The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Have the Palestinians Ever Wanted a State? Einat Wilf on the True Obstacles to Peace

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading thinker on Israel, Zionism, foreign policy and education. She was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010 to 2013, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Born and raised in Israel, Dr. Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company. Dr. Wilf has a BA from Harvard, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge and is the author of seven books that explore key issues in Israeli society.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, available wherever you get your podcasts, available on YouTube, available on demand on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Dan Natterman here, along with Noam Dorman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar, the ever-expanding Comedy Cellar. Perrielle Ashenbrand is here, writer, comedian, and what else do you do, Perrielle? I do a lot of things. And she's, I guess, really a co-host, I guess, at this point. I mean, you know. Producer, producer. But functioning as a co-host.

Then we have with us Eynat Wilf, who is a former member of the Knesset, a writer, a Jerusalemite. This show promises, even by our standards, to be particularly Jewish. So just be forewarned why we still call it the official podcast of The Comedy Cellar. That's another question. In any case, Noam, I assume you invited Anat for a particular reason.

Anat. Anat. Anat. Anat. And by the way, her pronouns are A-ta, La, O-ta, La, la, ata. I think that's all of them. At, at. Oh, sorry, at.

Welcome, Eynat. Thank you. All right. I've been, we met once before in, were we allowed to talk about it, actually? Not sure. At this thing where you're not supposed to talk about it. Fight club.

Fight club, yeah. But we didn't really get to know each it, actually? Not sure. This thing where you're not supposed to talk about it. Fight club. Fight club, yeah. But we didn't really get to know each other at all beyond saying hello. I don't know. You must be just petered out of talking about Israel on yet another podcast. And I know they ask you all the same questions. So what do you not get asked? What is the point that you want to make that you get a little frustrated

that is not out there often enough? I have my own ideas about what needs to be made. What do you... So let's go with your own ideas because I'm not sure. I respond to the questions I'm asked but let's go with what you feel should be asked. The point actually, I should take it asked. Well, the point, actually,

I should take it back a sense, because the point that I think is not out there enough is really not with regard to you. Actually, you do make this point. Which is that the entire issue comes down to the fact that in our opinion, I think

everybody at the table, the Palestinians do not want a state. And this is something that a very slight percentage of Americans understand. And if they did understand it, you would have to imagine that in some way the antipathy towards Israel would crumble because of the tremendous cognitive dissonance that it would cause in people. But they don't know it.

And I'd criticized for a long time our side, meaning the pro-Israel side, for harping on the atrocities and 10-7 and all that, which I felt was just, and I found some clips today, I'm going to play from our first podcast that we did about this in the first week, which doesn't convince anybody. So what is the nutshell case to prove to people who don't understand this that the Palestinians actually don't want a state?

So the precise description is that they do not want a state if that state has to live next to a Jewish state. Right. And that is really the key issue. When I speak about this issue, in many ways this is the issue that I've written about and spoken about it for the last many, many years, is my personal kind of process of realizing that, having grown up in the Israeli left with the assumption that what stands between us and peace is the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

When you were in the Knesset, you were on the left? Absolutely. I was a member of the Labour Party, even though I was already in the midst of the process, because the transformation really began when Ehud Barak, an Israeli prime minister of the Labor Party, of the left, was elected on a platform of making peace based on a two-state solution, establishing a Palestinian state, offered it only to have Arafat walk away, Clinton chasing him, he walks away. And walking away doesn't matter so much as much as that he followed it up with murderous butchery

and even more important, that there were no dissenting Palestinian voices who said, go back to the negotiating table. This is a great proposal. And I lived through that, and I lived through the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. I lived through another major round of negotiations with Ehud Olmert, an Israeli prime minister, with another Palestinian leader, Abu Mazen, to realize that, again, the pattern continues. Again and again and again, when given the opportunity to have a state of their own, no settlements, no occupation, capital in East Jerusalem, holy sites, they walk away, they follow it up with violence,

and there's no debate and no dissenting voices. So I begin to ask a simple question, what do the Palestinians want? Because it's clearly not all of those things. And I find that to their credit, they've always said. They've always said what they wanted. We just didn't listen, or when we listened, it sounded so preposterous that we assumed it's bluster. A tactic. Yeah, it's a negotiating position. But they said, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, in case you wonder free of what. In Arabic, they say, from water to water, Palestine will be Arab. And I agree with you. I think the great failure on the Israeli side is that on this issue, the Palestinians don't lie. They lie on

everything else from genocide to famine to open air prison. When one lie is revealed, they replace it with another. But on this issue, that their entire ideology and identity and worldview is tied up with the negation of a Jewish state in any part, they don't lie about that. And this goes back 100 years, before the Nakba, before... Absolutely. I always bring a quote when I give my full talk on this issue. It's a quote by Ernst Bevin,

the British foreign minister after World War II. If you know anything about Bevin, a friend to the Jewish people, he was not. And he goes to the British Parliament in February of 1947 to explain why Britain failed to fulfill the terms of the trust, the mandate that it received unanimously from the League of Nations to help the Jews achieve sovereignty. It did not fail the Arabs. It created Iraq and Jordan and with the French, Syria and Lebanon. But the Jews don't have a state, even though they were supposed to have one after the Ottoman Empire was kind of sliced up. So he explains the failure.

He says his majesty's government is faced with an irreconcilable conflict. Now, this is February 47. The reason I love this quote is that in February 47, you have no settlements, no occupation, no blockade of Gaza, no Bibi, there was such a time,

and most important, no displacement. You often hear the story that the conflict is because Israel, Zionism displaced local Arabs. In February of 1947, no one has been displaced. Everyone is in place. And already he defines the conflict as irreconcilable.

And he didn't make it up. He talked to decide. And he says, in the land, there are Jews and Arabs. No one, of course, is called a Palestinian at this point. And he says, each one of them has a top priority. He says, for the Jews, the top priority is to establish a sovereign Jewish state. Great. They want to exercise the principle of self-determination in their homeland.

And then he goes on to say, and for the Arabs, and these are not just general Arabs. Those are the Arabs that will later hijack the name Palestine to be known as Palestinians, he says, for the Arabs, the top priority is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. By definition, irreconcilable. He's basically saying this is a conflict between one group, the Jews, who want a state, a sovereign state, even if it's a rump, tiny state. And between another group, the Arabs, who don't want something for themselves, like another Arab state. As their top priority, they want the Jews to have zero. But let me ask you a question about that, because I was speaking to an Egyptian friend the other day, and he said that one of the reasons it was very hard for the Palestinians and the Arabs to accept Israel

was because of all the humiliations of losing in wars so often. But this is prior to humiliations as well. Exactly. One of the key ways that the conflict is misdescribed, mistold, is reversal of cause and effect. So people will tell you the conflict is because there are refugees, people were displaced. No, the Arabs went to a completely stupid, unnecessary war, right? They could have had an Arab state, another one, living next to a rump Jewish state. But no, true to their belief that the Jews should have nothing, they went to war. They failed.

People became refugees. It's the outcome. It's not the cause. But then they turn it into the cause. And you're seeing it happen all the time. People talk about settlements, checkpoints. Recently, I was in a conference, a Palestinian spoke about the checkpoints as if it's something that came out of like nowhere. Why are there checkpoints? Because literally minutes

after they could have had their own state in the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the negotiations of 2000, no occupation, no settlements, capital in East Jerusalem, holy sites, no. True to their view that the Jews should have nothing, they went to another wave of butchery, another war, and as a result, these are the suicide bombings, these basically blowing people up to bits for going to coffee in a hotel, then Israel ultimately was able to use checkpoints as one of the means to bring this wave of butchery to an end. But again, this is the outcome of their choice, not the cause. And what you're describing is exactly another example

of reversal of cause and effect. I'm sorry, you want to say something, Dan? Yeah, so there are those who say that the Jews at the time accepted this rump state as you characterize it,

but that the majority of the opinion of the Zionists at the time was that this was a starting point to eventually expand to all of Palestine. And they bring up some quotes of Ben-Gurion that says, well, this is how we'll start with this, and then eventually we'll take the rest of Palestine. So that, again, that is completely not true, by the way, because they find it very difficult to kind of, to try to hide that, again, they went to a completely unnecessary war.

