Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about Zionism and how Trump and Biden are not the same.

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

On this week's episode: Isaac and Ari talk about Ari's previous job working for NATO, disagreements in editing, why Democrats think they're losing and Republicans think they're winning (they're both wrong), how Trump and Biden are not the same, an in-depth talk about Zionism, and as always, the Airing of Grievances.You can check out our latest YouTube video where we tried to build the most electable president ever here and our interview with Bill O’Reilly here.You can⁠ subscribe to Tangle by clicking here⁠ or drop something⁠ in our tip jar by clicking here.⁠ Today’s clickables: Ari worked for NATO (2:09), Disagreements in editing (7:03), Republicans and Democrats are confused (21:25), Trump and Biden are not the same (29:19), Defining Zionism (40:02), Is Zionism a colonialist movement? (61:18), Isaac and Ari talk personal views on Zionism (65:10), The Airing of Grievances (80:21)The response to our ⁠first-ever Tangle Live event⁠ was better than we could have imagined and we're excited to announce we're running it back on ⁠Wednesday, April 17th in New York City!⁠ We'll be gathering the Tangle community at The Loft at City Winery for a conversation between special guests about the 2024 election moderated by founder Isaac Saul with an audience Q&A afterwards. Choose Seated General Admission tickets or VIP Tickets that include a post show meet- and- greet, Tangle merch, and the best seats in the house. Tangle paid subscribers will get first dibs on tickets a day early with a password protected pre-sale today, Tuesday, February 6th (password for subscribers below). ⁠Grab your tickets⁠ fast as this show is sure to sell out!Buy your tickets⁠ 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.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take or our take in this case. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm your co-host, Ari Weitzman. And today we're going to be talking a bit about some stuff that happened in the Tangle editorial world this week, some disagreements. world this week. Some disagreements we had, some arguments we had in our editing process that I thought people might be a little bit interested in. We're going to talk about today's issue and the fact that Democrats, in my opinion, are much stronger than Republicans, but for some

reason nobody talks about that, and it's driving me insane. I don't really know why. And then we're going to chat a little bit about tomorrow's Friday edition. So those of you who are not paid subscribers to the Friday edition can get a little bit of that in the podcast, which is about how Donald Trump and Joe Biden are actually not the same, believe it or not, despite how many people talk about them. And then at the end of the show, we're going to do something Ari and I have been talking about for a little while, which is we're going to talk about Zionism. I think this is really important because the word Zionist

is getting thrown around so much recently. And there are many different definitions for it and many different interpretations and feelings about Zionism. So we're going to talk about that, which I am very excited and interested to do, because I actually don't really know how you feel about some of that stuff. So I'll be sort of learning about you on the fly for once, which is nice. I think you want to have something different

rather than you always being the person who has their opinions out there, having to defend it and get run through the ringer. Now maybe you can throw somebody else through the ringer. to defend it and get run through the ringer. Now maybe you can throw somebody else through the ringer. Yeah, I'll pass that on to you. There's some stuff I want to talk to you about. Speaking of getting to know you, I memory hold this somehow. I don't know. I mean, I guess there was just a period of my life when we were friends in 2011, when you were living in Rome and working for NATO. But I just don't remember that at all. And we wrote a lot about NATO this week. It came up, I mean, we did a whole edition about Trump's comments on NATO, but it's coming up because there's just so much foreign policy stuff going on. And you were there kind of? Did you really work there? You were like an intern there? Yeah, I really worked there you were like an intern i really worked there i

well i don't see how that's that different did you get paid to be there i did get paid i get i got paid by the big international conglomerate uh that we call nato but yeah i wanted to find what we mean what we mean by there when you say, did you work there? I didn't work at NATO HQ. I worked as a, this is in that phase of my life when I was, I just dropped out of a master's degree for library science at the time. I think as Isaac knows and as some people who know me know, I'm great at dropping out of grad degrees, grad programs. It's the thing I might be best at. Do you still have student debt? You must have an unbelievable amount of student debt. I don't. I pay it up. Wow. Because I never finished them. Well, they weren't that expensive. Master's degrees, if you don't finish them, aren't super expensive, for one.

That was the thing that took me the longest amount of time to pay off was the master's that I dropped out of at Pitt. I dropped out of a PhD fellowship from Rutgers that I was getting paid to attend as a PhD fellow. How many graduate degrees have you dropped out of? Three. Three. phd fellow so how many graduate degrees have you dropped out of three three the third was a master's a part-time master's in software engineering a couple years ago that i was doing through penn state's um world quote-unquote world international campus and that wasn't that expensive either since it was part-time that's pretty impressive so okay so So what did you actually do? Yeah. What did you actually do at

NATO? So I was a library intern at the NATO defense college in Rome, Italy, which is a kind of interesting place. A lot of people don't really think about how this happens. If you are a career military officer and you have a good career and you get promoted through the ranks in your nation's military, and if your military is a member of NATO, you may one day find yourself in your 40s or 50s promoted to a level of leadership that requires you to know about the world of international affairs and have no experience in that. Not really of any background about, say, if you're a military, like a new major in the German army, now you have to learn about Canada's international relations with East Asia. A completely different world to you. So what these militaries will do is they'll send these promoted personnel to the defense college in Rome, where they'll take a semester course

in something, sometimes two, and they'll just get a crash course on modern international affairs with NATO countries. And they'll have to write book reports. It's actually kind of, you'll have all these 50-year-old, very serious generals sort of regressing to college a little bit, needing to go to the library for help researching things. And they all sort of act really chummy and collegiate. It's kind of nice. And I got paid a sum of 500 euros a month, which was enough to pay for a room in an apartment at the time. And that was about it. It did cost me money. I didn't save any money from it.

Is the NATO library just full of books about foreign countries' relationships with each other, basically? Yeah, pretty much. And biographies on famous people, a lot of periodicals, tons of periodicals, and bound editions of periodicals from the 70s and 80s and earlier. That's actually how I started reading The Atlantic was when I was at NATO. I wasn't super informed on global affairs at the time. I was just out of college and had a lot of time to kill because I was mostly sitting in a library and sitting at a desk. So I started reading things that were interesting.

Interesting. And the Atlantic was reliable. Okay. Okay, so we actually, I felt like, had a pretty good lined up understanding of some of this stuff with Trump and NATO. You and I did not have much disagreement about that. little bit of a throw down in the comment section of our Google Doc, our shared Google Doc, where we're editing the daily newsletter, which there's always disagreement, I think, which is good. When it's really strong disagreement, we tend to argue it like right up until the bell at 1150 Eastern, we're still at each other, I think. And that happened this week. And you said you wanted to talk about it on the podcast,

which I think is a great idea because it's sort of a nice window into some of the editorial process that goes on. I wish Will was here because he disagreed pretty strongly with me in a way that I haven't really seen him disagree yet about, you know, like a position he had that he like, I don't want to say didn't let go, but was sort of like he didn't let go. basically that he felt really strongly that Robert Herr, the special counsel in the Biden investigation into his classified documents, crossed the line by sharing anything about his mental state or his memory. And I asked him to write something up so he could share it in

the newsletter, which we did. And I thought it was very well stated. I think it maybe moved my position a little bit. Again, it's unfair to talk about it without Will here, but I think he articulated a position that a lot of Tangle readers felt because I saw tons of emails come in, which is basically like there are legal experts all over TV just saying, There are legal experts all over TV just saying, effectively, you know, this is pretty much unprecedented. And the thing Will said that I thought really resonated with me was, think about like Robert Mueller's report into Russia. You know, he could have said all these things in the report about Trump's mental state or the way Donald Trump Jr. behaved when he was interviewed or, you know, just like he was unhinged or, you know, rambling or whatever,

