The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Should Jews Abandon Israel? An Uncomfortable Conversation with Josh Szeps

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Two Zionist Jews discuss: "Until Israeli politics can radically reorient itself, it’s time to construct a vision of Jewishness that’s independent of the state that pretends to act on our behalf. It’s time for Jews to reclaim the moral mantle of our ancestors. For the Palestinians, but also for the future of the Jewish people, it’s time for Jews to abandon Israel." https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/about Josh Szeps is the host of the podcast Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps.

All right, good evening, everybody. Welcome to Live from the Table. I'm doing a special interview with Josh Zeps. I'm going to read from your Wikipedia bio. Born 1977, an Australian media personality and political satirist and television presenter. Zeps has previously hosted Weekend Breakfast on ABC News. He was a founding host for HuffPost Live, and his work has included satirical writing and presenting for Australian radio, as well as hosting The Brink. I'm already bored. Most importantly, he currently hosts the podcast, The Fantastic Podcast, and quite influential podcast, Uncomfortable Conversations. And maybe most importantly, I believe you're going to be doing a show at the Comedy Cellar uh yes at the end yes i think it's tuesday the 29th of july or something but go

to the comedy cellar uh it's a bunch of i'll be doing this i'm actually i can't break the news about exactly what i'll be doing but i'll be doing like a fun world tour type thing and the lynchpin will be some of the guys from the fifth column and some of the folks from the free press and us at the cellar. So Noam has generously allowed us to use his space. I'm really excited about that. So listen, I was driving home and I heard your episode. I forget what the title of the episode was. I think it was just Staying Sane on Israel.

That's exactly it, Staying Sane on Israel, where you read a column that you had written for which Australian paper? The biggest broadsheet in Sydney is called the Sydney Morning Herald, and it has a sister paper in Melbourne called The Age, but they're functionally sort of different versions of the same thing, so it ran in both. And, I mean, it hit me between the eyes. I recorded your reading of it. I don't know if you want me to play that or you feel like reading it, but before I get to that, only because I think it should be answered upfront because it would have helped me listening

upfront. I'm going to read just the last paragraph of it and you can just explain what's meant meant by the last paragraph, and then we'll go and listen to the whole thing. We can go through it. Are you sure? Isn't it better to have the buildup to the last paragraph to understand the context to it? I thought about it, and I'm sure. I'm not sure it's the right thing to do, but I've thought about it, and I'm sure this is the way I would like to take it. I may have painstakingly spent a thousand words leading up to the final paragraph, but sure, Noam, jump in. Jump in out of context. But I just want you to explain what you mean by the end because it's not explained in the column. Okay, yes, yes, good.

So the last paragraph is, until Israeli politics can radically reorient itself, it's time to construct a vision of Jewishness that's independent of the state that pretends to act on our behalf, our meaning the Jews. It's time for Jews to reclaim the moral mantle of our ancestors for the Palestinians, but also for the future of the Jewish people. And this is the part I want to ask you about. It's time for Jews to abandon Israelrael and even up till now i'm not sure what you mean by abandon israel and that's why i want to ask yes yes good thanks so there are two important uh points in that uh paragraph one is the first word which is until or the first portion of the sentence right until israeli politics can radically reorient itself so it's

not a blanket claim it's prov provisional on Israel's behavior. It doesn't mean that we should cease being Zionists. And Jews should abandon Israel, which I think people will understand when they hear the context, I think, of the previous thousand words. What I'm calling for is a removal of the taboo on diaspora Jews criticizing Israel, a removal of the reflexive instinct that diaspora Jews like us have to defend Israel when in any conversation outside of Israel.

I'm not calling for Israelis to no longer exist. I'm not calling for the state of saying the state of Israel doesn't have a right to exist or a right to defend itself, as some people have misunderstood that to mean, I'm calling for non-Israeli Jews to have a really frank and bullshit-free conversation about that state and about how comfortable we are with being hitched to its wagon and essentially having it as an albatross around our neck, where we are so repulsed by the way that anti-Zionism is flaring up and we are so threatened by the way that anti-Zionism is flaring up and we are so threatened by the way that anti-Semitism is manifesting itself in our countries,

that we take this hunkered down reflexive stance of defending Israel because we think of all the criticisms of Israel as being disingenuous. I want us to not take that bait. I want us to like big the grown-ups in the room and be able to distance ourselves from that state in ways that feel difficult and complicated for us right now. Yeah, well, when you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad to me. That doesn't sound, well, that doesn't sound, you say, listen, you shouldn't be reflexive. You shouldn't defend what might be the indefensible, that you should be ready to have an open mind, that you should be ready to call a spade a spade, even if it's difficult.

I don't call that abandoning at all. That's the attitude I try to have about my children, right? In other words, the truth has to come first, always. No, I think I'm calling for something more than your relationship to your children. Like your relationship to your children is rightly unseverable. There is nothing that your child could do that would have you betray them. My position is there have to be things that Israel would do in principle, hypothetically, that would lead the Jews of the world of good conscience and good character to say, not in my name. That's not something your child could ever do. What does that mean? It means that we create a new conversational norm outside of Israel that says, yes, we're allowed to say that

Israel has gone for too long doing too many things that we disapprove of for it to be our country anymore. It's a country for Israelis. It's entitled to exist for Israelis. It's allowed to function as a state for Israelis. But it's not allowed to carry a mantle of speaking on behalf of world Jewry. I'm going to play the column now, but do we still root for it to win? Well, it depends what winning looks like, right? So if you would rather

at what cost so you know you could and this is the minimum at the minimum cost that makes it possible uh i mean if the choice is do we want israel or do we want hamas then every sane person jew or not would want israel um if the choice is do we want israel do we want Hamas, then every sane person, Jew or not, would want Israel. If the choice is do we want Israel or do we want Iran, and I say in the piece that of all of the actors in the Middle East, from Iranian theocrats to jihadists to Arab autocrats to Hamas to Hezbollah, Israel is the most moral actor in the Middle East. So yes, given a choice, absolutely. But I answered your question, I think, pretty well, which was that at the minimum cost possible, meaning that do we believe that Israel has a right to defeat Hamas, and it should not do it in any way that is excessive,

but it shouldn't have to give up the fight because Hamas has reverse engineered things in such a way that Israel has to capitulate to their plot to have their own lives lost. No, I hear you, but I'm talking about a bigger context, right? Firstly, I don't think that any military strategy or any kind of foreign policy strategy is independent of the means and the facts on the ground. I don't think anything is so sacrosanct, any goal, that you can say at the minimum cost, but regardless of how bad that minimum cost is. In other words, in a hypothetical, if it was necessary for some reason, if Hamas rigged the game such that the only way

to remove every last Hamas fighter was to torture every Gazan child, then I would say, no, that's actually not a price worth paying, even if that was the minimum cost, right? So it does happen in a context. And secondly, I would say what I think that's where we're at right now. No, absolutely not.

No, no, no. I'm sure that's within within the universe of what you think is actually realistic here. Yeah. Well, I mean, I so there are a couple of things that I think are. No, I would not say that there's any goal that is acceptable, independent of the means to achieve that goal. So how weak would Hamas have to be? Like, do you have to get every single last person

who ever signed a form that said they were a member of Hamas, no matter how junior they are, and how uncommitted to the cause they might be? And how badly would you have to prosecute that war in order to get that last person? That would be consistent with the goal of triumphing over Hamas. I mean, if that's your goal, you have to, well, Israel has every right to try to extinguish the enemy that invaded it. That's fine. But I think it's an unfair kind of rhetorical trick. And we do, we do a lot of it to pluck out one particular snapshot of a particular moment in time or a particular objective and to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Like a lot of people also do this with like, well, what would you have done on October 8th if you were the Israeli government? I mean, it's a cute question, but it ignores decades of settlement building of occupation, you know, all that sort of stuff. That's different. That's different. That's different. cute question, but it ignores decades of settlement building, of occupation, blockade,

you know, all that sort of stuff. No, that's different. That's different. That's different. I think that's different because I haven't even heard Hamas once mention the settlements and their beef was pre-existing the settlements. I mean, this- Yeah, but it's not about Hamas, Noam. It's about us and it's about the overall strategy of Israel's survival in the Middle East. Like a lot of the response to my piece that I've had has been from supporters of Israel saying, you don't understand how bad that neck of the woods is, right, that I'm naive about the challenges that Israel faces.

I don't think it's about the challenges that Israel faces. It's not about who's better and who's worse. I want to make that clear. Like I'm not interested in. It's not about who's better and who's worse. I want to make that clear. Like, I'm not interested in getting into a debate about who's good and who's bad. I'm a realist. I think it's about strategy. Like, is Israel's strategy a good strategy for Israel and a good strategy for Jews? Does Israel's strategy make Jews safer?

Okay. You know, I'm sorry. Now I think you were right because I want to get to the thing but this yeah i don't want to drop this but i feel like i i you know i'm going to read you something later but i feel like i haven't been able to get to an answer here because what i'm asking about is not unheard of i mean we had this attitude about the japanese about the germans there's been um many wars that were fought where the army didn't feel that it had to hook every child up to an electric shock torture but that you know they they killed millions and um that is not what i want for the for the pal people God knows but you do seem to be saying

that what other nations were entitled to do for themselves when they were existentially threatened Israel has somehow forfeited because of its settlements or something like that but let me just know I'm not saying that I'm not saying that but well hold that look I But let me just ask you... No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. Hold that thought. I will. Let me get it. Because there's another part to this, and this is something that needs to be grappled with, which is that, you know,

we heard for years and years and years that Hamas was an open... I'm sorry, that Gaza was an open-air prison, and Israel had this terribly excessive and harsh blockade on goods going in and out and they're emissary ting and and you know this was a very convincing narrative but now we realize actually that blockade was porous as hell right here we are two years into this war and they still have arms to the teeth. They're still managing to send rockets.

