The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved: Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

From college campuses to the UN to the US Congress, it's one of the big debates of our time: is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? Introducing the first episode of the Munk Debates podcast, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Bret Stephens VS The Atlantic contributing editor Peter Beinart.  Sources: CNN, CTV.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debate podcast. I'm your. moderator Rudyard Griffiths. Our mission every episode is to provide you with civil and substantive debate on the big issues

of the day. Free of spin, focused on facts, and animated by smart conversation. By the end of each debate, our hope is that you'll be armed with enough information to make up your own mind about any given issue. On this episode, we debate the motion, be it resolved. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. When people sneakily make claims that they are for the Jews but against Israel, that's something that we can't just pretend is theoretically sound because we know the consequences that too often follow from it. Anti-Semitism is something very frightening and very disturbing and is coming from both the left and the right.

But it is not fair to make Palestinians pay the price for that. It's a debate brewing on college campuses in our domestic politics, and it's shaping opinion about the state of Israel on the world stage. At the heart of the debate is the issue of where and when. In fact, if ever, it's okay to question the legitimacy of the Jewish state in present day Israel. We're going to walk this fine line with two big thinkers that hold sharply different points of view. Arguing for the motion, be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, is New York. Times columnist Brett Stevens. His opponent is Peter Beinhart, contributing editor at the Atlantic, an author of the crisis of Zionism. Brett Stevens, Peter Beinhart, welcome to the Monk Debate

podcast. Thank you. Good to be here. Brett, since you're speaking in favor of today's resolution, be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Let's hear your opening statement first. Start for us. I think there's a common misconception that anti-Zionism. That anti-Zionism, Zionism amounts to nothing more than very strong criticism of Israel. And I'd like to begin by dispelling that notion. People who don't like the Netanyahu government, that includes me, are not anti-Zionists. That's part of the normal democratic debate. People who oppose Israel's settlement policies or its policies vis-a-vis Gaza or anywhere

else aren't necessarily anti-Zionists. There are many patriotic Israelis who feel just the same way. Anti-Zionism is unique because its view is that the Zionist enterprise, that is to say, the state of Israel, is misconceived, it's wrong, and at the end of the day, it isn't simply Israeli policy that has to change, but it is Israel itself that has to go. Now, This is unique. When you think about other countries around the world, many of us are critics of China's occupation of Tibet, Russia's occupation of parts of Ukraine. Some people are aware that Turkey is occupying northern Cyprus in violation of international law and putting down settlements there too. But none of those critiques extend to calls that are now increasingly pervasive around the world, not only for Russia, China, or Turkey to change their policies,

but for the states themselves to disappear, to be eliminated. So even if you accepted the premise for one second, Rudyard, that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, you have to come to grips with the eliminationist ideology that is at the heart of anti-Zionism. But anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. First of all, it's anti-Semitism for a reason I just suggested. It singles out the Jewish state for a probium and with a prescription

that anti-Zionists apply to no other state. Second point that's very important is that anti-Zionism tends very frequently to traffic in images, in tropes, and in liables that have a long history in an anti-Semitic tradition stretching back for thousands of years. So, for example, when you hear that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and it, of course, manifestly is not. You are abusing that word. That is trafficking in a classic anti-Semitic tropes, suggesting that the Jewish people have a particular kind of bloodlust. Or if you say that Israel or Israeli leaders have hypnotized the world to get them to do their bidding, that again goes back to an old anti-Semitic trope. And finally, anti-Semitism is

anti-Zionism because like all forms of Jew hatred in history, it has adapted itself almost like a virus to the cultural and political fashions of our day. Today it is very difficult for people to be anti-Semites to hate Jews for racial reasons, for the obvious reason that that kind of ideology fortunately went out of fashion with the destruction of the Third Reich. It's unfashionable to hate Jews simply on a religious basis, but it has become fashionable to hate Jews using the excuse of their statehood, of their nationality, and of their willingness to defend their borders as the latest pretext to single out Jewish people for opprobrium and for hatred that is applied to almost no other people, if no other people in the world. That is why, in a nutshell,