and use that as like an opportunity to sort of disparage him as a candidate. But he didn't do that. He just talked specifically about what happened in the investigation, what evidence they found, et cetera. And Hur did a lot of that in this piece. And then he just kind of added this, he like shoehorned in this whole section about Biden's mental state. The way he did it was by saying that, you know, it was one reason why he didn't think he was able to prosecute him is that a jury would find him a pretty favorable witness. But it was still pretty jarring to see, I guess, in that sense. I don't know. Did you find Will's perspective there compelling? Yeah, I think Will had a good point. I think if you remember the tone of my participation in the debate, I was sort of on the side of,

we are arguing about a caveat right now. We are arguing about whether or not we should be criticizing Robert Herr more, whereas the story is the story now. It reminded me not as much of the Robert Mueller investigation, but it reminded me, in terms of the shape and tenor of what we're talking about, it reminded me more of James Comey's announcing that the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails was happening before the 2016 election between Clinton and Trump. Because a lot of the comments were, this is really political to do this 11 days before the election, which is when that news broke. And it's motivating, or it's motivated by the FBI, and it's going to affect the election. And that's what the conversation was about,

which is fair. I think that's similar to what Will's saying, is this is something that's unusual in this situation to do with her report. But it was already out of the bag. I think you kind of have to deal with things in order of importance, which is what is the subject of the thing that we're talking about now. And then we can also later or as a side talk about whether or not this should happen. or not this should happen. But it was telling to me that the arguments were, essentially, we have a report saying we're not going to prosecute Biden for possession of classified documents. And as an aside, a reason is that he seemed elderly and forgetful. And the counter to that was not, actually, Biden is not forgetful. Actually, Biden is not too elderly.

It was, how dare you say that? And that is what felt a little more like the story to me than the pushback that it was an unusual thing. But that's where I kind of came from. I don't know if you would shape, prioritize differently. There are sort of two minds for me. One was like, I could see the legal argument that this was inappropriate from like a prosecutor perspective, from a special counsel perspective.

This was something that maybe crossed the line and breached some sort of code or guideline that they're supposed to follow. And then there's like the journalism side of my brain where it's like, I'm just, yeah, tell me everything about how that interview went and what Biden's state of mind was and who was in the room and what was said. I mean, I want every detail like that. So I was happy to get the information. I don't think Robert Herr made this stuff up. Biden's team is not denied that any of those things happen. I mean, Biden said, of course, I remember when my son died. But he

didn't say, of course, I remembered in this interview when my son died. He just said, I know the day. You know, they didn't push back on any of the claims. I think Robert Herr could be acting with some political motivations. I'm not going to put that past anybody in this day and age, but he's somebody who Democrats and Republicans alike respect as a prosecutor. He's considered a pretty fair, straightforward, by-the-book type guy. So I definitely don't think he made any of this stuff up. So the fact that he didn't make any of this stuff up to me is the story. And like, that is a pretty important, relevant thing to discuss. So, you know, I think

even taking Will's argument, maybe if I were to rewrite the my take, I include more language and, you know, credence to the fact that this was probably inappropriate in some ways or maybe crossed some line, but I'm still glad it happened anyway because I'd rather get this information than not. You, on the other hand, had a terrible wrong opinion about Tucker Carlson that I can't even remember about. This is one of those things where I think everybody else is being infuriatingly wrong. said the main aspect of the story is that Tucker Carlson is realizing that Putin is justifying the war in Ukraine by saying Ukraine is something that is a territory or contains territories that Russia has a historical claim to, and it's Russia's right to claim those territories now, and he's exercising it. And you said that Carlson just learning about that is one of the key salient elements of this. I think that's accurate, right?

I'm not learning about it. I would say believing it and parroting it, telling his audience Vladimir Putin's response shocked us, he effectively made the case that Russia has a historical claim to Eastern Ukraine. And we had a good deal of discussion about whether or not this shock was genuine, because genuine because my read of it is I am so used to seeing Tucker Carlson's bemused, what, inquisitive face that I can't see that as anything other than an act. So if you said anything in an interview that I wanted to get people to watch, I could very easily say, what a shocking answer. And then if I were going to intro my video that maybe had a 30-minute really, really dry portion as a lead-in, and I wanted to convince people who are going to watch or listen to the interview to stick around, I might say,

it's shocking. You should really listen. I think you'll be shocked. And I have a really hard time believing that Tucker Carlson was really shocked by the thing that was kind of out there that Putin's been saying for two years. Maybe he's genuinely surprised at how genuine he thinks Putin is, but I think shock is, at best, a huge overstatement of his reaction. At best. I felt like, first of all, with the clickbait argument that he's just trying to get people to watch the interview, I mean, I'm sure he's promoting, you know? He's definitely doing something promotional at the top of the opening monologue, but he's also giving it away. I mean, he's telling them that he responded with this long historical answer. We thought it was a filibuster and then we determined it wasn't a filibuster.

And actually his response was shocking. It was that he believes there's this historical right Russia has to this portion of land. So I think if you were saying his answer shocked us, but it might take a little while for you to get there, that lends more credence to this sort of clickbait. Instead, he summarized what the answer was in one sentence and made it so if you didn't want to watch the first 30 minutes of the interview. You didn't actually have to watch the first 30 minutes of the interview. My read on it was more like Tucker Carlson is so heterodox now and is attempting to be so heterodox that the mainstream media's position about what Putin's motivations were just has to be wrong. And so maybe he was shocked that Putin said it to him in this interview and did it so explicitly. But then, you know, he went, I saw him, he's, you know, he's doing this

tour right now. And I watched another 30 minutes of him, of Tucker being interviewed at this conference in Dubai, where he's still sort of pressing the NATO button on a bunch of stuff, which I thought was kind of interesting that he like went back to it so quickly after, you know, I mean, he referenced the historical claim to Ukraine stuff as well, but he sort of fell back into some of his previous talking points. So maybe it's all a shtick and whatever. I just, I felt it was notable that to his audience in the first three minutes of this interview, he told them that Vladimir Putin believes

that he has a historical claim to Ukraine, because I do think that is the central thing of this conflict. And I think there's too many people obscuring that right now. And I think this is one of those areas where, frustratingly, I don't think our disagreements are... I think they can both be true at the same time. Like you just said, yeah, that could be a shtick. That's kind of my point, is that I think it is. But at the same time, him platforming this opinion that the rest of the mainstream media has been saying is Putin's point of view and his opinion is notable. That is a story. A lot of people were talking about, like it was like a little discussion thing that people would have of, do you think Russia could join? I think we're close. I think we're getting to this point where we could maybe include Russia. It would be a huge triumph for peace and prosperity. And I think we're sort of retroactively looking at NATO expansionism east in this lens of aggression.

And I don't think it was always seen that way. I mean, they talked about it in the interview, like Putin said, you know, claimed that he was open to it, but the US wouldn't do it and whatever, all these obstacles came up. I think any rational person should be pro-Russia in NATO. That would, yeah, that would be a triumph for world peace. I think that ship has sailed. For sure. That is an interesting aside, actually. I don't think enough is talked about in that context. Now, everything looks like aggression because of what Russia's done and because they're pinning NATO expansion as one of the reasons that they need to be aggressive and defend their territory. But yeah, it is crazy to think about a time where Russia was really being considered to join.