You look at all the quotes, we also bring them in the book. The Zionist leadership in 1947 was very clear that if the Arabs were to say yes, and you have a lot of quotes on that, that if the Arabs were to say yes, this is going to be the Jewish state. Even though it was a rump state, it was only on lands that the Jews purchased and reclaimed from malaria and desert. They said if the Arabs will say yes to partition, this will be the Jewish state. End of story. It is the Arab continuous declaration

that this is unacceptable. They're going to go to war. The war will be one of annihilation. That the goal of the war is no Jewish state in any side, in any borders, then you have quotes that say the final borders will be clearly determined in war because the Arabs are going to war. But you have as many quotes and declarations

that if the Arabs will say yes to partition, then this is it. Is there a quote from Ben-Gurion which says we're being duplicitous? No, no, no, absolutely. Dan's describing one. What there is is a quote that says that if there is war, which the Arabs made clear that they were going to go to because any Jewish state is unacceptable. One of the quotes that I bring in the book is that

Weizmann and Abba Ibn speak to the head of the Arab League on the eve of partition. And they tell him, look, why don't you just say yes for partition? Let's skip the war and let's just have an Arab state living next to a Jewish state. And he says, no, you cannot expect us to do something which we consider shameful. And here it's actually important because your Egyptian friend, what he was hiding, is that what was shameful to the Arabs was... Don't say he was hiding, but go ahead, go ahead, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What he left out. Yeah, what he left out was what was shameful was the very existence of a sovereign Jewish state, the idea that Jews could be sovereign, could be equal, after 1400 years of always thinking of Jews as their inferiors, the shameful part was that Arabs would have to live next to Jews as equals rather than as inferiors. That's the situation.

Is this religiously based? What do you attribute? I describe it as sociologically, religiously, theologically, because by the 7th century, when the Arab and Islamic conquests take over the Levant in North Africa, the Jews have already been dispossessed and stateless for about six centuries. So when the Arabs and Muslims come on the scene scene the only kind of Jews that they know are Jews who have already been dispossessed stateless, miserable

and as far as they're concerned that's the natural order of things as I'm sure you know in their world Islam is the final prophecy and there is an expectation that the Jews I like to call it the book the people who got the first book right, but not the sequels. So they're not really pagans, they cannot be kind of converted at the

sword, but they're still not the equals of Arabs and Muslims, they're a little backward. So they are given an inferior status that has many humiliations tied to it that is called dhimmi, which basically is a kind of extended purgatory and limbo until they see the light of Islam. Now, for the Jews to reclaim their ancient homeland, to reclaim a modern state, to be sovereign, to be equal, is to almost reverse the era of history. Because the Jews in the Arab and Muslim mind are supposed to be headed out of history. They're supposed to be headed in the direction of the dustbin of history.

I see. And that is the result. That's the shame. And he tells them, you can't expect us not to fight you. If the trajectory of the Jews is on the up, that this is discrediting in some way of what they believe in. So, they can't have that.

Exactly. There's a lot being said on Twitter and elsewhere that Jews were free and equal citizens in the Arab world and that the Arabs were so good to the Jews and this is the thanks that they get. Yes, one of my favorite kind of stories. There's this, as you described, this beautiful mythology that says that Jews and Arabs or Jews and Muslims lived in harmony in the Arab world until Israel and Zionism came on the scene and really destroyed this beautiful harmony. And I love to describe it as the harmony, maybe one that you could have in Gone with the Wind, you know, as long as the Jews knew their place as lower, then you had harmony. And you can actually see that the waves of violence in the Arab world already going back centuries before they begin whenever the Jews raise their head initially it's under a kind of colonial ideas of emancipations then you have massive pogroms against the Jews because the Jews are assigned an inferior place.

If they dare challenge that, the response is almost instinctively violence. I sometimes describe it almost geometrically. Imagine that for 1400 years, you are being told that the proper social order, the just order, is to look at a certain group of people from this angle. And they tell you, this is the proper society, this is the good order. And suddenly, these people, they say, no, hello, I'm your equal, I'm going to look at you straight in the eyes. Your almost instinctive violent response, because geographically that means you're kind of, you're like, go down, go back to where you are. I sometimes like to give examples of that

status. Jews could not ride horses in the Arab world. Those were considered elements of dignity. They could not carry arms because they were supposedly at the protection of the Arab and Muslim rulers, sometimes more, sometimes less. Many humiliating ceremonies of paying extra taxes. If you look at the early Zionist images, one of the things you see are Jews riding horses and carrying arms. And that is a challenge to the very proper order of things. And the violence began already, especially against the Jews in the land of Israel, in the long before, but kind of in the modern context, in the 20s, in the 30s, the Arabs like to pretend themselves as having been betrayed by the Jews that they welcomed. The last thing they did was welcome the Jews. Essentially, the Arabs go to violent

kind of butcheries that look very much like October 7th, immediately when they understand that this time the Jews do not intend to play the role of the subservient? So what about their, people listening will be infuriated, what about their argument that, well, whatever you want to say about that, I'll grant you all that. But they started moving into our land and gobbling up our apartments and our homes and, you know, precluding us from living in our land. So, you know, even if we love them, that's not okay with us. What's the response to that? So I'll do two responses.

The first, it was not their land. This is, at the time, this is part of the Ottoman Empire. This essentially belongs to no one. There is a notion that in the wake... What's the land they've been living on, right? Some of it. Okay, so if you are making it more specific than here, that is absolutely easy to... Sorry, I'm trying to... So maybe you can use a leg there, but here, you can look for it here. This is a map of partition, the UN proposal in November 1947. And this is the map of incidents of malaria in the land in the early 20th century. As you see, it's pretty much one-to-one. The land is entirely malarial. It's very sparsely populated. It has no major centers. You know, in the entire land is malarial, but the dark blue is entirely uninhabitable land.

This is the land that the Jews purchase, typically from absentee landlords. And here they go on a remarkable project funded by the Joint Distribution Committee led by a Zionist doctor named Israel Kligler, and they eradicate malaria. And it is such a... I have a picture of my grandfather somewhere up to his knees in the mud.

And as you see, the lands that were allocated to the Jewish state in partition are basically lands reclaimed from malaria and desert. So no one's home was taken. No one was displaced by the way. The eradication of malaria, because it was for the entirety of the land, led to a population explosion among the Arabs in the land because their children were no longer dying. And in many ways, and true to behavior that became typical,

they used a population explosion to actually begin the libel that begins in the early 30s that the Jews are stealing their land. But there's no one stealing anything. It's just that they see a growing population. It's because their children are no longer dying, because malaria is being eradicated. And rather than deal with it, they go to what becomes a pattern for the last century. It's claimed that the Jews are stealing,

that the Jews are up to no good. But that's actually the remarkable story. Yeah, but I have to tell you that I wish in retrospect I had someone here who knew the other side of these arguments better than I do because people get frustrated that we don't push back more. But prior to October 7th, I knew less about this subject in general and I was more moved I assumed that the Nakba was a real thing

a blemish I thought time has to go on but since October 7th my opinion changed about the entire issue of the Nakba and this is the way I see it now I haven't heard anybody put it this way so you tell me if it's wrong. I've said it on the podcast before. Essentially, I see it as a pretext that this was 1947, which is, it's very important to understand, closer to the Holocaust than we are now to COVID.