anti-Zionism is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. It is the anti-Semitism of our day. Brett Stevens, thank you for that opening statement. Peter Beinhard, I'm going to turn the microphone over to you. Let's hear your opening remarks. Sure. I think first it's useful to try to define what Zionism or at least political Zionism is, it's the idea that there should be a state that privileges Jews that has a special responsibility to protect and represent Jews. You see that in the state of Israel's symbols which are religious and with immigration policy, which allows a diaspora Jew like myself to come to Israel and become a citizen on day one and makes it virtually impossible for a Palestinian to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen. Now, I am a Zionist because as a Jew,

I believe in the importance of a state that has a special responsibility to Jews. But I also think that there are many, many examples of people who do not support that Jewish privilege in the state of Israel, who are not anti-Semites. So, for instance, there is a component of the Jewish world that opposes Zionism. It doesn't get necessarily that much attention. But the Sattmar Khashidim, for instance, who are the largest Hasidic group in the world, they have meetings in football stadiums that are, larger than the APAC National Convention are anti-Zionists because of their traditional reading of Jewish texts. Jewish Voice for Peace on the left is a Jewish organization that believes that its liberal

democratic values are in tension with the idea of a state that privileges Jews, even inside Israel proper, privileges them over Palestinians. It's true that most Jews around the world are Zionists, but that wasn't always the case, and there still is a robust debate about Zionism. Probably if you look at younger American Jews today, you would find that there's an even larger number of people who have significant questions about the idea of Zionism, either because traditional Jewish religious texts say that it's incompatible with Jewish religious law or because it violates their liberal democratic values. In either cases, those people are just simply not anti-Semites. Secondly, you have almost all Palestinians are anti-Zionists, again, because they don't support the idea of, a state that privileges Jews over Palestinians. Now, some of their anti-Zionism is absolutely

Semitic, if you look at the Islamic kind of dominationist ideology of Hamas. But there are many other Palestinians who say very openly and simply that they want Israel to not be a Jewish state, but to be a state for all its citizens in which everyone lives under the same law. There were a number of Palestinian members of the Knesset who introduced what's called a basic law in Israel last saying simply this. This should not be a state built on principles of privilege for any group. It should be a liberal democracy with equal law provided to everybody. Now, it's true that there are many ethnically based states around the world, but we do not, as a general principle, have the idea that every nation that wants its own state should have one. The Kurds don't,

the Catalans don't, the Basques don't, the Quebecers don't. I don't think we would say that people who oppose a Kurdish state are anti-Semitic. And in fact, there are states that were built on ethnic or racial privilege that had been dismantled, right? So I do not consider Israel an apartheid state. I think the way that apartheid South Africa privileged whites over blacks was much more extreme than the way that Israel privileges Jews over non-Jews. But when that was dismantled and the project of national self-determination for Afrikaners was ended and Israel became a state for all its citizens,

That wasn't anti-Afrikaner, bigotry. And if you say that all Palestinians who are anti-Zionists are anti-Semites, even those who say that all they want is one state in which Jews and Palestinians live under an equal law, then, in fact, you are essentially delegitimizing all Palestinian politics. You're equating Palestinian politics with bigotry. And I think that's very destructive for our appreciation of Palestinian human dignity. and I think undermines the quest for peace. Thank you both for those opening statements.

