The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Is "Zionism for Everyone?” Tablet Mag Editor Alana Newhouse Makes the Case

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Tablet Magazine, Alana Newhouse. They discuss her recent piece, "Zionism is for Everyone."  Available on Tablet:  https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/zionism-for-everyone

This is a Mill. Hey, hey, this is live from the table, the official podcast at the world-famous comedy seller. Available wherever you get your podcasts. And in particular on YouTube, this is Dan Natterman, comedy-seller comedian. We have with us, Noam Dwarman, the owner of the comedy seller, with locations in New York and Las Vegas.

Periel Ashen Brand joins us. And with us in studio, Alana Newhouse, editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, and an author of a new piece in tablet, Zionism for everyone. Peace for everyone. No, Zionism for everyone. This show promises to be more Jewish than usual,

and that sang a lot. Alana Newhouse, welcome to our podcast. Or welcome back, I should say, because you've been here before. No, she's never been on the show before. Yes, she has. She has? Let's fight about it for a little while.

Yes. I don't remember when you were. Years ago. Years ago. Oh, my God. Downstairs. I guess because I've seen you from time to time. She was mine then.

She was just mine then. That was before she was yours too. I think wasn't now I'm there? Yeah, he was there. Yeah, okay. Anyway, it was so memorable. So Zionism for everyone. Okay, no.

So I'm trying to find my notes here. Well, welcome again. How many years ago was it? It was before COVID because we were still downstairs. All right. What do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about the war? Do you want to talk about my love

affair with Darrell Cooper, which you were the first one to tell me, he's a Nazi norm when I was, you know, fooled by him? Or do you want to talk about your article first? Which one? Because, you know, people sign off as a podcast progresses, you know, you don't have as many people at the end as you have in the beginning. So what do you want to make sure everybody hears you talk about? I want to talk about the piece. Okay, go ahead. And I, and if you want to talk about the war, we can, but I really want to talk about the piece because it's the most, it's meant to be a deeply optimistic piece. I feel the optimism in it.

So if you're going to take one thing away from the conversation. Let me set it up for you. I saw that Neil Ferguson. Yeah. No slouch tweeted out that this was probably the essay of the year. And that alone should have put you on Cloud 9 because I've never seen him praise really anything like that. and although people may disagree with him on some things, the guy is quite formidable,

has quite a scorecard of being right about things. And if I were you, I would have just been like pinching myself. So, okay, so give us an overview of the piece. So the piece makes an argument that there's a reason why at a moment when we're living in a time of massive flux, changes that are largely driven by technology that are changing every single aspect of human life on the entire globe.

We are genetically engineering diseases out that have been a scourge on humanity for as long as we have historical record. We are rewilding. We are bringing back extinct animals. We're literally changing the whole line. Well, we haven't brought back extinct animals, yeah. Right.

So we've reanimated something close, to what an extinct animal was. And you don't mean Jews, right? Messianic Jews. No, I don't. The point is, is we are, the level of transformation that is happening in human life is at a scale that I think

we almost can't even comprehend. At just this moment, when these changes are radically affecting every single aspect of every single human being's life on the planet, it feels like suddenly, certainly the entire West is having a conversation and a fight about, of all things, Zionism. And when I started to think about it and see the juxtaposition of that debate inside of those big changes, at first I was like, this is insane. It's truly like the mark of lunacy. except then all of a sudden the more I thought about it, I realized that it made complete sense.

And that in fact, the reason why we were having that argument is because of a larger trend that happened over, call it 70 years, basically we're talking post-World War II, where in the West we have lost the purchase on national identity and sovereignty. and we don't even understand what it means to be part of a distinctive population anymore. And all of the countries in Europe and the U.S. have these, they're going through crises of not knowing who they are and not knowing who their society is for. What is it, when we think about America, we say like, is America, is it white? Is it Christian? Is it creedal? Is it because we are free?

What actually ties this country together? And that same debate is happening in almost every Western country and not just Western ones. And when I started to think about that, I realized that in fact there was something inside of Zionism, which allowed me to think about it as a technology. And if you think about it that way, I can roughly map out Zionism as a code. And it includes three parts. The first part is particularism. You are part of some group that is different from other groups. Not better.

There's no value judgment yet. Just different. And you can recognize it. You recognize other people in your group. And other people can recognize you as part of that group. Some more recognizable than others, I can I say. It's basically just tribal. It's how humans organize themselves.

You add on to that, ruthless pragmatism, just like working hard. and forward-thinking idealism, the idea that actually there's a good future ahead of us and we can build something. If you map those three things together, that's a technology that you can call Zionist that could be applied, frankly, to, I don't know, to any country around the world. So I tried to map out how particularly the West got to where we're at now and why I think that conceiving of themselves inside of the frame of that technology could be useful. Do you see the timing of this obsession with Zionism and the timing of these technological changes that you talked about? Is that fortuitous or you see them linked? Is there a causal link?

I think they're linked. And I think that in my thinking, I am very affected by the economy and by technology. I think that they influence what we see as political. There is an, what technology did was, if you think about the internet, right? The internet runs on speed and on ease. One click. We need to get you to actually, everything has to be super easy. In order for things to be easy, you have to take out the friction. So what's friction?