So if what you're saying comes to be, which essentially seems to be, Israel's going to have to give up on this enterprise and let Hamas stay in charge. No, that's not my position. Well, if Hamas makes it so, the only way to do it is to do this thing, which the price becomes too high, which is 100% within their capability of their capability of doing that and they will do that and they have done that so I think it yes it is I think if you're being forthright that is your position because you know that's what they're gonna do they're going to see to it that the price is too high for somebody like you let me just follow the through anyway you can go back yeah and what's

going what's gonna happen is that now Israel is going to have to re-put in place this blockade. It's going to be twice as harsh as the one previously because we've learned our lesson from the previous one that didn't work. And the world is not going to say, well, we saw what they did to you on October 7th, so go ahead and do whatever you got to do. We accused you of propping up Hamas, so this time make sure not a dime gets in there. So what is Israel going to face if they don't get rid of Hamas? They're going to be forced into this position I'm describing, and that is an untenable position. It was untenable then, and as I said, it's just worth repeating, that blockade, which we thought was too harsh, was insufficient.

So have you thought through to that point of what that would mean? And then we'll get on to the the whole column look i mean on my podcast uncomfortable conversations we have many uncomfortable conversations with people from across the political spectrum you know be it uh you and you're welcome to come on the show i'd love to have you douglas murray you know i did a tour with douglas murray in australia we were sneaking in the back door the stage door of the theater as well uh anti-semites and anti-Zionists were spray painting the front of the theater and harassing attendees. I've spoken to Professor Amos Goldberg, who's an Israeli Holocaust historian at the University of Jerusalem,

and you and I had an email exchange about that. He's extremely opposed to the Gaza war. From all across the political spectrum, I talk to people all the time and I just want to put into context the kind of question that you're asking, which is a question that comes from a particular, like I would say, narrow strategic point of view, which both sides have their stories. Everyone has their claims. My job as a conversationalist and my job as someone who looks at the way we have conversations and tries to improve those conversations is not to take the bait of answering every single strategic or military question. It's to pull back and go as a Jew and as a person who wants to encourage sane conversations and bring the rest of the world together with diaspora Jews and have the rest of the world appreciate to some extent that there's a diversity of opinion amongst diaspora Jews and that we're not in lockstep with the IDF, what is the best way to conduct these conversations? the ground about Israelis, about Israel's posture towards the Palestinians and posture towards its

own dominion over those people that stretches back for decades, which is independent of the question about what to do about Gaza or Hamas right now. Now, yes, Hamas, completely horrifying, terrible, like awful jihadist death cult. Why is it there in the first place? How does it come to be? What are the factors that bolster it? What were the Netanyahu government's policies that kind of propped it up in comparison to the Palestinian Authority because they wanted Palestinians to be either radicals or totally moribund? There are a huge number of things going on here. And at some point, I think it's time to just step back and go, do we have the conversational breathing space to just calm down for a moment and go, here are the things that this state is

persistently doing? And am I allowed, am I entitled without massive blowback to articulate my problems with that? Yes. Regardless of whether or not they should be, you know, doing X, Y, or Z in Gaza. Okay. First of all, with me, listen, you read some of the responses you got to the column and, you know, I feel your pain

because you should be able to say whatever you want and be able to make your case. I don't think that what I just asked you is a clever strategy because I think it's overwhelmingly almost a certain outcome. Unless you can explain a timeline to me that I hadn't thought of. I think it's overwhelmingly the almost certain outcome of what you're describing. And it's perfectly rational and almost necessary for anybody who advocates something to be able to explain if they support the logical outcome of it and the logical outcome of Hamas staying in place. And by the way, just so you know how I got there, because yes, I felt this way a long time ago. I felt this way before Israel attacked. Like,

you know, Israel was asleep at the switch. I remember saying on October 8th or so, if they did nothing, I wouldn't necessarily criticize them. It's not going to happen again so easily. They're not going to be a huge intelligence failure again tomorrow. But then I began to think, okay, well, what does that mean? And one of the things it means is a clampdown, the likes of which the world will not tolerate it also means that the future will be worse in the sense that lethality every year becomes cheaper and more easily obtained what we saw with with ukraine and operation spider's web is that what it's

called operation spider's web where they took a battalion or whatever call it a swarm of 400 drones and took out all all that uh russian air force um hamas is going to get their hands on that too. Ten years from now, Israel will not be able to avoid this trend of ever more available lethality. And it will only be worse. And these are not, yeah, I don't like what you said about how this being like strategic questions these are the questions which the guy sitting behind the chair in the prime minister's office he has to have an answer to these questions yes he has to have an answer to these questions and you and maybe you should too well okay i mean i can i can play the game and give you the answer if you want a game i don't know why it is It's a game, no, because it's a particular, what it does is it ignores all of the leading events

that came up just before this. No, I don't want to ignore the leading events. Well, I don't want to ignore the leading events, but you can't, the leading events are not relevant unless you're going to say that, well, yeah, you're right. It'll be worse for them 10 years from now, but that's on them because they deserve it. And if you think they deserve it.

Well, it'll be worse. Look, there are so many ifs. Who knows? I mean, for Hamas to be in power in Gaza in 10 years is worse than for Hamas came to power in 2008, they've done absolutely nothing to give any incentive to Palestinians not to be violent because they've made no overtures towards a peace process since 2008. That's not true. What overture towards a police process has there been since 2008? In 2014, they froze the settlements and Kerry went to Abbas.

I can find a view. And they said that- Obama briefly tried to do something and neither side was into it. No, that's not true. I'll find you. Go ahead. You speak and I'm going to find a few. Go ahead.

So the question of exactly what's happening right now and what should happen reminds me a little bit of like, do you remember when the Iraq war went to shit? Yes, of course. I do, yes. Yeah. And there was like, I would face questions a lot, which were along the lines of like, well, do the Democrats have a plan for Iraq?

What's your plan for Iraq? What would you do to fix Iraq? And I thought that was always a little bit unfair because my plan was not to go into Iraq in the first place. So we can talk now about what Israel should be doing or should not be doing. But the point that motivated me to write the piece was that I had a sense after October 7th that there was a legitimate existential response that Israel had to undertake. And at some point this year, that existential justification was no longer valid. It's no longer clear to me that it is existentially necessary

for Israel to be behaving the way that it is in Gaza. All right, let's play the column, and then we'll get back to this. Is that a good idea? Okay, yeah, yeah, great. Okay. The opinion piece begins, Since the October 7th butchery of Jews by Gaza's reigning death cult, I wrote,

The anti-Zionist left and the anti-Semitic right have indulged in a masterclass of double standards and selective outrage. Social media algorithms, designed to inflame, flood our feeds with Gazan disaster porn. Instagram influencers are suddenly brave opponents of the Zionist colonial settler state. Many of them know little of the Oslo Accords, of Yitzhak Rabin, of Ehud Olmert's peace plan, of the savagery of the Second Intifada. They couldn't tell you who invaded and occupied the West Bank as soon as Israel was created. Hint, it wasn't Israel, and it rhymes with Blorden. Or who invaded and occupied Gaza.

Hint, it wasn't Israel, and it rhymes with Blegipt. The online warriors allied the Arab state's sterling effort at wiping out Israel in 1967 and the attempted do-over in 1973, they denounce Israel's failure to create a Palestinian state while ignoring the repeated reluctance of Palestinians to condone a two-state solution during periods when a majority of Israelis believed it was not merely desirable but inevitable. So Jewish Australians have found it head-spinning, since October 7th, to be collectively blamed for the plight of Palestinians by anti-Zionists who don't seem to give two stuffs

about actual, real-life Palestinian people. Activists who never mention the sinister coercions of Qatar, Iran or Hezbollah, who've never campaigned for the right of Palestinian refugees to escape Hamas's brutality by seeking better lives in neighbouring Arab states, who remain silent about Muslims being crushed in Syria, Chechnya, Yemen and Sudan, who chant catchy slogans whose subtexts they don't understand about rivers and seas and globalised intifadas, who pretend that Iranian theocracy and jihadist ideology aren't a problem in Palestine or the wider Muslim world.

Many pro-Palestinian Jews who detest Netanyahu are rendered mute by a tsunami of foggy-headed, anti-Zionist righteousness, so selective that it smells like an anti-Jewish double standard. I went on to write, many Jews also remain wistful about a homeland for the most persecuted group in history. There's still an allure to the Israel that my grandmother dreamt of when she fled the Holocaust. The Israel envisioned by Zionism's early pacifist socialist hippy-dippy kibbutzniks, of which today's anti-Zionists are ignorant. But, I wrote, and as an aside, you will note that I've spent the entirety of the article so far doing nothing but shitting on anti-Zionists,

something which apparently my Zionist friends didn't read. But, I wrote, how far does the actual existing Israel, and I capitalise that, actual existing Israel, have to stray from its founding principles and from the basic moral tenets of Jewishness, and for how long, before we stop making excuses for it? Palestinians in the occupied West Bank endure lives of systematic dehumanisation under military law. Their Jewish neighbours, most of them in newly illegally built towns, endure lives of systematic dehumanisation under military law. Their Jewish neighbours, most of them in newly illegally built towns, enjoy the full rights of citizenship, sometimes with violent impunity.

The settlements are an elaborate, militarised thicket of ethnic discrimination. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza have been crushed to within an inch of their lives, many of them too young to bear any responsibility for the jihadists holding them hostage. The annihilation of Gaza and the open rhetoric from senior Israeli cabinet ministers of ethnically cleansing the territory are not self-defence. Israel is no longer in an emergency where all bets are off. It is now choosing a strategy. It is now proactively erasing the future of millions of people. Quick reminder, as an aside, I wrote this before the attack on Iran. I would say it very much is in an existential war of self-defense now, but it wasn't two weeks ago. To continue my article, if you suspect that a fair bit of the pro-Gaza hoo-ha is motivated by, and can I also just say, let's give credit to the fact that I managed to get

the word hoo-ha into a mainstream broadsheet publication, the most prestigious and widely read broadsheet in Sydney and Melbourne. If you suspect that a fair bit of the pro-Gaza hoo-ha, H-O-O-H-A, is motivated by bias against Israel, and some of it is, read the work of Israel's own progressive independent media, Haaretz, 972 Magazine, and B'Tselem, and the Israeli historian Lee Mordechai's website, Witnessing the Gaza War. Listen to my recent interview with the world-renowned Israeli genocide expert, Professor Amos Goldberg, who wrote,

There's no Auschwitz in Gaza, but it's still genocide. The facts of Israel's bloodshed are staggering. The IDF's own artificial intelligence system, Habsura generates bombing targets so fast that a former Israeli intelligence officer described it as a, quote, mass assassination factory Targets have been expanded to include non-military sites such as universities, banks, government offices, infrastructure and high-rise blocks, which the army defines as, quote, power targets, Matarot Otsem.

