The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved, anti-Zionism is antisemitism

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

On this special edition of the Munk Debates podcast we are sharing the full Munk Debate on anti-Zionism, which took place in June 2024 in front of a sold out crowd of 3,000 people at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall.The debate resolution was: Be it resolved, anti-Zionism is antisemitismArguing for the motion was award winning journalist, best-selling author, and former Munk Debater Douglas Murray. His debate partner was Natasha Hausdorff. She’s an attorney, international law expert, and legal director for the UK Lawyer for Israel Charitable Trust.Opposing the resolution was Mehdi Hasan. Mehdi is a best-selling author, former NS Now anchor, and the CEO and editor-in-chief of the media company Zeteo. He was joined on stage by the award winning Israeli journalist and Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy. 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.

The Jews are hated not for their religion or their race, but for having a state. This motion is not about whether you are pro-Israel or pro-Zionist. It's about whether the rest of us have the right, the freedom, to take a different view. Zionism means national supremacy of one people over the other. Why, when it comes to the Jews, would you let the anti-Zionists define anti-Zionism? No, ladies and gentlemen, no minority should have it. identity dictated to it. Welcome to this special edition of the Monk Debates podcast.

This week, for the first time on our podcast, we're airing the full-length edition of the Monk debate on anti-Zionism, which took place in June 24, eight months after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, and seven months after the start of Israel's war in Gaza. Suffice to say, tensions were high, and this debate was one of the first of the war. of the most heated in the history of our series. The debate resolution, be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Arguing for the motion was award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and former monk debater, Douglas Murray. His debate partner was Natasha Hausdorff. She's an attorney, international law expert, and legal director for UK lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust.

Opposing the resolution was Medi Hassan. Medi is a best-selling author, former MSNBC anchor and the CEO and editor-in-chief of Zateo. He was joined on the stage by award-winning journalist and Ha-Aretz columnist Gideon Levy. As with all of our monk debates, the audience voted on the resolution prior to hearing the debate. Initially, 61% of attendees were in favor of the motion, 39% opposed. We did another poll after the debate to find out if people had changed their minds. We'll bring you those results, but first, let's Listen to the debate in progress with Douglas Murray, giving his opening statement in favor of the motion, be it resolved. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

Well, thank you very much, Rudyard. It's a great pleasure to be back to the Monk debates. When I was last here a couple of years ago, I just returned from the front line of the war in Ukraine, where I was with the Ukrainian armed forces. And for most of the last eight months, I've been in Israel and Gaza. following the war there as closely as I can. And I won't go into all the details now that I could give you of what's happening. But I would just put it in perspective in this way,

first of all. What happened on the 7th of October was not just a massive attack on innocent people inside Israel. It was the equivalent to about 6,000 Canadians. being massacred and burned in their homes in one day. It's the equivalent of about one and a half thousand of your fellow Canadians being taken hostage.

You know, you would have thought after an attack, like the one that Hamas instigated that started this terrible war, you would have thought that there would be some sympathy for the world, from the world. You might have thought the world would pay attention to the attack and at least pay attention to the attack least pay attention to the people behind it. You might have expected, like me,

that there might have been a worldwide opposition to the terrorists and rapists and the murderers of Hamas. You might have thought there would be hatred around the world erupting at the government of Qatar and its mouthpiece and Al Jazeera, its funding of Hamas, and its hosting of the leadership of Hamas in Qatar. you might have thought there'd have been an outpouring of rage

at the Islamic Revolutionary Government in Tehran but no, there was an immediate outpouring of rage against the state that had been attacked. Bring back our girls, we had 10 years ago in the war in northern Nigeria, which I also covered, bring back our girls, no international campaigns saying bring back our Jewish children. Believe all women, we've been told. for years, but it turns out not if the raped women are Jews.

Israel is the only country in the world, which, when it's attacked, gets attacked more. You know, the interesting thing about anti-Semitism is, as my late friend Jonathan Sacks said, it's a shapeshifting virus. It moves across the centuries. When you could hate people for their religion, the Jews were hated for their religion. Then you couldn't hate people for that anymore, so people hated the Jews for their race. and then after the 20th century, people realize that wasn't such a great idea either. Now the Jews are hated,

not for their religion or their race, but for having a state. People around the world hate them so much for it that Israelis are attacked when they have hostages taken, and this is to remember the 100 hostages still in captivity in Gaza, who if they were given back by Hamas today, the war to be over. And they're also attacked when they rescue,

their hostages. You know, the interesting thing about anti-Semitism is the Jews can never win because historically they've been hated for being rich and for being poor. They've been hated for integrating and for not integrating. They were hated for being stateless. Remember, rootless cosmopolitans, the far right used to say. Now they're hated for having a state. today the only really acceptable form of anti-Semitism aside from the sewers of the far right the only real tolerated form of anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism and Zionism as we just heard is simply the right of the Jews to self-determination in their historic homeland that's all anti-Semitism as we've also just heard is double standards

against Jewish people or cruel and unfair treatment of people because they're Jews. This isn't very far away from home here. If this isn't anti-Semitism, can the audience here tell me why the following things have happened since October 7th? Why in a Montreal suburb a synagogue should be firebombed, as happened in November, where there should have been gunshots against the Ishiva, why in Toronto a bookstore owned by a Jew should be attacked, why a Molotov cocktail was thrown through a Jewish community center in Montreal, why a Toronto Jewish Delhi in North York was firebombed,

why in Toronto the Orthodox synagogue was vandalized, why in Toronto two men opened fire the other week on a Jewish girls' school. If it isn't anti-Semitism, tell me why just a week ago, pro-hamas protesters try to go through Jewish areas in this city shouting not just alaqba but and i quote sorry for the language fucking filthy fucking zionist pigs dirty zionist rats have you heard that language before the jews have now look if you are interested in this motion just bear this in mind it's not about netanyahu it's not about this war, it's about double standards, and one question hovers over it above all. The question of who would protect the Jews. Who would you trust to protect them?

The Europeans? The Arab world? No. History shows only one people will protect the Jewish people. The Jewish people. That's what Zionism is. Thank you. Opening statement, Douglas, it's now Medi Hassan's opportunity to present the con side of the argument. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in 1917 over 100 years ago, Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, a card-carrying anti-Semite, a man who had denounced the evils of Jewish immigration into the UK, a man who referred to Jews as an alien and hostile people, he issued his Balfour Declaration, which promised a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. It was the first time a major world power had come out in favor of Zionism, which at the time was a pretty new and pretty controversial movement

calling not just for a Jewish homeland, but for the building of a Jewish majority state in Palestine. And yet the only Jewish member of the British cabinet at that time, a man named Edwin Samuel Montague, adamantly opposed both Zionism, which he called a mischievous political creed, and the Balfour Declaration. which he referred to as anti-Semitic

and a rallying ground for anti-Semitic in every country in the world. The only Jewish member of the British cabinet, that is what he said. And yet tonight here in Toronto over 100 years later, we are being asked to vote for a motion that would damn Montague as the anti-Semite

while praising Balfour as the champion of Jews and Judaism. That's ridiculous. In fact, this entire motion tonight is ridiculous, disingenuous, A historical. It says, be it resolved, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. It doesn't say some anti-Zionists engage in anti-Semitism, which I don't disagree with. It doesn't say some anti-Semites hide behind the cloak of anti-Zionism, which again, I don't disagree with. Everything Douglas listed about

what's happened in Toronto, disgusting, reprehensible, those people are shameless bigots. But that's not what the motion says. The motion says, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. No if, no buts, no caveats, no exceptions. Anyone, anyone who takes an anti-Zionist position is automatically, inherently, unavoidably anti-Jewish and anti-Semite, a racist. That is what you would be voting for if you make the mistake of voting for this motion tonight,

which I'm sure you won't do because you are far too smart and nuanced an audience to do that. You are Canadians! And I have great respect for Canadians. I say that for no apparent reason whatsoever. I like Canadians. I like Israelis. My debate partner tonight, Gideon Levy, Israeli writer,

is one of my journalistic heroes. It's a privilege to be on the stage with him. But this debate fundamentally at its core, and I kind of agree with Douglas here, it's not about Israelis, it's not about Israel. It's not about Gaza. And by the way, on the subject of Gaza, given Douglas gave us some math

about the death toll on October, the seventh, horrific death toll, which we all condemn. I would remind you also that the death toll inflicted on Gaza, the deaths and injuries in Gaza are the equivalent if we're going to do the ratios of 2 million Canadians. Two million Canadians. But that's not what the debate is about. It's not even about Zionism itself.

It's about the legitimacy of anti-Zionism, whether you can be anti-Zionist, opposed to Zionism, which, remember, is a political ideology, a nationalist movement, not a religion, not a race, not a protected class, whether you can be anti-Zionist without being smeared, tar, demonized as an anti-Semite. And I want to be clear tonight.