Friction is difference. So, in fact, Amazon, France looks exactly like Amazon Germany looks exactly like Amazon Italy. They have to map next to each other. The Internet prizes taking away difference, taking away distinction. And so countries did that. They took away their distinction and took away their differences, which I don't even, I'm not saying that this was like some sort of conspiracy that people actually understood what they were doing. But looking back, you can see that that is what they did. And as a result, England doesn't know

what England is anymore. France doesn't know what France is. What is Frenchness? So let me ask you this. So when I listened to you, I was thinking exactly that. The French who maybe don't want to say it out loud, they want to stay French and Le Pen and whatever. and the same in England. And they're at a disadvantage because they're so wrapped in their, you know, liberalism and progressive, that it's declaced to say it out loud,

but then they're turning more and more to the right. And in Germany, they have to... Israel has a kind of advantage here because the catalyst of... Zionism was catalyzed by the fact that we need our own country, otherwise they're going to kill us. And it's not...

of us not to think that. And even to this day in Israel, they can say, we can't be one state because everybody knows they're sworn to our destruction. It will break down into a civil war. They will slaughter us, just like Sunni slaughtered Shiites. And I believe that's true. And I believe that is a royal flush argument, if you're being honest. But what would the Jews say if the people they're sharing this land with were peaceful people who know. nobody could even suspect would have any bad intentions to the Jews. They just want to live side by side with equal rights. Then how would we defend Zionism?

I don't know, because we haven't gotten there. Right. But more importantly, I don't see Zionism as, I definitely don't see Zionism as solely defensive in the way that you just described it. It is not only that we have our state so that people don't kill us, it's that we have estates so that we can lead rich, engaged lives in the land that we come from, in a land that was inspirational for us, for me. It doesn't have to be for you.

For other people, it can be... You live in America, after all, and you live a rich, engaged life. So to me, where you, I don't, I think that a healthy understanding of your life and of ethnos, which is sort of a term that I take from the, this, and the instance. assault of an ethno state. You should not live your life only defensively. Defense is a huge part of life. If you cannot defend yourself and the people you love and the people that you live around, you are not going to survive. But that can't be it. We're not, we don't just start the clock. We're born and we just start to, we stave off death for the rest of our lives. We're here to

make stuff. We're here to have pleasure. We're here to have good lives. So I don't see my life as an American or Israeli's lives as solely about defense. So how would the French or the English turn Zionism for everyone into an actionable plan for how they run their country now? Like, what would they do with the immigrants they have? What would you, what do you suggest for them? So I think that every country, part of what I love about the idea of this is that it now, the clock starts now in having the discussion. And every single country, the great thing, the great thing when you think about it this way is every country really is distinct

and different. I created a definition of culture that is so thin, meaning the way that I describe culture is as a mixing board. There's race, there's religion, there's music, food, there's tons of things. This was an excellent part of your

article, by the way, because you brought out, it's coming back to me, because you made a really good point, I hadn't heard anybody actually laid out that what bonds is not a cookie cutter. So, Some cultures are bonded by this. Some cultures are bonded by that. Some cultures are bonded by that.

But we can all recognize that the bond is real and has to be respected. Correct. So for example, one thing that you can see is in Japan, race is a central part of their ethnos. They recognize each other. This was my favorite line. Right. Paria liked the line about my husband, who lived in Tokyo, and I asked him how the Japanese related to him when he would speak Japanese.

and he said like a talking dog. Because then they were just like, because he doesn't look Japanese, right? So race is important in Japan. It doesn't mean that people who are not, who don't look Japanese, can't be part of their culture. Just they have a majority culture

and that majority culture has race as a central component. Race is not a component in Israel. Right? Vastly misunderstood. Race actually is almost irrelevant in Israel. But people, There is a genetic component because most Jews, there's convert, but most Jews are Jews because

their mother was Jewish. Actually, not true at all. And in fact, not one of our matriarchs was Jewish, nor was the head of the Davidic line. Correct. I've been telling my, because my kids, you know, are half not Jewish, and they were converted by some, you know, magic words as babies. But this is true. Magic words are important.

Yeah, it matters to me. And Moses had a baby with a non-Jewish woman. And Moses himself has questionable lineage. Wait, wait, wait, and God commanded that Moses have the baby circumcised, even though the mother was not you. So go ahead, go ahead. But. But, let her finish later. Okay.

No, no, no. I still see Jews as, well, maybe. We have Ethiopians. They're black. Yes, but most. And they apparently don't have the genetic lineage. Most Jews are, have, you know, they say that most Jews, at least Ashkenazis, come from this bottleneck in the middle of age, in the middle ages where there were like 600 people,

and we're all descended from them. So, so let's, for the purpose of my piece, I actually, I actually don't talk about necessarily about contemporary Jews because I'm really interested in nations right now as a at the challenge that I'm looking at right now is a nation that has a distinct geographic boundary. So the Jewish history is endlessly fascinating and we can talk about that. But what I'm really interested in is how does how does how do Israelis create a national ethnos? How did the British create a national ethnos. How do Americans create a national ethnos? And in this, I think that one of the things I was aiming for was to set the table so to start those conversations. I would love to see,

and I've actually started hearing, people say that they would like to have those conversations with inspired and interesting people in their countries. Right. Now, in America, we had a really, really interesting in my assessment, America has this strange history because we don't have, there's nothing that held these people in common, especially after the revolution when we lowered the understanding of who we were going to bring in as citizens and we made the country an immigrant-friendly country to absorb immigrants. What was the tie that bound, what were the ties that bound people together. And I try to explain in the piece

that there are two inventive ties in America, which I think were present at the start of the country, one of which you can call covenant and one is capital. So America's a big dollar sign. And you can come here and you could make money. And America was always going to be very, very ambitious. And it was going to be a place where you could,

non-royals could come here, and really change their lives materially. Streets are paved with gold. Streets are paved with gold. Could put a line from Scarface, but it's inappropriate. Is there such a thing as inappropriate here? Oh, there is, but I don't know. Go ahead, go ahead.