Let me quickly sum up here. Brett Stevens, the gist of your argument is that while it's become widely unacceptable to be anti-Semitic, for racial or religious reasons, it has become acceptable to criticize Jews for pursuing statehood or for defending their borders, which to you are essential to the very existence of Israel. And Peter, Beinhart, you're saying quite simply that one condition, disagree with the politics of the state of Israel. You can even be anti-Zionist and still not be anti-Semitic. Hence, you're against the motion, be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Now, let's move on to our rebuttals. Brett, Stephen, I'm going to pass the microphone back to you

to respond to a few of the key things that Peter have said that are at the top of your mind. Well, I know this debate is being heard, and obviously in Canada and in the United States, and in both countries, the idea of a state privileging a particular nation, that is to say, a particular culture, ethnicity, religion, language, and so on, might seem a little strange to our tradition, simply because the United States was not founded as a nation state. But you or many listeners might be surprised to learn that around the world, all kinds of states, including states, that we consider upstanding members of the liberal democratic order, do in fact offer certain kinds of privileges to a given nation that are not offered to others. Let me give you an example. Denmark, unlike the United States, has an official language. Danish, you'll be surprised to learn.

Germany, for many years, I don't know if it's the current policy, but certainly was the policy for decades. Post-war Germany offered expedited citizenship to German nationals, who had been living in what became the Soviet Union for not decades, but in fact, for centuries. They offered citizenship based on an ancestral claim of nationality and ethnicity. So the idea that Zionism, that Jewish Zionists like the Danes, like the Germans, like many other nation states, offer certain kind of privileges to the dominant ethnic or religious group is not a very strange idea. it's certainly not an outrageous idea. I don't hear many people calling for the elimination of Germany,

much less the elimination of Denmark. Now, a second point that Peter raises, you can always find the odd exception, like he mentioned, the Satmar Hasidim, who are not Zionists. I'm perfectly happy to concede that there are these rare exceptions as there are when it comes to any prejudice. But that does not mean that we should overlook the fact that if you were to draw a Venn diagram and map anti-Zionism over anti-Semitism, the overlap would be absolutely astonishing.

So Peter is trying to point to a handful of exceptions and say this disproves the rule. I'm not sure that that's at all the case. The third point, and maybe to some listeners of the most powerful point, is to say, well, there are a lot of Palestinians who don't want a state of Israel, who want the destruction of the state of Israel, or at least want it substituted with a single state. Now, for the last 25 or however many years, well-intended people, and this includes myself, have been working and have been hoping for a two-state solution, precisely because Zionism is so central to Jewish identity. So when there are Palestinians, Palestinians who say we want the destruction of the state of Israel rather than the creation of an independent Palestinian state, they are in fact participating in that anti-Semitism. And it should be no surprise. And I'm sorry to say this, but anti-Semitism, not just of the postmodern 21st century anti-Zionist variety, but of the old-fashioned 19th century kind is alive and well on Palestinian television, in Palestinian mosques and in Palestinian society. That's a reality that a lot of supporters of Palestinian statehood want to look away from. But if anyone is being honest about Palestinian politics, they have to acknowledge that there is far too much rank old-fashioned anti-Semitism inhabiting of Palestinian politics, Palestinian discourse.

Thanks, Brett Stevens. Peter Beinhard, let's get your response to what you've heard from Brett just now. I want to start with the idea of the Venn diagram, that there's an almost exact overlap, not entirely almost exact between the group of people who were Zionists and the group of people who are anti-Semites. I just think that's not empirically the case. First of all, some of the most virulently and obviously anti-Semitic leaders in the world today, I think of someone like Viktor Orban in Hungary, for instance, or the far-right leaders in much of Europe. And to some degree, even Donald Trump, who has a much longer history of peddling anti-Semitic stereotypes than Ilhan Omar, are very Zionistic. In fact, it's not intellectually inconsistent if you, like the Polish leaders

of the 1930s who were anti-Semitic, if you don't want Jews in your country, you might be quite happy about the idea that they would have a country of their own. And what we know about polling in the United States suggests that the Venn diagram actually may not really overlap nearly as much as Brett says, because when the Anti-Defamation League did a study and they asked people to measure their anti-Semitism, they ask questions like, do Jews have too much power, do they only look out for themselves, they found that the most anti-Semitic people in the United States were older and without college degrees. And yet when people study Israel sentiment, hostility to Israel, for instance the Pew Research Center. They find that the people who have the most hostility to Israel

