The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler

Episode Date: April 7, 2024

What makes international conflicts turn domestic? Does Qatar play the key role in bringing peace to the Middle East? Is there a generational split in the West over Israel-Gaza? On today's episode of Leading, Rory and Alastair are joined by Ed Kessler, a leading thinker in interfaith relations, to answer all these questions and more. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/leadingvpn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolities.com. That's the rest is politics.com. Today we're releasing an interview that Alistra and I did with Ed Kessler. We recorded it on the 18th of March. And I think at the center of the whole thing is the relationship between what is international, in this case, Israel, Gaza, and what is domestic, British politics, American politics. American politics. politics and the way those two things interact. In the week in which we're releasing it, for example, we've seen a former conservative foreign minister demand that a conservative security minister in Britain be fired from his job for apparently supporting settlements. We've seen demands for members the House of Lords to be stripped of their position for speaking for Israel in the House of Lords. And of course, we have continuing the fallout from the death of aid workers, kill by an Israeli strike in Gaza, which we covered in the podcast this week. But the broader issue, whether you're talking about South Africa's case, or whether you're talking about Biden's electoral politics or Labor's struggle around this issue, the way in which an international issue becomes domestic and the way in which tensions are now rising within our own societies between communities. And that's where Ed Kessler has worked very, very hard for 30 years and where he says things have never been. as tricky as they are today.

Welcome to the rest of this politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. And today we're very lucky to have with us, Ed Kessler. He's a scholar, but he's particularly well known for his work on the relationship

between different faiths. In particular, the relationship between, I suppose, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is the founder-president of the Wolf Institute, which is an academic institute in Cambridge, which studies interfaith relations. I first came across him, in fact, in Amman, where we had an extraordinary dinner with Muslim guests and also a Palestinian newly appointed Palestinian bishop, I think, who just turned up. And Ed's story is of somebody who is Jewish, but who's taken a real interest in this very, very tricky question of engaging both in terms of communities here in the United Kingdom.

So thinking through issues of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, particularly relevant today and presumably extremism today with my country. or goes definition comes from the government, but also, of course, somebody who knows the Middle East well. And when I came across him, was engaged in very difficult issues of community relations in Israel, Palestine. So thank you very, very much for joining us. Yeah, it's good to be here. And I'm going to hand over, I suppose, to Alistair, to get us going and then come back. Yeah, thanks for being here. I mean, I guess I want to start with the observation that we probably wouldn't be talking to, had it not been for October the 7th. We might have done. But I think that that has brought the sort of issues we're going to talk about into very, very sharp

relief. So I want to start by asking whether you had the same reaction as we did when October the 7th happened, that this was going to presage a pretty horrible period, and that is being borne out by events. It's been an absolutely calamitous period since October the 7th, not simply because of the attacks in Israel, but the following war in Gaza, which is still ongoing, and the impact that it's had around the world. I've never known relations between faith communities, particularly, as Rory said, choose Christians and Muslims in this country to be as bad as they are. And that's a direct effect of struggling with probably the most difficult issue between us all, which is Israel-Palestine. Do you think that when Hamas launched that attack, that part of their

thinking was that that would happen? And is this a good thing for what they are trying to achieve, whatever that is? I think there are lots of reasons for Hamas attack, and you've discussed them in the program, the rest is politics. I don't think they thought about interfaith relations. I think they wanted to undermine whatever conversations that were going on between Israel and the Gulf states, for example, what they called normalization. I think they wanted to undermine any conversations that were happening between the Israelis and Palestinians. So under this particular government, that was in serious decline. But they just wanted to blow everything up, literally, and they've achieved that. And I think they suspected they'd get the response, which they have, which is

calamitous for everybody. And how do you see a way out of where we are? There will come an end. All war comes to an end of one type or another. And what we've got to start thinking about is the day after. It will end with some kind of resolution probably brokered by Qatar. There are all sorts of conversations going on at the moment. Rory said when I met him in Amman, that was specifically about Jerusalem. And there have lots of conversations about Jerusalem. In some ways, the map of Jerusalem has been drawn already.

