish Impact, all these different places. But like, you know, if you want to get like, like more than a five minute soundbite, check out Impact History, learn the history there and engage in conversation with me. I don't think I'm right about everything, by the way. I'm subbed. I'll change my opinion if someone like, like shares it with me in a way a way that I could hear it and listen to it. I'm annoyingly not set in my ways sometimes. So engage in conversation with me in good faith, and I'm open. And I hope you are too. Noam Weissman, I appreciate the time. Thanks so much for coming on the show, and we'll do it again sometime. All right. Thanks so much for coming on the show and we'll do it again sometime.

All right. Thanks, Isaac.