And that was true a year and a half ago when I first made this argument. So you're really like literally in the shadow of the Holocaust. And the world at that time is killing civilians right and left. Every conflict is just taken. We dropped the bomb in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden. You know, this was, it's not like the world was being very careful or outraged at people killing civilians. And then there's a partition and the Arab armies attack. And similarly, I'm assuming to the problem today, you don't know who's an enemy and who's not. And every able-bodied male is a potential enemy. And some number of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians get pushed to say,

listen, we can't have you here. It's just too dangerous. You're swearing to our destruction. And they don't get pushed into a foreign land. They don't get killed like we were killing people. They get pushed over the line to their own new country. And it's like, no, I want to live in your country well i'm sorry but you your your people have attacked and we're pushing you over we're not slaughtering you and there were a few massacres small numbers of people relatively you know and we're so and this is the great nakba and a hundred years later or you know 80 something years later say no no we want to live not in our own country we want to go live in tel aviv we want want to live, you know, where that shopping mall is now in whatever city.

And this sounds to me very much like a pretext. This is, I mean, you could have to really, you'd have a very hard time working me up about any injustice that happened to my great-great-grandfather.

Some house somewhere. You don't know him. Your great-great-grandfather, they robbed that house You don't know him. Your great-great-grandfather. They robbed that house. Oh, I want that house. That's my house. It's like, this is a long time ago already. Am I wrong for this?

Well, I guess if you give me the counter argument is that, or the argument that I've heard made is that, well, the Jews were very attached to their homeland, that even after 1,600 years, they wanted to go back. So why do the Palestinians, why is it hard to believe that they want to go back to their villages? Well, I'll let her know. So I'll do it together. First, the general context,

and why you're right that this is really, really unique. The entire 20th century could be broadly described as the transition. I love what I think. And to the extent that the land, that there was improper behavior, it can be handled with money. This is what we normally help things. It's even less than that. Okay.

The entire 20th century can be simply described politically as the transition from empires to states. You begin the 20th century when much of the world is divided between empires. You end it when much of the world is divided between states. When lucky, they go through a process of self-determination.

They have some national, linguistic, ethnic, religious coherence. When unlucky, the receding empire drew some lines in the sand, threw a few ethnicities nations religions together told them your estate they typically have spent the year since there in civil war and dictatorships we have a few of those countries as our neighbors this is a bloody process it involves two world wars, numerous regional wars, civil wars.

Tens of millions of people become refugees in those wars. Ukrainians and Poles and Bulgarians and Hindus and Muslims and Greeks and Turks and Germans and Jews. And they all get the message. It's not up to them personally. They all get the message that says the following. It's tough. It's tragic, and you move on. And they move on. And they build a world of peace because it was understood

that once the new states, the new borders were established, this is it. There's no going back. Because if you were to go back, it would be just eternal war. So this is the message. One group is able to get an exemption from the message. The Arab refugees from the war refuse to move on and ultimately hijack the agency that was supposed to settle them in order to funnel money to ensure that they are never settled.

This is UNRWA. This is UNRWA, because they understand that if they are settled, it means that the Jewish state gets to live. And again, true to their consistent worldview for a century, they say that it's more important that there should be nothing, no state for the Jews, than that they have something for themselves. Again, to the issue of shame, in real terms, in real time, the Arab national thinker, Constantine Zureik, who coined the term the Nakba, the disaster, in real term, in 1948,

he describes it as following. Seven Arab armies attempt to subdue Zionism. And it's an interesting phrasing. Subdue Zionism really shows you that the idea is to like put the Jews back to a time when they didn't have these ideas that they are the equals of Arabs and Muslims. So seven Arab armies attempted to subdue Zionism and turned on their heels impotent. The Nakba in real time was the shameful failure to defeat the lowly Jews. And the entire text he writes is about how we can do better next time. So first of all, the message indeed to everyone else in the world was move on.

And the Arabs, and this is where it goes to your point, and they, again, like to pretend that it's just about some desire to be attached to a home. The issue was always in the service of what? The Jews sought self-determination for their people in their homeland, and there was no question that the Jews as a nation and a people and am are connected to one land and one land only. The Arabs, and once they began to call themselves Palestinians, have created this notion of perpetual refugeehood in return for the goal of no Jewish state. If their vision had been like the same of the Jews, they would have had their state multiple times over.

The proposal by President Clinton, by Ehud Barak, by Ehud Olmert, was establish your state, just like the Jews did theirs, and then you can have what every sovereign state does, an immigration and naturalization law, which you can call whichever name you want. Sorry. It's okay. And then you can, that's it. And then the Palestinians who live in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan can become citizens of Palestine.

And they rejected that again and again because it's not what they want. Can I give a good illustration? I'm telling people that it's clear that's not what they want. Can I give a good illustration? I'm telling people that it's clear that's not what they want. Yeah. When, you know, in business, you can make the analogy, when somebody wants a deal, you can tell that they want a deal and they make the deal, they find a way. But here's a nice illustration. The Saudis were very close to making a deal with Israel, right? Right before October 7th. They say this is one of the reasons Hamas may have done it.

So even to this day, throughout the quote-unquote genocide, but even with all the horrible images of poor Palestinian people dying, and I want to play a recording of what we spoke about a year and a half ago, and the worry about the Arab street, as it were, we still see the Saudis sniffing around to try to make this deal with Israel. It's very, very clear. All right, you know, yes, it's a genocide,

and yes, a lot of people were killed, but there's got to be some way we can still work around this to make a deal because it's in our interest to make a deal. That's what people look like when they think they want to make a deal, when it's in their interest to make a deal and they want to make a deal. The Palestinians behaved exactly the opposite. They were this close to a deal. The Arabs, the Israelis were clearly kind of on the back foot. Okay, how about this?

How about that? They were blinking at every impasse. And they found, what was the pretext? Oh, that Ariel Sharon, the opposition politician, takes a walk somewhere they don't like. That's it. Pissed off. How can you expect us to continue to negotiate? We're out of here. Obviously, they didn't want the deal. And again, is that wrong? No, it's not wrong. It's exactly right, because they keep saying that. They keep saying in one way or another that their goal is no Jewish state. And to their credit, they have been always consistent about that. Is there an example of a people who claim to be a people who want liberation, independence, self-determination, statehood, and who repeatedly have the opportunity to achieve that and repeatedly walk away from that? There's actually no such example. It makes no sense.

Can I ask a question? So I have an Israeli friend who has explained it like this, that they have been saying, the Palestinians have been saying for decades from the river to the sea, we want all the Jews dead. And then we hear it in the West. They don't always say they want all the Jews dead, but go ahead. To know their place, at the minimum. Excuse me. Let me rephrase that. Hamas has said very clearly that they want all the Jews dead. I'm not even sure about that, but go ahead.

Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm pretty sure about that. Well, I read that article in Haaretz. Maybe if we had an expert. They wanted cantons. Some Jews were going to be thrown out. Some Jews were going to be killed. I just don't like to exaggerate. That's all. Go ahead. What all the Palestinians, Hamas,

Fatah, PLO, everyone is very clear on is that a complete refusal for Jews to be sovereign in their own state. I'm going to anoint myself the Palestinian voice only because I think I'm relatively familiar with their arguments. She didn't get to ask her question. Okay, go ahead. I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that from the river to the sea meant to wipe out all of the Jews

but if all the Jews were to leave on boats somewhere else that's also an acceptable outcome excuse me wait one second let me ask my question

what Tal has explained numerous times is that we hear it in the West and as though a male is speaking to women and they are mansplaining, he says we hear that and we do something that he calls West-splaining. You called that? He got that from you.