It just takes the courage of leaders and a great deal else to enable there to be some kind of end resolution and moving forward. We'll come back to all this later in the program, but I'd love to take us back to you and your story, a sense of how old you are. I'm not telling you how old I am. What we can look it up. What community you grew up in, how you came to this work, how this work has changed. Just a little snapshot. Sure. So let me start with my parents were both born in Vienna, came over as refugees.

I'm presently chairing a commission on the integration of refugees, so the circle has come around. And I was very aware of that as a kid growing up in Southgate. North London, one of the most suburban and forgive me South Gators, but dull areas of the universe. We're famous for only one thing. As far as I know, and that's Amy Winehouse. Went to the local school. She moved to Camden.

Yeah, she escaped. Went to school in London, local primary school, then to a public school, deeply unhappy at school, secondary school. And then went to university and I ended up in this world, Rory, because of Maggie Thatcher. Go on, tell us about that. So I took a year off between school and university, worked, and then I went to Israel to work on a kibbutz before travelling around the Middle East. By the time I came back, I'd apply to study Hebrew.

The Hebrew Department had closed to new applications because of the cuts. So they put me in the Department of Theology and I ended up doing religious studies. Tory cuts, Roy. And your parents came over from Vienna when? As children. My mother on the Kinder transport, 7 or 8. You know, they were very, very young. Leaving their parents behind?

So my father's family got out, had a business there, and the whole family got out and started up the business again in East London called Kessler. It's now the Kessler group. I worked there for seven years. And what did it do? At the time, my great-great-grandfather was a wood turner, and he made umbrella handles, which was a fashion accessory in the 1880s, 1890s. And he said to one of his children, go to London because it rains a lot there.

It would be good for business. As a result of that decision, they had an agent in London who got the whole family out. They lost the business because, of course, it was appropriated by Hitler and the regime. But they started up again in Stought Newington and then I moved further east. And now they're in East London. My mother was sponsored by a synagogue called the Liberal Juris Synagogue, and we were brought up there in St. John's word, it was a Schlep from Southgate. But they sponsored my mother out, so it was good enough reason.

And tell us a little bit about what the liberal Jewish synagogue was like and how it sits within Judaism. So the Jewish community in this country is about 300,000. And it's divided between, if you like, three different denominations. There are lots, of course, but let's put them into three, a bit like Catholic's Protestants and the Orthodox Church. You have the Orthodox. You represent about 30%. And then you have the progressives, liberal and reform. In fact, they're going to become one movement in the coming year. And they also represent about 30%.

And then you have ultra-orthodox. That's called Haredi, whether it's in Stanford Hill, the northeast, who really just keep it to themselves in their own little worlds. And you have a good proportion of Jews who are non-affiliated to a secular. I work very hard when people ask me what kind of Jew I am, which you haven't asked, but I'm going to preempt it, to say that I'm a Jewish Jew because I would go to a liberal to reform to an Orthodox synagogue. And in the work that I do, it's really important that I cross boundaries.

and also to the ultra-orthodox community. Yes, I have relations with the ultra-orthodox community as well. They have interesting outreach programs. There are some similarities between the evangelical churches and the ultra-orthodox communities that you wouldn't expect. Just to explain to somebody who doesn't really understand that much about religion, define the difference between a Jew and a Christian. What are the big things that divide a Jew from a Christian?

The irony is that Christianity is based around a Jew called Jesus. Jesus was born, he lived, he died a Jew. and his followers claimed him to be God or the son of God. And that's what made Christianity begin to separate from Judaism, even though it was about Jewish things and the arguments in the New Testament are about things like food, laws, circumcision, or whatever. But the belief in the life, death and resurrection of Christ as something absolutely fundamental is what divides Jews and Christians.

In which case, why can't they sort of... Why can't they resolve that rather better than they've done? Because you would understand in the political world, there are certain truth claims that you have. You and Rory get on pretty well. I get on with Christians pretty well, but you differ over your allegiances, over your political truth claims, as do Jews and Christians. Jews don't think the Messiah's arrived, don't think the world has changed in that way.