Israel's rules on killing Palestinian civilians have been so loosened that a former US State Department senior advisor on civilian harm, Larry Lewis, told the New York Times, the willingness to accept this level of harm to civilians is far beyond what I've seen in operations in the past. Renowned American trauma surgeons with experience in other wars have returned from volunteering at Gazan hospitals horrified. One wrote in the Los Angeles Times,

quote, I've worked in other war zones, but what I witnessed in Gaza was not war, it was annihilation. Another told the UN Security Council, quote, as surgeons, we have never seen cruelty like Israel's genocide in Gaza. This can't all be anti-Semitic lies. The claim that this is a just war being prudently prosecuted, in which civilian lives

are lost only regretfully, is at this stage laughable. To be fair, I wrote, Hamas, as Israel constantly reminds us, is worse. Compared to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, to Hezbollah, to genocidal Jew haters, and to murderous Arab autocrats, Israel is the most moral actor in the Middle East. But it's still responsible for what it does. If I kidnap a murderer and yank out his fingernails with pliers,

I don't win a morality prize because he's a murderer and I'm a mere fingernail extractor. At some point, my actions need to withstand moral scrutiny on their own. The terrorists made me do it is neither an excuse nor a moral blank check the Jews of the world are required to honour. You need to innovate. You need to humanise. You need to find moral courage. That's the Jewish way. The Israel which my grandmother dreamt of does not exist.

What exists is illegal settlement building. What exists is a discriminatory occupation. What exists is a political establishment so eager to undermine Palestinian statehood that it bolstered Hamas. What exists is the jailing of moderates like the Palestinian lawmaker Marwan Bagouti in order to keep Palestinian leadership either moribund or radical. What exists is a state that's preparing to annex or reoccupy

all the lands of the Palestinian people indefinitely. What exists is the obliteration of Gaza. For thousands of years, Jews have preached fairness, resilience, reason, pacifism. It is the most un-Jewish thing in the world to make somebody a refugee. Hasn't this Israeli state, this real-world government, not the idealized vision of a Yisrael in the clouds, proven that justice and peace are not its priorities, that it is unworthy of our support. Israel, the country made to save the Jews, is now the thing that most endangers the Jewish people,

physically, culturally culturally and morally. Until Israeli politics can radically reorient itself, it's time to construct a vision of Jewishness that is independent of the state that pretends to act on our behalf. It's time for Jews to reclaim the moral mantle of our ancestors. For the Palestinians, but also for the future of the Jewish people, it's time for Jews to abandon Israel. So that was that little shot across the bow. Very well read, I have to say. I sensed maybe a few edits edits there but still i i i

could never no there were no edits no edits nope i don't know also i was a radio broadcaster before i was a podcaster so i was doing three hours a day of talk radio like with callers and interviewing politicians and stuff so i've got my thousand my ten thousand hours of uh practice down on that um yeah i think so i i should also say if anyone wants to read it or share it um it is unpaywalled now because i know a lot of americans have been saying i can't get past the paywall so i emailed the editor uh the other day and they said they'll they'll um lift the paywall so if you just google smh which is stands for sydney morning herald zeps israel you'll get it i should also say also say, Noam, that I had on the podcast recently,

we haven't released it yet, but she was on last week, a Knesset parliamentarian, former Knesset parliamentarian, Einat Wilf, who was in the, you know Einat? Yes, I know her. Yeah, yeah. And she made a very good argument against my position, which was to say that, love it or loathe it, for Jews to be articulating these kinds of ideas is for them to play into a story, a narrative, that demonizes Israel uniquely, that makes it the Jew among nations, that calls it out and invites criticism, disingenuous criticism, and basically betrays Jews. And I'm not unsympathetic to that claim. I've heard it a lot from fellow Jews since writing the piece. I'm just fundamentally untribal,

and I don't believe that conformism is generally the most productive path in sustaining flourishing societies. I just think that speaking truth to power is the fancy way of putting it, but just calling out bullshit or being defiant or telling people that they can't tell you what you're supposed to think is ultimately more fruitful. Josh, I don't think I'm going to say anything which that would be an answer to. I'm not telling you ever to not say what the truth is or any of this. Let me go through. First of all, just before we played the thing, you made to what is israel done since 2008

and i remembered something and i looked it up in the thing so this is from the new york times 2014 midi's peace effort pauses to let failure sink in um in a march meeting with mr abbas in the oval office mr obama tried to sell him on mr kerry's framework the palestinian leader official said did not respond, preferring to reiterate his rejection of the Israeli demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Quote, the president was skeptical about a deal after that meeting, the official said. Abbas was more comfortable pivoting to public grievance

than focusing on a private negotiation. He continues. In a speech last week at the Washington Institute for Nearest Policy, Mr. Indyk, now, you know, Indyk was no fan of, he died, right, of Netanyahu. Mr. Indyk drew a distinction between the Israeli government and Mr. Netanyahu, who he said took substantial risks. He moved. He showed flexibility, Mr. Indyk said. We had him, I think, by the end of that process in the zone of a possible agreement. So I have to say no. Israel has tried at every time for 80 years. And you, I mean, the assumption that seems to be behind your argument is that somehow if Israel had just said the right thing or taken risks again with another intifada or something like that, that somehow they would have melted the heart of Abbas or Hamas. No, my operating assumption is that both sides have to take responsibility,

which means that there tends to be this tendency on the left, right, on the anti-Zionist left, to give all the agency to Israel and all the sympathy to the Palestinians. There's this flaw in our thinking where the left is likely to think that Palestinians are noble savages who are completely blameless and have only been steamrolled by Israel, and that Israel has all the power and could have extended a Palestinian state. And that is bullshit. But there's also a similar tendency on our side to sometimes exaggerate the agency of Palestinians and downplay the agency of Israel. Yes, in 2014, there were these talks that Kerry and Obama cajoled the parties in the Middle East into.

Abbas was hopelessly moribund. Netanyahu, since the 1970s, has showed no inclination to act in good faith on this matter. That's not what Indyk said. He said he budged. He said he moved. Hang on. No, hang on. This is all happening. Yes. So there was one meeting. This is all happening in a context that, yes, you say for 80 years, the Palestinians haven't wanted peace. I agree. All of my blame, 90% of my blame goes on the Palestinians. I just don't want us to be hijacked by the Palestinians. I want us to own agency and us to feel like we are capable of building our own futures as Jews and also Israelis as Israelis as well, rather than

constantly pointing fingers and saying that we are helpless because the Palestinians aren't a partner for peace, whilst we create facts on the ground that make it very, very, very difficult for Palestinians to step up. Yes, for 80 years, they've been intransigent. Also, for 60 years, we've been building fucking settlements on their land in contravention of international law. There's almost been no hold to the building of settlements. The settlements were briefly paused. One second, because I know you and I probably agree about this. Listen, I'm not pro-settlement at all. Well, I don't know if i'm anti every settlement just to be i don't want to lie because there's something um there's something about

international law which i just don't buy which is a notion that you get a reset each and every time you start a war of aggression meaning jordan can invade, they can lose, reset, give us our land back, do it again, lose. I think at some point it's fair and important that a country take a haircut in some way. Number one. Number two. Me too. I agree with that. Number two, when a country is only nine miles wide, it is also perfectly fair to understand that they want to take some more land, especially strategic land in the hills. Having said that, as we know, Oslo did not require Israel to give up the settlements. Oslo contemplated these being resolved through negotiation.

In the negotiation, they did not break down over settlements not once not twice not three times israel always at each and every time was going to take out certain settlements and and have land swaps for the rest so the notion that these were the problem for peace, to my knowledge of the history, is baseless. They didn't back out because of the settlements. No, if you win territory, to address the first point, in war,

and you want to take it as part of your country, then take it as part of your country and give citizenship to all the people who live there and they're all israelis right that would be that would be legitimate okay for israel to just have taken in 67 have taken the west bank and taken gaza and then just made them part of israel proper and all of those arabs have become israeli citizens we wouldn't have a problem we wouldn't have this problem the problem is that a lot of people perceive it as being an apartheid state in the territories because the real lived experience of Palestinians in the West Bank is that they're constantly humiliated, degraded, and shat upon by 19-year-old Israeli Jews

with machine guns. Was that the problem in 2001? Was that the problem in 2008? Was that the reason that, was that the problem? Is that the problem that Obama describes when Abbas backed out? It's not, it isn't fruitful to look at the, to read the minutiae of every single specific deal whilst ignoring the context in which all of those things are taking place. What I'm saying in the article. It is fruitful. Well, if you want to keep going round and round in circles with the other side, then it is. I mean, not here, but like, it's a never ending game. No, we never win it. We're not going to win going round and round in circles with the other side, then it is. I'll tell you why it's fruitful. It's a never-ending game. No, we never win it.