tend to be young and highly educated. So actually, the Venn diagram doesn't necessarily overlap nearly as much, I think, as Brett is suggesting. It is certainly true. Brett is absolutely right. There are lots of countries in the world that have crosses or crescents on their flags and that have some form of preferential immigration policy. Israel is at an extreme in the sense that even though Britain has a cross on its flag, Britain has had a Jewish prime minister, where it's very difficult to imagine the state of Israel having, let's say, a Palestinian prime minister. But I think the critical point for our debate is that if you were a Brit who wanted to take that cross off the flag, or a German, to use Brett's example, who didn't want Germany

to have an immigration policy that privileged Germans over another group, you might be right, you might be wrong. You wouldn't be a bigot for taking those views. This would be an argument about ethnic versus civic nationalism, which is an argument that takes place in all different parts of the world. There is Palestinian anti-Semitism. Brett is entirely right about that. But when he uses the word destruction

of the state of Israel, I think what he is conflating is the notion that some have, like Islamic jihad, for instance, of a violent war to destroy Israel and kill Jews, and another group of Palestinians who have supporters around the world,

who want to replace Zionism which is an ethnic nationalism with a civic nationalism that they believe would treat all people equally. There are very good critiques of this. I am a supporter of the two-state solution. But I just don't think it makes, I think it defies logic to say that someone who wants people to live equally in one state is therefore a bigot.

You're listening to the Monk Debate podcast. Be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. If you're enjoying this debate, check out our website, monkdebates.com, for dozens of debates on the big. issues of the day. Listen to Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens debate whether religion is a force for good in the world. Watch freed Zakaria and Neil Ferguson go head to head on the future of geopolitics. Read Stephen Fry and Jordan Peterson's debate on political correctness. All these debates,

free to listen, watch, and read at monkdebates.com. So, Brett, what's the rebuttal that this discussion around anti-Zionism and labeling people as anti-Zionists is cutting off the kind of legitimate, necessary, sometimes difficult conversations that necessitate, that are the basis of sustaining some hope for a two-state solution? You know, just recently in the United States, we've had an argument between left and right over some horrendous comments that the president made with respect to four minority congresswomen in which he said that they should, quote, go back to the countries that are supposedly their countries of origin.

And obviously and importantly, Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screens. I mean, to me, this is a nakedly bigoted and frankly racist comment, and I don't need anyone to tell me otherwise. But I found it interesting to listen to some conservative commentators, either duck the question of the statement's bigotry and racism altogether, or actually engage in this kind of fine-grained legalistic parsing as to whether it was racist or merely xenophobic. We live in an age when we not only

see and hear, but if you don't mind my saying, when we smell, when we get that whiff of racist bigotry, we call it out. And people on the left, people who typically are on Peter's side of the debate, have been very vocal in doing so, and I, of course, have joined them in that as a so-called never-trump conservative. What I find amazing is that when we come to a different kind of bigotry, which is the bigotry against Jews, that all of a sudden my friends who are so attuned to microaggressions and to racist dog whistles start to sound a little bit like the Mitch McConnell's of the world in trying to carefully parse exactly what the language was that was used, and to make excuses for people who are engaging in just the kinds of stereotypes and tropes

and language that those of us who understand anti-Semitism are unfortunately all too familiar with. And I would wish that someone like Peter, who is so honorably thoughtful when it comes to calling out racism when he sees it and not allowing racists to hide behind carefully parsed language, would be equally vocal when it comes to not insisting on these exquisitely fine-grained distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. I want to make a final point, which is this. We are living in an era of resurgent anti-Semitism. And this is not a question of anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism.