I mean, that is kind of hard to imagine now. We did agree on quite a bit today. We're recording this on Thursday. Yeah, I mean, we'll do this quick because people got this podcast today, this morning, and I know this is going to come out on Sunday. it's in the email we sent it's just really nuts to me the dynamics of the two parties right now and their general psyche like republicans have not won an election they haven't had a good consistent election run since 2016 basically and their chests are out and they're confident and they're arrogant. And the party is like, we're going to win. We can ride Trump. Biden's this bad. Democrats are this weak. Their policies are this unpopular. And they just keep losing over and over and over again. And then Democrats are winning every election and they're like

tails between their legs. They're always looking for bad signals. It's like they win a swing district that Republicans flipped two years ago. And they're all just talking about how there was a snowstorm and maybe it wasn't that meaningful. And it's like, I really don't... Simon Rosenberg, that Democratic strategist who we interviewed, who was the one guy who was right about the 2022 election, he's the only person I see who is, in my opinion, seeing things clearly, which is like, the Democratic Party is really, really strong right now, like it or hate it. And they, for whatever reason, don't feel that way. And Republicans don't feel that way. And I don't understand why. Do you think, I'm just trying to understand why too. Do you think it has to do with the amount

of control that each party's wing has on the message coming from the party. Like when you think about the right, you have the Freedom Caucus and the Matt Gaetz of the world, the Matt Gaetzes of the world, kind of scoring wins for their agendas. And on the left, I don't know if you could say the same for like the squad and the aocs of the world that their agendas are really driving the democratic party like that section of the party just feels like it's always pushing against the machine at the dnc whereas that similar section of the right feels like their hands on the wheel at the rnc and that could be shifting the way they see the world.

I don't know. What do you think? I think that plays a role. I think it's the figureheads of the party are the biggest factor. I think it's Trump versus Biden personality, persona. I mean, it's a very weird complex. It's unlike anything I've really observed in the political world. I mean, again, I know we talked about this today, but just to emphasize, Democrats have won basically every single competitive race since 2020. race since 2020, and they have survived a midterm season when they were supposed to get obliterated.

They win another special election last night. This November, they won every competitive race people were following. They're going into 2024 as the favorites. I don't care what the polls say. I don't care that Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump by three points in some college poll. He's the favorite because the democratic machine is so much better than the Republican machine. The dynamics of why people view it this way, I don't really understand. I think maybe it's the neuroticism of the media on the left that they're just like so scared of Trump and Republicans and it's all fear-based and like all the ways the different things could go wrong. I think that's part of it. I think one thing we don't talk about enough is the reality of why Democrats are winning all these races. And there's not nearly enough reporting on this,

but it's because they run better, like the party is better organized and they run better campaigns. They have this unbelievable machine churning out fundraising dollars, the ground game they have, the volunteers they have, the reach they have through the media,

through email blasts, like everything on the right is condensed around Trump. It's like he controls the RNC, he controls the email fundraising, he picks which people to endorse. And among Democrats, there's this like party infrastructure that's making really calculated choices about what candidates to elevate. And when they do that, they activate these people on the ground, like these grassroots organizations that are just crushing. And that's what happened in New York. They got like 70,000 people of the 90,000 people who voted early, they estimate were Democrats. And then this huge snowstorm hits and like 180,000 people vote in the

entire election and they win by 13,000 votes. And it's like, yeah, you could say, oh, there was a winter storm and maybe that reduced turnout and whatever. I think Swazi was going to win anyway, but they had this backup plan of they got the early vote out, they got mail-in votes, they were organized, and Republicans just don't have that. They just don't have that. They're not good at this. They used to be good at this, though, like in 2016, 2018. For sure. Yeah. And I think it changed post-traumatic. And in Florida and in Ohio. Yeah, it changed post-traumatic. I mean, more people are engaged

now because of the abortion issue, and more women are engaged, and more suburban women are engaged, which is, you know, very much changing the dynamics of a lot of these swing districts. But I just think the party infrastructure is so much better among Democrats. I don't think people talk about that enough. It's just like, they're just playing a different game, it feels like. Do you think that's part of why? I do think that's key, that I think Republicans were more engaged pre-Roe. I think this is such a salient issue. It has been for our entire lifetimes, probably, I think longer, honestly, that a lot of people turned out to protect the lives of unborn children on the right, while Roe v. Wade was essentially the law of the land, like you said, suburban women, a lot of liberal and moderate voters are engaged now that they are pushing back against that status quo being removed. I think you can make a really convincing argument that that is the salient driving point in a lot of our national elections for the past three or four decades. our national elections for the past three or four decades. Yeah. And maybe it's just that simple. I just, I think it's bizarre that this isn't discussed more and, uh, Democrats can't take a win. Right. Yeah. Democrats can't take a win. It's really interesting. Um, yeah. All right. Well, that's it. We've jumped through some of this stuff. I want to make sure we have plenty of time to chat about tomorrow's issue and

this Zionism question. Let's get into tomorrow's thing. We'll take a quick break, and then we're going to talk about why Trump and Biden aren't the same. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Okay, so speaking of things that are kind of pissing me off. That could be the title for the podcast, if you consider that. Yeah, no, I haven't considered that yet. This is like a, I don't mean to lean into the media grievances today, but this is another media grievance. I messaged you about this, and I told you in Will I wanted to write this piece, and we're going to publish it tomorrow as a Friday edition in the newsletter. a Friday edition in the newsletter. I've been observing this very bizarre thing that's happening now, which is that Democrats are insisting on basically saying that the worst parts of Biden

are actually not that different from Trump. And Republicans are insisting on saying that basically the worst parts of Trump are not that different from Biden. And I'm watching in real time as both parties flatten their candidates into the same people. So the two examples that I lead with in the story that we're going to publish tomorrow, that Donald Trump, a lot of Democrats are now running with this line that actually Donald Trump is old and he has, you know, he also might be senile and he also is saying things that are totally, you know, ridiculous and getting people confused. And the example that is in every single column, I mean, it's so funny when you read all these opinion pieces, you start to see the same arguments regurgitated over and over again by pundits is he mixed up Nikki Haley and

Nancy Pelosi, and he keeps referring to Biden as Obama. And, you know, and it's like, okay, so they found like these three examples, they're just going to hammer over and over again. Donald Trump, from an age perspective, is not equivalent to Joe Biden. I'm sorry. Democrats who are telling themselves this are diluting themselves. You go watch a Donald Trump rally, and then you watch Joe Biden at a press conference, and they are two completely different people. They are on a

different plane. Joe Biden comes out and walks up to the lectern and he's got this stiff gait. He's shuffling his feet. He looks really old. He looks tired. He can't hear certain questions. He gets lost in his train of thought regularly and just kind of like will be talking about something and then just sort of drift off and lose his place. I mean, he's doing stuff that makes him look and seem very old. Donald Trump is like energetic and vigorous and alert, and he's loud and rambunctious and he interacts with the crowd and he's, you can loathe him and hate him and all that stuff. And he says totally insane shit. I'm not going to pretend that he doesn't. And he does. He riffs and he gets people mixed up and all this stuff.

But he does that when he's just riding the Trump wave of him just spewing his nonsense. Biden will be reading from a prompter and get lost in his train of thought. And they're different. And the age thing is not going to be that big of an issue for Trump. It's going to be a huge issue for Biden. And this is my first example of like, these two people are not the same. I think your frame of reference matters here too. When you say that, if you just ignore Biden, just imagine a world where we're just looking at Trump and he's running against Obama, say. It would be so salient to talk about Trump's age. He would look old. We can compare Trump to where he was six, eight years ago, and he didn't look old. We can talk about him losing his train of

thought. But if you compare him to the candidate that's in the race now, then yeah, that comparison looks a little more stark. And to your point, Trump does get lost in his train of thought, but he kind of always did. He was always like a free stream of conscious speaker who would free associate while he's talking and you could lose some details, but that's not super new. And to your point, it's not the same as needing to take time to collect your thoughts before you give a response to something that's a straightforward answer. it. Like you watch Trump in an interview four years ago, and he's pretty much the exact same person. Eight years ago, go back to 2016, go back to the race with Hillary, go back eight years with Joe Biden and tell me that the difference is not stark. I mean, it's just a lie. It's just a lie. And it's okay. Like I think, I actually happen to agree with some of the sort of like center left pundits, like Mattie Iglesias, who were saying Democrats should drop

Biden out and let him do these press conferences every single day. He should have more exposure. He's good. He still has his moments. He's good in most, like in that press conference, when he called on Peter Doocy, the Fox News reporter, and was like, my memory is so bad, I forgot not to call on you. That was funny. That was a zinger. I was like, oh, yeah, sick. He zinged him. He nailed that press conference, and then he walked back to the podium.