We're not going to win any hearts and minds. Can I tell you why it's fruitful? Nothing's going to change. Listen, I would stop every settlement tomorrow. And just to go on record, I know probably through closer – I shouldn't say that, but I know through close contact with people who have been treated horribly by Israelis, humiliated, whatever. I have zero defense for the way Israelis often treat Palestinians, not just in settlements, but in any time they're in a position of power over them which um you know is an unfortunate also part of the human condition when people are under the yoke of other people

especially uh fueled by war and violence and emotion and and desires for retribution and bigotry so so i get all that but the reason it's um i the reason I think it's not fruitful is that you can't do seven things at once. And there has to be some reason to think that this is the problem if we're going to attack it as if it is the problem and i am all for as a loyal jew a loyal israeli absolutely fighting protesting as as an american would listen i believe that black people even during jim crow were supporting the American war effort against the Nazis. It is possible to be a very, very vehement critic of certain of your government's policies without just abandoning them, as you say, especially when so much of the mistreatment of the West Bank, on the West Bank of Palestinians is in a reaction to very real

security problems, which didn't used to exist. The checkpoints are a Venus or like a flypaper for arrogance and mistreatment on behalf of the Israelis. But the checkpoints are necessary, and that's not the Israelis' fault. That is not the Israelis' fault. And further, I would say, and this sounds like an excuse, but I don't mean it to be an excuse, but it's always important to be realistic. You're never going to have checkpoints without abuses. It is the nature of putting people in charge of others. But in the end, when it comes down to it, it is the Palestinians driving this because what is asking too much for one of their leaders to say, you know what? We don't even remember what it is you didn't offer us, and a fund, and you were going to pay us for the houses that we lost, and we walked away, and you know what? We want to revisit that deal, and at that point, at the point where they utter, it's asking so much for them to just express out loud, you know what? We'd like to make peace with you. At

that point, then you would have me, and I'm going to say, listen, they're saying they want peace and now you're treating them this way. But when they're saying, listen, we want to kill you. We'll do it again if you give us the chance. Oh, well, you should be, you should be giving them more olive branches. You know, if the world tells us that it's only acceptable to kill 25 civilians to get one commander. We're going to make sure you have to kill 30, and then you'll be the bad guys. And then Joshua said it's about the settlements. These are very difficult problems. Yes, and no, we agree on a lot of this, right? So we agree that if you're going to run, you said it is in the nature of controlling others

that if you have a checkpoint, there are going to be abuses. Yes. Yeah, that's the point. My point is not that Israel is uniquely bad. It's that it's an untenable situation to put yourself in perpetuity in a situation in which you're controlling others, in which you're in a relationship of dominion. Now, is that all Israel's fault? Of course not. I completely agree with you.

Palestinians have been totally intransigent about this. What part of it is Israel's fault? Of course not. I completely agree with you. The Palestinians have been totally intransigent about this. What part of it is Israel's fault? Well, the fact that they haven't found a way to give up the territories since 1967, you think they're completely blameless. They don't share any of that, any blame for that. Yes, I think in 1967, they immediately offered to try to give it back. They wanted to keep the Western Wall and that area of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But yes, they offered it back. You know, the three no's. No peace, no negotiation, no recognition.

They tried to give it back with Clinton and Barack. Olmert tried to give it back. I just finished reading parts of his memoirs. He really tried to give it back. Yeah, the Olmert deal was legit. And the Palestinians were right there. I mean, there was almost a deal in 2008, which is what makes the subsequent history so tragic. They don't want a deal.

But are you saying that, well, there were lots of reasons why that deal fell apart on both sides. I mean, Olmert had no credibility anymore. He was almost out the door. But if, you know, you can imagine a parallel universe. It didn't fall apart because of Olmert. It didn't fall. Abbas walked out they never answered well there's a negotiating tactic which is you walk out and then you come back with it and you hope to get a better deal

and they're always playing this game and of course you know they're in an impossible situation as well with the arab street who are who have completely crazy and see what you did there what you did there i really object to you have no basis for for saying that Abbas just had a tactic and it was holding out for a better deal. He never, ever said, I want this deal or that deal. He walked out and he stopped answering, just like Obama described him doing in 2014. And by the way- No, this was like months before Almet left office. You talk to people who were involved in the deal, then they say that Almet no longer had any credibility. If Tzipi Livni had won the next election, then maybe. But this is the kind of like minutiae that is exactly antithetical to the point that I'm trying to make in my article,

which is we are caught in a trap of borrowing. Listen, we saw Sadat. We saw Sadat. None of this stuff that you're talking about stopped Sadat for half a second. Sadat decided, I want to make peace. He got in front of a microphone and said, people of Israel, I want to make peace. Yes, but who is the Sadat in Palestine? There is none because they don't want peace. Who is even a hypothetical? We have successfully managed to deteriorate Palestinian civic life to such an extent that there is nobody of any credibility.

Marwan Bagudi is rotting in an Israeli jail who is possibly the only Sadat or Mandela. They're not going to release him. What's he in jail for? For having been part of the second Intifada. No one's blameless here, Noam. But I mean, we've systematically deprived the Palestinians of any capacity to have leadership and then criticize them for not having leadership. Hold on. This is not living up to the great morals of Jewishness. Maybe not. My call is for – look, are we going to go down a rabbit hole on Bar-Gudi now? No, no. You're going to tell me that he's a murderer? Yeah.

I just want to let people know, not everybody knows, because you said, why isn't Israel letting him out? He's in jail for five counts of murder, attempted murderer, complicity in and terrorist attacks and incitement and a boss this is very important a boss has always insisted that he not that barghudi not be allowed on any list of prisoner swaps because because the boss is threatened right but somehow this is all israel's fault for not letting him out well Well, he's in an Israeli jail. Right. He's in jail for five counts of murder. You call him a moderate, but he's in jail for five counts of murder, unless you think he didn't do it. No, I think that he's had a change of mind.

I mean, I think that Mandela was also guilty of crimes. You know, there are people who know Bar-Ghouti, who speak to Bar-Ghouti. He's a highly educated guy. He's a guy who has always claimed that he believes in Israel's right to exist. He's not an extremist in that respect. And he's a murderer. He participated in horrible, heinous acts. You know, you can't let the perfect be the enemy. They're good in this. We find ourselves in a situation where, excuse me, I'm calling for Jews and Israelis in particular. Hang on. My daughter's got a cold and I think I'm getting it.

I'm calling for Jews to feel a calling to a higher sense of morality, to a higher sense of purpose, and to hold ourselves to higher standards. And what happens whenever you try to have this conversation is that people on either side will pick out the things that support their side. And I mean, I'm on your side broadly because I think that the Palestinians are much more to blame than the Israelis are. And yet we live in a world in which Israel has basically all the power over the Palestinians. Israel failed on October 7th to protect its own citizens. There is no reason why Hamas should have been able to pull off that attack.

There is no reason why the Netanyahu government should have been empowering Hamas and dealing with Hamas the way that it was and trying to split up Palestinian leadership in that way. I don't agree with that. Let me just finish. You can jump in there. good finish sorry there is no reason why palestinians and the west bank should be enduring the ignominy uh for the decades that they have why the settlements should have been continually expanded almost without halt for the past 60 years and when i raise these things of course course, you can say, well, Hamas doesn't care about the settlements and Iran doesn't care about that. Yeah, of course they don't. They're a jihadist death cult. But what is Israel doing to strategically empower itself against those

people rather than simply relying on a militaristic solution to everything? And how do we find ourselves in a situation where we have a country that is in a position of dominion over another people, militarily occupying one half of their population, building settlements apace at the same time as it's saying, why aren't you putting your hands up for peace with us while we make your future impossible? And blockading another group of people. Now blockade i think is justified because of hamas is having won the election but that didn't happen in a vacuum either it's a shit storm and i am not a statesman so it's not my job to figure out how israel can be

better let me make one final point here go ahead in every instanceam, of countries finding themselves becoming pariahs and finding themselves tangled up in moral thickets that causes people to resent them and that really betrays their own principles, whether that's apartheid in South Africa or whether that's like, I don't know, the Ottoman Empire committing genocide against the Armenians. There are always important details as to why the people doing the dominating feel justified. And there are real threats to them if they don't do the dominating. When Nelson Mandela was calling for an end to apartheid, and the international community was going batshit against South Africa, it was not illegitimate for white South Africans to feel that the whole place was going to fall apart if they ended apartheid.

They had real concerns. They were dealing with people who'd been terrorists, including Mandela himself. You can hardly say that the history of South Africa since the end of apartheid has been a glowing example that you'd want to replicate to some extent their fears were correct it didn't make apartheid okay it didn't mean that their nuanced justifications about this deal and that deal and whose fault it was that they walked away from this and that they couldn't get that and should fw de klerk do this and should Mandela not have done that? All of that was just talk. The fundamental bottom line was apartheid. Similarly, the elites in

Istanbul had every single reason to believe that it was dangerous to allow the Armenians to continue their subversion, and they committed a genocide against them. And there were people at the time having conversations like this one, in which the bulk of rational justification appeared to be on the side of the people who were defending a genocide. Now, I'm not saying that Gaza is a genocide. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know. There are certainly learned people who believe that it is. But what I'm saying is that all of these conversations get ourselves tangled up in minutiae when the large screaming, like bright red neon font, to me, is that Israel is not living up to the moral duties of the Jewish people. It is failing to be imaginative and to be morally courageous. So what should they do right now on

this particular date in Gaza? How should they withdraw? How should they deal with the humanitarian thing? What happened in Oslo? What happened in 2014 with Kerry? Fuck it, Noam. It's about us living up to our promise as the Jewish people. you know when i was younger something like 150 000 people turned up for peace now demonstrations in uh square in tel aviv um these were not racists or people who hated arabs these are people who wanted to live in peace with arabs and to the extent that they've turned to the right and bigotry and racism as apartheid did. This came about and continues. Sure, and it still sucks to be a Palestinian in the West Bank. Yes, yes, but you know what? That is because of 80 years or 100 years of rejectionism. And if you vote for a candidate who promises to,

if you vote for me, I'm going to bomb Mexico. I'm going to kill all those Mexicans. And then you vote for him. And then all of a sudden, Mexico kills thousands of us. And then we vote for you again. Say, yeah, I know this kind of backfired,

but we're going to double down. We're going to send you again. This, in some ways, is self-determination of peoples. Israel's responsibility is to be open, ready, and willing to listen if they want to make peace. And of course, I'm with you on this settlement. I mean, does that have a responsibility known to also try to create an environment in which the green shoots of peace-loving people can flourish well that's interesting yes but the question is and this is where i tried to say this before this is where there's a a philosophical difference between the netanyahu types and and

your type and you probably know this this goes back to Jabotinsky. They believe, and history has not proven them wrong, I have to say, you know, I've come to the right as well. They believe that the Palestinian attitude will only change when they hit the iron wall, when they realize Israel is not going to budge. And they believe that every time there's talk about these kinds of accommodations, that this is seen as weakness and we have them where we want them and just hold out and we'll get more and more and more. And eventually they'll lose their nerve and it'll fall into our lap. This is what Netanyahu believes. I don't know whether he's right or wrong, but I don't think we know whether he's right or wrong.