When a pogrom nearly happens in a synagogue in Paris, when protesters in Germany call for Jews, to go Palestinian protesters or Arab protesters in Germany call for choose to go to the gas when schools throughout Europe, Jewish schools are behind armed guards. And when a synagogue in Pittsburgh and another synagogue in San Diego is victimized by anti-Semitic, violent, murderous hatred, we are living in a certain era. And that's an era in which we've learned that not just in Europe, but also here in North America, Jews aren't entirely safe. The one place where Jews actually can defend themselves and have the sovereign and legal means to do so is in the state of Israel. And it behooves anyone with a sense of the long and violent history of anti-Semitism to

understand that that's why those of us who have that sense are so careful to not only denounce anti-Semitism when we see it, but to understand that the long-term security of the Jewish people requires the safety and health of the state of Israel. And when people sneakily make claims that they are for the Jews but against Israel, that's something that we can't just pretend is theoretically sound because we know the consequences that too often follow from Thank you, Brad. Peter, that's a point that I've thought about also in the context of this debate. I mean, why isn't it fair to take a harder line on anti-Zionism, to draw clear, sharper distinctions because we are seeing this wave of rising anti-Semitism? And how can the two not be in some way intertwined and linked and feeding off one another? I mean, the two can be intertwined and interlinked. I mean, if you've got a pro-Palestinian march that is saying Jews should go to the gas, then that's clearly both. anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. I'm not saying that people who are anti-Zionists, like

Louis Farrakhan, for instance, or Hamas, cannot also be anti-Semitic. I'm simply saying that Zionists can be anti-Semitic too, look at Victor Orban, and that anti-Zionists cannot be anti-Semites. You know, Brett might not like the folks in Jewish Voices for Peace, but they have 15,000 members, which is almost as big as some of the right-wing Jewish organizations, and they genuinely believe. And again, they come out of out of, there's a long tradition, going back to the Bund, a tradition of anti-Zionist Jews, not because they're not because they, don't care about Jewish welfare, but because they don't believe that ethnic nationalism is the best way to provide for Jewish security. And the problem is that anti-Semitism is something

very frightening and very disturbing and is coming from both the left and the right. But it is not fair to make Palestinians pay the price for that, as if to suggest that because Jews are frightened because of our history and frightened now, that therefore we have no concern about the rights of Palestinians that they need to, right? Palestinians also have basic rights, and to deny Palestinians, their basic rights, is also a form of bigotry. I always find it odd that so many of the same people

who say that it is bigoted to depose a Jewish state seem not to find it bigoted at all to oppose a Palestinian state, right? Many members of Congress oppose a Palestinian state. Are they bigots too? So earlier this year at a town hall meeting in St. Catherine's Ontario, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came out against the BDS movement, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which is the campaign promoting various boycotts against the state of Israel.

Here's a clip. When you have movements like BDS that singles out Israel, that seeks to delegitimize and in some cases demonize, when you have students on campus dealing with things like Israel apartheid weeks that makes them, fearful of actually attending campus events because of their religion in Canada. We have to recognize that there are things that aren't acceptable, not because of foreign policy concerns, but because of Canadian values. It's not right to discriminate or to make someone feel unsafe on campus because of their religion.

And unfortunately, the BDS movement is often linked to those kinds of frames. Peter Barnhart, first to you. agree with people like Justin Trudeau, is the BDS movement anti-Semitic? No, I don't think the BDS movement is inherently anti-Semitic. There are certainly anti-Semites in the BDS movement. As I said, there are anti-Semites on the pro-Israel right, both in the U.S. and Europe as well. The BDS movement, which I oppose, wants to boycott all of Israel until Israel leaves the occupied territories, until there is the right of refugee return, and until there is equality for Palestinian citizens. I have critiques.