And the other thing is, is covenant, which was this idea that America was exceptional, that there was something, we were blessed by God. And so whoever came here, didn't matter where you came from. it didn't actually matter if you're a Christian. If you believe that America as a country was blessed by God

or blessed by fate, you were in. You know what else bonds us, by the way? What? Who does? Huh? You know what who does? What else bonds us? Oh, what else bonds us. Okay.

Appreciation. Every immigrant group came here so desperate that they kissed the ground of America as soon as they got here. This was my firsthand experience with the immigrants growing up. And that bonded them to America in the most powerful of ways. America is the country that took us in, especially my goodness for the Jews who saw what happened in Europe during the house. Like, how could you not love America?

So that's, you know, I don't know if that's maybe a subset of something you're saying, but it's definitely real. But that's the point. The point is, so now this is what artists are good for. This is what poets are good for. what historians are good for. Get a bunch of them in a room. You really care about Argentina? Get a bunch of smart people in the room and say,

what is actually Argentinness? What does it mean to have an Argentine nation? Why are we different? How are we different from Bolivia or Peru or Mexico? What makes us us? How do you recognize Argentina as distinct from everywhere else? And then add to that an incredible leaning into work and just the ability to the capacity to actually work really hard

and the willingness to see a good future. And that's, you've got Zionism for Argentina. Do you think that the people in the early years of our nation would have thought of this part of the ethnos as being Caucasian or European? I mean, do they just take it for granted that it's going to be a white country and continue to be a white country, a majority white country? I don't know.

I don't know. So then what do the Brits and the French and the Germans who see their national identities under siege? What should they do? They should start having these conversations. For example, British. They throw the immigrants out? I don't know. I don't know.

Depends, right? If it turns out that the definition of Britishness that you came up with actually has nothing to do with. anything that separates immigrants from you, then keep them in. If that's how you want to define it, all your practical steps get drawn from that. But you have to first do the vision. You have to make a vision board of what your country is and what the actual, you know, think about it as musical instruments. What, where are your top notes?

And if those things are, you know, obviously there are. throughout Europe, there are blood and soil right wingers who are reaching, they understand that this is a problem. And what they're reaching for is the only thing they know, which is we've got to make everything white. We got to make everything Christian. To me, I don't know that that's what those countries were. And I don't know that it makes, to say that Hungary is Christian and white, how does that make Hungary any different than any other country that's Christian and white? It's not hungariness. Okay, so roll the clock back to Poland. at the turn of the century, and they're saying that about the Jews. They're not Poles.

This is a threat to what we regard as being Polish. But remember, just because you have an ethnos and you have things that are majority, let's call them tethers, it doesn't mean that every single person who lives in your population has to check every single one of those boxes. You have a majority culture. I am a Jew. I live in a country that was founded on Protestantism. I have never once found that to be a problem. Because the Protestantism that they created in this founding of America was a Protestantism that absolutely allowed, it was anti-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian, and it allowed exactly for, I mean, it couldn't have been better designed for Jews. There are other countries where that would not be the case.

But at some, in some, listen, I may sound stupid now because history is not my number one topic, but I just glean that Christianity was very important to some countries at certain times in their history. Absolutely. And the Jews reject Christ. So what could be more obvious as not part of that culture than the Jews? Go ahead. Well, if all the polls did we say the Jews aren't Poles, then we probably wouldn't have a problem with it. It's taking it one step further and mistreating the population and...

Or throwing them out. It's very complex because I have always been sympathetic to people and charmed by people enjoying their ethnic uniqueness, you know, and the music, the culture thing. and I understand and people are dishonest when they claim to not understand that people are comfortable among themselves. I don't talk too much, but I went to a Shabbas dinner at Max,

you know, Max Raskin. Every Jew knows Max Raskin. And, you know, I had never really, because I grew up, you know, totally unreligious. I don't think I had, or at least not since I was very young, been to like a really Jewish Shabbas dinner. And I said, oh my God, this is, has a...

a very emotional, powerful effect. These are my people. I may not have realized it even. These are my people, you know? So how, and that's not born out of any kind of hatred. There was nothing, it was the most wholesome feeling that I could have. And yet, that wholesome feeling can then be alchemized into something very, very ugly. And finding the right balance, the yin and yang of this, I don't know.

Yeah, but let me tell you something. I fundamentally do not believe that the engagement with your own tribe, whatever that that engagement is what leads to conflict. Human beings are naturally drawn to conflict. It's just something about us, right? What we're seeing on the other side of progressivism, flattening, globalism, that's not leading to conflict? It absolutely is.

It's leading to conflict. It's leading to enormous death. It's leading to poverty all over. So it's not about no ideology or technology if taken to the wrong place. They all can lead to something terrible. The question is, which one, given the technology, given the universe that you're looking at, the way that we're organizing our lives. Which one is actually going to work better for people?

My positioning in the piece is that we have just spent, I don't know, let's call it easy 30 years trying out internationalization and globalization and flattening of all differences. And I think it might be time for us to try something else. Periel? Yes, Nome. Yeah, what do you have anything to add to that? because you know we get comments that I don't let you speak enough so no well I'm just I'm just thinking

about you know this idea that this concept of Zionism has been like the focus of you know the international focus that everybody has latched onto and until I read your piece I wasn't really thinking about how insane it was with all of these other things going on in the world because I've always said, you know, in a move that would have surprised none of our grandparents. It seems to me that like it's just a convenient excuse to hate the Jews. And this idea that and the critique that whatever that guy's name was who wrote, which I also read, Alana doesn't read the comments.

He was a rabbi. He was a rabbi. A rabbi cool. Well, I don't, well, I mean, okay, he's a rabbi. Well, maybe he shouldn't be a writer. For the record, he's not anti-Jewish, but go ahead. Well, I didn't say he was anti-Jewish. I thought the piece was like pretty empty.