Christians think he has and thinks he's going to come back. Even more puzzling, I think, for somebody from the outside. Difference between Jews and Muslims. I mean, that seems much closer, really, than the distinction between Jews and Christians. Are my wrong about that? You're wrong and you're right. So, on the one hand, Jews and Christians show the fact that. that Jesus was Jew, the first Christians were Jews, etc., etc.

But the irony is, theologically, Muslims and Jews are much closer. The emphasis on the unity of God, the emphasis on the legal tradition, coming out the Middle East, customs like food laws and things like that, circumcision to boys, you know, they are incredibly close. And in my conversations with Muslims around the world, of course, that's where we always begin.

What do we have in common? Through your life, have you as an individual experience much anti-Semitism? I did when I was younger. I was an Arsenal supporter, and Arsenal-Totten Games were a pretty unpleasant affairs. in those days and there was a lot of anti-Semitic chanting.

There was a lot of racist chanting full stop. But hold on, the anti-Semitic chanting was... By Arsenal supporters directed against Perce. Yes, yes,

but still made Arsenal supporters feel pretty uncomfortable, right? I imagine, yeah. But that was, if you personally as an individual... At school, you have

comments made about being a Jew. Sometimes this anti-Semitism is so lightweight, you know, could be about, you know, comments about your wealth or your power,

your authority. So it's the tropes. Yeah, the tropes, exactly. You mentioned October October the 7th, one of the shocking things is the 12-fold rise in reported incidents of anti-Semitism just in the last few months. And these vary from online anti-Semitic comments to, you know, physical abuse and so on. So anti-Semitism is dormant.

It's always there, as actually some form of racism and hatred is often there within our society. But it's very much come into Western culture. Where do you think it comes from? I've never understood it. I've never understood why the Jews should be seen as such. a persecuted race and why there is such a thing as anti-Semitism and why it seems to be so profound through history. I've struggled with that, you know, because much of my work is about Jewish non-Jurish relations. First of all, there is within us, all of us, an aspect where there is a dislike of

somebody else. You know, we're not all perfect. So you have that within the human condition. Secondly, Judaism and Christianity, which are the bedrock, if you like, of Western culture. And obviously, we've added Islam more recently in the last 150 years or so, but nevertheless, Christians identify themselves as not Jews. You know, we're not like you. You might have provided Jesus a Jew, but you failed to see that he was the Messiah. You didn't read your own scriptures properly. You think it goes back to that?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Fundamentally. Fundamentally. Even earlier in some of the pagan writings. But most of the people who today might define themselves or we would say you're being anti-Semitic, would they even know that's what it's about? They may not, but it's like a cloud. It's there.

But what you're referring to is the modern complexion of anti-Semitism, which is the rise of anti-Semitism as a racism, you know, Jews as what Hitler did, it's intermension, subhumans, and it entered society in those tropes, as you mentioned. That's interesting. So you're suggesting there, maybe I'm misunderstanding, that with Hitler, a slightly different form of anti-Semitism emerged that got more connected to race. So potentially an idea that previously the Christian antipathy was towards practicing Jews, but that if a Jew converted to become a Christian, was there? No, you're right. We go there in a moment in terms of the difference of the rise of. of racism. It was the late 19th century. It wasn't the Hitler creation, Hitler exploited it. But in fact, the beginnings of modern 1970s actually go back to Spain, the Iberian Peninsula.

So Jews who were forced to convert, as were some Muslims, were forced to convert, they became new Christians, new Christians, not Christians. In other words, those Christians' time either married old Christians, but they wouldn't marry the new Christians because they were deemed a slightly different. And you have this whole history of what became known as Maranos or crypto Jews, secret Jews, and Muslims as well became known as Mariscoes, right? And so they was already deemed as different as in the 16th, 17th century, let alone in the late 19th. If you think about Hitler, though, in Germany in the 30s, you may say that they were identified as an untermench, but actually the fear was that they were the kind of ubermensch.