Yeah. If he had left before he came back and mixed up the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico, it would have been fine. But like, you know, I, I think they should give him that exposure and let him do his thing. They choose not to, that's their fault. But you know, it's like the, like the Jon Stewart bit was perfect. It was just like, you know, you, if, if you're telling me that Biden is all of these things, like, it'd be sweet if you guys released some footage of that so we could all see it, because we don't see it. And that's a big problem for him. So whatever. I don't want to—

There's plenty of other areas where you could talk about false equivalency. Right, for sure. And so the other one that I lead with in the piece tomorrow, which I guess by the time you guys listen to this will be the piece on Friday a couple of days ago, is the classified documents stuff. Same thing. I mean, this all comes up in the same thing because Robert Herr was investigating the classified documents thing, and then it turned into this age thing. But again, now what Republicans are doing, what Trump supporters are doing, is they're trying to flatten this thing. Like, oh, Biden isn't, or Trump isn't actually that bad. He basically did exactly what Biden did. They're just, you know, throwing the book at him. Which, by the way, if you're simultaneously

saying that Biden committed a crime and mishandled classified documents, and also Trump did the same thing Biden did, that's not a great argument, just for the record. You sound stupid when you do that. But they're not the same. Fundamentally, Biden got investigated and he got cleared. That's what happened this week. The special counsel said they're not indicting him. They're not pressing charges. They didn't think they had a case. And it wasn't just because he was old. They said there was a huge lack of evidence that he willfully retained these documents or did anything that rose the level of criminality that they would typically prosecute. Trump has already been indicted. He's going to trial because there's so much evidence and because what he did is so bad. And then in the same report, Robert Herr like dumped all over Biden. He said, and this is a quote from the report,

most notably after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations, including his homes, sat for voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation. That's the same guy who used space in this report to say the most politically damaging thing about Biden that we've heard in the last six months. So this is not some partisan anti-Trump actor. He's just laying out plainly

that what Trump is accused of doing is way, way, way, way, way worse than what Biden is accused of doing. These two things are not the same. And in fact, the equivalency that you see, I don't know if you've seen this, I assume that you have, that you see a lot of people on the left, a draw isn't between Biden and Trump, but it's between Biden and Pence. Because Pence also was charged with the discovery of classified documents in his home, which he also turned in. And there's also an investigation into that also resulted in no charges being pressed because they found it didn't rest the level of criminality required to prosecute. That's a better equivalency. Yeah, and Pence did the same thing effectively that Biden did, which is he cooperated. did, which is he cooperated. And when you're the president or the vice president, you know,

there's an argument to be had here that what Biden did and what Pence did should be prosecuted, because if they were some like low level FBI agent, they would probably go to jail for what they did. I think that's actually a really important conversation to have, but it's irrelevant to the Trump-Biden comparison because we're comparing two president, vice president, high-ranking leaders who mishandled classified documents in some way. And what Trump did is very clearly way worse and way more criminal and way more deserving of this investigation. So I'm going to talk more about this tomorrow, but it's not just the classified documents and the age, it's immigration, it's foreign policy. It's like all this stuff. I'm seeing these pundits just say they're the same. Like it doesn't really matter, you know, from various motivations, either because they're pissed about what Biden's doing or they hate, you know, Trump or whatever it is. they're just putting them into this blob when they are still very, very different people and candidates with very different policy solutions.

And the difference between one or the other being president is actually quite significant, despite some people saying that it doesn't matter. Yep. There's a lot of other things we can get into about it. But like you said, by the time we are talking about this, the piece is out. It hasn't been finished yet, but there are a lot of other areas where false equivalencies are made between the two of them. And by now, you've probably heard it from us. Last week, we had on Daniel Benora on the show. And the moment that the show ended, one of the first things Ari said to me was, we need to talk about Zionism because this is a word that's getting thrown around a lot. Daniel used it a ton in our interview, sort of, you know, describing Zionist and Zionism as this kind of racist supremacist ideology. I see people, my friend groups all,

you know, talking about Zionism on Instagram, my Jewish friends supporting it, my, you know, more lefty progressive friends sort of talking about it and using it as a slur. And nobody ever defines it or talks about the different definitions that exist. And so, Ari said this, and I've been saying to him, I think we have to have this conversation at some point. So, I want to talk about Zionism. This is not to discuss what's happening in Gaza and Israel right now. I think it's just important to talk a little bit about our relationships with it. But this is a really, really critical thing because I hear so many people using this word in such vastly different ways, just like oceans apart in terms of how they talk about it. I don't know what makes the most sense.

Do you think we should go through these definitions to sort of illustrate the way different groups define it? what Zionism is, and on the other, there's the how, which is how Zionism is expressed and how people who call themselves Zionists pursue it or have pursued it. I think that'll be helpful as we talk about the definitions. And I've prepared three for us here. The first, I think, is the more neutral, the most neutral that I could find anyway, I think has all of the elements that most people agree upon as being Zionist. It comes from Encyclopedia Britannica. The definition is, quote, Zionism is the Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient home of the Jews, Hebrew, Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. Though Zionism originated in Eastern and Central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century,

it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine where one of the heirs of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion. Do you have any response to that? None, except that I think that's the best definition of Zionism, in my opinion, not to poison the well like I just did, but I think that's actually... 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.

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Some people see it as only one or the other or both. I'm wondering if you have a comment or a way that you like to think about Palestine as a term. a way that you like to think about Palestine as a term? I mean, I think when I think of Palestine, I think of the ancient region that Israel now occupies a large portion of and concurrently the potential state that could be created to sort of exist alongside or around Israel in a two-state solution. So, like, I would refer to the West Bank and Gaza as Palestinian territories because they're, you know, associated with the a reference to a not yet realized sovereign nation that is just like an idea right now state in Palestine, I think it's talking about Palestine as in the region, you know, from the river to the sea. That is like the biblical region and the 19th, 20th century region that Jews now occupy with their own national state.