So, well, now you interrupted me and I forgot what I was going to say. So in a move that would have surprised. It's always my fault, Alana, just, you know. I'm getting this. You don't have to say. No, no, I had a point, and now I forgot what I was going to say. Your usual point. Everybody hates the Jews.

Everybody hates the Jews. Oh, that's what I was going to say. So it seems like really convenient that, you know, you can use this war in Gaza or whatever you want is an excuse for this. But what I also think is the case, which is that there, and I've said this before on the show, is that there are a military. other atrocities, and this is not to take away from any of the atrocities that happen to any of the Palestinian civilians or children or any of that, that are going on in the world that none of these

people give a flying fucking shit about in so many other countries. And the nice rabbi, you know, in all of his criticism of like what you failed to mention, also seem to leave that out, which seems to be like a big gaping hole. I'm going to say something that whenever I say it in mixed rooms, I can feel people break out in hives. The Jews won. We won. That's the problem.

Won what? We created a state after thousands of years in a diaspora. That state is a thriving state. If I told you at the start of an AI revolution, you have two different populations that you get to choose from, a population of 100 million people, half of whom have no education,

they're racially and gender angry at each other, there's enormous, there's no media cohesion at all, they are obese, have terrible medical problems, or you can have a country of 10 million people, half of whom have served in the military, the other half of whom sit around reading and studying an arcane document, legal document, right? I'll tell you at the start of the air,

Revolution, which country I want to be the president of. The Jews have just, they were just attacked. There was a massive incursion into their New Jersey-sized state. And they have not only destroyed one leader of their enemy country after another, but they have transformed their entire neighborhood. Okay, I'm scratching like, like Chris Elliott, like Chris Elliott and something about Mary. Right. Because you're neurotic and you need to, because we all need to feel embattled. And also, one second. I don't agree with her.

Also, also all you really need to do if you don't want to do all of that is look at the videos that are coming out of Tel Aviv right now of the literal people who are having missiles blow up their homes and what their general. position is vis-a-vis the state of the world, as opposed to these fucking people who think who are sitting in like their little privilege. You don't even have to get that far. Here's the thing. There's only one thing you have to look at. Who has babies? It is the way that human beings vote for the future is who has babies.

Palestinians have babies. Listen to me. The Israeli population in Western country, of a Western country, of a Western country. Yes, we're the only ones. They are the only ones that are actually anywhere close to and and surpassing replacement level. Yes, yes. That's it. But listen, I want to save you from, save me from, when you say we've won, it sounds triumphalist, and it sounds triumphalist in vis-à-vis Gaza as well. You know, I don't know if that's what you meant. No. That's not what you meant. No, I'm not commenting on the war as it's being

fought today. What I mean to say is I need for Jews, American Jews, to understand what, where they have achieved the results of their work. There has been enormous, we did not just work for decades and decades and spend money and soldiers' lives for nothing. We actually did it, and there is something to show for it. And this sense of constant embattlement... By the way, I really have hives, you see. My guttates or eyes, but by coincidence... Wait, did that just... No, I've had this... It's... It came after... Would literally be the most Jewish thing it's ever happened. It... I got this after an episode of Strep a year ago, and it came back.

It looks like you're preparing for Passover. How so? Boyles. Looks like boils. Acting out the plagues. Oh, okay. Anyway. But I think the obvious comment that we're going to get in the comment section is

if you would rather be the president of Israel than the United States, why are you living in the United States? First of all, that would be the comment. Then go back to Israel. So basically, what I want to say is the point of the piece isn't that Israel is perfect. In fact, I go through a whole host of ways in which Israel is not perfect. It isn't a comment on the war. What it is is it's an intellectual argument about the way in which a certain kind of thinking

might be useful for the West. As a result, the best thing I could do is stay here. The best thing I could do is stay and I would make arguments, I could make arguments for other people too. But I certainly think that the best thing I could do is stay in America because I would love for America to figure out how it can be the best version of itself. And if I have some way of thinking that I think helps other countries in the West, why wouldn't I stay here and try to help it? Has A.N. Wulf written for a tablet? Yes, she has. And she's incredible. Yeah, she's fantastic. And so she echoes something I've thought for a while, which is that, and this relates to it in my mind to everything you're saying, that the entire auntie is.

Israel argument, it kind of defies the logical laws of gravity because in the end, the pillar that would hold it up would be the fact that the Palestinians actually wanted to resolve the conflict. But they don't. But Palestinian rejectionism is the ingredient that to me is essential for all the things I believe about this conflict. If the Palestinians actually wanted a two-state solution, if they wanted peace with Israel, if they were ready to accept the partition,

if we didn't, and all of it, then of course, everything that's going on now would be totally unacceptable. I mean, totally fucking unacceptable, in my opinion.

Part of the reason why I tried to focus to try to take the piece out of the contemporary field of play is because of a reaction that I got from a Palestinian reader, and I loved it. This Palestinian reader read the piece and took it at face value and said, okay, so could the Palestinians use this technology?

Absolutely. What's your ethnos? How are you different? So you have to figure out how you're different from not just Israel, but how you're different from other Arab countries and other Middle Eastern countries, ruthless pragmatism, and a future-oriented idealism. I meant it when I said it could be applied by anyone. Yes.