They have the power, they had the money, they had the tropes. The irony is they were the communists, and they were also controlling the world. They were godless. You could choose whatever you want, right? And so what Hitler did, of course, was to find a scapegoat for the failure of the First World War, and the scapegoat within their midst was there. Nice and small. Yeah, relatively small.

They might have been very integrated, very German. I mean, he was Austrian, of course, very Austrian, right? Leopoldstadt, you know, you think about the contribution of Jews to culture in Europe in that period before Hitler. They were very easy targets. And Jews couldn't believe what was going to happen. It's easy looking back on it, isn't it? They say that the optimist stay behind and the pessimists left. So if you take the Boy in the striped pajamas, the final scene, it's almost like when they're war-haired.

into the gas chamber, they still don't know. They still don't know that all hope has gone. So what does that say about, I guess about the power of survival, but also I wonder how you feel today's form of anti-Semitism differs from that sort of anti-Semitism we saw then? Today's form of anti-Semitism is often, but not always about Israel and Zionism. There may be other tropes that hide behind it, but actually a lot of it is to do with Zionism and how we handle Zionism. And one of the failings of my world of interfaith,

and one of the reasons why there's been such a calamitous reaction here between communities is we haven't dealt with the most obvious thing, which is how do you deal with difference? We're very good at building up relations. What we have in common, Jesus the Jew, sharing with Islam, and vice versa. It's not one way. But what we haven't really got to, we have to get to, is how do we deal with the most difficult issues?

And it could be theological. I believe I'm saved and you're damned. It could be, you know, that's pretty profound. Or it could be to do with a piece of real estate the size of Wales. So let's move forward into the work that you do professionally and have done now for more years than you're prepared to reveal on the podcast. You're saying that one of the challenges is that interfaith work bring communities together isn't necessarily always about emphasizing similarities. It may be about being honest about difference. You start with what you have in common.

You know that and the work you do. I want to get to know you. I mean, dialogue is very easy because I simply say, tell me your story and I shut up. literally shut up. So the first thing is you get to know the other person. And you can't go anywhere without that, whether it's knowledge, whether it's feeling, whatever it is, experiencing things together. But then you've got to go on to where do we differ and how do we manage that difference. And we haven't done that well enough. And it's remarkable how well we have done, but October the 7th and the invasion of Gaza and the war shows us how far we have yet to go.

What's the difference between what you define as dialogue, and conversation. I've seen you talking about that before. I thought it was really interesting. Essentially, dialogue is really difficult. Dialogue is about understanding the other person as that person wishes to be understood. If we just unpack that, it's not simply you messaging me or me answering a question about a fact. It's you trying to get into my shoes and vice versa. It is really, really difficult. That is genuine dialogue. That's what Martin Buba talked about. There was a wonderful bishop called Christa Stendal. He had three principles of dialogue, and I add a fourth to his three.

And the first thing he said is when you want to understand something, go to that person's religion. You want to understand Judaism or Christianity, Islam, whatever. Hinduism, go to a first will go to the person. The second thing is compare best with best or worst with worst. I mean, we're very good at comparing my best with your worst. The third in the interfaith world is to have something called holy envy. Admiar something about somebody else. And what I would add to it all is have a sense of humour because there's a tricky world out there. And sometimes you can absolutely prick the tension with a joke or something self-deprecating.

But if you, as you were speaking, I was thinking, right, if this thing is going to get resolved, at some point, there has to be some kind of dialogue and some kind of progress between Israeli and Palestinian. Right now, on all four, I think of the people that I've been seeing speaking for Israel or speaking for the Palestinian. and I see no possible meeting of minds right now. You're not speaking to the people who are trying to do that. You're speaking to the leaders, the representatives, quite rightly. But if you go on the ground, there are some little pockets of excellence, whether it's Jewish and Arab groups in Palestinian groups in Israel, trying to protect certain places.

Rory will know in certain parts of the West Bank, whether it's rabbis for human rights working with Muslim leaders. These are little pockets. They are under incredible pressure, because what's happened since October the 7th is that, for those of us, who are trying to do it, we're being squeezed. When the majority feel under attack, what do they do? They retreat.