Do you think it's useful to try to define what we mean by Israel historically right now, or should we move through these other definitions first? I don't, I mean, I don't, interestingly enough, the Israel historically part is a lot more complicated. I mean, maybe that isn't interesting, maybe that's obvious, but, you know, like, there's debate about where Jews were and what the land of Israel, quote unquote, in the Bible is referring to. I don't know how useful it would be. I mean, I think like some scholars and Jews and Zionists would insist on defining the land of Israel in certain parameters. I personally don't think it matters that much because the central debate is all about this land that was

occupied predominantly by Palestinians in the 19th and 20th century, and that is the central point of the conflict. So yeah, I don't find it that critical to have this discussion, but it should be noted at least that there is a lot of scholarly debate about what the quote-unquote land of Israel actually means and what the boundaries of that were in relationship to the Bible. Okay. So, let's move on then. The next definition that I have comes from the ADL, which we can talk a little bit about after I give this definition. ADL is the Anti-Defamation League. It's generally a pretty left-leaning organization that's against the defamation of Jews, primarily. And it is an umbrella for more anti-defamation against most people, but it's primarily grounded in Judaism. I think that's fair to say, right? Yeah, I think so. So, the definition from the ADL is, quote,

nation and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel. The vast majority of Jews around the world feel a connection or kinship with Israel, whether or not they explicitly identify as Zionists, and regardless of their opinions on the policies of the Israeli government. Now, before I get your feedback to that, things that stand out to me is one, we have our first description of how instead of what, which is this idea of self-determination in the, quote, ancestral homeland. Because I think that when you're around Jewish people talking about Zionism, self-determination comes up a lot as a term, an idea. And the second thing is this offering the ADL gives us that the vast majority of Jews, what their feelings are. And that's notably different. Yeah. Bizarre thing to have in a definition. I personally am really frustrated with the ADL

right now because they do so much conflating of Zionists and Jews. And I think this definition is a good attempt at that. And I think it's really dangerous and counterproductive that they do that. But yeah, I would also argue the premise. I mean, the vast majority of Jews around the world feel a connection or kinship with Israel. I think there's like as many Jews in New York as there are in Israel or something, you know, there's that ridiculous stat. I'm skeptical that the vast majority of Jews around

the world feel a connection or kinship to Israel, maybe a majority, but like 70%. I don't know if that's honestly true. I certainly, American Jews, I think there are many American Jews who feel connected to Judaism or their culture without feeling a strong connection to Israel. And I think that's something we're definitely going to talk about maybe now as we get to time as any about this new term that we need to define. Maybe we shouldn't because it's too big, which is Jewish or Jews, because we are both American Jews. Surprise to some listeners. Isaac Saul and Ari Weitzman.

But we are both pretty different with our relationship to that portion of our identity. The two things that stand out to me the most are that I am not religious. I don't consider myself a religious Jew. I consider myself more secularly Jewish. It's a struggle, I think, for people who are raised Jewish, raised in sort of religious households to think of themselves as Jewish when you're not religious. It is also a cultural idea. It's also weirdly somewhat ethnic, but it has a lot of different sides to it that I know different people identify with in different ways. The other area where I think we're different is in our relationship to Israel. When you're an American Jew, you have the offer to go on the birthright

trip, which is when an organization pays for you to go to Israel and experience what it's like there. And I never did that. I never wanted to do that. I actually always thought it was odd. I don't like doing things that people want me to do, naturally. So I was always sort of bent against it in that way. But I do remember as a kid at Passover Seders, it would always end with next year in Jerusalem was a thing that you're taught to feel as an American Jew. And I don't know that many secular Jews, probably not the majority, if that's a term you feel is acceptable, this term secular Jew. I don't know if many of them, like me, feel a connection to the state of Israel or the land of Israel.

Yeah, I think a lot of them don't. Israel? Yeah, I think a lot of them don't. Even some of the ones who went. I mean, I know a lot of Jews who went on trips like Birthright, and they left being radicalized as Palestinian activists. I've heard from people who that was their experience was going there and traveling through the Middle East and seeing parts of Israel made them feel like there was something wrong with how the country was operating. So, you know, I think it's, yeah, it's really complicated. I think the differences you point out between us are relevant and definitely there. Yeah, defining Jews is interesting. It's certainly a religious association. I think there's an ethnic element of it. I think it is because of the Jewish diaspora and the things that sort of tie down the religion, like the idea that you're Jewish if your mother's Jewish,

whether you want to be Jewish or not. There are these elements of the religious tradition that sort of create a kind of ethnic connection. And I certainly find that I can sense and see a cultural through line among Jews and not just like the food they eat and, you know, the songs they sing and things like that, but just like how they operate in the world and the certain kinds of humor and certain, you know, lifestyles and professions. And there's something there that I personally find quite easy to observe, which makes me think of it oftentimes more as an ethnicity. So yeah, I think it's a good call out to try and define it. Let's hit this last one before we move on.

So this last one comes from this project from Al Jazeera called Palestine Remix. They have a definition of terms associated with it. This is a project that Al Jazeera runs as a means of trying to support documentarian efforts in Palestine. Al Jazeera is Qatari or is it Emirati, Isaac? Do you know? It's Qatari-funded. Okay. It's probably the most well-known Middle Eastern English language news source in the world. And the definition they provide for Zionism is, quote, a colonial movement supporting the establishment by any

means necessary of a national state for Jews in historic Palestine. Zionism is a nationalist political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state and now supports the continuing existence of Israel as such a state. I think we have a lot of how in that definition to go with the what. And a couple things stand out to me. I think one is the mention of by any means necessary, and the other is the past tense portion of it, just called for a creation of a Jewish state, and that supports the continued existence, which I think is a fair parallel to draw. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's really illuminating seeing these. I think this is like a really good

exercise. I would say, you know, similar to what the ADL did by kind of injecting this, the vast majority of Jews around the world feel a connection, a kinship with Israel. There's also this injection here of sort of motive and intent that Jews will do or Zionists will do anything necessary to establish a state for Jews in historic Palestine by any means necessary, that I, again, like strongly disagree with that framing. I think there are millions of people who self-identify as Zionists who would not support the existence of a Jewish state if it meant, you know, nuking a country. Like, I don't, I don't, there are millions of Zionists right now who are outraged at the Israeli government and protesting the current war that we're watching, genocide,

ethnic cleansing, whatever you want to call it, in Gaza because they object to, you know, all the death and the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people. So, you know, they don't view that as a any-means-necessary project, those people who are sort of like turning their back on the Israeli government and the Israeli military right now. So, I think it's, you know So I think that's the most problematic part of this. I agree that it's a nationalist and political ideology. It is obviously calling for the creation of a Jewish state. Is it a colonial movement? That's something that I wish I'd highlighted.

God, yes. That's another one of those big terms. Yeah, I mean, yes, I think. got it that's another one of those big terms yeah i mean yes i think also not in the way other movements are colonial you know like i like it's not a one-to-one with the english coming to the united states or coming north North America and, you know, wiping out the Native Americans like that. To me, it's very much not one-to-one. I don't think like, you know, traditional colonialism does not have the same story that the success of the Zionist movement has. There are people, the Palestinian people, that were displaced by the Zionist movement, and that's very real. But it sort of just depends the lens that you look at it through. If you look at this from a 19th century or 20th century lens, you identify this 150, 200 year period, then yeah,

if you look at it through like a seven, 800,000 year period, then I think it's different. And if you zoom out beyond what was happening in Palestine and you consider not just the Holocaust, but Jews being run out of all the surrounding Middle Eastern countries, like Iran and Iraq, and, you know, then there's a different context to it too, you know? Like, a lot of colonial movements come from positions of strength where people are conquering land because they have the power to do so. I think Zionism succeeded in part because Jews were coming from a position of weakness and Zionists were coming from a position of weakness. And there was a great deal of sympathy throughout

the Western world for them. And so there was support for this idea of a Jewish state and this safe haven, even if it meant the conflict and displacement with the Palestinian people. So I think yes, it is a colonial movement. I think that is an incredibly loaded term that I don't think properly captures the nuances of it, I guess I would say. I also don't know. I struggle with the word colonial, honestly, and I'm sure we'll have people that are going to be willing to tell me where I'm wrong here. But like you said, with the traditional idea of colonialism, it implies a colony, it implies an empire that is holding a colony elsewhere. I think the Zionist movement came through the British colony of the British Mandate in Palestine, and that's where a lot of Jews moved to, or after being either displaced in the Middle East or after the Holocaust in Europe to pursue the Zionist movement. But Zionism wasn't one-to-one with colonialism at that time, and I struggle to see it as colonial in itself now because it's not a colony of any other country. I think having these terms of displacement and

these ideas of power structure are often hand-to-hand with colonialism, but the presence of those things don't imply colonialism themselves. I think they just mean that there's a lot of similar terrible effects of colonialism that can be present without quote-unquote the colony, especially post the British leaving. I think there's a lot we could talk about that we're going to have to decide not to wade into in terms of the UN resolutions of the Balfour Declaration, the British history and talking about what could have been done differently and what happened at that time. But I will again come back to saying that I don't know if I see Zionism itself as definitively colonial. That's something, maybe it's semantic, but that's we'll be right back after this quick commercial break i think like an interesting exercise is considering the zionist perspective

on this question to just show how easily like the lens can be changed and something, you know, I've talked about with some progressive or liberal friends about this is like, imagine for instance, Native Americans creating a really powerful political movement to take back like North Dakota or something. And in the process of doing that, they like revive an ancient language that had stopped being spoken. They create generations of people who have like this really strong connection to their indigenous culture. They collect political power. They advocate across the country for different states to support their reclamation to North Dakota. And then a political party who's in power, call it Democrats because this is the realistic one, is like, okay, we're going to decide that you guys get North Dakota and pass this thing for you, and all white North Dakotans need to leave, and we're going to restore this injustice or whatever.