And so this is not about what's, happening currently in the field. That's not, I don't talk about it for a reason. I'm trying to zoom people out and get them out of that. Here's what I just want to underscore so that I make myself perfectly clear. When I say something like we won, what I'm trying to do is shock you and shock people out of their black pilling. I find the anxiety around people hating us to be fundamentally unproductive. we have so much to build. We have so much to do. We just don't have time to focus so much

on people who hate us, who cares. And so I'd like for us to feel not triumphalist, but I want us to feel like if we actually wake up every day and we work, we will get what we want. And that's the only thing I want people to feel. And by the way, they've always hated us. This isn't like a new phenomenon, right?

They're just allowed to say it out loud now. And I think that that's, I mean, I don't know what you're referring to specifically or who you're referring to. I'm referring just as like a general statement. No, they have not always hated us. I mean, they used to, Americans, and the polls show it even now in terms of Americans over a certain age, Americans were not anti-Semitic. We're seeing it mushroom up again from dormant seeds. But my generation of non-Jews were not anti-Semites. But guys, I really think that my.

what I would, how I would frame this conversation. Mushrooms don't come from seeds, but go ahead. What I would say, what I would say is, we can pick up polls about increases in anti-Semitic attitudes. And is it young, is it old, is it people on X, whatever. The bottom line is, is anti-Semitism emerges when a society is in stress. So one thing we could do is, I'm not saying that we should make ourselves unsafe. And I'm not saying that we should be Pollyanna,

is that we should be naive. But I do think I am an American. And so when I see an increase in anti-Semitism, my concern is that it will lead to people getting hurt. That's one concern. My other concern is for Americans. Yeah, for sure. What is going on with you that you are getting there?

What are you lacking? What is happening in your lives that you need to find scapegoats, that you need conspiracy theories about how your life didn't turn out the way that you want it to be? Why do you feel so powerless? And frankly, there are very good reasons why people feel that way. And what do you want from us? Can I play you?

By the way, Stephen, I pressed the period to stop it? Yep. Yeah. So did you hear, no, you probably wouldn't have because you avoid anything that brings your blood pressure up. Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan debate Israel? I did not. Okay.

Do you know Andrew Sullivan? Sure. him personally? No. Okay. I don't really know. I mean, I met him, but I don't know him. But I've always enjoyed him.

Mm-hmm. I found him to be brave and smart. Okay, there's always been something about him, which I realize could go off the deep end, because he was sure that Sarah Palin was faking the birth of her child, trick Palin. Do you remember that? No. He was totally in on this conspiracy theory. So, you know, he has that.

But he says some stuff to Eli Lake. Now, you know, he's this is a very, very sophisticated guy. I'm going to play some of it for you and get your reaction to it. Let's start with number one, Stephen. I guess it's just audio, but you can bring it up because the transcript is on the screen. Check myself for hives after this. Dan, don't ever, one second, Stephen. I guess, I guess, don't ever show your skin condition on the show again.

Well, I wouldn't have, but you brought up. be de-platformed. I found it fascinating. But when you post the show, also put it under health and hygiene. Some trigger warning. Yeah, some trigger warning. Okay, put it back to the beginning. Am I able to do that too?

Yes. With what? Star. With what? Star. Star goes back? Well, that's what we're going to say. Once we have the beginning of this Tuesday solution, I supported it in the 90s, like as many people did.

The Tuesday solution was proposed in 1947. It's a lot older than... Well, sure, no, arguably was proposed in the Peel Commission before that even. But my point is that once you had renewed emphasis on it after the... So first of all, the first thing he says there, which is amazing to me, he says, well, the two-state solution proposed in 47, implying that Israel rejected the two-state solution when every dummy knows that Israel was the one that accepted it, right?

So just like he's coiled and ready to say things that even he probably said, oh, yeah, I didn't mean that. You know, anyway, good. Madrid conference. and then obviously Oslo, like everybody, I don't, I mean, it was a weird thing because I come to Washington in 90, at the end of 94. So you, I mean, I'm sure you remember this. I was not writing about it at the time, but like everybody was pretty much, I mean, who were the holdouts? There were a few, I guess, but, you know, you had A PAC briefing conservative think tanks on the importance of the Oslo, you know, solution.

Well, I, I just remember a moment. Republic where Charles Kravon wrote a column saying this is why he means Krauthamahom the Palestinians will never agree this that and the other and the day before it went to press they did he had to write a column scrambling I just remember that particular moment Charles was right the first time it seems where we can get into that we're not there was and you could tell honestly that Marty at the time was also you could feel just horrified at the idea of peace in the Middle East so so I Marty Perretz, the publisher of the, or as the owner, I don't know, the New Republic.

He's making the case, and, okay, he walks it back just a little bit after this. He's making the case that the Jews, and these were our intellectual heroes at the time, were horrified at the notion that there might be peace in the Middle East, as opposed to these people being extremely skeptical that the Palestinians, and they proved to be right, Krauthammer proved to be right, that the Palestinians were dealing in good faith or actually wanted to enter the conflict. So this is the first of three things that...

Well, no, I'm being a little facetious there, obviously. But the idea that this might be settled in some two-state solution really unnerved. I think a lot of Israel supporters. Now, I don't know a single Israel supporter that was unnerved. We were all, hundreds of thousands of Israelis were protesting for this,

as we know from Javiv Rettigur told us that Ulmer ran on a promise to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank and won an election in Israel and this is what so put number two on there Stephen and this is what

this is not Tucker Carlson this is Andrew Sullivan so go ahead okay press plays I can start a Stephen? Okay Terms race in the Middle East oh surprise surprise yes I mean if someone in

a region acquires a nuclear weapon. The people... Israel has a long-standing. Okay. In the region, like, Jesus Christ, only one country has a nuclear weapon. They can do what the fuck they want because they have a veto of what we need to do. Obviously, someone has to get a balance to this. You see, the reason Iran wants a nuclear bomb is because they're worried about Israel.