You could be the most pro-Israeli person in this room tonight, the most proud and ardent Zionist here, and still vote against this motion with a clear conscience. Still vote with our side, the right side. Because this motion is not about whether you are pro-Israel or pro-Zionist. It's about whether the rest of us

have the right, the freedom, to take a different view on Israel, on Zionism. on Benjamin Netanyahu even, without being silenced, without being told we're racists. We're not. Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. I'll tell you three reasons why.

Three reasons why you should oppose this motion tonight. Number one, if you vote for this motion tonight, you are throwing logic, history, and the English language under the bus. Because anti-Semitism is hating Jews, the people and Judaism and the religion. Anti-Zionism is opposing Israel, the state, and Zionism, the ethno-nationalist ideology that underpins that state. Zionism is not Judaism. Let me say that again for the people up top.

Zionism is not Judaism. It's a very modern, secular, political ideology, movement that was founded less than 150 years ago by an atheist named Theodore Herzl, who said, and I quote, the anti-Semites will be our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries, our allies. His words, not mine.

Number two, if you vote for this motion, you're throwing Palestinians as a people under the bus. You're telling an occupied people, a dispossessed people, to accept their own occupation, their own dispossession, meekly. in silence. Otherwise, they're racists. As my friend Yusuf Manaya,

the Palestinian-American activist, says, to ask Palestinians not to be anti-Zionist, is to ask Palestinians not to be. And number three, last but not least, if you vote for this motion, you're throwing a lot of Jews under the bus as well. Not just Jews like Edwin Samuel Montague,

but Jews today. If you vote for this motion tonight, you'll say my debate partner, Gideon Levy, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, who served for Shimon Perez, who's written for Horat's for over 40 years, Just won Israel's top journalism prize three years ago.

He's an anti-Semite. You're saying the Satmar, the world's biggest Hasidic Jewish sect, which says it is fighting God's war against Zionism, is anti-Semitic. You're saying Jewish college students on campus. Maybe some of them are your kids, members of if not now and Jewish voices for peace. They're anti-Semites. You're saying some of the most respected Jewish voices in the world,

like Abraham Berg, the former Speaker of the Parliament. Miriam Margolis, the actress from Harry Bloody Potter. They're all anti-Semites. That is what you are saying. That is what you're signing off on if you vote for this motion tonight. So I have a simple solution for you all. Don't do it. Vote instead for common sense, for free speech and the right to criticize a foreign country, the right to criticize a foreign country and a political ideology. I beg to oppose.

Thank you. Natasha Hausdorf, let's have your opening statement now. Well, thank you, and good evening. What a privilege it is to be here stood on this stage, on what I consider to be the most important topic of our age. I have to begin with a debating tip coming from a land with a culture of a rich history of debate, and that is that in debates, it is for the proposition to define the motion. And Douglas did that for you, loud and clear.

Medi seems to think that he can redefine anti-Zionism without you noticing, but the proposition are not going to allow him to pull the wool over your eyes and conflate Zionism with politics. Who has the right to define Zionism? Well, apart from the proposition in this debate, because that's how the rules work. Would you ask a misogynist to define misogyny?

You wouldn't ask a sex offender to define rape? You wouldn't ask the KKK to define anti-black racism. So why, when it comes to the Jews, Would you let the anti-Zionists define anti-Zionism? No, ladies and gentlemen, no minority should have its identity dictated to it. And we have defined Zionism. It concerns the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancient homeland. Zionism is not a political ideology.

Zionism does not stipulate how the Jewish state should be governed, which is what a political ideology does. It simply says it should exist. It doesn't dictate borders or the makeup of population. It does not say that Israel should be socialist kivol-tseem or capitalist startup nation. Israel has exemplified both of those and everything in between. This is not about political ideology. This debate is about racism and creating a double standard where you make an exception for the Jews.

Now, you don't have to support Zionism. But if you are anti-Zionist, if you are against the Jews having a state, you are against the Jews. Medi Hezhan is lying about what Zionism is in an attempt to win this debate and to provide cover for his own anti-Semitism. We usually hear a series of lies spewed by anti-Semites and anti-Zionists in an attempt to justify their anti-Zionism. And these are the modern blood liable. They are widely believed, as widely believed as the ancient blood liable. that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for religious ritual, as widely believed and as false.

I'm going to take you through four blood liables that anti-Zionists rely on. Number one, the liable of colonialism. Israel is the ultimate decolonization success story. Against all odds, after Arab imperialism, Islamic conquest, and British colonialism, the Jews, indigenous to Judea, re-established Israel. My family lived under Ottoman and then British colonialism. British colonialism in Jerusalem, long before Yasser Arafat, who was born in Cairo, created

Palestinian national identity in the 60s. Number two, the liable of ethnic cleansing. In 1948, when five Arab armies and the local Arab population attacked the fledgling state of Israel with the stated intention of annihilating its people, 700,000 Arabs escaped the fighting. Those that remained became Israeli citizens. The Arab population of Israel, has increased tenfold. This is ethnic cleansing? No. Ethnic cleansing is what happened to the Jews in 1948

when Jordan occupied the West Bank. Ethnic cleansing is what happened to 850,000 Jews expelled from Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq where they'd lived for thousands of years. Ethnic cleansing left Arab countries Jew free. Meanwhile, two million Arabs live in Israel today. Number three, the liable of apartheid, because those Arabs that remained in Israel are now 20% of its population, the only free Arabs in the Middle East. They are represented in

every area of Israeli society, as mayors, army officers, police commanders, members of parliament and the Supreme Court. I served under Salim Drew Bram, who put both an Israeli prime minister and a president in jail. And those who propagate the lie of apartheid seek to conflate Arab citizens of Israel, with Arabs living under the Palestinian Authority, who have an autonomy and should be voting for their leadership, but President Mahmur Abbas is now in his 19th year of his four-year term. Number four, the liable of genocide, the reprehensible smear that maliciously accuses the Jews of perpetrating the very crimes committed against them. October 7th was the latest in a long history of genocidal acts by Arabs against Jews in the Middle East.

The genocide libel inverts reality. Kermas has spent 16 years embedding its terror infrastructure in mosques, schools, hospitals and every second house. Its central military tactic is to use civilians as human shields. And in the face of these unprecedented challenges, the IDF has taken greater measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other army in history, far exceeding the requirements, international law, genocide is the latest modern blood liable that anti-Semites use to justify their anti-Zionism. And it is central to Hamas' war strategy. Today, its only aim is to survive and to achieve this with international pressure on the Jews to cease their self-defense. Voting for

the opposition supports Hamas in this endeavor by legitimizing, aiding and abetting their anti-Zionist aim to wipe out the Jews from the river to the sea. Don't stand with a terrorist. and anti-Semites, stand on the side of moral integrity, stand with a proposition. Thank you, Natasha Houseforth. Gideon Levy, we're going to have your opening statement now. Thank you very much. This couldn't have happened in Israel that so many people

will have so much interest and come to such an evening. I can't prevent a remark that I didn't plan to say to what Douglas had just said. To stand here today, eight months after this war started, and to talk only about the Jewish victims, totally ignoring 38,000 people who were killed in those eight months, totally ignoring the starvation, the destruction, the tens of thousands of children which were killed,

tells the whole story. After this, you almost don't need to continue. Because when you don't see the other, when you victimizing yourself and totally ignore the other suffer, the other agony, then really we have no basis here. Now I want to get back to my... I couldn't help it, sorry. I will start with a personal note. If not Zionism, I would have been here tonight.

My father said goodbye, my late father said goodbye to his parents and fiancée. in the railway station of Prague in 1939, he went on a boat, illegal boat, five months in the sea. No port would accept them, detention in Beirut, Lebanon, and finally illegally arriving in Israel. He had no idea about Zionism. He hardly knew Judaism. He never knew the difference between Purim and Pesach until his last day. I always had to explain him when Puri him, you eat Matsot. No, it's Pesach when you eat Matzot.

But he came here, here to Israel, and Zionism saved him. Zionism at its beginning was a just cause, which was performed with many, many mistakes and even crimes. But the idea that the Jews deserve a rescue place was the most moral idea that I could have thought at those days. but years passed by Zionism which nobody today in Israel knows to define exactly many Israelis will tell you that to help an old lady to cross the road even if she doesn't want to cross the road that's Zionism

but Zionism today is the scaffold that's a word that I wrote myself and I will never know to pronounce it the scaffolding of a building which was built already And once you built it, you don't need it anymore. Zionism today has only one meaning and nobody can find any other meaning. It is Jewish supremacy between the river and the sea. That's the real meaning of Zionism today. I was a good boy in Tel Aviv for many years.

I got Zionism with the milk of my mother. You mentioned all my sins. Yes, I was in the army. I was working for Shimon Peres, I was a Zionist, until I realized that Zionism means national supremacy of one people over the other. And I cannot support any kind of supremacy anywhere. Yes, it was a nice lie to tell that the people without a land, arrived to a land without a people.