I don't think that the last 80 years of history, he would look at it and say, yeah, this is really, we should just be showing more accommodation. We should be trying harder. I think he's looking at it and say, we did try, we did try, we did try. And it only got worse and worse and worse and

by the way, he took his own medicine because although you say that He was propping up Hamas in order to you know Divide and and maybe there's some truth to that It also seems to me He was just trying to buy them off, to buy their complacency in the same way our Iran deal tried to buy Iran off with money. Make sure there's enough money coming in, make sure they know we look the other way when the money comes in. And the quid pro quo is, eh, they might send a rocket from time to time, but it'll just be a show. It won't be really-

That's exactly right. Yes. Yes, he allowed the money in from Qatar, and he allowed Gazans to come a civic life in Palestine in collaboration with other Arab states that could give rise to a Palestinian polity that is, I mean, you talk about the democracy, you know, voting for a government that bombs Mexico. I mean, when do Palestinians ever get a vote? I mean, they've got such a dysfunctional polity that, you know, they vote once and then they never get to vote again. So I'm not sure that we can hold, you know, 17-year-olds who are being bombed in Gaza or humiliated in the West Bank responsible for the people who they supposedly voted for 20 years ago. This is the crucial point. That the polls show, if you believe that guy Shikaki, I think it's his name, these Palestinian polls.

Yeah, yeah. That Hamas would win. Abbas cancelled the elections not because he was afraid some peacenik was going to win. He was afraid that Hamas was win. Abbas canceled the elections, not because he was afraid some peacenik was gonna win. He was afraid that Hamas was going to win. Now, I mean, I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent, because I do believe to some extent in what you're saying as well. I do believe that hearts can be melted.

I do believe that Israel should try. I mean, I'm not even sure that my position is hearts can be melted. I do believe that Israel should try. I mean, I'm not even sure that my position is hearts can be melted. I guess mine is more realist or strategic. My thinking is every culture and every society consists of a set of interlocking different was, who would have hated having to swallow the existence of a Jewish state, but would have copped it in order to have a better life. There's some proportion, right? So the super Israel hawks believe that it's almost vanishingly small. Other more naive Pollyanna people might think that it's half the population, whatever it is. My instinct now in calling for Jews to be more forthright about the moral challenges of Israel speaking for them and constantly acting as if it is in lockstep with their interests

is in saying there has been quite a long time now where Israel has failed to demonstrate any commitment to emboldening the factions within Palestinian life that are moderate. In fact, it's done quite the reverse, which is like the Hamas-Qatar deal. It's tried to normalize the existence of the jihadist death cult and collaborate with the moribund corrupt Palestinian Authority. And none of, I mean, it may just be the case that you're not aware of like other plans here, but there have been plans since the 80s and 90s that forward-thinking people who collaborate with Palestinians

and Israeli peacemakers on both sides have suggested about trying to foster, you know, small community groups, about trying to get the buy-in of Arab states in order to bolster, basically wrestle power away from the corrupt Palestinian authority and the jihadist death cult in Hamas and foment some kind of civic life in Palestine that is not constantly being crushed by Israeli domination. And there's not a huge amount of – there hasn't been a huge amount of innovation on that from Israel. There's been none. They just keep building settlements. I guess. I'm not, listen, if you were just, if you were just saying these things and you weren't using it as the reason to abandon Israel, I'd say, yeah, I think you're right. You know,

the fact that you've inflated this point into essentially you're on your own, Israel, until you can, you know, take some idealistic moves. And yeah, I get it, Israel, I don't have to live there. It's not my kid who's going to get blown up in a coffee shop if the ZEPS plan doesn't work. But, you know... No, I'm saying Israelis can be responsible for Israel. Like, this is another rhetorical move that frustrates me, which has happened since since writing the piece which is that people confuse national well maybe it's not a rhetorical move then it's an intellectual error conflating nationality with uh with ethnicity right so people will say a lot of people have said to me you know why do it why does every other you know why why don't you require we don't expect russians to disavow russia because of putin's actions right we don't expect uh chinese

americans to disavow china because of the communist party of china why are jews the only people who have to disavow their country like that it's a double standard i didn't say that problem there uh no but it's an illusion to say it's saying it's holding me responsible for whether or not an israeli gets blown up because of my plan is implying that I have some responsibility over Israel. No, what I'm saying is that it sounds good in theory, but it's a classic thing in human nature. It sounds good in theory until you actually have to walk in the shoes of the person who's got everything to lose if it doesn't work out. Yes, but I'm not telling the Israeli what to do. I'm calling on diaspora Jews.

You're saying he's immoral unless he does it. So you are telling him what to do. Well, no. I mean, you can have a moral opinion about something and encourage diaspora Jews in my community to be more open-minded and more courageous in the way that we speak and think without finger wagging and bossing around another country. I have all kinds of ideas about what Americans should do as well,

but I don't think they're immoral not to obey me. But just to finish, let me just finish that point about, because I think it is common, even if you're not making the point, I think a lot of listeners will be thinking- Only if you're going to let me make my other points, but go ahead, because I don't want to run out of time. Yes, yes, go.

Then go ahead. So just the point about this being a double standard for jews look jews are a religion and we are an ethnicity and we are also ostensibly a nationality yeah i don't think it is unreasonable for jews to create daylight between themselves and israel just as if you know putin goes up and claims to be acting on behalf of all the white Slavic people of the world, I don't think it's unreasonable for white Slavic people the world over to say, actually, Russia's not acting in our name. And if China goes out and claims to be acting on behalf of all the Han Chinese ethnic groups in the world, I don't think it's unreasonable for

Chinese Americans to say, yeah, that country doesn't represent us in our totality. When there's jihadism, we do sort of expect Muslims to distance themselves from jihadists. I don't think it's a double standard to make a distinction between Jews as a people and Israel as a country. So I can sit here as a Monday morning quarterback and judge what Israel is doing. None of that is to imply that Israel doesn't have a right to do it. I mean, it's a country. It can do whatever it wants to do. What I'm calling for is my right to dissent. All right. I so deeply disagree with what you're saying. I almost can't even follow it because

the analogy between Chinese people and China, it's just not similar to me. What about Iranians? What about Persians and the Iranian regime? Like, is it legitimate? I know lots of Iranian people outside Iran who say that Iran, as it stands, does not represent them. I don't know many Jews who are willing to say that about Israel. There seems to be more of a conversational reluctance to, like, more of a sense of betrayal among our community. Do you not feel it? Do you not feel that there's a taboo about criticizing Israel that doesn't exist for Persians criticizing Iran? There is, well, I mean, I've seen no shortage of Jews criticizing Israel, to be honest. But having said that, there is pressure among certain types of Jews to keep your criticism of Israel

within the earshot, you know, of the Jews, right? In-house. In-house. Having said that, you're supposing that the reason that we're not criticizing the Jews is simply that rather than because we – Israel. because Israel is because we, and not because we think Israel is actually right. And that we don't want to buckle to this peer pressure and the double standard, as you say,

this horrible double standard, which applies only to Israel and only to the Jewish people. One of the reasons Ukrainians and Chinese don't feel this pressure is because nobody attacks them. When, when, when their country does something and um i mean i don't go around in circles but i get it about the settlements but um you know the there's

anti-semitism is kind of unique right you agree that it's unique and when you know i mean this may you're going to object to this and it's going to go further than it's but it's just the analogy that comes to mind it's very dangerous to say you know the the kkk would be less dangerous to us if we would all if to us black people if we would only admit that they're right about a lot of the things they say about us black people. It's kind of like you're saying that it's dangerous. Israel is dangerous to the Jews if we don't, I have it here somewhere. Israel, the country made to save the Jews, is now the thing that most endangers the Jewish people physically, culturally, and morally. And we should, we could stop this by speaking more critically of Israel.

And I'm saying, no, the goyim,yim as it were they don't know the details here all they're gonna say is well if the most educated and informed Jews think that Israel is a hundred percent in the wrong here and should be abandoned that's really all I need to know and if I hated the Jews and I want to, you know, have them the victims of my anti-Semitism in whatever way I prefer, including physical violence, they are not going to come off that because now the Jews are telling them,

well, actually you've been right about what you're saying. This is dangerous because it emboldens bullies. Can I just address that? Having said that, the truth has to come first. If Israel is wrong, as I think we all agree, the settlements largely, especially in the areas which are not contemplated in the various negotiations, the settlements are outside the areas that we pretty much know would be kept by Israel and Israel. This is wrong. And Israel should – and we should have no problem saying that.

But again, but to inflate that into really – and it's your go-to here – into a reason to say that somehow we should not stand up to hamas in quite the same way but the settlements aren't like a little oopsie i mean the settlements have been consistent policy since 1967 with tiny little breaks like a 10-month break in 1992 and a brief pause for those talks that you were talking about they were very small early on and not not an issue and as i said it still doesn't demonstrate enormously good faith to keep building on the land of the people who you say that all they have to do to get peace is to put up their hand and say that they want peace. At certain point in negotiations and in treaties, certain things are agreed to and it supersedes what came before. In Oslo, whatever

it is that you're saying, 66, 67, in Oslo, there was a framework established. The settlements are going to be handled in negotiation. We're not going to rehash all that. In the negotiation, the settlements were handled. They were not the sticking point. This is so important. It was not the sticking point, the settlements. Hamas.

No, I understand that. I understand that. But the settlements create a context. If you ask the guy from Hamas, if Israel withdraws from all the 67 borders, will you then be ready to recognize Israel? He will say. No, of course not. Hamas is, you better keep your settlements because you need that land. That's reasonable. That's a reasonable- Well, it's reasonable if you want to be a puppet from us.

If you want Israeli policy to be dictated by Hamas, then it's reasonable. But if you want Israeli policy to be bigger than Hamas- Did you see October 7th? I did. Now imagine Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from the West Bank, as Olmert had promised to do, and taken the settlements. And then Israel had October 7th, both, and Hamas took over the West Bank, which is totally likely. And then October 7th would have come from the East and the West. Yes.

Which is – No, this is – They're playing with all the models here. I see this as making my case, They're playing with all the models here. To some extent, I see this as making my case because there is no solution without a settlement. There is no solution without a settlement. And there's no settlement unless somebody on that side of the table says, we want one. That's all they have to say is we want one.

Right. So behave strategically in ways that are going to make that most likely. All right. So this is the main pushback that I've gotten. And it's something that I wrestle with, and I'm glad you raised it, that for Jews to dissent makes Jews unsafe, right? That if Goyim see Jews speaking out against Israel, then they're going to think, well, if even Jews think that Israel is beyond the pale, then it's okay to attack Jews.