And we need a balance to this. Again, Andrew Sullivan, even though, of course, Israel, I mean, Iran was a ally. of Israel for many years and didn't need a bomb and the other Arab countries, if they want a bomb, it's to protect themselves from Iran, right? None of the Arab countries are he talking specifically about Iran and then? I'm going to let it continue. Yeah, somebody wrong. Yeah. Okay. Isn't that the entire argument of non-proliferation? No. So Israel went ahead unilaterally. Correct. Unilaterally altered tremendously the balance of power in the Middle East. Yes. By getting a nuclear weapon. And then ask the United States to make sure no one else ever in the region ever gets one to balance them.

Well, no. Why the fuck could we do that? The United States. No, Israel acquired a nuclear weapon because all of its neighbors since its inception have tried to destroy it and said so openly. Yes. So by the same argument, why can't Iran have a nuclear weapon? Because no one's pledging to try to destroy Iran, including Israel. I'm sorry, we don't know what anybody will do.

But I thought, did you hear that last thing? Yes. He says, you don't know what anybody will do. As if there's a hypothetical world where Israel would just, for the hell of it, want to destroy a friendly Iran. This is fucking deranged. And by the way, let me add, you know, I've been making arguments like this for a while. So, 1948 is the war, 1945 is the Holocaust, 1948, closer to the Holocaust than we are to COVID. Israel is fighting another war against extermination in the independence war.

And then like 19 years later, when all the Arab countries are getting ready to attack again, and they thought they were going to fight another potential Holocaust when Egypt was amassing its troops on the border, around that time, in that atmosphere, Israel felt it needed a nuclear bomb as a fail-safed, last measure deterrence. And that was as close in time as we are to the Iraq War, approximately, closer, actually. And yet we are still extremely traumatized by the Iraq War, supposedly, right? I was just talking to somebody. My generation was traumatized by the Iraq War. He's like in his 40s. So it's just important for people to understand what was the psychology of Jews. at that time when they felt they needed this atom bomb, which they've never wielded, never

threatened anybody with, never even want to admit that they have. But they keep it in their pocket. Everybody knows that they have it. And somehow Sullivan thinks this is what is Iran's nuclear program is about. It's almost a country. If you have only one country in a volatile region like the Middle East that is nuclear arms, all the other countries are going to feel extremely vulnerable. And it is entirely reasonable for them to take extra measures to make sure they're the only way to be protected when you have a threatening nuclear power that's talking about, by the way, the way that Israelis talk about what they're going to do to the regime, is to get your own nuclear weapon. Brilliant. The way to settle Iran is for Israel to get

rid of its nuclear bomb. That would make sense. Okay. And the last one, number three, because the number three is the, how do you say it in French, Piers de, Resost, misdistance. Piesta resistance. I don't know if they actually say it over there. Say it then? My accent is shit. Piesta resistance. Okay. Number three, my accent is terrible.

Raps the whole thing up and I'm just going to let Alana, hopefully your eyes will not be as bad as then because this really got me. Go ahead. Well, that's what I was going to say. Once we have the beginning of this Tuesday solution, I supported it in the 90s, like as many people did. The Tuesday solution was proposed in 1947. No, this is the same one.

That's number three? No, that's number one. Did you play the wrong one, or I missed, or I screwed it up? All right. So I'll just cut it in afterwards. So in the last one, he says that Israel penetrated America. He said, if Israel could penetrate Iran, as it obviously has, it surely penetrated America. And that's why Trump went along with bombing Iran.

So he goes full embrace of the idea that the Jews hypnotized the world. This is Andrew Sullivan. What does Andrew Sullivan mean to you? He is a supposed to be someone tethered to facts, introspective, and respectable, respectable intellectual. I can absolutely believe. I got the clip. Oh, okay, go ahead. Sorry. Hit it.

Go on. Okay, so let me just say that. That's where I'm out. Okay. I think all that could is almost certainly part of the truth, right? Okay. Of course, the Israelis are also really good at working people. And could know entirely how to appeal to Trump.

They've probably done a million studies of this. They're massive. If they can penetrate the entire. regime of Iran, they've penetrated this administration as well. They know exactly what makes this guy tick. They've almost certainly got a strategy for getting him to do what they want to do.

And all I'm saying is that then you also have the sheer serendipity of luck, timing, you know, this... That's pretty much it. I mean, this is insane. This is what we've come to. And he knows, and there's nothing Andrew Sullivan means to me. He knows

exactly what he's saying. He knows how close to the line. He knows that he's hearkened, hearkening to these most base kind of stereotypes. He knows exactly what he's doing. And he's not afraid of it. Well, at least he didn't bring up Epstein. You know, five years ago, I published a piece that I wrote during COVID,

and it was called Everything is Broken. And in it, I tried to explain why all the sense-making institutions of American public opinion were decaying and why I had lost trust in them and why I thought that whole parts of the American population had lost trust in them. And I think people thought I was being hyperbolic, but I wasn't. I don't, I wake up every day and I judge people anew based on whether or not they seem like they reflect reality to me. I don't, I don't know how to explain it, but I don't have a whole lot of investment in people who were important in the 1990s, just because they were. And even people who were important to me in the 1990s, it's a really different world right now.