of all of those three points. But there's nothing inherently anti-Semitic in that view unless you believe that it is bigoted to oppose Jewish statehood, which I don't believe. Others would say it's bigoted because they're singling out Israel. The problem with that argument is that the BDS movement emerges from Palestinian civil society. It was a Palestinian call for a boycott modeled on the call by the ANC and others in Black South Africa. People around the world are responding to that call. Most of those people, in my experience, who support of the BDS movement, they are responding to a particular boycott call from the Palestinians, and it is not discriminatory to respond to one particular groups of people's call for a boycott. I think if there

were a similar movement that emerged from Tibet or Saudi Arabia, you would see that many of those same people, including myself, would be very sympathetic to it. But the problem is that there is no similar movement, and here's why the BDS movement is anti-Semitic. because the same people who don't think twice about using cell phones with components that are made by prison labor in China, the same people who wouldn't think twice about taking a vacation in India, despite questions about India's position in Kashmir. The same people who wouldn't think twice about visiting Istanbul have alighted on the one state that they wish to boycott and divest from, which just by some weird coincidence happens to be the Jewish state. And the origins, I'm sorry to say, but the origins of the BDS movement do not lie in the American Civil Rights Movement. The origins of

the BDS movement lie in the longstanding Arab boycott of the state of Israel, which began, even before Israel came into existence, began in the early 1940s. That partakes of the kind of odious bigotry that, of course, was ubiquitous in Nazi Germany when Jewish business businesses were being boycotted for obvious and obviously anti-Semitic reasons back then. So if you're going to tell me that you oppose Israeli policy in the West Bank and therefore you're going to boycott Israel just as you are boycotting Chinese goods, just as you are boycotting Russian goods and so forth and so on, then I'm happy to make an exception for you and to say that at least you're applying your principles universally. But when you have a movement

that is singularly focused on boycotting the state that happens to be. the Jewish one in a way that you're not applying that same principle equally, then that's a discriminatory and anti-Semitic practice. And we should, listen, people who are the victims of bigotry, whether they are black, whether they are gay, or whether they are Jews, do not have the option to be idiots. They do not have the option to say, well, let's constantly give those who are persecuting us the benefit of the doubt. On the contrary, they have an obligation, not only to stand up for themselves, but they have an obligation to call out bigotry as they see it and at least put the onus on the BDSers or on the homophobes or on the white nationalists to say, tell us

exactly why it is that we shouldn't call out your bigotry. If you can provide a convincing explanation, then we might be willing to listen to you, but to preemptively simply say, well, the BDS movement says it's not anti-Semitic and therefore we're going to accept that explanation. I think is worse than foolish. It's naive, and it's an invitation for even more insidious kinds of bigotry. Look, the BDS movement is a Palestinian movement. It emerged in 2005, created by a call for Palestinian civil society. By the way, after the end of the Second Intifada,

when Palestinians were looking for a nonviolent way of trying to gain their rights. So there's something to me kind of bizarre about saying about a Palestinian movement, why are they not focusing equally on Burma? It's a Palestinian movement created by Palestinian. Yes, it's appealed to people around the world, but it was created by Palestinians because they're responding to their own basic oppression. Anyone who has spent one day in the West Bank with Palestinians will see the magnitude of that oppression, people who lived without their whole lives without basic rights. I mean, the notion that you are a bigot, if you focus on one particular unjust policy you want to oppose because you don't oppose all in the world with the same vigor, I just think belies reality. In the 1970s, the organized American Jewish community boycotted the Bolshoi ballet

because Soviets were not allowing Jews to leave the Soviet Union. And I think it was a very proud moment in American Jewish history. The Soviet Union was not the worst regime in the world at that point. There was the Khmer Rouge. There was Idi Amin. So someone would have said, ah, this is bigotry. You're not equally focused on what's happening in Cambodia and Uganda. The point was this was a Jewish movement that was based on trying to secure rights for Jews.

people have the right to try to gain liberation for themselves. That's what the BDS movement, which comes out of Palestinian society is. And therefore, I just don't think it makes sense to say that it is bigoted because those people are not equally focused on the million other forms of oppression that exist in the world. You're listening to the Monk Debate podcast. Be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Arguing for the motion is New York Times columnist Brett Stevens. Peter Bynhardt, contributing editor at the Atlantic, is arguing against the resolution.