And we were brought up according to those stories. I heard the word Nakba first time in my life when I was 20. I saw the ruins along the street and they were on the roads in Israel. I never asked, where are the people who lived in those ruins? What happened to them? We had no interest for this. But you get adult and I started to cover the occupation. It's now 40 years that I'm covering the occupation and I cannot accept Jewish supremacy.

But that's my problem. It's not necessarily your problem. What must be really understood is that Zionism, as my friend, May I just mentioned, is an ideology. You might support it. You might not support it. Israel, the Jewish people had defined themselves already. We have a strong regional superpower, and we live in a state which is more Jewish than democratic,

and the struggle should be between the two. and this struggle is still ahead of us, but Zionism finished its role many years ago. It is meaningless today, but still people might believe in it. That's fine with me. My request from you tonight is don't fall to the trap of the Israeli propaganda. The strategy of Israel in recent years is efficient and successful, and you shouldn't fall to the trap because it's finally also your

problem. Not any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. Not every policeman who writes a ticket to a Jewish driver is an anti-Semite. You may be anti-Israeli in the way that you are anti-occupation, anti-apartheid and still have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I'll tell you more than this. Israel does succeed by this to silence any criticism and take my my word, there is nothing that Israel needs now more than criticism. Because Israel will never save itself by its own. Israel will never put an end to the occupation without you, without the criticism of the world. Thank you very much.

What a terrific set of opening statements. Thank you, all of you. This debate is off and running. We're now going to move to rebuttal. So this is three minutes on the clock for each of you to react to what you. you've just heard. We'll do that in the same order as the opening. So, Douglas, you're up first. Thank you very much. There's quite a lot to reply to there. Let me first say, Gideon, you started with a peroration about me not mentioning the Palestinian casualties. That's because

I started by mentioning the war. And there is no law of war that says you're allowed to start a war and then complain when you lose it. And if Mady cares about the Palestinian casualties, as I'm sure he does, then tell your bosses in Qatar to tell their friends in Gaza to stop the war and give back the hostages. Gideon says nothing, Israel needs nothing more than criticism. If Israel doesn't get criticism, wow, he doesn't even read his own country's press. By the way, you said the other day in an interview,

I couldn't care less about the Jewish state, so we know very well where you're coming from. Let me just say a couple of things that I didn't get to in my opening remarks, but are important. You know, if you didn't throng the streets of this city or any other for the actual genocide going on in Sudan, not the one that Madi and Gideon pretend is happening, but the actual genocide going on in Sudan, If you didn't spend weekend after weekend doing that, but you did come out for the post-October 7th protests, you're an anti-Semite. If, like, maybe you once sent a tweet condemning that,

it doesn't give you quite enough smoke cover. You know, if you protested not a bit, didn't set up a tent when Bashar al-Assad was killing six times an hour, of people in a decade that Israel and all of its enemies have lost in 75 years of war. You are an anti-Semite. And I would just add one other thing. I know that media has tried to reframe the motion. I'm not going to allow it either.

You know, maybe there is somebody in the world. Pakistan was invented, created as a state around the same time as Israel. I reckon that if this debate tonight without Pakistan, Pakistan started a lot of wars, it suffered a lot of wars, it suffered a lot of casualties, caused a lot of casualties, of casualties. But you know what? If somebody said, I don't, I think Pakistan should be abolished. They just don't have the right to a state. And although they had one set up for them, many decades ago, we should abolish it. I think people would say, hmm. And then if the person said,

oh, by the way, although I want to abolish that state, I have no problem with the Pakistani people. Please. Please. Of course you would. for a rebuttal, three minutes on the clock. Thank you very much. Woof. Woof. I love the fact that Natasha started the speech by saying, our side cannot define Zionism,

anti-Zionism, or anti-Semitism. So Gideon, you and I should just go check out the CN Tower because I'm not sure what the debate's about. We're being told by the proposition that we must follow their definitions of what we're here to argue and vote about, which tells you how authoritarian that side of the motion.

This debate for me tonight is fascinating because for years, Douglas has been the free speech warrior, and I've been the guy saying there's no right to absolute free speech. Tonight I feel the roles are reversed. I'm here to say, what happened to free speech? What happened to the ability to criticize others, governments, countries? Yes, political ideologies, Natasha. Theodore Herzl would be surprised to hear you say it wasn't a political ideology

or a national movement. And I just find it fascinating that Natasha made it very clear that non-Jews cannot define anything to do with this. And then Douglas stepped up and accused, every Jewish protester against Israel of being an anti-Semite, which I find offensive and ridiculous. Thousands upon thousands of Jews. You don't have to agree with them, remember, but you don't have to agree with them.

But they took their right to go out on the streets in Toronto, in D.C., in New York, in London, in Paris, all over the world, in Tel Aviv, to protest against what's happening in Gaza, and Douglas, one of the world's most proud atheists, not Jewish, as far as I know, just damn them all as anti-Semites. Wow, that speaks volumes about where this debate is going. who is defining what and how. As for Natasha's line and Douglas' line, that if you don't support self-determination

for a particular group, you're a bigot. Well, you know, we've already had a lot of votes. I won't ask you to click. I don't have power over your clickers. But I'd love to know how many people in this room either were in the last Quebec referendum or supported it from afar. Because we're in Canada.

We're a bunch of people want to leave Canada and do their own thing. And I'm sure many people in this room legitimately oppose that. And no one says your bigots towards the people of Quebec. Nobody says your anti-French language. You're allowed to have a debate about whether Canada includes Quebec or nor.

And you know, my friend Peter Beinart, who is Jewish, just so Douglas will call him an anti-Semite later, as he pointed out, the Basques, the Catalans, the Kurds, the Scots, the Scots, they don't have states. And if you oppose them having states, you're not an anti-Kurd bigot, you're not an anti-Scott bigot, you're not an anti-Catlan bigot. People have arguments all the time. There are 5,000 indigenous groups in the world today, according to the UN. There are 193 member states of the UN. You do the math.

Right? So this is ridiculous, this argument that we are being expected to believe that if you don't support Israel as it is currently constituted with Jewish supremacy, as Gideon points out, that makes you an anti-Semma. It's an abuse of anti-Semitism. It empties at a very important concept at a very urgent time of all meaning in order to defend a country, which as Gideon has pointed out, and which Douglas seems to think is fine, has killed tens of thousands of innocent people in recent months. Let's reset that clock, and Natasha Hustorf will have your rebuttal. now. Oh, yeah, thank you. I'd like to use my time to do some fact-checking, but I only have three minutes, so we'll see how far I get. But first of all, balfour, we heard him

quoted to you earlier, ladies and gentlemen. Will, let's be clear about that quote and what was changed, or at least misrepresented, because I think this is going to give a really strong indication for what is coming out of the opposition as a whole. We were told he'd referred to Jews as alien and hostile. In fact, that he was therefore an anti-seeing,

might. Well, I'm going to read you out the quote, and you make up your own minds. He said, mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb. You very strongly not to take for granted what the opposition are telling you tonight. And now we come to look at the numbers, and we've heard 37 and 38,000 quoted at you already this evening, and we've only just started. Ladies and gentlemen, would members of the opposition be quoting figures from Al-Qaeda or ISIS in the way that they are quoting Hamas propaganda here this evening? These figures, which have not been verified, and which even the UN has revised down

on the basis of missing information for significant thousands of these figures that have come from quote, unquote, media sources as opposed to from hospitals and that have been circulated on Google Docs where people are encouraged to enter their martyrs here. This is the methodology for compiling these supposed figures. But even if we look past that and all of the studies that have already debunked these as significantly fabricated and invented, these figures make no distinction between civilians or combatants. They do not tell you how these people have died.

We know that Hamas are shooting their own civilians. We know that they are bombing, fleeing civilians. We know that when Palestinian Islami jihad and Hamas rockets, full short in the Gaza Strip, they kill indiscriminately, unlike the measures that Israel takes, which are targeted, precise, and based on proportionality exercises.

I mentioned that Israel takes more measures than any other army in the history of war to prevent civilian casualties. Hamas' main aim here is to drive up that casualty figure and inflate it, if necessary, in order to seek to win this war through creating international pressure. And it is inextricably linked with what we are discussing here tonight because their mechanism for doing so is not just the lies about the origins of anti-Semitism or whether Balfour was an anti-Semite,

but also significantly about what is happening on the ground. That is anti-Zionism, and it is double standard against the Jewish state, which means that we know that it is anti-Semitism too. Get in, we're going to save the best for last. Let's have your rebuttal now. I really feel overdose of propaganda and it really

neutralized me in a way but I'll try to manage just on a factual ground because you were all kind enough to applaud to what Douglas said that if only Hamas will release the hostages the war will come to its end.