And there are some people who are really, really smart about this world right now. And I would encourage people, whatever their politics are, to find people who reflect reality. So if you read someone and they tell you, that if the U.S. invades Iran, it's going to start World War III. And World War III doesn't happen. And that is the fourth or fifth prediction that they've made that didn't come true. You can either decide that you want to keep listening to them because you are addicted to the anxiety that they give you. Or you can decide that you'd actually like to talk to people who generally know how to predict reality and they know what they're looking at. To me, that's the challenge that we all face every day. Do people, the United States of America

is a country with 50 times the GDP. I mean, I can't, the idea that America, which is the most powerful empire that's ever existed in human history is controlled by the Jews is so patently bizarre and seems insane. And also at once seems like the fever dream of people who feel powerless. So when I hear people say that, it really, to me, feels like a commentary on what they believe about themselves. They don't believe they're powerful anymore or if they ever were. And they are, they don't know who is. Somebody has to be.

It's not me. And you just see them reaching for stuff. And I think He went all technocratic and shit. He's like Israel's probably done a study on Trump and they put him up on the drawing board and they figured out how to get to him. Trump definitely seems like a predictable person

who can be studied and controlled. I mean, this stuff is just insane. But again, to me, I almost feel a little agnostic about it. Like if I wake up every day, listen, if you want to wake up every day and listen to Andrew Sullivan, listen to Tucker, listen to A'naut Wilf, listen to Kaviv.

A month from now, decide which one of the people that you listened to on Monday were right on Friday. If it turns out that Andrew Sullivan is right, whether we want him to be or not, if it turns out that he's right, you might want to invest in continuing to listen to him. If it turns out that he's wrong and he sent you down some weird path, that's your answer. By the way, how do you feel about soul asylum? How do I feel about what? Soul asylum. But you say you don't listen to people that were important in the 90s. Oh.

All right. Last question. Last question. We're about an hour. So you were the person who introduced Daryl Cooper to the world. I did not. Didn't he publish an article in Tablet Magazine? There's no way you're going to put that on me.

I am putting it on. We, no. So what I will say is we did reprint a piece by Cooper years ago. that I still think was a very affecting piece. And in fairness, the piece had gone viral even before we published it. But we did. I wouldn't say that we introduced Cooper to the world. I'm, you know, rubbing it a little bit.

But did you have any dealing with him before you ran the piece? I didn't even, I don't think I had any dealing with him even. I wasn't the editor who worked on commissioning the piece. So no, I didn't. And you warned me. Well, before the show, you said that Alana told you that Darrell was a Nazi and you didn't listen. But even if you believed he was a Nazi, you still would have invited him to the Olive Tree to have a discussion. He didn't come to Al-Tree. No, but the thing is, and I still struggle with this because Darrell, he's basically gone full Nazi now.

I don't think that, by the way, when I say that, I don't remember calling him a Nazi, but it's fine. Or something like, I think you did. What I want to say is, it's not a value judgment. It's a descriptor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? He's a person who believes that Jews are fallen and that they are poisoned. Yes. But No, him loves to debate people that are at polar opposites. When I first met Daryl, all I knew about him was his fear and loathing in New Jerusalem, this podcast he'd done, which seemed like a tendentious view of the conflict. But it was it wasn't horrifically over the line.

And I had some, you know, private conversations with him where he would concede points. He says, yeah, if I had it to do over, I might have changed this. I might have changed that. And then he did this Easter message podcast where, I mean, we spoke really beautifully about bigotry and Judaism. And, you know, and he's obviously a gifted person. He's quite insightful about human nature. and yet it emerged more and more

that he's a seething anti-Semite, as was his hero, Dostoevsky, who was the most insightful, maybe inhuman nature of all the novelist ever, who was also a seething anti-Semite. We have a column at Tablet called My Favorite Anti-Semite where people write about Ezra Pound or Kanye or Coco Chanel. Coco Chanel is actually a...

one of them. You know, we all are sitting here and there's, I'm willing to predict, I will bet a thousand dollars that if we sat here together, each one of you has an idea in your head that I would find insane. It's just what happens, right? It's human nature, right? Some people's ideas are more dangerous than others and some people's ideas are really toxic. I believe that anti-Semitism is this sort of really astonishing brain disease that definitely endangers Jews, absolutely. It endangers the lives of Jews. It endangers their ability to be safe and to lead thriving lives. But in many ways, much more so endangers the anti-Semite.

Those brains, they just melt. Yeah. What do you make of Jews being the objects of hatred in so many places and for so long? There are much better people to talk about the history of anti-Semitism, probably than me, because I focus a lot on modern history. But what I would say is that it goes back to this idea that humanity actually needs difference to understand itself. And we need community. We need other people around us who seem like us. But what that means is that there needs to be a not us too. And throughout history, or throughout certainly Western history, let's call it the history of the West, because that's where the majority of Jewish history happens. The Jews are this weird.

othering enzyme in Western societies. And I guess I just, what I want to say is for me, when I think about anti-Semites and I think about why they, there are definitely heartbreaks. Like there are people who went off the deep end that I just feel really sad about. But, Kanye. Well, so this is what I was going to say. What's really interesting about anti-Semitism is how few people recover. It's like a zombie bite.

You just watch them decompose in front of your eyes, and they kind of can never get purchased back on reality. And it's really interesting to watch somebody like Kanye, who, again, it's clearly part of a panel of mental challenges there. and it's like it's different than it might be for other people. I think also artists are have a unique, get a unique flavor of it. But this zombie bite phenomenon, I think, is what a lot of us are experiencing today. We, we watch these people and once you see them start saying maybe, maybe Macron's wife has a penis, you're just like, I think this is going somewhere. and I don't know that you're going to ever come back. And I really can't think of a lot of examples of people who find their way back

from this kind of conspiracy thinking. You say that all the time with a conspiracy theory, right? This is the one common thread that these people who are... And I don't think he's ever made the point that they never come back. No, no, no, not that point. It's really hard. I have a loaded invasion of the body snatches. Was Richard Hananiah ever anti-Semitic?