Okay, so perfect. Can you speak to that? Like can you- The man stole it from her. Yeah, go ahead. Typical. Westplaining is the word I introduce in the book, The War of Return,

and it is indeed when Western diplomats, journalists, academics, explain away what Palestinians clearly and unpalatably say. So they will say, we don't want two states, we want one, from the river to the sea. The right of return, again, it's not a right, there's no return, but it's holy, it's sacred. They will say those things. And I've tested it in numerous opportunities. They never lie

if you keep asking the right questions. And people will say they're angry it's a negotiating tactic it's bluster uh i was recently in berlin speaking to a german diplomat he's like you have to give them a state i was like they don't want a state if it has to live next to a Jewish state. You can't want for them what they've never wanted for themselves. He's like, but you have to give them a state. I'm like, but it's insane because Israel really, really, really tried multiple times. So, why do we do that? First of all, I love that he got that from you and just stole it. Why do we do that? What is it about?

The West Plain part? This goes deep into some, you know, sometimes here I really have to go into some deeper issues. You know, there is an effort now to legislate, people told me in Canada, the notion of anti-Palestinian racism, APR they even call it. And I kind of wrote, not completely tongue in cheek, that there is anti-Palestinian racism. It's serious, it's dangerous for and take them at their word

and give them the respect of taking them at their word. But that is, of course, not what they're trying to legislate. But I see it again and again. You know, when there was this whitewashing kind of commission on UNRWA. I was asked to testify. I explained that the mandate of how to be neutral is virtually impossible

because UNRWA is a Palestinian organization for the Palestinian cause of no Jewish state in return. So there can never be neutral by definition. So the head of the commission kind of was not happy with what I said. So at one point I stopped and I said, okay, you know what? You clearly don't want to listen to me. So listen to what the Palestinians are saying. They're very clearly telling you. I showed her a sign from an entrance to a neighborhood next to Ramallah that is misnamed a refugee camp, but no one there is a

refugee by any international standard. It's not a camp. And it says the following, UNRWA services are our right until return. So first a sense of entitlement, you the West will pay for all the normal services of a functioning people, not until there's a two-state solution, not until the occupation ends, not until we have our own state, until return. And again, if anyone thought return is some nostalgia, October 7th is return.

You look at Arab, Palestinian, Arab texts in the 50s and 60s, the way they describe return, and again, very different from the Jewish notion, is this invading, violent triumph they describe will tear the hearts out of the Jewish bodies, will tear the fingernails from their limbs. It was always this violent triumph and desecration of the Jewish body in order to reverse the shame. And that's what they're saying. They're saying, you will pay for us, not until there's an acceptable political solution that West planers think is acceptable, but until we get what we want, which is no Jewish state.

But like you began the whole podcast, if people would have to acknowledge it, then either they will have to work harder, they will have to let go of their pet scapegoat. And you know what the head of the commission told me when I told her to listen to them? She said, they don't get to decide. And what I believe was one of the greatest acts of neocolonial anti-Palestinian racism, I was almost shocked to silence, and I kind of said, they kind of do. Stop West Plaining over them. It's condescension.

I want Dawood Nasser is here. Yes, hi, Dawood Nasser. I'm the designated Palestinian voice. So I would say to you, well, that's all fine and good. First of all, I don't want to tear the hearts out of Jews. I'm a peaceful Palestinian. But the Jews long for their homeland for so long. Well, my family is not from the West Bank or Gaza.

My family is from Haifa. And there may be no, under international law, there may or may not be a legal right of return, but don't you have sympathy for me who wants sympathy to return to our ancient land of Haifa, which is where my family is from? So, I'll say something before that about you being a Palestinian voice. Whenever I've put on my feed, for example, over the years, I would put the Bevan quote, and I would say, look, this is what the conflict is about. The Jews want a state, the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state. This is the conflict, this is all it's ever been. The Jews on my feed would respond, Jews from the US, from Israel, some of them would say, no, it's all about, you know, get rid of Bibi or get out of the West Bank or

it's this right-wing government. They would say all these things. The Arabs on my feed would say things like, of course, you're white, colonialists, get out. And so what I loved about this is that the Arabs were very clear that, yes, their opposition is to a Jewish state. They think it's justified. Everything they're saying is their justification. But they're not actually challenging that this is what the conflict is about. So, what the Arab voices that I speak to when I tell them, you know, you demand return, which again, the Jews did not demand. The Jews demanded and got what every nation had the right to, the right to self-determination. The Arabs do not ask for the right to self-determination. If the Arabs of the land asked for the right to self-determination. If the Arabs of the land asked for the right to

self-determination, we would have had an Arab state living next to a Jewish state in peace and prosperity. But for them, it was more important. And again, reversal of cause and effect. You're saying this person's saying, I just want to return. But the reason people were displaced is because the Arabs went to a completely unnecessary war to ensure that the Jews had nothing rather than ensure that they have something. So, again, the cause, the core issue has always been the complete, total Arab refusal for the Jews to have a state anywhere. And it's not a personal issue about this or that person. No one's happy with their territory. The U.S. is not happy. There's not a state in the world that thinks...

They want Greenland. Yeah. There's not a state in the world that thinks it has all the territory, it has a historical connection, legal claim to. There was this beautiful map of Europe where you see every country, how big it was at its height. Every country in Europe, including Luxembourg, was once seven times the size what it is today. No one's happy. But the idea that there is something unique about the Arabs having to live in one state and be a minority in a Jewish state, this is the source of humiliation, that they had to be Arabs living in a state where

Jews would be their equals and would have a sovereign state. The idea of return came after they failed to achieve the annihilation of the Jewish state, and they established it in the name of continuing the war against the Jewish state. It was never an innocent idea. I want to move up to the current day, but I would also answer, and there are two things quick to say about that. The first answer to your question would be, I take somebody at their word, let's say. But there is, unfortunately or fortunately, I believe, a moral obligation to the practical. So, yeah, maybe you're right.

Maybe you should, if there was justice in the world, you'd have your house in Haifa back. No, no, I'm sorry. I'm going to stop this here. That's not justice. That's why I started with tens of millions of people who became refugees. The message was tough, tragic, move on.

And you're right. The moral idea was that you accept that these are the borders and it's over. That was justice. But I'm stipulating for the sake of argument. Let's say that you're right. But you must know, Israel's not going anywhere. That's simply not going to happen.

And for a hundred years now, your children are dying and living in misery for this quixotic notion that somehow these Jews are going to up and leave. But they don't think it's quixotic. That's the problem. You know, some certainly do understand. By the way, there's an interesting layer that I got a glimpse of by speaking to a Palestinian

friend, which is that for the more reasonable segment of the population who would actually be ready to make peace with whatever that number, that slice of the population is, they look at the conflict and say, the second we have our own state, it's going to descend into a bloody civil war, a la Gaza, a la Syria, a la everywhere. And you know what? The status quo is much better than anything we can hold. As much as we don't like living on the West Bank, as much as there's humiliations, as much as they have a righteous,

I'm sure very righteous indignation, many of them, I believe, understand that the alternative is not Shangri-La. It's a descending into a bloodbath of a civil war that they don't want. And I think they understand that the status, I mean, I believe they have the highest standard of living of any, of all Arabs in any non-oil Arab state. But that's, again, that's not the argument they make. No, well, except that one Palestinian did actually make this point to me. He said, you know, if there's a Palestinian state,

I don't want to live there because they're just going to kill each other. So, yeah. So I think there is, I do, listen, you know much better than I do. So maybe what I'm saying is naive, but I do think there is social pressure for people who might have more reasonable thoughts

that we might consider more reasonable thoughts to not express them so openly among their peers and among their community. Because one thing is for sure, when they leave that geography and come to America, you don't find yourself dealing with a bunch of crazy people.