From time to time it's also good to stick to facts and the fact is that Israel wants to continue this war with the hostages or without them And Israel is not ready to get a deal because Israel does not want to end this war. So with all the respect, things must be more accurate than this.

But I would like to speak about something which is more principle. One of the big fears that we are being taught day and night is that they all want to exterminate Israel. That if you call from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. It means to send all the Jews back to Auschwitz. It is a fight over the regime between the river and the sea. Nobody who opposed apartheid in South Africa spoke about exterminating South Africa. We were speaking, or they were speaking,

about changing the regime. Between the river and the sea, today there are two peoples living together under the same rule, half and half by size, there's only one thing lacking there, and this is equality, this small value which democracy cannot exist without it. And when there is no democracy, it looks like apartheid,

it behaves like apartheid, and it is apartheid. Zionism stands behind it, and in order to create this new regime, that we all should have been in favor of a real democracy between the river and the sea, Israel has to give up one of two, either being a Jewish state or being a democratic state. As long as there are two peoples, it cannot be Jewish. As long as there is Jewish supremacy, it cannot be democratic. So it's all about changing the regime.

And yes, between the river and the sea, I would love to see. one day equality. And this is the meaning of releasing Palestine. And it has nothing to do, not with the Holocaust, not with Auschwitz, and not with many other things. Right now, our cause, and it should be the world's cause, is to changing the regime into a democracy. What is wrong in this? What is wrong in wishing for an equal society? Okay, I'm going to join the debate now and try to think of some questions that are top of mind for our audience following this. Fantastic back and forth. Let's begin, and Douglas, let me come to you first because I think it's certainly no doubt on many people's minds to address Gideon and Medi's point about what is legitimate in this debate in terms of the criticism of Zionism and what is illegitimate.

Give us a sense of your parameters here because they're making an argument that you know this is a debate. We are having a debate today, are we not? So is all of this off the table? What's on the table? Give us calibrate for us your understanding of Zionism. Let me just reiterate because we started this debate with a definition put up behind us on the screens

and however much Medi and Gideon want to reframe it it's quite straightforward. Zionism, I repeat, is the right. right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland. Anti-Semitism is cruel double standards towards Jews and cruel and unfair treatment of them as Jews. When I'm, I mean, I wish I could say I'm amazed by what Gideon said, but I recently watched your interview on Al Jazeera where you said that, when the interviewer said to you, how many people in Israel agree with you,

and you said you could fit them in a phone box. And that's true. That is absolutely true. You are as obscure a figure in Israeli society as it's possible to find. And I'll give you an example of why. Natasha just picked Mady up on an important lie. You can say just an elision or a mistake he made because he hadn't read the primary sources.

But I cannot allow Gideon to get away with what he just said, which was unbelievable lie. He said, Israel isn't a democracy. First of all, it just. Just, I don't know, maybe, have you ever been there? Yes. When? A few years ago, not recently.

I didn't, I don't get awards from the President of Israel like you do, so I don't get to do softball interviews. You should, you should. You know. I didn't get invited into God. Douglas, Douglas, you said in your speech. But you went to Gaza, right? You said you went to Gaza.

How come you went to Gaza when the world's media is not allowed into Gaza? But they took you into Gaza? Well, first of all, I'll explain. I'll explain, but let me pick up my points since you keep trying to derail me. There are two ways to go into Gaza. One is with the IDF, which is what I did, and what most Western journalists have done. The other is to go in with Hamas.

You could probably go in with Hamas. I can't. Secondly, secondly, so if I was on the stage tonight busily defying a democracy, I would spend a bit of time there, Mady. I would spend a bit of time there because everything you said about it, like Gideon, is totally untrue. And I'll just give one other thing. Gideon said an appalling thing just there, that this is not about annihilation.

One of the heads of Hamas, 2012, kill them all. All the Jews don't leave a single one. Ismail Henir, 2017, children are tools to be used against Israel, will sacrifice them for them. Yahra Sinwa, who planned the seventh, we will take down the border with Israel and tear their hearts out from their bodies. I'll tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, from what I've seen, which you scorn because you are an armchair.

journalist. I'll tell you what I've seen. When Yahya Sinwa said that we want to rip the hearts out of the Jews, it wasn't rhetoric. They did it. They mean it. And only this side wants to pretend they don't. For whatever reasons, a psychologist would have to explain. Sorry, you call me. Let me respond. Let's do this. I want to see if all four of you can work with me to work through some of the questions that are on the mind of the audience who are going to have to vote on this resolution at the end of the evening. So, Medi, have a quick response, but then let's get focused back on this question of what, why do you think Zionism is a movement, a political, an ism like anti-Americanism or anti-Britishism or whatever it is. I want to hear more on that so this audience can make an informed choice at the end of the day.

Yes, but let me just deal with a few things that Douglas said, because there were a few things were said. I mean, look, it's amusing. I wasn't surprised at all. I came to a debate in Toronto to debate Israel with two defenders of the current government. And so far, Gideon and I, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't call... We could have done a long list of your apologies for genocide and war crimes and crimes against humanity. We didn't do that, but we've been called liars and Hamas supporters.

And I get it. Neither of us talked about Hamas. We don't support Hamas. This is not a debate about Hamas. I know Douglas wants to redefine it as a debate about Hamas. Great, good for him, because he can't actually deal with the arguments we're putting forward. All the Jews who are putting forward these arguments. They're all anti-Sumites, remember.

I just want to deal with one point very important here. Douglas is the great journalist in Israel. I love this, cosplaying as a journalist going into Gaza with the IDF. Douglas interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu in January. Douglas did not... You're very bothered by Qatar and funding Hamas. That's because they're your bosses. We're talking about bosses. Let's talk to this.

You're literally paid by them. I've interviewed... I've interviewed Qatari officials. You can go on YouTube and watch my interviews with Qatari officials. And then you can watch Douglas interview Benjamin Netanyahu where he asked him, Pearls like, Is there another chapter left in the Netanyahu biography? That was the strong question.

He didn't ask Benjamin Netanyahu, why did you work with Qatar to fund Hamas all those years? Why did you pop up Hamas all those years? Why, according to today's Israeli media, did you have reports that there was going to be attack on your citizens and completely allow that to happen? Douglas didn't ask any of those questions. Instead, he'd like to spray around Hamas at the Muslim on the stage. Douglas referred to Hamza Yusuf, the first minister of Scotland recently, as the first minister of Gaza. Muslim guy, and he said, quote, you said, quote, he has infiltrated our system.

Given we're at a debate about anti-Semitism, I find it ironic that you were throwing out some of them as bigoted dual loyalty tropes known to man, referring to a born British Muslim politician as the first minister of Gaza. Since he's leveled that, I have to correct it. First of all, you obviously didn't see the whole interview of Netanyahu.

You'd have seen the first question was one that no one else has asked him, but anyway. Did you ask about his support for Qatar? gentlemen, we're going to read, we're going to read this. Douglas, did you ask you about it? It's lovely to have the Douglas and Medi show, but we have two other presenters on this panel that our audience wants to hear from. Don't you want it? Yes, thank you. So let me try again with this question. I'm going to keep trying, and I'm going to come to you, Natasha. The other side brought it up in a different way. Where do the Palestinian people fit into this debate?

Are they all anti-Semites? Because they oppose Zion. the ideology, the movement, Israel's statehood? What's your answer to that question? First, I think we have to acknowledge that the Palestinians have self-government. They have an autonomy. So when we're talking about Quebec as an example, actually, it's an important one so far as Canada is concerned. Well, it's...

Hold on, let Natasha finish. I'll come to you next year. There is an important Canadian Supreme Court case for the secession of Quebec, which is so significant that it's said to be part now of customary international law, which deals with the question of self-determination. And it's clear that that has to take into account the territorial integrity of other states. Now, the ability of the Palestinians to self-determine in the West Bank

and actually vote for their leadership in the Palestinian autonomy, and certainly after the last 16 years of Hamas building a terror infrastructure, we can see what they've done with self-governance there. But that exists. I think they have been desperately let down by their leadership. and when it comes to the question of anti-Zionism, what's desperately tragic about this debate and what we've heard already so far

is that the opposition seem willing to fight to the last drop of Palestinian blood in order to make the case against Israel. And it's not just Israelis that are suffering as a result of that, but it's also ordinary Palestinians. If the opposition actually cared about the Palestinians, they would not be seeking to conflate Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the way that I described earlier.

They would stop propagating these falsehoods about the situation and they would stop blaming Israel for the tragic deaths that we're seeing because ultimately, as Douglas was describing earlier, this is the responsibility of Hamas, no one else. There's one very brief point. One very brief point. Then Gideon's going to come up. Yes.