and the white people or whatever, the people, the North Dakotans don't want to leave. So they fight and the indigenous people win and they take over North Dakota. And there's like a progressive lens that would celebrate that as like a revival of this indigenous people to their rightful land and the return of them. And there's this culture and this language that's all brought back. And there is a progressive lens to view that very positively. I don't mean to say that this hypothetical I'm creating is some perfect one-to-one

with Zionism and Jews in Israel, but it is the story that Zionists tell about the establishment of Israel. And it is like a similar framing of this indigenous people who was run off and has this 2,000-year-old history in this land and was oppressed and attacked and killed in mass slaughters all across the world, whether it's the Spanish Inquisition or the Holocaust or being run out of Arab nations in the Middle East, and now collected enough political power to regain some semblance of what used to be, that is the story that Zionist Jews tell. And while they're telling that story, there are people on the left who are like, this is a colonialist, racist, exceptionalist society or political ideology.

And that tension, I think, needs to be spoken about. And it's obviously the opposite lenses to look through this thing, but it's surprising to me that that Zionist lens doesn't get more of an ear from a lot of people who are really critical of Zionism. I just think it's, in so many ways, it's like this kind of manifestation of this sort of ideology and worldview about how things should be that a lot of progressives or lefties or whatever sort of run with. And again, I'm not saying this is how Zionism is. I'm just saying that is like a hypothetical comparison that I think a lot of Zionists would make to the movement to create Israel, basically. Would you consider yourself a Zionist? I think so, yeah. I mean, again, this is sort of why we're talking about this is,

I mean, if you'd asked me this six months ago, I would have said yes. you had asked me this six months ago, I would have said yes. I think watching the way the word has been redefined and used as a slur and, you know, sort of framed as like this inherently racist, supremacist, colonialist movement has sort of made me think like, A, you know, am I just brainwashed by virtue of being a Jew who grew up in, you know, a household that valued Israel and was brainwashed by my time living there and all this stuff? And B, did I like fundamentally misunderstand what Zionism is and have only viewed it through certain lenses? Personally, I don't think that's true. I mean, you know, one of the things that's interesting for me is like, I've been really engaged on this issue for a very long time. The last six months was not the first time I've thought about, you know, heard about

Palestinian perspectives. A lot of the people that, you know, folks have heard come on our podcast or that I've interviewed for Tangle or quoted in Tangle, they're people I've been talking to about this issue for 10 years. Daniel's not, he was new to me and he was on last week, but I've had a lot of Palestinian guests, interviewees, podcast guests, sources, whatever. I have Arab and Muslim friends, Palestinian friends. So there's this whole thing that's been happening for me for a long time. this iteration of the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu and what's happening in Gaza right now, I'm less interested than ever in sort of being associated with the Zionist movement. But the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and an ancient homeland of the Jews having Jews live there and a government that's represented by many Jews or Zionists or whatever, that definition of Zionism from the Encyclopedia

Britannica is one that I would lump myself in. I believe in the project of Israel. I don't think that this iteration of Israel is sustainable, healthy, good for Jews, makes us safer, or is just for Palestinians or Arabs or Arab Muslims in Israel. I don't think it has been for a long time. I think there's fundamentally friction, for sure, with how can a Jewish state exist and also create a just, fair, democratic society. And that gets into a whole other, I think, conversation and debate. I believe that it can exist. I don't love where the Zionist movement has gone. I don't love where Israel as a country has gone. But fundamentally, I think that a Jewish state on portions of this land is something that can be achievable in a way that's good and productive. And that I think, you know, the Jewish people and the historic Israeli people have earned.

I think they do have a historic claim to the land. I think they did survive and win wars in order to get that land and paid a huge price for it. And that's not how I want the world to solve problems. But, you know, until 75 years ago, that kind of was how the world solved problems. So, you know, all these things, you know, like the idea of undoing Israel now, of abolishing Israel, of right of return, all this stuff. I find that stuff really tricky and problematic, A, because it's never happened in any other country in the history of the world, and B, because Israel, despite all of its shortcomings, has also been a really, you know, the society they've created, I think, has been productive and has a lot of potential.

has been productive and has a lot of potential. And I think if they could address the injustices that exist and create some kind of functioning two-state solution or one-state solution, that they could be a shining beacon of democracy and equal rights and all the things that I think they claim to be and want to be in an area of the world that doesn't have enough of that. And so, you know, I support that vision. But yeah, how would you answer that question? The part that I struggle the most with was something that you said kind of right in the middle about this conundrum of having a state with a Jewish identity also be a democracy. So we talked about the idea of what it means to be Jewish and how it's a religion and an ethnicity and a culture. religion and an ethnicity and a culture. But even if it's all of those things, it's still an ethnicity, which means if you are making a state with a Jewish identity, you're definitively making an ethnostate. And it's hard to have that or have a state with an official religion be a democracy.

Those things are just fundamentally in conflict to me. And I have to, again, remind everybody that I've never been to Israel. I can't speak as an authority here. I'm not an authority on this. But it is something that I've had a hard time reconciling. If we compare our idea of what we think of as a modern democracy, being the United States, which is a pluralistic society, or any European democracy, or Singapore, Australia, what have you, you think of a country that doesn't have an ethnic identity. But a lot of nations in the world do have ethnic identities, and a lot of them are democracies. They just aren't the NATO Western democracies that you think of. And so, it's not like Israel is unique here in that regard. So, I couldn't say that I'd have a specific complaint about Israel that I

wouldn't have with other countries. I've had a hard time seeing myself as a Zionist. I don't think that I would say that I am, but I also have a hard time speaking against it in theory because maybe it's the same with you, what you said about the way that I was brought up. But when you're a Jew, like as a kid, you are taught about the Holocaust and you are taught indelibly that we are safe in the U.S. for now. And it's always with that connotation for now. And you know this, I had one of my cousins was shot in the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. I don't need to be told that Jews are under threat and that anti-Semitism is real. And I understand the comfort and the idea of having a state with

a Jewish identity. It feels in that part of my identity that is Jewish, that feels like an idea of safety. And I appreciate that. But I don't know. I don't know if it is. The creation of a Jewish state did not prevent the synagogue shooting. And I don't know if it's going to make things necessarily better. And I don't have a conclusion. I don't feel like I have a good place to come from. I just have confusion. Yeah. I mean, look, this is something that I've said on, I said this with Daniel last week and have talked about Entangle. I don't think the pursuit of the protection of Israel in this conflict is making Jews or Israelis safer. Like what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing right now and what the Israeli military is doing right now,