You know, the Arabs I know are reasonable and nice and they say, you know, they don't resemble, and this is part of the reason it's so hard to understand what's going on over there. They don't resemble

the people I'm seeing on TV in Gaza. And they are transplanted from the same trees. But you have to ask them the specific questions. When I started this process of really listening to Palestinians and what they say, I thought in the beginning, maybe I'm meeting with the wrong ones. I met with Palestinians who are called moderates, educated in the best British and American universities from the negotiating groups,

and they would say things like the Jews are not a people, you have no historical connection to the land, you invented it to steal from us. And I began to say, wow, what they think about the conflict, which is what are we doing here, and what I thought about the conflict, which is what are we doing here, and what I thought about the conflict, let's just share and divide, don't even meet. And I began a journey to say,

maybe I met the wrong Palestinians. Over 20 years of seeking, challenging, everyone who would tell me you're generalizing, you're exaggerating, there must be other voices, I would tell them, please, bring me a Palestinian who publicly and in their own voice, and you're right, in the Arab world, whatever is said privately is worthless. So they have to say things publicly because only when things are said publicly do you know that there's a chance of change.

So find me a Palestinian who in their own voice publicly, because as a result of West planning, I don't want anyone to tell me, oh, I know them, says my vision for peace is to live next to a Jewish state, not from the river to the sea. I understand this means that we are not refugees and there's no such thing as a right of return. Those are the two litmus tests that basically fail everyone except for. But there was like this guy, Nabil Amr, who was on the Palestinian delegation and he wrote this public letter to Arafat. Didn't we throw mud at President Clinton? Didn't we piss away everything that was offered to us?

He obviously was upset at the way Arafat handled it. Of course, he was a victim of a drive-by shooting. And he'll never make, I don't think he died. And he'll never make that mistake again. But even within that inner group of Arafat's people, obviously there were some people who kind of wished that he would have settled the matter. You don't think so? There's no evidence for that.

Oh, just that letter. I'll have to read it specifically. I'll send it to you i'll read the letter because again i've noticed over the years that we read things they will say things like even now there are in gaza demonstrations a lot of people immediately look at those demonstrations to say ah okay those are palestinians who want peace, and they project on them all the ideas. Now, I'm listening carefully. This creates an opening, a crack.

But we shouldn't kind of immediately West Plain it to begin, oh, those are people who believe our views, because they are not yet challenging the ideology in the name of which Hamas carried out October 7th that have come to call Palestinianism. Palestinianism has four core tenets. From the river to the sea, there will be no Jewish state, and we are therefore perpetual refugees of that. And when you want to find people who really want peace, then

they need to disavow all four elements. Anything less than that does not mean that there's no partner for peace yet. Do you have to go? I can stay. Okay. So, let's fast forward. Should we play a little bit of the... Where

should we start? Let me think about this. So let me just start by a personal experience. And I'm going to show you the video from October, must be October 11th, 2023. I am very concerned that... If you ever read any books on persuasion and about psychology, the associations of things with images and dark thoughts and violent illusions, this seeps into the brain in a way that overcomes rational thought. And we are seeing, I believe, it's very concerning to me,

a kind of Pavlovian reaction that is developing in people who wish it weren't happening to them, about everything to do with Jews and Israel. They're just hearing it and seeing it. Now it's on the right and it's on the left. And it's seeping in in a way which is almost dehumanizing and scares the shit out of me. I met with an old friend of mine. This guy is such a sweet, not Jewish, such a sweet guy.

You know how they measure pure water, parts per billion of arsenic? You can have certain number of parts of arsenic and still be considered pure water. This guy had zero parts per billion of anti-Semitism. I would vouch for him. And I'm sitting, we hadn't seen in a long time, we're hanging out, we're talking about politics a little bit.

He's all anti-Netanyahu, of course. That's a whole nother issue. I like to talk about that kind of derangement syndrome. And he was there with his daughter and his daughter is a sweet, she's 25, she's bright, she's sweet, she's got great vibes, you know. And I see her lips kind of tighten and I can see she's disengaged from the conversation and almost in a, you know, clear way communicating something. And I engaged her a little bit about, you know, what's going on. And, and this angry thing, I don't believe in an ethno state and, and, you know, all kinds of stuff about the Jews. And, you know, this is because of the British. And I said, well, actually,

my grandparents were all dirt poor on both sides and they came with nothing and they worked the land. It's nothing to do with the British. She said something about coming from Miami, whatever it is. Uninformed stuff. But what was interesting

is that although she was accusing me and my people of being the villains here. She was the one who was angry. She was the one who was revolted by me. I was not revolted by her, even though she was saying all these horrible things about me and my position. And I was just trying to correct the record.

And again, she's the sweetest girl in the world. No, no, no. me in my position and I was just you know trying to correct the record and when I saw and and again she's the sweetest girl in the world this is she's not no no no she's not she is a victim of as I've described of this kind of acid rain on the psychology of the world which is winning which is winning and I don't see how we as Jews are going to recover from this. And then, let me now, can you play those two videos? It's just a few minutes. Play the first one and the second one. You have to put your headphones on to hear.

This was October 11th, talking to Bret Stephens. Why is she a victim? Why is there no responsibility here to be an intelligent human being and do a little bit of research into things that you're spewing when you know nothing about it? I'll remind you of that next time you mouth off because that's not the way the world works yeah you put your head on that so this is that's the first one i said started 23 seconds so so this was this is four days after october 7th we're talking about with brett stevens what's gonna happen happen? And I put it on today. I said, oh, God, I hope I didn't say something stupid.

But, okay, play this. Did you? Yes. Did I? More importantly. Is this a George Floyd quote? No, no. I should have picked that.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Tiana. My brain, and I'm sure your brain as well. And since you're quite an expert on this stuff, let's talk about that and see how long it lasts. The conversation or the war? Both. I have this foreboding feeling that this is pass, that the Jews are at war now.

Not Israel, the Jews. That we're going to see very soon horrible images of horribly misfortunate people. And we need to really recognize how terrible this situation is, at the hands of the Israeli retaliation. And I feel like the support of the world is going to peel left fighting this kind of horrible battle to not be treated as permanent Afri the kind of matter-of-fact, carefree Jewish identity that I did. And as someone else once said, that maybe we're returning to the mean, regression to the mean on anti-Semitism in the world.

And I don't really see how that won't happen. Let's play this one. 9.3 million people. America is a country of 330 million people. That means roughly speaking, okay, that for every Israeli, there are 35 Americans. That means that when you had 1200 Israeli deaths, it's the equivalent of more than 10 9-11s, right? Most Americans watch 9-11 in horror, but very few Americans knew someone who had been killed on 9-11. Very, very few. Even those of us here in New York City, not many of us knew someone who had been in one of those

towers. Every Israeli has a next of kin or a cousin who is gone. And I hope Americans can grasp the scale of tragedy and horror that has hit Israel. The second thing I hope is that Americans remember that, you know, when you're hit like that, the best advice is not to tell the people, why don't you turn the other cheek? Because that's not how we reacted after Pearl Harbor. It's not how we reacted after 9-11. And if Israel were to react that way, it would send a signal that will ultimately hurt us here at home, that terrorists can get away with mass atrocities, and we will

restrain our response for fear of getting it wrong, overreacting, our own moral scruples. If you can't respond to something like that, you're basically saying to something that is barbaric, the gates are open, come right in, do what you will. So I don't think America will grasp it that way at all. I think people like, you know, if there's a close call on a sports event, people who root for one team see the refs call this way and people who root for the other team, they see the refs call the other way. It doesn't really matter what they see before their eyes. I think that people are going to process eventually once they see the retaliation,

they're going to process it through whatever their existing bias is of that conflict. That's what they're going to revert to. They're going to revert back to the way they already feel about that conflict and the way they already feel, as the polls show, especially in Democratic Party, is pro-Palestinian. So this is not a wake-up call. This is what I feel. I think it's—listen, let's get off this, because it is difficult even for me to contemplate what Israel has to do and how awful it's going to be for these people caught in the middle.