We've heard already this utopia of a one-state solution being advanced by the other side in contrast to the autonomy that I have described. And we saw the reality of that for anyone who was blind to the realities here on the 7th of October. This was not a surprise to anyone that listened to the Hamas leadership and listened to what is being said in the rest of the Arab world. When we're talking about the mutilation and the terrible atrocities that were committed on the 7th of October, we need to understand the history that led up to that. Even in 2002, in the lynching in Ramallah,

that very famous image of two Israelis who had wandered, gotten lost, they came to the Ramallah police station in order to seek refuge there. They were lynched, and their livers were eaten by the mob that lynched them. The photograph I refer to is the individual who held up his bloody hands into the window, and the baying crowd below went wild for that sight. That was exactly what we were.

saw on the 7th of October, but in 2002 in Ramallah, these are Palestinians who have been educated for generations to believe that the highest calling in life is to slaughter Jews, and they are being let down by that education system that is internationally supported. UNRah schools educated three quarters of the terrorists that crossed the border on the 7th of October. 3,000 people don't just wake up one morning

and decide that it's a good day to slaughter Jews. That takes time and effort and energy and indoctrination. Let's go to Gideon and then, Maddie. In the last 35 years, I'm covering the Israeli occupation. There's not a single week that I don't go to Gaza or to the West Bank. Unfortunately, in the last 17 years, I can't go to Gaza because the Israeli government does not let any Israeli journalist into Gaza. But I've seen a little bit of the Israeli occupation,

not as much as Natasha and Douglas saw, but still I saw something. To speak today about autonomy in the West Bank, really it insults propaganda. It insults any human being who just knows the reality on the ground. Autonomy in the West Bank? I mean, did you ever hear a worse joke than this? Do you know what does it mean to live under the Israeli? occupation? Do you know what does it mean to wake up in the morning or to go to sleep at night with troops coming into your home, with kidnapped children, women? I don't have to get into it

because you in Canada see much more than we in Israel because we are protected by our media who doesn't show us anything. I just want to say to Douglas, I'm very proud to be a single voice. You know why? Because messes in history made the biggest mistakes. From when is it a criteria if you gain a majority, I'm not a politician. You want to look like messes in history who went blindly after horrible ideologies and horrible leaders? Do you need examples from this? And those few dissidents, they are the heroes of today, not me, but those dissidents are the the heroes that we admire and should admire. From when is the fact that I am lonely as a guarantee for anything.

You can go with the messes, have a nice time with the messes. I don't want to be with them. But we are running away from the subject. And the struggle is still the capability to criticize Zionism. And what is unacceptable is that Zionism will be above any suspicion. any suspicion, any question, any remark or any criticism. There is no ideology like this in the world. Yes, in Soviet Russia, if you were not a communist, you couldn't stay there.

I don't want to live in a country in which if I'm not a Zionist, and that's the situation today. I can live there. But you are out of the... You are traitor. Where and where is there? place where if you don't support a certain ideology, by the end of the day it is an ideology. Why can't you criticize it?

Thank you. Why can't you have some questions about it? We appreciate it. We'll give you a round of a pause. And, okay, many, very briefly, very briefly, because I've got a question for Douglas, very briefly. I'll be as brief as everyone else. The, the propositions might have sprayed around the word lie and lie. so let's return the compliment and Tasha lied when she talked about UNRWA and terrorism

the UN set up an independent inquiry asked the Israelis for evidence I know you don't want to hear this the Israelis these they asked the Israelis she's parenting propaganda for the Israeli government the Israeli government was asked to give evidence they refused to give their evidence every Western government including your own Canada's has restarted funding because they looked at the evidence and didn't see it that's great I get it I get it I get it but at But as Douglas might have once said, facts don't care about your feelings.

To come back to the other point of light, Douglas says the war would end if Hamas gave back the hostages. Complete lie. The Israelis have said, even if the hostages come back, we carry on the war. In fact, I interviewed Abraham Muntar's nephew. Abraham Muntus is a 17-9-year-old Israeli hostage right now. Poor guy, tragic.

17-9-year-old in captivity. Should be freed, of course. Had to have his birthday in captivity. His nephew says that every time he goes on the streets, Bengavir's police beat him. They beat him and arrest him. They're arresting hostage members' families. Hostage's family members.

And they're coming on TV and saying, why are we being used as props by people who support the war? He doesn't support the war. He wants a deal. Israeli family members are going on the streets and being tear-gast on water can or whatever, beaten by the police because they want a deal and they want an end to the war

that Douglas and Zasha so proudly support. They keep telling us about the horrors of October the 7th. I agree. This side shares the revulsion against the horrors of October the 7th, but we also share revulsion against the horrors that came since October the 7th. We don't support those horrors. I'm opposed to the war crimes that happened on October 7th

and the war crimes that have happened since October the 7th. Douglas, now I've got to finish this point. I've got to finish this point. Douglas, the week after October the 7th, came out in the spectator and advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. He said, now is a good time to do it. Everyone can read the piece of other than Maydie.

I'm going to ask to respond to that because it's clear Medi didn't ask. listen to a single word that I said. I was talking about UN statistics that show that out of the 3,000 terrorists that crossed the border on the 7th of October, three quarters of them would have been educated in the UNRWA school system. I didn't even start to talk about the complicity of UNR in the terrorist atrocities themselves, and that has been well documented. But on the education point, on the education point, I commend the work of Impact SE that looks, at Palestinian Authority textbooks. I commend the work of UN Watch

that has outed the UNRWA chats on telegram in which the attacks were both supported and celebrated and the identities of those UNRWA employees that took part in them. There are NGOs doing important work to clear the realities of what it is that the opposition seemed to be blind to, but that also includes this absolute,

absolutely abhorrent allegation of war crimes. It's another blood liable. So was occupation, by the way, but we can come on to that, I'm sure, a little bit later. War crimes invokes international law, and I'm going to take the prerogative as the lawyer on the stage to talk about what Israel is doing that surpasses international humanitarian law in Gaza,

the principles that it upholds a proportionality, distinction, necessity and precaution. No other army gives the sorts of warnings before strikes that Israel provides through text messages, phone calls, leaflets to individual householders, a proportionality analysis on strikes that does not launch them when civilians are in the way, and that plays into the hands of Hamas's strategy of using civilians as human shields, another Hamas strategy that has been supported by the opposition tonight with its propaganda.

Thank you. Douglas, we have a little later time for Douglas here, and Douglas, I know you're going to want to say your piece, but I want you to address something else because I want to move on to college campuses. This has been a big part of this debate. There have been, as we know, chance on college campuses. I'll say them. They're not pretty. There's only one solution in Tefat a revolution. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

They're probably better known of the two. What does college campuses, and what's happening on college campuses here in North America, Douglas, say about this debate right now? Well, it says that a young generation has been like, to in significant numbers and with a sense of ferocity and extremism which we should all abhor. I mean it's possible that these college campus kids didn't get the memo from the other side in their desperate attempt not only to reframe anti-Zionism but

also anti-Semitism. It's very strange to me isn't it that if if anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitic why do all these kids who've never protested about anything else before in the world stage, suddenly turn up at Columbia and chase Jewish students with go back to Poland or Ukraine. Why is it Jewish students at universities here in Toronto and Montreal who get chased by mobs and shouted down by mobs screaming anti-Semitic slurs? They're not even bothering to cover over it. I mean, they very rarely anymore remember to say, oh, I meant Zionist. They're revealing themselves. all the time and it's because

first of all they've been lied to secondly there are a very large number of them who are I would I would say that they fall into two categories the sinister and the silly the sinister are the ones who know exactly which river they're chanting about and exactly which sea

and they want the eradication of the world's only Jewish state and they think they're the good guys the silly they're the ones who like there was a guy at Columbia who started this academic year calling for climate

emergency and then Hamas attacked Israel and suddenly he was for Hamas he has a sort of belly button piercing and I think he's queers for Palestine or as I say chickens for KFC and these these students are

they are desperate for a cause They're desperate for meaning in their lives. They have searched and scoured the land looking for meaning and purpose. And instead of learning something good to do with their lives, they've decided they will do this incredibly simplistic thing. Everything in the world is oppressor, oppressed, occupier, occupied, colonizer, colonized. And this incredibly simplistic idea that works nowhere, they then implant or try to implant,

over the world's most complex region. And they think in doing so that they're being good guys. And what they don't realize is that if they got what they wanted, they'd have finished the work of Adolf Hitler. Something you've thought a lot about too. Douglas earlier was telling us all about the importance of journalism going on the ground. While Douglas was getting awards from the President of Israel, we were actually reporting my news organizations at Tao from those campuses

with Jewish students. In fact, the most red piece on our site is from a student called Jonathan Ben Monarchum, who is at Columbia and reported, from inside the encampment where they were having a Seder, where he was protesting war crimes in Gaza, which I know the other side thinks they're on at war crimes, everything we just imagine the last eight months. What you have to tackle tonight,

I'm glad we brought up college campuses, because again, if this ridiculous sweeping motion, Douglas says complexity, we are the side of complexity, we're not the one saying anti-Sionism across the board is anti-Semitism, you have to deal with the fact the college protests are disproportionate, they're a disproportionate number of Jews in these protests.