And they retreat within. That's what we've got at the moment. I don't have a lot of optimism, but no, to say there's nothing happening. It's not right. There are things happening. There are things, but not many. And what's your, we talk to you, Volna Harari, and he gave a very interesting assessment of his own relationship with the concept of Israel

and how I think it's fair to say it was changing as a result of October 7th. probably still hates Netanyahu, but has a stronger feeling for Israel. How would you define your relationship as a Jew hasn't lived in Israel? How would you define your relationship with Israel? Personally, I think as a Jew, I relate to three aspects. I relate to the religion and the way that I practice. I relate to the culture, Jewish culture and literature and so on, and I relate to land, the land being specifically the land of Israel.

My aspiration, my hope is that there is a land of Palestine and a land of Israel. How we get there is beyond my pay grade. But you have to build the relationships up from the ground. So in a way, I suppose I would define myself, and we've got to be very careful. My wife read a book recently called Untied Kingdom. I don't know if you come across it, Stuart Ward. It looks at the development of the UK since the colonism, since the subcontinent, 1947, Palestine, Ireland, 1920s and so on.

And he came up with this term, loose-fitting clothes. In other words, you take a term and you kind of make it fit to whatever you want. A term like Zionism. Zionism can mean a whole array of different things, whether I'm a West Bank's nationalist religious settler on the West Bank, whether I'm a secular Jew in Tel Aviv, or whether I'm sitting in London or in Cambridge, or wherever I'm sitting.

So there's almost Zionism, which essentially means a homeland for the Jewish people in the land of Israel, makes no points and definitions about the size of that land, the extent of that land, the relationship with others. It's just saying there should be a homeland there. That's all it is, and I relate to that. Well, that's just sort of lean for saying, How did you get to your view that you are in favour, I suppose, of what we would call a two-state solution?

How did you decide that that is the direction of travel? Why do you remain committed to that, despite all the problems? And is that is a loose-fitting garment? Oh, it certainly is a loose-fitting garment. It might be so loose that it's fallen off. It's not clear to me, Rory, that there is a two-state solution, such as the complexity and the division and the building blocks in certain places. It may be that we end up with one state. There's a kind of federal state or some kind or other.

Prince Hassan of Jordan, our mutual friend, talks about a confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The answer is I don't know. My work, although I've done some work in Israel, in Jerusalem bringing together Israelis and Palestinians and Israeli Palestinians and Jordanians about Jerusalem itself and particularly about Alaksa, but my work really is about the relations between people

and how we can get to a level where we can actually get on a little bit better, whether that's in Israel or Palestine or whether that's here in the UK. I like for being, of course, the conversation around the Dome of the Rock and the... It means the furthest place, right? So it's the third holiest place at Islam. It's also where the temple, the biblical temple stood.

It's 500 yards, if that, from the Church Holy Sepulchreca. And what we did, in fact, one of my proudest moments was bringing together to Cambridge with Prince Hassan's support, just before COVID, 21 Israelis, Palestinians who work on the ground. How can we, or we, I mean, I just don't mean in a sense. The world. Well, no, how can they? Yeah, those three groups. Those three groups sitting around the table who do not get along.

How can we get along? How can we help you get along? It was a wonderful conversation because they were out of the spotlight. They weren't in their homeland. There was no coverage. And we were beginning to get somewhere. Tell us about what that feels like. What are the sort of changes you might see through a conversation like that from how they arrive, not getting along the beginning and getting a bit better as that conversation happens?

What's a good story there? A good story is around the table when people introduced themselves. Most people knew most people, not everybody. One Israeli Jew said quite aggressively. I want you to know, I am the eighth generation Jerusalemite. And everyone goes, goes around, about three further on. And there's Palestinian Catholic, not Muslim, Palestinian Catholic says, thank you, I'll give his name. Thank you for sharing that.