I mean, it's just, there's nothing more horrible you can think of, right? So we called it on the nose, right? You can take it down now, Pat. And we're right in the thick of this. And because of what you're, this is how it all comes together,

because of what you're describing, this is going to go on forever. Forever is a long time, but it's going to go on for my lifetime, your lifetime, probably my kids' lifetimes. And how do the Jewish people fight this wave of dehumanization of who they are in the face of what is going to be never-ending images of Palestinians being— and by the way, they are mistreated, right? You were a left-wing Knesset member. I'm sure on certain issues you were championing the Palestinians, right?

I'm very, very pessimistic, I guess, is all I'm just describing. Deep pessimism. I don't know if you feel that way. I would just say that I'm not so sure that the Jews as a group are being lumped in. You know, I think there is such a distinction between, like, that person that you were discussing, who has zero parts per million of anti-Semitism, but was talking about Israel. So it's not your, she didn't hold anything against you for being Jewish. Not until I spoke up for being Jewish, not until I didn't want to lose my self-respect.

And at that point, I was too much for her. Now, I'm sure I'll see her again and she'll be fine, but she's a nice person. But if you were Dave Smith and said all the things that they want to hear, they would say you're the greatest guy ever. Well, yes, of course. Right, which is why anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is the same thing.

Can we let our guest? Yes, I will. It's even worse and more dangerous, and it's not just a reversion to the mean. Told you. This thing has been building on for a very, very long time. I've been following it very closely. It's something that I've called the placard strategy,

because you see it in anti-Israel placards. The placards are brilliantly designed. They're simple equations. One side says Israel Zionism Star of David, an equation sign. And then the other side has a litany of words that the strategy has been so successful that everyone knows, right? Colonialism, imperialism, racism, apartheid, then it will escalate, ethnic cleansing, genocide, Nazism, Holocaust. And if you're in America in 2020, suddenly it will escalate ethnic cleansing, genocide, Nazism, Holocaust. And if you're in America in 2020, suddenly it will say white supremacy, and that gives you a clue to how this strategy works.

The strategy works not because of what Israel or the Jews have done at a particular moment. What the strategy does is it puts next to Israel Zionism, Starve David, words that are by now universally agreed to connote evil. So in 2020, white supremacy was the evil word in America. So bang, you put it next to Zionism, even though it's exactly the opposite, if you know anything.

Those words do not only not reflect reality, they're typically the inversion reality. But the way that the placard strategy works is through endless repetition, almost like a nursery rhyme, not just in placards, in media, social media, international institutions, academia. You will get a PhD in Zionism as colonialism. You would get tenured for Israel's committing apartheid long before October 7th. And doing it, laundering it through academia and international institutions has been crucial to the success of the strategy. It's been brought together historically by the Soviet Union as the respectable replacement for the discredited

anti-Semitism, obviously after World War II. This alliance of the Muslim world with the Soviet world is the one that laundered Zionism, its racism and all that through international institutions. I recently saw a lecture by someone who was a Soviet operative. He talked about how you create mass manipulation. He talked about repetition. He talked about clear visual images. And then he said something that I thought was key. He said prestige,

because prestige paralyzes judgment. Now, that's why it matters to capture a Harvard, a Columbia, to get the UN to pass something. Who knows that the UN General Assembly is one lousy country, one vote? Who knows that the augustly named UN Human Rights Commission is Qatar and Iran and a bunch of terrible countries sitting in judgment and singularly obsessed with Israel. Even though they shouldn't, the letters UN are still hallowed. So people hear the UN said that, a Harvard professor said that, and prestige. Human Rights Watch.

Yes, and prestige paralyzes judgment. Now, after October 7th, you said this was a few days after October 7th. There were no images yet. The only ones were from Israel. But already people were erupting in euphoria in Gaza, the West Bank, Palestinians and their collaborators around the world. And the euphoria was not because of what Israel did. The euphoria was because they saw that it was finally possible. And that, after October 7th, a new placard appeared.

And because I've been following the placards for 20 years, I know that they don't have to do with what Israel did or which government is at the moment. I was once in a panel. No one was dying at the time. And the Palestinians said, Israel's committing cultural genocide. That was many years ago. And I remember thinking, what is that even? But then I realized all that mattered

is that he wanted to say the word genocide next to Israel, because given anti-Israel speaker 30 seconds on television, they will say apartheid, colonialism, racism, genocide, regardless of what you asked. It's this constant drip, drip repetition. So after October 7th, a new placard appeared, and it said this, keep the world clean. And it had an image. Clean.

Clean. Yeah, I was going to say this. It's like dirty. Yeah. And it had an image of a Star of David or a flag of Israel in a trash bin. And I remember seeing that and thinking, that's it. We're more than reverting to the means. We're getting to the culmination. One of the biggest failures of Holocaust education is that people will know a lot about the Nazis and the death camps. How many people are able to crystallize the idea that everything the Nazis did was downstream of their belief of keep the world clean?

They believed that they were birthing utopia. And this is what we're saying. And this is why this young woman was so angry. Because you are standing between her and a better world. And when people see things like, you know, queers for Palestine, feminists for Palestine, Palestine is fighting climate change, Palestine is worker rights, a lot of people look at this and they're like, okay, they're morons, don't they know what Palestinian society is like? But they're not. There's a powerful logic there. And the logic is this, and this is why it There's a powerful logic there, and the logic

is this, and this is why it has nothing to do with what actually is happening. Whereas Israel's Zionism starved David have become associated through this repetitive process with every evil word, Palestinianism, as the erasure of the collective Jew has become associated with every good word, because this is utopia. I know it sounds weird, but Palestine has become the abstract marker of utopia. Why? Because in the world, utopias have historically been associated with the eradication of the collective Jew that stands between us and a better world. This is why what's

happening is so dangerous. And you talked about anti-Zionism and you tried to separate it, but you will notice that among Jews living in America, it's not everyone and I'm not generalizing, but you will see a phenomenon that Jews who are less susceptible to the belief that we love Jews, it's nothing against Jews, we're only against Zionism, we're only against what Israel is doing, the ones who are less susceptible to fall for that are Jews whose families lived in Iran, in the Arab world, in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe. because those are all the places that adopted anti-Zionism and Palestinianism as the respectable replacement for the discredited anti-Semitism. And they went through this process of, we love Jews, we have nothing against Jews.

You know, when Egypt and Iraq legislated, they legislated against Zionism. They said, you know, Iran continues to say that it loves Jews, but its Jews are in LA. So from Morocco to Afghanistan, in the 20 years when anti-Zionism became institutionalized and legislated in the Arab world, no Jews were left, the same in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Iran.

I once checked, in order to kind of free myself from this theoretical hair splitting as anti-Zionism, always anti-Semitism. I asked the practical question, what happens to Jews when anti-Zionism becomes institutionalized and legislated? And the process is always the same, the same playbook. Step one, the environment turns hostile to Jewish life. Even as they claim to love Jews, have nothing against Jews, they might be Jews themselves.