They're all brainwashed, they're all idiots, they're all self-hating, some of the top academics at Columbia University, who are Jewish have come out to defend the protests. Annalise Orlek is a 65-year-old former chair of Jewish studies at Dartmouth. She was beaten on camera by police while she was protesting against the war in Gaza. Apparently Douglas, an atheist, says that she's an anti-Semite. That's the debate, that's what we've got to tonight,

where the former chair of Jewish studies at Dartmouth is an anti-Semite, while Douglas is the champion of the Jewish people. I find it bizarre, and I'm glad we've brought up college protests because it's the number one evidence right now in our discourse that actually a lot of young Jewish people, and by the way, this whole argument, why didn't you protest Sudan, why didn't you protest Syria? Last time I checked, the United States Congress does not fund Bashar al-Assad or the RSF militias in Sudan. So stop with this lazy, what-aboutism that gives you... They do you fund your friends in Tehran, don't they?

The US Congress funds Tehran. You know very well, Biden's package for Tehran. What? You don't know about it? US funds Iran. Okay, you've got me there, Douglas. By the way, by the way, since we know... Since we're doing fact checks...

Since Biden decided to bring Iran back into JCPOA, they are no longer under the sanctions that they were and they've been brought back into the fall. Ergo, they end up with international funding. Ergo, America is funding Iran like it funds Israel. This is absurd. By the way, just on fact checks, Natasha gave us a lecture about she's the law on stage.

That's true, you are the law on stage. But literally, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has asked for arrest warrants. And you're booing again, again. I know you don't like it, By the way, by the way, the advisor to the ICC chief prosecutor is a man named Theodore Meron, 94 years old, Holocaust survivor, former advisor to the Israeli Foreign Minister.

He advised the ICC to ask for restaurants, but according to Daiglas and Natasha tonight, and many of you, he's an anti-Semite too. Theodore Meron's an anti-Semite too. Let's just keep the list going to that until we vote tonight. As to how many Jews we're going to call an anti-Semite tonight? I will be one of them, obviously. You're Hamas, too, Gideon. Don't forget. I want to a little bit come down and speak for a moment about anti-Semitism.

Where were the anti-Semites and the campuses when Israel went for peace in the Oslo years? How come did the world hugged Israel then? From coast to coast, from continent to continent, campuses and others hugged Israel. Because Israel went for peace. now when we look backwards obviously we see it was a kind of a trap but let's put it aside. Where was

anti-Semitism then? What? Antisemitism went to sleep when Israel is doing the right thing? Antisemitism goes to sleep when Israel is following the international law. Antisemitism goes to sleep when Israel is following the resolutions of all the

international institutions. It just wakes up if Israel doesn't. So if so, Let's ask ourselves, what is the contribution of Israel's policy to the increase of anti-Semitism in the world? There is anti-Semitism in the world. It should be fought without any compromises, no doubt about this. But the manipulation of Israel to label any criticism as anti-Semitism makes the damage to the fight against anti-Semitism. because we should the genuine anti-Semitism, we should fight.

But the critics of Israel, part of them are anti-Semites. Part of them are using what's happening to express anti-Semitism. And part of them, let me tell you, a big part of them, are people of conscience, are people that not only have the right to criticize Israel, they have the duty to do so. Okay, Gideon. The important point, we're going to register that. I'm going to come to Douglas briefly, and then Natasha, I've got a question for you. First of all, again, nobody on this side has said or would say that if you criticize any

politician in Israel or any action of the Israeli government, you are therefore an anti-Semite. Neither of us said that at any point. Secondly, at no point on this side have we said that this is a zero-sum game between the Israelis and the Palestinians or the Israelis and the Arabs. There is no reason why a Jewish state should not be able to live side by side with another Arab Palestinian state. Okay? The only, and I'm glad that Gideon brought up Oslo, the only reason that there is not a Palestinian

state today, not the Palestinian Authority, which runs most of the West Bank, or Hamas that was given the Gaza and then decided to do, well, we know what they decided to do with 18 years of international funding from this country. and others. Not that, but if they were given another state, there is no reason if they brought their children up to love life and to live by their neighbors, if they educated their children into learning instead of hate, there is no reason why they could not live in a state beside a Jewish state, and there's no reason why Zionism opposes that, and it doesn't. But once again, Gideon and Medi said something without giving you the context. You said that when Israel was involved

in Oslo, the world loved it. Well, we all have our different histories and interpretations of that, I'm sure. Maybe it just looked better in the rearview mirror. The reality is that the Oslo process massively changed Israel. Why? Because the Israeli public and their politicians

went for peace and they got into Fada. They went for peace and they got suicide bombers at nightclubs in Tel Aviv. And one reason why Gideon is such an extremely rare voice in Israel. And congratulations, Mady, you know the drill. You can always find a Jew on your side who'll support what you do. But the reason why Gideon is such an unusual voice in Israel is because most Israelis learned from that into Fada what it means,

what the teaching of hate to Palestinian children means. and now, after October the 7th, they've learned it a thousandfold. The people who were killed in the communities beside Gaza were people who dreamed of peace just as much as you do, if not more. And I can tell you that of the young people dancing at the Nova Party that night, that morning, the young people dancing at the Nova Party, that party, massacred, raped, shot, kidnapped for the crime of dancing, there's not one of those kids who didn't dream of the day they could dance with their Palestinian brothers

and sisters. Okay, Giddy, but Giddy, you've got to be brief here because Natasha is up next. Sure. I don't know what, they should have been killed, in any case, if they dreamed about peace or didn't dream about peace, they shouldn't have been killed, no doubt about this. But to put Israel today as a peace-loving country, really, something must have some borders. I mean, where shall we stop? We can say everything about Israel and believe everything about Israel.

When Israel, you just mentioned the two-state solution. Wonderful solution. Why are there 700, 700,000 settlers there if you want to give it back? Why did you put 700 settlers? out of peace and I want you to tell you one more thing. Each of you, I don't know you, unfortunately, maybe I'll get to know you tonight. I can get your mood.

Each of you ask yourself if you would have been born Palestinian and live all your life after under the brutal, maybe the most brutal regime today in the world. I saw it. I saw it when you would wake up in the morning and see your parents beaten and go to sleep at night and troops will come to your home and kidnap your father or your mother in front of your eyes on a daily basis and I know what I'm talking about.

Don't tell me about facts, yeah? What do you think you were the felt tower, the people who does it to you? What do you think? It has nothing to do with education system. They don't need education system to hate us. We make them hating us. We've got the point. I appreciate it.

A little bit of time left here. I want to try to squeeze in a couple more topics. And you guys are going to circle back, I'm sure, but we're going to try to soldier on together. Natasha, you've thought a lot about international organizations. And they've come up in this debate a few times already. One of the features, the long-standing historical features of anti-Semitism,

has been to blame Jews for actions that they themselves are the victims of. How do you see this? Let's hear your argument to how you think this is unfolding right now in international organizations and why you think they are emblematic of this new anti-Semitism operating under the guise of anti-Zionism. Well, this comes down to the core of lawfare. This not such a new practice, it's been with us for several decades, decades already. But it's an abuse of international law. And I think you're right that international

legal institutions are being abused for the pursuit of a political agenda in which these outlandish, malicious allegations, it's worse than victim blaming, of course, because here you're blaming the victims of the crime that was committed against them. And South Africa's application to the International Court of Justice alleging genocide is part and parcel of that. It should be noted that there is a reason South Africa made that allegation, not because it has any factual or legal basis, but because it serves as a legal hook to bring Israel to the court, Israel as a signatory to the genocide convention. And in fact, the genocide convention has always been a particular import for Israel.

The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin after the Holocaust to provide a legal lexicon to that experience of the Jewish people, that intentional eradication of a people, intentional destruction in whole or in part, that is what genocide means. Think about that when you hear allegations from the opposition of that order. There are a couple of points that I do want to pick up.

I mean, Douglas has explained the context of Oslo and the sort of extreme statements that we've had already from the other side in that respect, but picking up on Oslo and also the conspiracy theories that were mooted that the Israeli government was in some way complicit in the 7th,000. of October. I mean, the fact of the matter is that there are significant causes of the seventh that we do need to take into account, not least international pressure on Israel to make

security concessions. I mean, we're talking about generations of Israelis who have seen every concession they make lead to blood on the streets. Those who went to make peace in Oslo were met with an interfaida. The withdrawal from Gaza gave us a terror state that But what people don't seem to realize is that between January and August last year, there were some 400,000 entrances from Gaza into Israel. Douglas spoke about the people of the South seeking cooperation, coexistence with their neighbors in the Gaza Strip. Those entrances, 400,000 of them were mostly on work permits.