Just to be clear, just to be clear. Yeah, just to be clear, I don't think dissent is dangerous for Jews. I don't think criticizing the settlements is dangerous for Jews. I think to where you've taken it, Jews need to abandon Israel. Israel is no longer defensible. I made this point at the very beginning, which is that Jews should abandon the reflexive instinct to defend Israel. Not that Israel is indefensible as a state. No, you said more than that. That's what I said at the beginning. Well, but you also said that…

I said that we should abandon the taboo on criticizing Israel, and we should abandon our reflexive defense of Israel. But you also implied that because of their behavior, they do not have a free hand to defeat Hamas as they otherwise might if their hands were cleaner. And that means, as I said, in some way, even though you don't want to come out and say it, I believe what you are saying is that Israel needs to capitulate here and let Hamas stay in charge. No, I'm not talking about Gaza. The piece is about the settlements and the occupation and the overall policy of Israel more than anything else.

And I also included, I'll remind people, until such time as Israeli politics can radically reorient itself, right? So I'm talking about the ability of us to conceive of our Jewishness as independent from the behaviour of the Israeli state, especially when it, you know, and the question is, even if you don't think that Israel has reached there now, I think it's an interesting hypothetical to say, is there anything that Israel could do that would sever your allegiance to it as a Jew? So the question about, you know, does it make Jews unsafe to have this conversation?

The argument seems weird to me. Let me grant that there are certain anti-Semites who are so extreme that they're unswayable either way, right? I mean, of course, there are going to be people, this is like Hamas, right? I mean, nothing's going to sway them one way or another. So there's going to be some cohort of the population who just wants to kill Jews or beat them up in the street. The existence of that cohort does not, to me, suggest that the general soup that we're

swimming in can't be swayed one way or another by the way that Jews talk. And to the extent that Jews are perceived as being spokespeople for the IDF, I think that endangers them. To the extent that they are perceived in Western countries, this is, as being a complicated, boisterous, quarrelsome, diverse community of people who you can't quite predict what they're going to think about Palestine one way or another just by seeing someone on the street wearing a yarmulke, I think that protects Jews. I think it is harder for someone to commit an anti-Semitic act of violence in a context where Jews are regarded as being complicated and ambiguous than where they're regarded as being homogenous. And I think

we know this to be true just instinctively because we know it with other communities as well. I mean, when I see conservative Muslims on the street now, I am more judgmental of them and frankly, more bigoted towards them now than I was before October 7th, because I feel like their community has been wildly in lockstep with anti-Zionism and to some extent anti-Semitism. I feel more threatened by them. I feel less committed to them. Would I be slightly more likely to turn a blind eye if I saw one of them getting into trouble? Maybe. I mean, a guilty part of me hates myself for saying that, but probably if conservative Muslims, conservative Arab Muslims were all openly arguing with each other about the failings of the Palestinian cause, about how evil Hamas was, I'd be much more warm towards them. I'd

feel like they're having a conversation so to me writing articles like this it's a it's a red herring to say that i'm endangering jews by calling for jews to be more argumentative about their relationship to the jewish state i want to say two things number one while it's true that just because something has been so for a long time doesn't mean it's always so jewish history is long enough and fraught enough that we should be skeptical of any argument that says what we do or don't do is the cause or the driver of anti-semitism that is a very again i i'm not going to be so arrogant as to say it's not possible nothing we could do could ever could

ever be response cause it or or contribute to it or inflame it or exacerbate it let's just be careful about the word cause let's just say exactly let's just say that we have some capacity to push the edges of it back and forth. Yes, but it is always dangerous to miss forests for trees. This is a point that I've been trying to make. To focus on this margin here of the difference between the ambient level of anti-Semitism and what we can drive it to. If it can go to 11, but normally it's at 10, and we put our focus on that one thing, and really blinds us to the first 10 points of it. And I think, especially in a country like America, which is unique in our history, in the sense that we have a free exchange of ideas, we can advocate, we have methods available to us that Jews never had. The most dangerous thing that's facing the Jews is our own inability to make our own case and i

want to play you something because it occurred to me today i was interviewed by you know constantine kissin on trigonometry yeah yeah this is this was like six months before october 7th or maybe even more than that and he but it was i think was within the year and he asked me like one more question. What else do you want to talk about? Have you done his show? Yeah. Yeah.

It's very good. And I just want to play you what my answer was to him. I cut it down a little bit. I played for you just to show you this was the way I was thinking always. But before we go there, we always end the main interview with the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think

we really should be? I would say that this may be not exactly the answer to your question, but personally, one thing that disturbs me that is not being adequately spoken about, and this is a very personal matter to me, is what I consider to be the very important defenses for the state of Israel, which young Jewish people, and I'm not excusing whatever things Israel does wrong, but young Jewish people, even intellectual Jewish people, are so ignorant about the history of that country and why it's in the predicament that it is and how it has tried to extricate itself from that predicament that they are unable to have the argument anymore. They basically just nod their head in shame.

And I think this is actually dangerous, not only for Israel, but for the Jewish people all over the world. And I don't know what can be done about that, but that is something that's on my mind. And as they say, you know, if you're not for yourself, who will be? If Jewish people can't make their own arguments, no one's going to make it for them.

And that worries me. So what needs to be said. I'm not going to go into the whole, you know, but like I ask smart, young Jewish people, do you know how it is that Israel came into the occupied territories? No. Like this is like the most fundamental question about the whole country. Why is that territory occupied? Do you know about the Clinton attempts to make peace? Do you know what the second Intifada was? No, they don't know any of this stuff. So in their minds, they've internalized that we are like Afrikaners, we're an apartheid state. And so when I went to college,

I took a semester abroad in Israel. And this was a perfectly okay thing to do. I read stories all the time now about like kids at Columbia that would never think about taking a semester abroad in Israel. We have a Jewish star in the window of the aisle for you upstairs. This has been there my whole life.

And most of my existence, this was seen by the general public as no different than an Italian flag in a pizzeria. Nobody really gave it any thought. In recent years, people say to me, good for you. Or you're taking a stand, are you? They're seeing it as almost like a defiant political statement on my part as opposed to just it's an ethnic symbol. Like every ethnic restaurant, it's an Israeli restaurant, every ethnic restaurant has some sort of ethnic symbol like every every ethnic restaurant it's you know it's an israeli restaurant every ethnic restaurant has some sort of ethnic symbol no no jewish people their i think symbols are controversial this is very dangerous i think all right so that's my that's kind of like my 180

degree different take on your thing but i i was thinking this way honestly sure enough the hit the fan exactly as I was worried about. And right after October 7th, and by the way, I criticized, I know you want to say something. I criticized the Jews very much because here we are more than a year and a half later. And we've done nothing but bitch and moan and about the atrocities and the death and the baby heads and all this is all very real but what we should have been doing is educating our own people about the history of this conflict so they could have some self-assurance that we're not just like afrikaners and then i'm worried that when you now tell them someone who who's esteemed as you and persuasive well actually you are kind of like afrikaners they're just gonna be like you know they're just gonna they just as i said they're gonna hang their heads in shame well they don't they don't deserve that let me just also be

clear the first half of that that article that i read in was just to clarify that was in a center left um publication it's a broadsheet kind of like the new york times right so most of the readers are anti-israeli and sympathetic to the palestinians so i should just note one of the readers are anti-Israeli and sympathetic to the Palestinians. So I should just note, one of the tricks that I was trying to pull off there was to make it a Trojan horse and kind of booby trap it so that they would read it on the basis of thinking that this is going to be a Jew criticizing Israel. But actually, the first two thirds of the article is all about how fucking stupid anti-Zionists are.

And a lot of the points that you were making, that you've been making in this piece, about how they don't understand the Second Intifada. They don't understand the Oslo Accords. They don't know about Clinton. They don't know why the occupied territories are occupied. They don't know who occupied the West Bank first. They don't know who occupied Gaza first. And all of that historical illiteracy was there on display. And a lot of the feedback that I've actually gotten from the article, just socially from people who read it, is from very anti-Israeli goyim who've said, oh, I never thought about all of that.

You're kind of right about this like Gaza disaster porn that we're being pushed on social media. I hadn't really thought about that before. So I'm doing a couple of things in that piece, right? The things that you're talking about in that clip on trigonometry, this is like one of those little holograms where you can twist it just one way and the baby Jesus is smiling or has their eyes closed and you twist it another way and it's the Virgin Mary or something. Because you see that and you watch that back and you describe it as being 180 degrees from what I'm saying,

I see that and I see it as almost exactly what I'm saying. Okay. The fact that the Star of David has gone from being an innocent ethnic symbol at the Olive Tree to being some kind of audacious, brave political stance is a consequence of how tight and unbroken and unquestioned the link is between the Jewish ethnicity and the Israeli state. I agree with you. We need greater education amongst young Jews about the causes of the crisis, about the reason why Israel finds itself in the situation that it's in. And we need greater moral imagination among the old guard of reflexive defenders of Israel about how Israel might be able to extricate itself. And we need to locate the focus of our

own agency back on ourselves, instead of saying, oh, the anti-Semites have been around for 5,000 years. We can't do anything about them. Woe is us. No matter what we do, they're going to hate us. I have to take issue with you. I have to take issue with you. And there is a fact of physics, of semantic physics, that what comes first is just a setup for what comes later.

So Obama said after October 7th, yes, it's true that what Hamas did was awful, but it's also true that the occupation is unbearable. And the fact that he didn't say, the occupation is awful, but what Hamas did is unacceptable. The order tells you everything. Yeah, it's true that I I shouldn't have cheated on you but living with you is unbearable it's and and the fact that

you put all that stuff in the front even if you really don't mean it to be taken that way it doesn't matter what comes up front is just a throat clearing disclaimers whatever it is for is, for what follows it, which is the point. And everything that comes before, I'm afraid, is lost. I can't change the logical structure of an argument. I mean, in order to make an argument, you need to sort of build up to it.