And if this is not fought against, ultimately no Jews are left. Under the good scenarios, they're simply elsewhere. So when I'm saying this is not just a reversion to the mean, this is building up to a very dangerous culmination. And what you're saying is correct, that the Jews are too small to fight it alone. At the end of today, the tide of this will only be turned if a plurality, not even a majority, but if a plurality of Americans, of Canadians, of French, of Brits, of Australians, let's say, and ultimately in the Arab and Muslim world where Jews live,

will say not here. We are not going to let this madness become institutionalized. But you know when a few months ago someone said a post-Trump scenario of an AOC brought to power by essentially the classic alliance of leftists, Marxists, and essentially Islamists of different or Palestinians. This is the, this is, you know, the alliance of leftists with Islamists is what brought down the Shah, and we know what happened to the leftists under there. It's always the same alliance. It always ends for the Jews in the same way. The scenario that this will be a post-Trump Democratic Party or even presidency doesn't sound so crazy anymore. And maybe post-trump republican

party as well you know who knows where it's going yes so i sort of say i mean this just so you know this girl is a sweet girl and and um she is simply she wants to do good she's simply a product of her environment and um yes it's you know it's difficult to untangle that, but I blame us. I blame my people for the way we handled the last year and a half. Let me just say, going back to what I said earlier, there are two key facts which could have been made that she had never even heard. one is this very clear case that ain't not as laid out as to you know with with evidence and bullet points legit bullet points not like you know half-assed uh tendentious ones of that the palestinians do not want peace you can't find a single palestinian who's on record saying i want peace number one number two and i asked her she did not even know that Jordan had attacked Israel and that's how the West Bank was lost.

Like this is such a key fact of the whole thing. And I could see when I told her that, it put her in a bad spot because all of a sudden, oh, you mean that land is occupied not because Israel took it, but because they were attacked? And then, yeah, and did you know that as soon as they got it, Israel offered to give it back and peace was rejected? Three no's. She'd never even heard of this stuff. But what she had heard was claims about baby's heads and rapes and this all happened and we feel all this.

This doesn't convince anybody. Does this girl... Does this girl... It doesn't. It's proof I've done it. Was this girl open to hearing the truth? Because I know that she's your friend's daughter and you want to keep saying

that she's very sweet and all of that, but to me, this is a dangerous person. Oh, come on. Take it easy now. No, no. I think she was open

to hearing the truth, yeah. I'm not convinced that these arguments will convince many... will convince some people. I think some people's where they see a relatively white looking population and a relatively dark looking population and and they see one is more powerful they're going to side with the less powerful may i just challenge that

for a moment but i don't think skin tone you many years ago, a group of students came to Israel, and one of them asked, what does colorism have to do with the conflict? And I told her, you know what? Be my guest. Leave the room right now. Go to the streets. Tell me if you can tell Jews and Arabs in the Levant apart,

based on skin tone, good luck. We are fighting over a lot of things. First and foremost, that the Jews want to be sovereign in their state, and they want us not to be. But skin tone has to have zero to do with that, and to claim that this is what people are seeing, they're not. Well, I think it is what they're seeing. I think it's what a lot of people are seeing. And I think you're quite right that what they're seeing is an optical illusion. But they're seeing it nonetheless.

And I think that it's going to be hard to convince a lot of people with arguments about Jordan. This argument exasperates me. I've run into this argument in many different forms and many different manifestations and many different issues in my life where I'm trying to make a point and someone says, why are you getting

hung up on that arithmetic of a real point? It's not going to matter anyway because blah, blah, blah. I said, well, maybe it will and maybe it won't. But if we don't make the actual point that matters, then what the fuck are we doing? I mean, like, yeah, maybe you're right. But the thing is, we're not even making the fundamental points. We have the math on our side, but we're not showing our work. Let's show

the fucking arguments, at least. We have a, we've had a lot of people doing a lot of shows, and forgive me, we have, uh, we have an Israeli here. You might recognize her from the Larry Davis show. Come on, come on. You re-spar.

But don't. You can say whatever you want on Dan's mic as long as you don't contradict me. Do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm? You know who she is. Hi, everybody. We don't have a boom mic. Two things. As someone who was also in Israel on October 7th, trying to combat the losing battle of trying

to win arguments, which I think it is a losing battle. And I'm wondering your thoughts on this idea of our resistance to be victims and trying to battle this binary of oppressor and oppressed is not something that comes easy to us. So the minute after October 7th, we're going to get them. We're going to, whoever touches us, we're going to destroy, right? It's that post-Holocaust trauma of Israel will not be defeated. And I don't know to what detriment, and again, it could be losing the battle because no matter what we do, we're going to be in the wrong. And there's that binary and they don't see us as Semites. We're invaders and using Holocaust as a justification for Israel is problematic. But the point is, my question is,

I think Israel is doing a horrible job of PR because these arguments do become arithmetic and intellectual. And less, it's impossible for an Israeli, and I understand this, to express compassion for the deaths in Gaza. Because when your children are fighting the war in Gaza, you know what I mean, and you're losing children, it seems like a betrayal. And so you don't see a lot of the devastation in Gaza on the news in Israel, and you don't see Israelis talking. I heard hostage mothers expressing sympathy for the Gaza. Yes, but it's not in the space enough of that compassion. So we're just, the oppressor thing is only being further, because what do they see? They see the apocalyptic images of Gaza.

It doesn't matter that they attacked us. All the other stuff doesn't matter. They see the body bags, and they see, you know what I mean? And so how I'm finding it a losing battle to combat and even, you know, brilliant people like Douglass and historians and all that, I don't know what to do to battle the intersectionality, to battle this idea of

the oppressor, you know what I mean? And the lack of no one cares about the hostage, we only care about... How do we battle that without... And I think that's been a frustrating... Where's your question, Iris? No, I'm asking her opinion on our role and Israel's role, and not that I have hopes in, you know, but in expressing compassion in order to win the hearts and minds of certain people. So I wanted to kind of hear your thoughts on that. Okay. So first, to what both of you have said we are battling something that is much greater, but even within that,

I do agree with you that we are, sometimes I call it criminally delinquent, in not making the absolute singular point that the conflict has only ever been one about the complete Arab and especially Palestinianist rejection of the idea that the Jews can be equal, free, and sovereign in even one square inch of their historical homeland. When you said, for example, they don't want peace, again, you have to be very careful in the wording. I remember many years ago, I gave this talk to a delegation of students who came to Israel. One of them was the head for Students for Justice in Palestine. By the way, when they say justice, we West Plain it to like two states. Their justice means you correct the injustice of the very existence of a Jewish state

but at the end of my talk she said you just said Palestinians don't want peace which is not what I said I was very precise I said there has never been in the last century any Arab Palestinian vision of peace where there's a Jewish state anywhere to be found. But she heard me say they don't want peace. She said, that's not true. I want peace. Now, 99.99% of people would stop the discussion here and would be like, ha, Einat is wrong. Look, the head of Students for Justice in Palestine, American University, wants peace.

But I've come to develop a musical ear. So I asked her, what does peace look like? And what happened was fascinating. She kept saying, but you do this and you do that. And it's long before October 7th. And I kept pushing her. Is there a Jewish state anywhere? And she couldn't. As I said, why are we criminally delinquent? Because on this issue, they do not lie. You sometimes have to ask more precise questions. You have to push. You have to see through the general words, coexistence, peace.