People who came to work in the Kibbutzim and the Moshevim in the South, work in the agricultural centers, work in the houses, build together with the communities there. Many of them gathered intelligence for the 7th of October. The terrorists, when they crossed the border, they carried manuals, which listed house by house, how many people, whether there were children, was there a dog in the house, was there a gun, and what they were instructed to do to each of those families.

Security concessions, made in the name of seeking peace, which has been Israel's story from the very outset. When David Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel, he stretched out his hand to the Arab population and said, let us build this country together. And that war of annihilation was launched on Israel almost immediately. And kicked out 600,000 Palestinian, and he raised all in the villages. Well, let's deal with that point head on.

Natasha, there has been... In fairness of time, and what's remained on the clock, just quickly wrap this up. There's been a great deal of literature debunking those false claims, in particular a recent book on the myth of Dear Yassine, which I commend to the audience. And I think we're looking at a parallel issue here of history being subverted to promote a particular narrative that is not, that is not a keeping. We appreciate that point.

We're just going to, in sick, many of you want to respond to that. But I want you to also offer defensive international institutions at this moment as it relates to holding the state of Israel to account. I have just one sentence to say about that, is it the entire world wants a ceasefire and the United States and Israel and, I don't know, the Micronesia and whatever else, don't, right?

The entire world takes a very different view, unfortunately to the people in this room and to Douglas and Natasha, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the UNHCR, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,

Oxfam, Christian Aid, yep, you're booing! What does it come to when you're booing Oxfam? What does that tell you about yourselves? You're sitting here booing Oxfam to defend Benjamin Netanyahu. Let me just deal with something you just said. You talked about debunking propaganda. First of all, you can't even get Israeli propaganda straight.

The Israeli government's own security agency, Shinbet, investigated what you just said and said, no, we found no evidence that workers from Gaza were involved in the October 7th attack. Oh, Shinbet alike. They're booing Shinbet, the Israeli security service. Got it. All right. Let me finish my point.

You had a five minute speech from your side. Okay. That's Shinbeck. Let me just deal with your wider point here. Douglas and Natasha tonight want to make this entire debate about October 7th. I get it. It's a horror show. But that's not the debate.

The debate was about Zionism, and it tells you a lot, that they can't find any arguments to say, as Gideon says, why we can't be allowed to criticize a political ideology that is 150 years old that many Jewish people have criticized from the beginning and continue to do so. They can't tell you why that is. So they focus on October the 7th,

which is fine, but if you're going to focus on October 7th, then also focus on what happened since October the 7th, The erasure of Palestinians in this debate, the booing when Gideon mentions what happened to Palestinians. Shameful. I'm sorry to say it's absolutely shameful in telling about what's going on. And I would say this. If we're going to talk about October 7th and what happened since. Everyone's a liar.

The Hamas Health Ministries is a lie. Everyone's a liar. A friend of mine, American doctor, goes to Gaza. Many doctors have gone to Gaza. You've seen them on the news. They're all liars, all Hamas apparently. Friend of mine went to Gaza. He's been to Sudan.

He doesn't just use it for what aboutism like Douglas. He's been to Sudan. He's been to Afghanistan, he's worked there. He came back from Gaza and said, I've never seen atrocities like I've seen here. What's happened to children? He's an anti-Semite because he saw children with burn wounds like he's never seen. He saw children with gunshot wounds to their head.

To the head, but that's Hamas's fault. Everything is Hamas's fault. So let's talk about war crimes. It is amazing that every human rights group in the world, including Israeli human rights groups like Betselem, Gisha, Yashid, are all documenting this stuff, but you guys think it's all imagine. So again, it tells you about what Zionism is.

This is not about some abstract ideology of people trying to settle the land and trying to have it. As Gideon said, there was an argument to be had in the 1940s, 30s, 20s. Zionism today is what the Palestinians are enduring on a daily, nightly basis in Gaza, in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, in Israel itself. And the erasure of that tells you everything about why we need to be able to talk about what Zionism does to the Palestinians without being smeared as anti-Samites. First of all, again, you should do the reporting yourself, Mady.

I've seen the maps on the bodies of the terrorists. I've seen, for instance, the one of the bodies of the terrorists. I guess Shinn-Bet is on us. Well, no, you're just trying to make a cheap debating point again. No, it's called a fact. But let me just make the point which instead of you making your cheap debating point is a fact which you should think of inviting. Just stop it for a moment, Mady, and listen.

Please, go. Come on. Give us your facts. I'll give you one example. The terrorists who came into Offa Kim, which is many miles from the border, on the bodies of the 12 terrorists who made it into

that settlement and that community there in Offer Kim, I have seen the map on the body of at least one of the terrorists and it had on the map the house of a member of the Knesset who lived there, the house where the synagogue was going to be because it was a holy day and the kindergarten. Now, I'll give you one other

example, in near Oz, in near us, excuse me, because you lied again. Because you lied again and pretended that what Natasha just said was not the case. And I am telling you. What Shin meant says? No, you're not made it. As usual, you're not going to trust you.

As usual, you're making a cheap point for your partisan reasons. And I am telling you, I have seen, I have seen, I have seen, I have seen, I have seen, I have seen the precise maps of the communities of the, I'm afraid. I am. I'm afraid you're liable than you and your boss is in Qatar.

I'm afraid you're not, Douglas, oh my boss is in Qatar, not cheap, debate, Douglas, you're the guy, that's sorry, no, let's just be clear. You're the guy who denied earlier that what you said in the spectator. Just be clear content. We're just about October 7, October 7. Five days after October, you said, maybe they will finally put an end to this insoluble nightmare, raise Hamas to the ground, or clear all the Palestinians from that benighted strip.

It could be a good time to do it, but you tell this audience, we can live in peace side by side. That's a war crime. No. cleansing is a war crime. Not at all. Clearing people. No. I said maybe for a reason. It could be a good time to do it. Oh, for good is safe. Oh, for good this. Just apologize. Grininin. Seriously. Talking about moving on, we are now going to move on to closing statements because the time for this portion of the debate has come to a close. We're going to approach those statements in the opposite order of the openings. Four minutes each. So, Gideon, this time, you're the only time. You're the only time. the debate you get to go first.

Take us away with your closing statement. I would love to have the last word, but I never get it. That's fine. I guess I don't deserve it. I would like really in a different tone now because we are concluding soon. I'm the only one here who lives in Israel, who was born in Israel, who raises his children in Israel,

who never had a slightest idea of leaving Israel, who will never leave Israel, live Israel as long as I will not be forced to live Israel. All my life I live in Israel. Part of my life I was a zernerist. Part of my life I was struggling because it's not very easy to get released from something that you get from childhood in quantities that I can't even explain how much propaganda goes to our veins and how much blindness goes to our veins towards other side of Israel. And Israel has so many good sides.

Don't tell me about them. I know very well, and I know to appreciate it very well. And in many things, I have very hard time to live in Israel, to be in Israeli. Many times I'm deeply ashamed of being in Israeli, more and more so. A few times I feel proud of being Israeli, less and less old.

And gradually, after covering the occupation for decades now, after covering the crimes which were never denied by no one, none of my stories was ever denied, but everyone can say whatever he wants. After so many years, I realized that the only way to get out of this deadlock and nobody can deny here that Israel is right now

in its worst position ever. A pariah state par excellence. You may blame the whole world for it. But maybe we Israelis should also look upon ourselves and ask, maybe we did something wrong. Can it be that we didn't do any mistakes, any crimes, and the whole world is anti-Semitic? The Supreme Court of this kind and the Supreme Court of this kind,

this forum and this forum, intellectuals, artists, everyone. Can it be that all I and the Semites and only we are pure and just forever? So we have to look with some kind of decency at the mirror and ask ourselves, but that's really our problem as Israelis. Most of the Israelis are still convinced

according to the propaganda lines that we heard here today are not ready to take any criticism and become very, very aggressive if you dare to criticize them from time to time I dare to suggest to my fellow Israelis maybe the Israeli IDF, the Israeli army, is not the most moral army in the world but the second moral army in the world. You know, after 40,000 victims, in eight months,

maybe they had a second after the army of Luxembourg. They become offensive. How dare you say so? So really, because time is running out. the only thing which is today to be decided in this respectable forum is do we have the right to criticize Israel without being criminalized, without being silenced, without being labeled as anti-Semites? And believe me, for the benefit of Israel,

we better stand in front of the challenges, the criticism of genuine friends instead of trying to silence them because this propaganda campaign of silencing any critic will by the end of the day be the best source for new anti-Semitism. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Gideon, for a great debate. We appreciated you coming from Israel to be part of this event tonight. Natasha Hustor, four minutes on the clock.