in my opinion, is very self-evidently not making Jews safer. It's creating a huge surging amount of support for Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Israeli soldiers are dying in battle. Jews all across the world are being targeted because they're seen as automatically being supportive of Israel, even though many aren't. And the entire region that all these Jews live in is being destabilized by live war. So, you know, yes, Hamas invited this. Israel's also giving Hamas everything they wanted. And so this is like a perfect example of how Israel and its existence and the pursuit of Israel is not making Jews safer. I don't think that means, you know, that Zionism is bad. Like, bad. Democracy is not bad because 100 years ago, Black people couldn't vote in America. And we had a racially segregated, awful society that existed in our country

in a democratic society. The truth was that we weren't fulfilling, you know, the promise of democracy. I don't think in a lot of ways, you know, Israel is fulfilling the promise of Zionism. So, you know, I view it through that lens in a lot of ways of like, the fact that Israel has policies that are unjust, the fact that the creation of Israel has created all this war doesn't mean that the pursuit of it is necessarily the problem. I think the how is a big problem. And their democracy goes south too, but I'll pick democracy every time. And I want to just point out one other thing, just really quick. I just looked this up while you were talking, but several nations, there's a lot of religious associations with countries that have democracies. The

countries that identify themselves as Christian states or have state churches, Argentina, Armenia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Denmark, Greenland, England, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Malta, Norway, Samoa, Serbia. I mean, it's possible to have this sort of identity, a Jewish state, a Christian state, a Muslim state, and also be accepting of other religions and give people equal rights and have a real democracy and not have you know, have partition land and non-contiguous territories and constant war. Like, it's possible. So, there are differences in all these countries, obviously, but I do sort of reject the idea that, like, there's one Jewish state in the entire world. There's dozens of Christian states.

There's dozens of Muslim states. And the Jews are being told like, actually, that's not cool. They're being told that because of how they're doing it and because of the things Israel's doing, which is totally legitimate. But like the idea that a Jewish state can't exist without being racist, nationalist, ethno-state, whatever, I think is a flawed idea that I don't totally buy into. So I just want to throw that out there. So you're using the framework of what versus how. That's very helpful, actually. Yeah. No, I think it is a really good framework.

I'd be really interested to bring on some some scholars and maybe this is something we could actually have daniel back on to talk about i mean i would love to hash this out with him and have this conversation in the context of you know religion and stuff because he is a theologian and um this was some of the stuff I was thinking when we were talking. I think we should start thinking about putting a wrap on this. Do you want to talk about the Wikipedia thing? This has been something that's been on your mind for a little while and I feel like you might want to get it off your chest. It's not necessarily a thing that it's not going to feel like getting off my chest, but it's something that I think is interesting because in this conflict as with, I think, any major event that happens, you see things start to shift in real time and ideas and terms

start to change in ways that if you're not really paying attention to the subtlety of, can be missed. And a tool I like to use is the Wikipedia or the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to look at how Wikipedia articles change over time. It's really easy to use, and it can be really interesting. In this case, looking at the Wikipedia article for Zionism, the biggest change between the article as it exists now and the article as it existed on October 6th before the attack from Hamas is that the following section, which I'll read, it's about 45 seconds to read, exists now and it did not exist then. about 45 seconds to read, exists now, and it did not exist then. The section is titled,

Role in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. In 1938, Ben-Gurion, who is the first prime minister of Israel, often credited as the founder of Israel, described the conflict with the Arabs as, quote, in its essence, a political one. Politically, we are the aggressors, and they, the Arabs, defend themselves. Israeli historian Benny Moore is widely regarded as an authority on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the leading authority on origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, affirms Ben-Gurion's description saying, quote, Ben-Gurion, of course, was right, unquote, and goes on to describe Zionism as a, quote, colonizing expansionist ideology and movement, whose ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist. End quote. Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as necessarily displacing and dispossessing

the Arab population. It goes on from there, but I do think it's one of those things where that what of Zionism being added to the definitional page on Wikipedia, or sorry, that how of Zionism being added to the definitional page of what is at least the thing worth considering, whichever side of the argument you're on. Speaking of Jews... That was very Jewish. I think we should get into our grievances. The airing of grievances. You gather your family around and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year. I'm curious if it's hard for you to find your grievances. It's really easy for me.

I mean, I'm very Jewish, as we're discussing right now. Complaining is one of our superpowers. Us Jews, that's a cultural through line. We love to bitch and moan about stuff. Yeah, I find it really easy to find my grief. Like, I'm like deciding which grievance I want to bring up in the podcast throughout the week. Is that your experience?

I have to look is my experience. I think I'm finding myself sort of philosophically at home in more stoic outlooks. And right now I'm reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, which are great. And he has this great line in it, which is exceptionally quotable, but I think very powerful, which is, if you don't believe you have been harmed, then you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been. And I think the way that we often think about things

that happen to us as injustices and hold on to them as things that need to be solved creates discomfort about discomfort. Whereas if you just let things go or accept them, you will feel less pain and feel more durable. And I think, not to say that I'm the perfect durable stoic, but just to say that that philosophy I think is comforting to me and something that I try to follow. So, looking for things to complain about isn't natural, but I do think I have some funny stories. I'm doing the opposite of that. I'm constantly looking for things to complain about. Yeah, if you become like a stoic, this section is going to get super boring. This will be a terrible bit on the podcast. Well, I also think that complaining about stuff can be helpful. So I'm not. Yeah. It's helpful for me. I felt so much better last

week after I got that off my chest about the shipping thing, all my packages being stolen. In fact, just today I had a conversation with my office. I'm in the shared office space. We're recording this and I'm going to start shipping all my stuff here. They accept packages here. So I found a solution to the problem. That wasn't a post office, even though you're being a smart ass. Yeah. Okay.

I'm going to go first. You should. All right. This is my grievance from the week. Okay. So when I first moved to Philadelphia, Phoebe and I were sort of trying to find our footing, our social footing, and restaurants we liked and all this stuff. And one of the things that's really interesting about Philly is there's this whole members only scene. So there are like many restaurants here and bars and like establishments that are members only clubs. And it's this just like, I'm sure this exists in New York, but it's just way less common.

And, you know, there are places like I would try to get a reservation and then they'd be like, oh, you have to be a member. And I was like, oh, whoa. So we got two memberships in the beginning. One is a dinner social club, quote unquote. It's called Messina and it's in South Philly and it's awesome. It was like 25 bucks for the year or something. It's just like a little bit of friction

to make a reservation there. Really great place, old Italian place that does like a five or six course dinner or whatever. The other spot, I'm not gonna name, but I will just say that it is a members-only club that had a totally different vibe. It was expensive. I'm not gonna say how much I paid,

but you can use your imagination. And it was sold as being like the most exclusive club in Philly, which totally piqued my interest. I saw it. I saw the branding. I looked at the website and I was like, this looks so cool.

It was movers and shakers. Phoebe and I had a friend who applied to become a member and got declined, which made me want to try even more. So I applied and I like said, you know, I sold like the media mogul thing. I run a media organization. That was like my approach. I like linked to my Twitter profile and said like, I have a public persona, whatever. And I'm from New York. I like linked to my Twitter profile and said like, I have a public persona, whatever. And I'm from New York. I'm new to Philly and I'm going to come here all the time and bring, you know, sources and whatever, have interesting dinners. And, and I got it, I got in and I was like so pumped about it. So like a few months into the membership,

I got an email from this members only club telling me that my membership that I was supposed to have to pay every year was now good for a lifetime membership, which was not a good sign. I was like, that's not good. Like they must, they must be basically bleeding members and they're worried about losing people because they would never do this otherwise. And like Phoebe and I went a few times and it was just like the first time we rent, there was like one other person there and they were like, oh, we're like a late night spot. Don't come here at like 7 or 8 PM for a drink. Like you should come after 10 or 11, whatever. So then we went again later in the night and it was, it was busier and it was cool. And the place is beautiful and it was really fun and whatever. It was, it was great. But again,

like super easy to get in, whatever. So last weekend, I'm having a bunch of friends visit and I call up the club or I email them and I say, hey, I have like 11 people who I want to bring to the club. Could we come in at like 11 o'clock on Saturday night or something? And on the membership, you're only allowed to bring in three extra people. So aside from Phoebe, I can only bring in two friends. That's like the members only rule. And I was just shooting in the dark.