When they said two states, we assume one of the two was the Jewish state. In retrospect, crazy. They meant an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza and another Arab state to replace the Jewish state of Israel through this mechanism of refugee return, where no one's a refugee and there's no right of return. But if you push them, they are our best allies in making it clear that they are the ones

who are rejecting the Jews in any size. So, if anything, the problem is not the oppressor oppressed. The problem is the complete reversal of it. The problem is that at the core of the conflict is the Arab view that the Jews should be inferior. They are driven mad by the fact that we are equal. Even the expectation that we will show compassion to our butchers is one that exists in exactly zero other situations and conflicts. So that's not what would buy us any sympathy or anything of the sort. We are already placed under bizarre expectations and demands, and when we don't meet them, we are somehow in contravention of what is obvious, but it's not obvious except for us. So I oscillate between absolutely, we have to make the case, this is the case. As I said, to the credit of Arabs and Palestinians, they never lie on this.

They never counter that this is what they're about. They will justify it, but they will never counter that this is what it's about. So I oscillate, this is what I devote my life to, thinking that it is worthwhile. I'm here. I'm spending time with you. I think it's worthwhile to keep making the case. I do see people going through an aha moment because, again, because the— When they hear you speak. Or read, because then they see that because the Palestinianists and the Arabs always follow through on this, then they suddenly see it. So, I oscillate between thinking, keep going, keep talking, keep writing, make the point, it's important, there's an audience, people want to listen.

And between thinking, oh my my god we're outnumbered what chance we have we are surrounded by billions of people this has gone global you know people say when it was in europe it was in europe now it's gone global what chance do we have we're a small people, and if a plurality of Americans, Canadians, Australians, Brits, French, will not rise up to say, enough. We have one chance. Moshiach.

That's my thing, but yeah, I do have days when I'm a little low. I'll even take Jesus at this point, but somebody's got to fix this problem. Two quick things, and we've got to go. So one thing is that there's many reasons what I'm about to say is not a perfect analogy. However, it shouldn't be lost that what didn't seem possible, that so many people would turn against Ukraine,

this was very much the product of arguments being made, bullshit arguments, but arguments that if they were true would be persuasive about how Russia was provoked and how Ukraine did this and Ukraine, and people are like, oh, maybe Ukraine isn't the good guy in this war. And even though Ukraine was the underdog and attacked and all this stuff, a lot of people are like, yeah, I think Ukraine has a lot to answer for here. They did a better job making arguments for Ukraine than we've done making actual logical arguments for Israel. Number one. Number two, just when you say Benny Morris,

who really, correct me if I'm wrong, was the guy who really brought the world to the world's attention, the fact that 700,000 Palestinians had been chased out or fled or whatever happened, however you want to divide up that 700,000 of refugees. He actually, in that book, The Palestinian Refugee Crisis, whatever it's called, he actually made a point very similar to what you just made. He said that many of them left because they thought to themselves, well, if they do to us what we would do to them in the same situation, we better get the hell out of here. This idea of being compassionate to the people that they couldn't imagine. We better get the hell out of here. So even Benny Morris said

that at the time when he was 100%, I'd say, in the pro- Palestinian camp. No, he was merely a historian. Not merely. Benny Morris was a historian, but all he wanted to do was show what actually happened. The first part, they fled. The second part, it was war. When I say 100% pro-Palestinian camp, I should say I meant he was 100% in the camp that felt that they would want to make peace. Later on, I believe he's come to the conclusion that much of this that he didn't realize came from what you described earlier, Islam

and deep cultural attitudes about Jews. He didn't really write about those things early on. And then after the peace process fell apart, it was almost, he didn't ever change his factual reporting, but I think he changed his view of it all, like what was going on under the hood.

Yes. So that's what I meant. All right, listen, you are our best guest ever on the Arab-Israeli conflict. We say that to all the girls. I have one other little question, which is, what Americans get their news from who are are really into this, is her arts. Now, we know, as Americans, that every media outlet has its own derangement syndrome. Even among the 75% of Republicans who know that Donald Trump is tough to take sometimes, but who voted for him, they know not to trust the stuff about Donald Trump on NPR or MSNBC. But somehow, we don't learn that lesson and apply it to foreign media. And I'm pretty sure

Haaretz is 100% as deranged about Netanyahu, even if Netanyahu deserves to be roundly criticized as Trump does, then I'm sure never give him the benefit of the doubt. They're never honest. They always exaggerate about him. What is going on in the heads of Haaretz, and how do we get around that as Americans who want to learn about what's really going on there without the derangement syndrome that must be going on in Israeli politics just as it goes on in American politics? I will just simply recommend the people that I think worth reading. So in addition to following me and my

colleague, Dr. Eddie Schwartz and the book, The War of Return, which I will say, since this has been the comment number one on the book, people have said to us, if you're going to read one book to understand the essence of the conflict, this is it. And even though people are not happy with the recommendations of the book, there's no right of return, they're not refugees, defund UNRWA, dismantle it, the book has been unassailable on facts. And that's something that, you know... But what about day-to-day news?

So day-to-day news, I would add, Khabib Redagor is wonderful. Dr. Shanim Moore, he writes very well. He wrote a lot of great pieces really explaining kind of one that talked about ecstasy and

amnesia, the way that the Arabs go to war with an annihilationist ecstasy, and when they fail in their annihilationist goals, what sets in is amnesia. So he comments regularly and then they become these blameless victims and he writes regularly.

So Khabib and Shani and Adi are some of my favorite writers. And I would just recommend that people curate Natasha Hausdorff, she writes beautifully and comments always on anything international law. Of course, Douglas Murray. So you can curate people. And I think that's what a lot of people do today. The Free Press obviously writes well.

Mati Friedman, anything and everything that Mati Friedman writes. These are the people, I'm sure there's more, but I would just highly recommend for people to just have a good feed of curated, smart, knowledgeable writers. Are there Palestinians

that you would recommend? Oh yes, thank you for asking, yes. The four that really have a true vision of peace next to a Jewish state rather than on top of it, highly recommend John Aziz, Ahmad Defuad Khatib, he now started something called Realign for Palestine, saying, you know, we need to have a practical view, no return, no refugees living next to a Jewish state, and to try to bring Palestinian

voices who will finally say that and to get support for them. He's one of the greatest critics of how the West uses Palestinianism for its own masks. So John, Ahmad, there's Muhammad Dajani, but he doesn't really write regularly, but he really tries to promote also a vision of Islam that is very moderate. There are Arab voices like Luwail Sharif, who really brings the vision of what I've come to call Arab Zionism. So an Arab and Islamic Middle East that flips the frame from foreign white European settler colonialists, which literally just means get out, to Abraham, to saying as Arabs and Muslims,

we know that the Jews have an ancient connection to the land. Israel is merely the modern expression of that. A proud Arab and a proud Muslim needs to embrace the right of the Jewish state to self-determination. I call myself these days a long-term peace activist, and if it sounds that I speak harshly, it's because I believe that we have not benefited from cutting corners, from not talking about what the conflict is about, from trying to express compassion rather than say, this is what it's really about. So these days, the vision I

say, I promote is I say, look, Palestinianism as a destructive ideology has to die so that Jews and Arabs can finally live in a new ideology that is Arab Zionism, which is merely the Arab and Muslim embrace of the Jews as equals, as sovereign, as free in their ancient homeland. We can divide the land, we can live side by side, but that can only happen once this insane, deranged idea that the Jews are not home and they need to be somehow ejected from the land. When that ideology dies, we can finally move forward.

What about Yosef Haddad? Do you know him? Oh, Yosef Haddad, of course. He's fabulous, but he's an Israeli and I was trying to speak. But he's a great Arab-Israeli voice who speaks about kind of Arabs in Israel and he's a great Arab-Israeli voice who speaks about kind of Arabs in Israel. And he's a wonderful voice.

Definitely recommend following him about what goes on in Israel regularly. Yes. Thank you. All right. Emails to podcast at comedyseller.com. Thank you very much, Einat. Good night, everybody.