Your closing statement, please. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we've heard a lot about freedom of speech this evening, and I think it's important to clarify, but Douglas and I aren't here to silence anyone. We're just here for the proper identification of what we've been hearing from the opposition. And that is anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Let me be clear, I do not blame the whole world

for the venomous hatred that Israel is currently being subject to. I blame the opposition and the blood liables that they have peddled in this evening. Gideon began with a statement of his credentials, perhaps I should do the same. I sit in front of you as the granddaughter of Palestinians. Living under the British, they had identity cards issued to them

that identified them as Palestinians, nationals of the British mandate. Think on that the next time you hear people trying to revise history and tell you what Palestinians are today and suggest that that is equivalent to what existed before the State of Israel was formed. We have heard hostility

to the state of Israel from the moment that Gideon got up. The suggestion that a gathering like this would be out of place and the Jewish state is preposterous. I've attended many myself. And you have the most rigorous, robust debate imaginable in Israel. More so I would suggest than anywhere in the world. But if the opposition really cared about Palestinians and the way that they profess, they would be calling, as I do, for Egypt to comply with its international law obligations. Those that it signed up to in the African Union Convention on Refugees,

which had acceded to in 1980, Egypt's responsibility to allow safe passage for refugees fleeing civil disorder in Gaza. Israel has gone above and beyond, and other modern militaries frequently say we wouldn't be able to meet the standards that Israel sets in the precautions that it takes. But it has had to move those civilians

or encourage them to move, it doesn't control them, to evacuate, to provide humanitarian corridors when you think of the ease with which those civilians could be properly provided for the other side of the border with Egypt, an Egyptian rafa, where the aid that Israel is facilitating into the Gaza Strip wouldn't be diverted and stolen by Hamas,

where aid workers would be able to assist them without being targeted by Hamas. I haven't heard any of that from me. the opposition today. And that is another reason that I say to you, what they are putting forward, the blood liables that they are peddling in, is anti-Zionism. And we also saw it in that comment from Gideon, give it back referring to the West Bank. It's the settlers, the settlers. That call for the West Bank or Judean Samaria to be due free, as so much of the rest of the Arab world, you'd and Hein. We've heard that before, ladies and gentlemen.

We were told because Jews in the 20th century differed about whether the creation of the state of Israel was a good idea. That was a reason that Jews couldn't be anti-Semitic if they were anti-Zionists. Well, I urge you to consider a debate between parents, which might be entirely legitimate as to whether or not to have a child, there may be arguments for and against reasonable ones. But once that child is born, to suggest that it should be gotten rid of, would be murder. What we have heard advocated by the opposition today.

And so I ask you, if you are, as Israel, liberal, care about peace and of poor racism, you will stand with the proposition this evening. Medi Hassan, let's have your closing. Ladies and gentlemen, before we finish that, I do want to say, look, I get it. I do. I get it. Anti-Semitism is undeniably on the rise. Hate crimes are on the rise.

Ancient tropes and conspiracy theories are back in circulation. No one is denying that. And so Jewish people understandably feel unsafe, threatened, insecure. So we should take a stand. I've said this for years. take a stand against anti-Semitism, all of us. But this isn't it. This is not it. This motion is not it.

I'm sorry to say this motion is an attempt to play you, to manipulate you, to gaslight you, by propagandists and apologists for Israel's current government. In fact, this motion could have been written by the Israeli government. And you don't have to say my word for it. Just back in 1973, Israel's own foreign minister, Aba Ibn, the quiet part out loud. It began over 50 years ago. He said on a quote, one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Zionism

and anti-Semitism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism, he said. So this attempt, there's nothing new about this attempt to define a new anti-Semitism, even while the old anti-Semitism from Douglas' end of the political spectrum is flourishing right now. We have a Republican presidential candidate who is a card-carrying anti-Semite who hosts Holocaust, deniers for dinner. But we don't hear about that. We have far-right militias on the rise right now across North America. We don't hear about that. Just a few years ago, the biggest massacre of Jews in North American history took place in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the shooter was not a left-wing anti-Zionist. It was a right-wing anti-Semite. We didn't talk tonight in this debate about the

anti-Semitic threat being posed by the rise of far-right parties in Europe, where the Israeli press says, this is good for Israel. Wow. I remember a time when the rise of far-out party, it wasn't good for Jewish people, but it's good for Israel and it's right-wing government, for Ben-Gavir, for Smotrich, for Netanyar. We don't talk about the threat posed by Victor Orban, openly anti-Semitic leader in Europe. If I wanted to make a cheap debating point, I'd say that's because he's a fan of Douglas, and Douglas is a fan of his, but I won't make that cheap debating point. We don't talk about that stuff.

And ladies and gentlemen, look, even if you ascribe the best of intentions to the proposition side tonight, and spoiler alert, I don't. This entire debate is a distraction. A deflection, an attempt to make you look over here, not over there. There being Gaza, where they don't get to have protests on college campuses because the most moral army in the world wiped out 12 college campuses in Gaza. There being the West Bank, where a record number of children have been killed since October the 7th, even though the West Bank is not run by Hamas.

There being Israel, where a government of self-proclaimed fascists and racist faces nightly protests from thousands of Jewish Israelis, including the families of hostages. But no, no, no, don't look over there. Look over here. Embrace this pernicious idea that those of us who oppose the way in which Israel was created or what Israel has become or how Israel treats its Palestinian minority,

we're all somehow bigots, racists, anti-Jewish, even the Jews among us like Gideon. Because remember, that is the motion tonight, not whether you support Israel or Zionism, which is fine, but whether the rest of us who don't are automatically anti-Semitic. By the way, what are we are. and bizarre situation we find ourselves tonight in Toronto where we've had a British atheist of

Christian descent, a non-Jew telling the Jewish grandson of Holocaust victims who lives in Israel that he's an anti-Semite. What a bizarre debate tells you everything. Because he opposes the governing ideology of Israel. Think about how absurd that is. Think about how offensive that is. And then ask yourself the question, why would you vote for that? Ladies and gentlemen, I urge you to vote against this flawed, false, and truly dangerous motion. Vote for free speech and common sense. Thank you, Medi Hassan. Okay, Douglas, as per convention,

the pro side of the debate gets the last word. You're up, four minutes on the clock. Well, thank you very much. Quite a lot of heat, some light. We set out this evening defining what both these terms were, and they are defined for you. anti-Semitism. Cruel treatment,

double standards applied to Jews. Anti-Zionism is a movement that believes that the Jews don't have the right to a state in their historic homeland. And as I said at the beginning, anti-Semitism is a shapeshifter. It does come from all sorts of directions and maybe is right, as I mentioned at the beginning,

it can come from the far right, can come from the far left. But at the moment, what we see an eruption of, is anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism. What else is it that is motivating the crowds? Why, when I was in Vancouver the other month,

but their crowds going down the street in Vancouver screaming about Israel? What's it got to do with them? You're miles away. It's got absolutely into the brains of people in the West who believe they're doing something moral and they are imbibing every anti-Semitic trope as Natasha has proven.

I don't, I should say, say since Mady was honest, I'll say what I think. I think he's a very dishonest actor, a very dishonest actor. And to say what you just said about hostages would come a lot better if a contributor to Al Jazeera had not been discovered last week holding a hostage in his home. It would be a lot easier to take. And finally, I just want to say this. It's, it's, it's It's perfectly obvious I said at the beginning that you can get anti-Semitism from all directions. This just happens to be the major direction which is coming in at the moment, in the guise of anti-Syman.

As I said, does everybody who is doing this know what they're doing? No. Almost certainly not. Do some of them? Oh, you bet. They're having a wail of a time. People like those people I mentioned marching last week through Jewish areas of Toronto getting to scream about the pigs and the rats again.

Wow, it feels good to them. Does everyone know what they're doing? No. But when you hear Gideon saying that, what did you say earlier, that Israel is the most brutal regime in the world you can have traveled nowhere, sir. And there is no reason, as I said at the beginning of this tonight, Why, simply recognizing that the anti-Zionism of today is anti-Semitism should be any barrier

to there being some kind of peace settlement at some point? But please understand that those of us who recognize that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is because we see after a mass slaughter of Jews the world turning on the one Jewish state. That is what we see and what we want. worry about and what some people like maybe seem not to care about and all of the smears and all of the lies that they get to pump out. But I've got good news for you, ladies and gentlemen, to finish. I hope very much that you vote the right way tonight, obviously. And it matters for Canada in its image. But the Jewish state and the Jewish people have survived an awful lot worse

than this. They have seen off every single one of their enemies from Pharaoh to the Abyssinians, to the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans. They will see off Hamas, they will see off Mady, and they will outlive everybody in this room. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Douglas, Natasha, Medi, and Gideon for being part of what was an important moment on the monk debate stage. At times emotional and definitely charged. The Monk Debates on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism will go down as one of the more storied in the history of our series. After the debate, we pulled the audience again. This time the results were 66% in favor, 24% opposed.

The pro team of Douglas and Natasha, winning by a margin of 5%. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us an email to info at monkdebates.com. that's M-U-N-K Debates with an S.com. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard-Griffis. The Monk Debates are a project of the Aurea

and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.