Yes, he, well, he was a white, he was a white supremacist, but he, yeah, he came back. Well, there are exceptions to... I also think that you have, you know, one of the things that's, that's, have you guys ever had Bridget on? My crown? Bridget Fettyty. No, but I just spoke to her on the phone today.

She's going to come on. She's incredible. And one of the things that Bridget and I talk a little bit about is this idea of, like, can people come back? Mm-hmm. And it would be really interesting to hear you ask her about it and to hear what she has to say about it. Because I think that there's also something about, there's an argument that some people have started to make to me, that technology, the particular way that we get our ideas these days, which is from social media, as opposed to previous generations, you got your ideas from your family, your community, books, right? School.

Now it's like you just get it from TikTok. And this idea is that you quickly adopt and quickly abrogate. So we cycle through ideas. So there are people working in this space that believe that even things like anti-Semitism, which historically feels like a disease you don't recover from, that there may be a recovery from it because it's not really, it's not really anti-Semitism for whatever that means. It's like this, it's this thinly adopted trend that will, like a fever just burn out. And we have to go. And also, I don't think she's referring to people like Hanania because she's talking about people who laps into it.

You know, he grew up somehow with that kind of attitude and then he overcame it. But we see people today who were never like this and then they get the zombie bite. I also think that there's a big difference between people who work in the world of ideas in whatever form. It's their job. And people who are normies, like just normal Americans. citizens, doctors, dentists, construction workers, in some senses, like, I don't want to say I care more about those people, but I do. Yeah. Like, I just do. Do you think that when these high profile people sort of lapse into this and then apologize that these are really just like empty words and yeah, okay, no. I think you'd have to take that on a case-by-case basis. Well, I think that there's been enough of it that happens. It's like, oh, I didn't mean that, you know.

I know. It just feels like a, like, it's like a weird dance that you're supposed to do on the stage of the internet. And it's just dance number six. Could I circle back, by the way, to how we began the discussion with this idea of how each country is going to decide how they're different and what makes them them. And you mentioned Japan. And Japan, you said had a racial component, but not just a component, but that's the major thing with them. Not the, but is one. It's a big one.

So, I mean, would you be comfortable with, forget about America, but some of the European nations saying, look, part of what makes us, us is that we've been here for a long time. We're descended from, say, the English from Anglo-Saxon stock, and that is part of what, that's part of what being British is. Would that revolts you, or would you be okay with that? I mean, it feels thin. the only thing being that you were there for a long time, that doesn't feel in a big culture. I mean, Japanese, by the way, didn't come from Japan.

I think they came from the Korean Peninsula. And so, but basically the whole idea behind an ethnos and the idea behind this mixing board is that there isn't one thing that actually binds you. It never is. In culture, there's always multiple things, like at least four or five, and there are varying different powers.

So the bottom line is, is if I'm not living in the country and they're not doing anything horrible, either to their own citizens or to other citizens, this is not, it's not, I'm not the judge of the world. Well, you would have an opinion, you would have a feeling,

you would have, I would have to see how, I would have to see how it manifested itself. If it manifested itself in a totally thriving tribe and thriving nation that served its own people well and didn't make wars, unnecessary wars on its neighbors, then sure. You know, let's end with this. America is just an amazing gift from God, you know, like our, our national ideal

allows for people to maintain their otherness to. That was the big magic. it and yet also be part of the melting pot. And essentially it's a formula for everything to work out. And we downloaded these ideas of freedom of religion and freedom of speech and this kind of spirit of all these things in the Bill of Rights. We download them to our personal lives and allows us to embrace our neighbors and to respect our neighbors' differences.

and it's worked very, very well for a very long time. We see it cracking now in certain ways, but I'm still bullish on America. I think America is going to be okay. I think we're going to turn it around. I don't know what's going to happen in the rest of the world. They're not America, and we are particular that way. I want to, in the piece, I will, I'll just end with one recommendation.

In the piece, I write a little bit about this. movie that I love and watch every year called Saints and Strangers, which is about the beginning of America. It's incredible. It's actually super dramatic. It has a great cast. In it, there's this idea that there were two different kinds of people on that first boat. Talk about the Mayflower? Some of them were coming for the money, and some of them were coming for God. they did not have the same intentions. They didn't have the same motivations, and they didn't have the same goals.

Conflict and difference is built into America. And to me, I find it to be a magic country. I think it's amazing. I just think we have to remember what made it amazing and try to find our way back to it. Well, we've been divided before, and even the question of independence was a sort of... Totally.

Division. So this is nothing new. You can't decide that you're going to actually, like, why don't we flirt with socialism? You're breaking a tether. You can do that somewhere else. Here, capitalism was a cultural tether. It wasn't simply about the money. It was actually a way to bring different people with different identities together.

It works differently here. This is a profound point. We have to go, but this, I agree with you with 10,000 percent. Great. Thanks for having me, guys. A lot of new house. Tablet magazine, which has just been a powerhouse. Now, for how many years? 18.

Ah, ha. 18 years for Steve, our engineer. Chai, the Jews have into numerology, you know. 18 is, what is it, the 10th letter and the eighth letter. I mean, it spells life. You know, Steve's an easygoing guy, but I can't help but wonder what he thinks of our conversations. I don't want... He's listening to Nick Fuentes while I was saying.

Oh my God. I don't want to get too sentimental, but that was also how I met you was through Tablet, if you recall. Yeah, that's true. That makes me so happy. I interviewed him from... It's great. Big deal to start a magazine,

and a bigger deal for that magazine to survive for 18 years and flourish. Thank you so. So among the impressive people that we've had here, you rank certainly very high. Thank you. Good night, everybody. Good night. Thank you.