So I have to do it in order. No, it works the opposite way too. A leads to B, leads to C. It works the opposite way too. Israel b leads to c it works the opposite way to israel doing this wrong is that wrong is that but i still have to say you have to know that it's well that's true that's true and i've actually done that over a dozen times since october 7th on my podcast i mean if people are interested people don't know me and they're interested in my more pro-zionist work shall we we say, there's a podcast from December of 2023

called Why Jews Are Literally Nazis, in which I tear to shreds the progressive anti-Israel reaction to October 7th. And there are a number of other editorials that I did between October 2023 and today, which do what you're saying. But I mean, there comes a point, yeah, look, there came a point at which the emphasis needed to shift slightly. And I needed to say, for the well-being of Jews ourselves, to maintain our own moral standards and to cohere as a community that is not held hostage by the whims of the Israeli government, there has to come a point at which we'll find independence from Israel.

There's one other thing. We're almost finished. There's something else you did here. Friend to friend, it really bothers me. Let me tell you what it is. Go for it. anybody who would take their news from Mother Jones, the nation, a Seymour Hersh blog post, and create a case about what America is, we'd say, come on, what are you doing here?

You can't sample the most fire-breathing anti-American sources and pretend this is a way to make a responsible case about America. No more than if I were to quote you three or four articles from the most right-wing publication in Israel or from Fox News and say, look, theians are monsters and i and and the sources that you quote here are so i i think this discredits your argument in a way in a sense that you might have been able to make the case from articles in the new york times and from other places but she didn't and i was going to give you a few examples well i did i did i did quote from from the New York Times as well. But let me just clarify what I was trying to do by citing those left-wing Israelis. Can I read them into the record first? Yes. Yes.

Okay. So in no particular order, I'm reading from your thing here. Israel's rules on killing Palestinians. I'm sorry. Jeez, I'm terrible at this. Israel's rules on killing Palestinian civilians have been so loosened that a former U.S. State Department senior advisor on civilian harm, Larry Lewis, told the New York Times, the willingness to accept this level of harm to civilians is far beyond what I've seen in operations in the past. Now, I looked up this guy.

This is other stuff. This guy says the same things about America. By the way, of all the people, he's a pretty credible guy, by the way. But I'll read you a little bit of Larry Lewis. And it's a New York Times article called Civilian Deaths Mounted as Secret Unit Pounded ISIS. It was much higher than I would have expected from a U.S. unit, Mr. Lewis said. The fact that it increased dramatically and steadily over a period of years shocked me. Mr. Lewis said commanders enabled the tactics by failing to emphasize the importance of reducing

civilian casualties, and that General Townsend, who commanded the offensive against the Islamic State in 2016-2017, was dismissive of widespread reports from news media and human rights organizations describing the mounting toll. But people who saw the task force operate firsthand say the 2019 strike was part of a pattern of reckless strikes that started years earlier. They were ruthlessly efficient and good at their jobs. In reality, four current and former military officers say the majority of strikes were ordered

not by top leaders, but by relatively low-ranking U.S. Delta Force commandos in Talon Anvil. And one more thing, he said, every year that the strike cell operated, the civilian casualty rate in Syria increased significantly, according to Larry Lewis, a former Pentagon and State Department advisor who was one of the authors of the Defense Journal, blah, blah, blah, blah. He says- Well, yeah, he's a specialist in civilian casualties, so journalists go to him to comment

on civilian casualties. The Pentagon's classified civilian casualty data for syria said that the rate was 10 times that of similar operations he tracked in afghanistan so this guy is essentially giving the same narrative to how america has become complacent america kills more and more people over time as he does about israel so well the israeli comments came afterwards. So he's saying, but I mean, we could spend literally hours or hundreds of hours cherry picking data. I think the bulk of information about Gaza is that I think the line that I make in the piece is simply that it's no longer credible that this is a just war being prudently prosecuted where civilian lives

are lost only regrettably there is a litany of different sources for that claim being true but we can go through every single little one i don't want to go through everyone but i want i want to go through a couple of them because because it's the heart and soul of your argument uh i just want to make sure it's really not i mean there's a ton of stuff I didn't include because you can't you know you know there's a time there's a word limit but like you know I could have gone into a huge amount of stuff the the the loosening of constraints on civilian casualties by the IDF the number of acceptable civilian casualties per Hamas fighter being

loosened and loosened and loosened in the first first weeks of the war, you're allowed to kill 15 or 20 civilians for every junior Hamas operative, and then that went up to 100, and then that went up to 300. In comparison, the number of permissible civilian deaths to kill Saddam Hussein was 29 for the United States. When the US assassinated bin Laden, the authorized number of civilians was 30, and now it's 300 by israel like i could we could go on and on and on we could we could talk about okay the highest kill rate of any military killing

anybody since the rwandan genocide of 1994 but these really aren't the point my point is about how we have the conversation hold on hold on just by the way just before i read this i'm going to kind of set you up and do you think that the, but just a quick answer, because I want to get onto what I want to read, that the, do you have a problem with the Hezbollah Pager operation? No. Okay. So renowned American trauma surgeons with experience in other wars have returned from volunteering at Gaza hospitals horrified,

one wrote in the Los Angeles Times. I've worked in other war zones, but what I witnessed in Gaza was not war. It was annihilation. Another told you in security council, as surgeons, we have never seen cruelty like Israel's genocide in Gaza. Now, I looked into these guys. Now, the guy who, why don't I have his name here? Irfan Guleria. He's a doctor. He did an interview with Tavis Smiley. I have it, but I'm not going to force it. On Democracy Now or something? And by the way, let me just say this. These doctors who risk their lives going into war zones to treat people, they die i have nothing but i'm actually feeling like you can get goosebumps

about the bravery and the commitment to humanitarian efforts so i want to be careful how i speak about him because he's doing you know he's not there killing jews he's there saving trying to save lives of people he cares about. So I don't want to besmirch him. However, he's a very, very committed advocate for that political cause, so much so that when Israel set off the Hezbollah pagers, he immediately caught a plane to Lebanon because he was outraged at this war crime. Tell me where you have been, and then we'll talk about what you saw on your tour. Of course. On September 17th and September 18th, the Israeli government and military launched a

series of attacks in Lebanon that are considered war crimes by the majority of military and legal experts. And these pagers and walkie-talkies were detonated, and thousands of explosions occurred at midday in public spaces, causing significant injuries. So I left immediately on September 19th to help civilians recover from these attacks. And he spent his time treating the apparent civilians who were injured in the Hezbollah action. So this is where he is.

So you'd have to take what he says with some kind of grain of salt. But it gets worse. I want to play you something. I think you're going to find it interesting. You know this guy, Feroz Sidwa? No. So he's another one of these doctors. With this guy, Irfan, he also signed these open letters to the Biden administration.

And he was the guy, you do know who he is, he was the guy who wrote the article in the New York Times about the bullets in the babies' and children's heads. In the children's heads. Yes. Yeah, there were a number of those, but I don't know what that one in particular. Yeah. The claim was, for people who don't know it, that medics in Gaza were seeing children come in and old people come in with a single bullet hole in their chest or in their head, which could have been Hamas, but they were suspicious that it could be the IDF, could be IDF snipers. Right. be idf snipers right so i had this guy in my podcast and by the way i've tried to interview a lot of people who were saying things which would be tough to accept as someone who cares about israel and i and in each time i didn't know where they were going to go i had a hearts

reporters talking about um prisoners and in palestinian palestinian prisoners who had had to have their limbs amputated because of mistreatment so I've tried to speak truth to power as you say so this guy Feroz who I who I got along well with he he although there were a few things in his story which led me to think he spun a little bit and exaggerated certain things you could listen to the interview to see he did not strike me as a liar at all he showed me actual scans of a of a baby's head with a bullet in it that he had on his laptop that he hadn't even published or put on twitter i do not think he he fabricated or whatever it is i was convinced that that there were children with bullets in their head. And it was very upsetting.

But then, and I hope I can make my point well here. Then, like two hours into the conversation, he said something to me that was fascinating. And he gave me an insight into these people. He said that, yes, this was about a year ago, fall of 24. That is the time when around 40,000 people had died I think and he said well the data we're seeing is that on top of the 40,000 people who've been killed there are probably at least 60,000 people who have starved to death in Gaza and he says 60,000 people starved to death in Gaza. And he says, 60,000 people starved to death in Gaza?

How could there be 60,000 people? They have cell phones. We would see this. He says, at least 60,000. And I had this conversation with him about it, and I'll play it for you now. It's a little bit long, but it's fascinating. And all of which is to say that to take our information from these committed advocates of a cause, and I want to say it again, that doesn't mean they're wrong.

Very often the activists are right. Very often the only people who will have the nerve to say something are the committed activists I listen to what Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal and everyone I listen with an open mind to every claim they make nine times out of ten they turn out to be I think full of shit but I understand that if someone is going to turn something up it's not gonna be you know Alan Dershowitz right's going to be Max Blumenthal or Aaron Maté. So I want to make that point clear. But that doesn't mean that you should not add salt to people who are committed advocates of a cause.

And let me just play you this. I hope it doesn't get too long. I'll throw in the towel when you say you've heard enough of it. But this is such a fascinating thing. And again, I believe this guy is sincere, which is why it's so interesting, because I wonder if you'll agree what he says to me is absurd, like just absurd. Let's hear it. Go ahead. Let's take a totally different thing. We wrote, me and 98 other healthcare providers, wrote an open letter to the Biden administration telling them what we saw and asking to have a meeting.

There's an appendix to that letter, too. And the appendix is very data-driven, I guess you would say. And in that appendix, I went through the integrated food security phase classification data for Gaza. That's the technical group that monitors food insecurity in the world. And if you look at their data, which admittedly everybody admits is not great because it's very hard to get data out of Gaza, but if you look at their data, the minimum number of Palestinians that you can estimate that have died from starvation or starvation-related causes since October 7th of last year is 62,000. Now, it's a huge number, and I sincerely hope it's not true. And if it doesn't turn out to be true, that would be wonderful.

How can it be true? How can it be true? We'd be seeing social media videos of people that look like concentration camp victims by 62,000. So this is what I'm saying. We see almost none. No, that's not true, Norman. And maybe you can explain this, because from time to time when I do see somebody emaciated like that, they're surrounded by people who are sometimes pudgy. Yeah.