One final question, brief on this, before we go into your closing statements, just short summations each. Brett, is there something Peter said today that would cause you to rethink a piece of your argument? No. Peter, same question to you. Are you set in these beliefs, or has Brett unsettled something that you've been thinking about in terms? of this debate. I take very seriously Brett's concern about what it would mean for Jews to enter into this very uncertain century, continue down that path without a Jewish state. And so in that regard, that is something that worries me a great deal. And I fully recognize that anti-Zionists and the

VDS movement are led by people who don't want a Jewish state to exist. So I understand that fear and concern that Brett has. It's simply that, and I think a lot of this just comes out of all the time that I've spent with Palestinian anti-Zionists. I just cannot call people in good conscience anti-Semites when I know from personal experience that they're not and they want the same things for their children that I want for myself. Is there anti-Semitism among anti-Zionism in the BDS movement?

Yes, I've had Palestinians say to me that they've heard anti-Semitic things in BDS movement meetings. That does exist. That is something that's very worrying. But it's also important for us to remember that some of the most prominent and I think dangerous anti-Semites in the world today

are actually supporters of the state of Israel as well. So Peter, some closing remarks. Some up. Any key points you want to leave us with? I just want to briefly quote, this is the basic law that was introduced by three Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset last year. And they said, we do not deny Israel or its right to exist as a home for Jews.

We are simply saying that we want to base the existence of the state, not on the preference of Jews, but on the basis of equality. The state should exist in the framework of equality and not in the framework of preference and superiority. I have my differences with those Palestinian members of the Knesset, but I simply don't see how one can call that bigotry. And this has very important real-world implications because the definition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism,

which was almost adopted, for instance, by the University of California system, if you say anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and should be bigotry that therefore deserves penalties when it's experienced on college campuses, you were basically saying that groups like students for justice in Palestine, The entire Palestinian political movement basically is a form of bigotry and therefore doesn't necessarily have the basic rights to free speech. I think that's deeply dangerous and dehumanizing.

It's important to remember that we not only live in a time of rising anti-Semitism, we also live in a time of rising in Islamophobia, and we live in an age where bigotry against Palestinians is in a way so pervasive that we don't even have a name for it, which is to say that people can routinely suggest that Palestinians should live their entire lives under military. military law without basic rights, and we don't even think about that as a form of bigotry. So if we're concerned about bigotry, we want to fight all forms of bigotry. I think conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism opens the door to a very profound bigotry against Palestinians, which says they don't have the right to live, to express political views that are based on their own experience and their desire for equality, and I think

that's a mistake. Thank you, Peter Binhart. Brett Stevens, your closing remarks. Israel has always been central to Jewish identity, and that was true both before there was a state of Israel and in the 71 years that there has been a state of Israel. We're living in a period in which the evidence of rising and murderous anti-Semitism is not only frightening, it's undeniable. And so to get behind an ideology that is inimical to the way in which the overwhelming majority of Jews see themselves and see their national and cultural and religious aspirations,

and to argue for the elimination of the one state in the world that provides every Jew around the world with some assurance that there are means for its own self-defense, strikes me as inherently anti-Semitic. Anyone who has a sense of moral decency cares for the rights of all embattled minorities. And I look forward to the day in which Palestinian leaders cease to embrace groups like Hamas, which are anti-Semitic and call for Israel's destruction, and embrace a politics that leads to a state in which all Palestinians have democratic representation, and liberal democratic rights.

While we wait for that to happen, we should be avid Zionists, because to wish for the opposite, is effectively leaving the Jewish people to resort to the kindness of strangers. And anyone who knows anything about Jewish history knows that that provides no long-term security at all. Well, Brett Stevens, Peter Beinhard, thank you for a civil, substantive conversation

on a difficult contested issue. I think we've moved the conversation forward, and it's thanks to your thoughtfulness and your ability to engage with each other. Much, much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. All the best.

Thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to the Monk Debate podcast, a place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion, to geopolitics, to the future of human progress, visit our website, www.w.w. monkdebates.com. You can also find show notes

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