Like, it'd be so fun to bring people. And they just write me back immediately. Like, yeah, we'd love to have you. And I was like, that's not good at all. Like I shouldn't be able to just just traipse in here with 11 people. Also, this means that this membership I'm paying for that's supposed to be so exclusive, I can only bring my wife and two other people. Now, any other member in the club can just roll in with 10 people. There was no like, oh, we have to talk to the manager and check it out.

Let me get back to you. We'd love to satisfy your request, but we're not really sure we have to see what the other res. It was like, I got an email back in five minutes. Like, yeah, we'd love to have you like, just give us the time. You know, I had like sent them the date or something. And I was like, this, this sucks. I'm paying an expensive pay for it. I paid for this membership. That's the whole point is it's the most exclusive thing. And I just roll in there like with whoever I want, whenever I want. And then we went and it was super fun. It was fine. It was like a great night, but like, you know, the place was like half empty and there were all these people in there and I was just sitting there thinking the whole time, like none of these people paid for this fucking membership. And I did. And I'm the schmuck who

like fell for this marketing thing this like exclusive club and now anybody can come into the club and this is awful so that's my one of those guys that's like I don't want them to forgive the loans because I had to pay and it was it meant more yeah I'm just pulling it's I can I ask a question though can you said you didn't want to say how much, but can you give me the number of digits? Four digits. Four digits. Okay. We're not talking five digits then. No, no. I'd be apoplectic. This wouldn't be a grievance. It'd be a lawsuit. You'd be busy pounding on the table of your local representative.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was outside. It was $1,000. It was the minimum four digits, which at the time I convinced myself was a reasonable thing to do. I'd never done anything like that. I've never done anything like that like I never paid for that membership of anywhere to go anywhere But I was like a thousand bucks Like i'm gonna go in there and see like the mayor, you know, like that's what I thought was gonna happen And instead it's like these 24 year old Fucking temple kids who are like hammered and came in with their buddy who got who has a membership Or maybe they don't even have a membership

They just knocked on the door and got in because apparently they let anybody in here. So, yeah, I was upset. Isn't that just the way, you know? It used to be for centuries, clubs wouldn't let Jews in. Now that we're getting let into clubs, they're like, yeah, whatever, anybody. Yeah, anybody can come. Let anyone in now. All right, what's your grievance?

So, Callie started doing something weird for us this week. You know who Callie is? You want to describe who Callie is? Callie is your dog. I think you should explain that to people. It's not a human. Well, I was going to give you the opportunity to, but sure, I'll do it. Callie is my dog.

Callie is Ari's dog that he has a weird relationship with. They're obsessed with each other. Has it a weird relationship? I love my dog. It's okay to love your dog. Love your animals. You love your dog more than anybody I know loves their dog, I think. And maybe that's...

How many people do you know have... We'll move on from this. Callie's my dog. She's a 10-year-old Australian Shepherd. She turns 10 next month. And yeah, we've got a good relationship. Yesterday, I come back from practice when I was coaching the local college Frisbee team. And when I got home, Katie, my wife, said to me, the first thing she said was,

look, Callie changed colors. And I was like, what do you mean? And I looked and she's like white scruff around her neck. It's most Australian shepherds do. It's like a, almost looks like a big scarf. And it looked like a little bluish, like the hue was blue. And I said, oh yeah, she does kind of have a different tint. And then for the rest of the night, acted deathly afraid of Katie, just completely avoidant. We'll look at Katie and start trembling, whole body trembling. And it was this huge riddle and problem for us. It's like, okay, now she's afraid of Katie. Why? And Katie recounted her whole night. She checked to see if she had anything on her that was emitting some noise because sometimes Callie decides that certain noises are no longer tolerable. Maybe Katie stepped in something when she walked Callie to the lake. So

she showered off. I took Callie on a big car ride to calm her down. As we're coming back in, she would not come back inside. She was just resisting so strongly, not wanting to go back home. And eventually we got in the door. She started kind of acting a little bit more normal, was okay, a little resistant towards seeing Katie, fell asleep okay, woke up the next day, seemed normal. And then again, just completely avoidant, just wouldn't go to Katie or do anything or interact with her. So we're trying to come up with ideas for why. The only thing that I saw from my end was Katie said, look, Callie's blue now. And then she started avoiding her. And I thought, well, that's a stupid thing.

So it's something that maybe it's the color itself. Maybe she rolled around in something and she's uncomfortable. And we thought maybe she rolled around like a pile of ash. A lot of people at the lake will have bonfires. And so there'll be old piles of ash on the ground. And Callie likes to roll around on the ground. So that made sense. So after a walk, I took her to the dog wash station in my apartment

because I live in Burlington, Vermont. It has a dog wash station. Don't give me that look. It's just fine. It's what happens up here. It's a really nice amenity. And we washed her off and cleaned her there's definitely some dirt and you could see it come off and she was immediately started to feel better she was acting better

so we thought okay that solves it we were worried at first like does katie have cancer is callig reacting to a smell of a disease oh my god afraid of it So we were really nervous for a full day. And it turned out that she just wanted a bath. And the way she was expressing that was by avoiding Katie. And that was the piece that we had the hardest time putting together. Why was it that she was physically uncomfortable? Because her back and the back of her neck was dirty. And she communicated that by being afraid of Katie. So Katie said, I know it's not this, but what if she heard me call her blue enough times and now is responding to being called blue with fear because she's associating it with being uncomfortable. So we tested that after she was

cleaned. I said, Callie, you're brown because that's her fur color. I said, Callie, you're brown because that's her fur color. I said, Callie, you're kind of reddish brown. Callie, you're white because some of your fur is white. And then I said, Callie, you're blue. And she turned around and slinked away from me. We did it again the next morning. I said, Callie, you're blue now. And she hid.

So now if we say the word blue, she responds by running away from us and hiding as if she's under threat, which is a bizarre new thing we have to do in our household is not use the name of the color blue because our dog decided that it's illegal. So that was fun. Wow. That is so bizarre. That was not the resolution I was expecting at all. that was not the resolution i was expecting at all same man it's just another one of those things we can't say bless you either in her house if somebody sneezes yes she made a game i guess where if somebody sneezes and you say bless you she runs up to you and barks at you and pokes you with her nose and then like sparking so it's gotten to the point where if somebody in her house sneezes she goes to the other person and looks at them like you're gonna say it you're gonna say it that's what i thought and walks away i can't wait to visit man i'm gonna turn your house into a torture chamber i'm just gonna be throwing blesses and blues out in every

direction that is sharing this information, that is one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard. Wow, great grievance. I think that was my favorite one of yours yet. That was a captivating story. I know it was a mystery. It was a riddle all tied up in the... Australian Shepherds are intensely smart. They're not really dogs. They're something different. Yeah. Thank you, C. So it's a companion worth having in your household and having a special relationship with. I still think the way you talk about her is weird, but that's all right. All right. We're going to end on that note. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Isaac gets the last word. Wow. Surprise. We'll be back here tomorrow, bright and early.

See you. Have a good one peace our podcast is written by me isaac saul and edited and engineered by john wall the script is edited by our managing editor ari weitzman will k Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. 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

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