And I'm like, what is going on? How can one person be starving to death around friends and family that are overweight so alex de wall is the major is like the preeminent historian of famine in the modern period his his book i forget his i forget the name of the book if you read it he goes into details about how so famine almost never affects an entire famine is not usually like what was happening in a nazi concentration camp but that's that's what we think of in our heads right in uh when and again i'm using the term famine let me just i'm not using that in the ipc's technical definition i'm just using it to mean a time when people don't have enough food and some of them are dying because of that uh famine usually happens in in circumstances of scarcity but it always

affects people who have fewer mechanisms to cope with it. So if you look at the IPC's face classification, it goes one through five. It's very, very uncommon for an entire population all to be starving to death. But again, that's the picture we have in our head because we think of the Americans going- That's not the point I was making,

but I want to let you finish. Well, but you said there are chubby people next to dying people, and that's normal. I understand that there might be different levels of, of who's starving, who's not, but I'm saying that we see these isolated videos of a child in a bed. Sometimes.

And, and no adult is going to let a child get to that level of starvation while they're eating comfort and maintaining their weight so it's you know listen you see you actually you actually really seem like a good guy somebody i'd want to know somebody i want to spend time talking to to um uh enrich my own knowledge of of thing you have a lot of life experience that um is vital to the understanding of this conflict that that I don't have. But there's certain disconnects in certain things you say that I have trouble accepting.

And the notion that there could be, I think about 62,000, 30,000. But this is what I'm starting to say. More people starving in Gaza. Well, everybody has a cell phone. And we don't know about it. And Hamas is not announcing it. And the Gaza Ministry of Health is not adding it to their numbers. This is a credulousness.

I don't want what I was saying to be misinterpreted. What I said is that with the available data, that's the lowest number that can be estimated. I don't know. But it's obviously not true. I wouldn't say it's obviously not true. Like I said, I don't know. We would see the videos.

There are people in Gaza. I mean, you would have seen it. You were there. I did. You saw there. I did. You saw people, you saw whole groups of people, like Auschwitz victims? So let me, so you, I think you said you saw the one picture of the child. Yeah, I saw the one picture. Right.

So like with that kid, if you just start pumping tube feeds into his stomach, you're going to kill him. He's going to have huge electrolyte shifts and his heart's going to stop working. Same thing that should happen. But why was he starving to death? Was he sick? Was he injured? Why wasn't he... Yeah, he was injured. I know he was injured,

but he'd been to Shefa Hospital. But this is my point. We sent him home and we told his family just give him little bits of food, but we knew that wasn't going to work. So he probably, unless he made it out to Egypt,

which is always possible. But that's my point. He was starving like that because he was injured. If he was home with his family, he wouldn't have been starving like that. Well, how do you know? He wasn't like that for a lack of food. He was like that for a lack of the ability to take in food. I don't know that that's true. I'm saying as a very reliable common sense matter, if 30 or 40 or 50, 60 thousands of Gazans were dead of starvation,

and another 60,000 or 100,000 or 200,000 not dead, but just starving to death, bone thin, how could we not know about that? That's a good question. There's no way we could not know about that, and that should be obvious to you. Now, if you told me that hundreds of people are starving to death, actually, with the ubiquity of cell phone cameras, even that I find hard to believe. Okay. And the fact that you saw one kid, but he was injured and not able to nourish,

take nourishment actually doesn't even count because that's not what starvation is. I don't mean to make light of him, but I do love your depiction of certain Garthens as being pudgy. I know, I felt bad about that word. No, it's a good word. It's perfect.

It's colloquial. It's evocative. He saved me by not reacting negatively to it because it could have been taken as flippant. But you understand my point. Absolutely. And he is one of these liable guys. Hang on. Let me just save us some phony disagreement here because you'll get no beef from me about how much bullshit there is coming out of Gaza, how difficult it is to believe so many of the claims, how nothing that comes out of Gaza

basically doesn't have the imprimatur of Hamas on it. So, you know, anyone who was disseminating information from Gaza that sought to make it seem more livable would find themselves at the wrong end of Hamas. But Josh, this is a guy who works with, signed the same letter as this renowned america trauma surgeon that you cite as yeah let me just continue the let me let me continue the love fest for a moment before i attack you again um you know there's a lot of there's a lot of bs here and i fully understand how these claims then get laundered through like the united nations and the international criminal court i mean the court of Justice and all these things. Also, the other point about starvation is the reason,

if there is a lack of food in Gaza, it's because Hamas is stealing it from people. Like, the reason why people don't have food is because Hamas is stealing it. Although I was against Israel. I was against the food embargo. I thought that was the one thing Israel did, which I thought was completely wrong. Although it may not necessarily be a war crime because of the reason you said but go ahead so tremendous amount of amount of misinformation um the volume of you know

it's impossible for us to go over all of the flames so i picked out a small selective handful of random things, maybe four examples from about a hundred, but there are other things that are completely verifiable, such as videos that have gone viral on social media in Israel itself of the Israeli army mowing down detainees whose hands are cuffed behind their backs and they're under you know these might be terrorists but gleeful it's they're going around in israel because right-wing israelis are like yeah let's show them who's boss as their limbs are getting crushed by a tank of course there are instances of so yeah but you can yeah but you but you but at some point okay to be so that's my only point right but to be fair we have to say it's a weird dilemma because you can't excuse it ever.

But you also can't say, unless they provide me with something which I know is not possible in a war, I'm going to cut bait. And America was known to mow down prisoners of war, mow down Japanese. I mean, there's no such thing as a war. You're talking about 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds. I agree. But there is, we have now reached,

look, my point was simply this, and I know that we have to go because this is book and photo. Wait, but I want to ask you about the 972 thing. I got to ask you 972. Is this interesting to go over minutia instead of ending with a big picture?

I'll tell you why it's interesting. Because I'm trying to, Is this interesting to go over minutiae instead of ending with a big picture? I'll tell you why it's interesting. Because I'm trying to open your mind to the fact that— You're not going to do it with minutiae. You're not going to do it by taking down 972 magazine. about Israel are not reliable and don't really tell anything nearly as significant as what you might have thought. So for instance, the last one I'll give you, if you suspect that a fair bit of the pro-Gaza hoo-ha, as you got, I like that you said hoo-ha, is motivated by bias against Israel, and some of it is, read the work of Israel's own progressive independent media, Haaretz 972 magazine in Beth Salem. I mean, this is just like, as I said, it's like Mother Jones, the nation and.

No, I know. But hang on. I was going to make a point about this before, but you wanted me to let you finish. But let me let me just interject here. I got to say this about the about the AI. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, yeah.

No, I just wanted to make the point. If my point was that these publications in Israel are good sources to rely on for always accurate and impartial information, then you would be right to say that that claim is ridiculous because they are obviously partisan, progressive outlets. But the claim that I was making was to say that it is not necessarily antithetical to Israel to be making these claims about the IDF's behavior in Gaza. I was saying, if you think that all of the claims that we're hearing out of Gaza are just anti-Zionist hoo-ha, then you'd have to explain why Israelis themselves are making them. That's all I was saying. Right. So, I mean, it's a bit like saying, it's a bit like if, imagine if someone said it is anti-American to make claim, to make this such and such a claim, then you might say, well, hang on, MSNBC makes that claim all the

time. That would be legitimate. And then you could say, well, hang on, MSNBC isn't representative of America. And I'd say, yes, but it's still not anti, MSNBC is not anti-American. Okay. But in, yes, but there are plenty of Americans who are anti-American. Okay. But in, yes, but there are plenty of Americans who are anti-American. There's also plenty of people who have derangement syndrome about the opposite party

and Israel has its share of people who do feel, by the way, 972 was founded by Palestinians

and Israelis. It's not even a clean, not that it would matter, but just, you know, it was- But Haaretz

was a mainstream newspaper. Haaretz actually had some stuff about this stuff. I'm not going to get to it. Point is this. The fact is, the fact of Israel's bloodshed are staggering. The IDF's own artificial intelligence system, Habsara, generates bombing targets so fast that a former Israeli intelligence officer described it as a mass assassination factory.

Now, when I read that, I'm like, yeah, I hope there is a mass assassination factory of Hamas operatives, Hamas soldiers, because we have, you know, 200 hostages there. We want to kill the bad guys as quickly as possible what is troubling is the notion that maybe um AI would you know it's just creepy that ai is involved but Ukraine is using AI in war a AI in war is coming and even this guy Larry what was his name the guy we were just talking about the guy who's the casualty guy? I don't remember. It's not important to the overall class to my argument. He wrote a whole article about how AI can save lives by making targeting more accurate with the recognition. So it's just like an emotional appeal, like Israel's using AI to identify targets.

Well, yeah, facial recognition may be much more accurate than human recognition i didn't i didn't have another 1150 words to explain what experts why experts are concerned about the accuracy of this would have been better this would have been better in person because this is really an interesting topic i love it listen i will be in person next month in new york we can continue this we can tape it if we want to i'm getting kicked out of this studio right now i love thank you for having me on. I mean, I think that I understand all of your concerns. I really, really genuinely do.

Absolutely. You always are. I listen to your show. I love it. I think you're scrupulously fair and super open-minded and I've enjoyed it. I just want to end with just the general point that regardless of any of our disagreements about the details, my desire is for a strong and powerful Jewish community globally. And I think that that vision is enhanced the more that we quarrel about Israel and the more that we question Israel's right to act on our behalf rather than

being impeded by it. I see a Jewish community globally that is hitched to the wagon to everything that Israel does as being an impoverished Jewish community. And so my call is simply for us to have, yes, more conversations like this and for there to be less of an internal taboo within our community about having them. To paraphrase, was it Ben-Gurion? I think you should criticize Israel and the injustices that it commits as if there is no war in Gaza, but I think you should defend Israel and its fight for survival vis-a-vis Gaza and its enemies as if there is no injustice

in Israel. You can do both at the same time. One does not have to lead to an abandonment of Israel because Israel is still fighting for a righteous cause. It may, I mean, they always say, you know, we create more terrorists and we exacerbate things, and nobody ever wants to stop and think. There is an Israeli psychology too. You know, they've created a lot of right-wing Israelis by killing us. Listen, I have talked about this a lot,

and if people want more of this and more, you know, uncomfortable conversations, go and listen to uncomfortable conversations because we have a lot. And if people want more of this and more uncomfortable conversations, go and listen to Uncomfortable Conversations because we have a lot of these kinds of conversations in which I make many of the points that you've been making known. God bless you. Thank you for having me. Bye, Josh.

Peace out.