I want you to know, I'm 13th generation. And it kind of set the context, a little bit gladiatorial, a little bit adversarial. But then the next day, literally they sat down together at breakfast. In the end, about relationships. Can I trust you? Or not trust you. It's not theology. It's not ideology. It's not politics. It's simply looking you eye. It's dialogue. Understanding that person is the other person which is to be understood. And it's trusting. Can I trust you? And at the moment, there is almost no trust between the groups on the ground. When I saw you walking up towards Piccadilly a few weeks ago, you said that your sense was the Jewish community in Britain was afraid and the Muslim community was angry, I think. Tell us a little bit about that. Tell us firstly about how the Jewish community feels and then how, in your experience, the Muslim community, feels in Britain. The impact of the attack has been quite traumatic on Jews around the world,

not just in the UK, but here in the sense that nobody expected it, it was a slaughter. It wasn't just an attack. It was a slaughter. Some of things that happened were truly, truly awful. And the reaction to that was a rise in anti-Semitism. And it's like, how have we got here? And then a retreat within and then the kind of feeds one off and the other. Let's just unpack that. What is the answer for why the October 7th attack then triggered a rise in anti-Semitism? This is very odd collection of bedfellows, whether it's left-wing anti-colonial rhetoric that sees Israel as the sort of representative, this arch type of colonialism. There is a sense of sadness at the suffering of Palestinians and how terrible it is. There is such heightened sensitivities that what is taken as criticism

now becomes anti-Semitism. You know, you have something like something as simple as, from the river to the sea, let Palestine be free. That in itself isn't anti-Semitic, in my view. waving Palestinian flags aren't anti-Semitic. But if I drive through the streets of a Jewish area honking my horn, waving Palestinian flags and shouting, that might be anti-Semitic. It gets so complicated. A number of Jews who've been on the marches, the big pro-Palestine marches. And a friend of mine stood outside watching the march.

He said it was amazing. Hundreds of thousands of people. I didn't see any anti-Semitism. He's Jewish. Any anti-Semitism. Another friend, all they saw were the few placards that were anti-Semitic or the few chance anti-Semitic. It's what you select to see.

Now, on the Muslim side, and we're making generalisations here, at least I am, of which I'll be criticized when I go back to Cambridge. But nevertheless, on the Muslim side, generally speaking, there is incredible frustration at the Palestinian voice not having been heard, at the suffering of Palestinians, the lack of progress, in fact, even worse, the decline of any possibilities, and the frustration at anger with that. Now, the irony is, is what I've managed to do in the Institute, the Wolf Institute has managed to do over the last few months, is bring together small numbers of Jews and Muslims, quietly, here in London, in Oxford, in Birmingham, in other places, Cambridge. First of all to say, tell me your story. How are you feeling right now? Let everybody expel that. And then to say, where do we go? And the thing is, Rory, they say the same thing. I'm scared of going on the tube in my hijab. I've taken down my muzzaza from the door. I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my personal security. I'm worried about social media.

If you didn't know what hijab and muzouzah was, you wouldn't know whether it's a misn or jewess it. They say the same thing and then they hear themselves say it and it's the beginning of moving forward. It's interesting, we're talking in the week of St Patrick's Day and I've been watching endlessly on social media clips of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, one Catholic, one Protestant, going around Washington together. And whenever I see that, I think God that shows that progress has been made. I just wonder if you have any sense of how within the Middle Eastern question, context in Israel, Palestine, there is still a process that can lead to that kind of image within

this context? Or do you feel pretty hopeless right now? As a person of faith, I have no choice but to be optimistic. It's a story about three people who meet in Jerusalem every day. And they look around and they see that the world's chaos, there's fighting, and they decide they're three pessimists. And one day, one of them turns around to the other two and says, you know what, I've converted? He said, I've become an optimist. I said, how can you be an optimist? There's so many terrible things going on. They said, no, no, no, that's who I am now. So are they accepting because they're old friends.

And then a few minutes later, they look at this newly converted optimist. It looks a bit like me if wrinkles and frowns and a bit of grey hair. They say, why are you looking so worried if you're an optimist? You said, do you think it's easy to be an optimist? There's no other way to go. For me personally, and for many people. So where does the optimism come from from faith or from a sense of a process that you can see? You're looking for process.

I'm looking for relations. Okay. I'm looking for where are those relations that people are going to get along, that are going to begin to build bridges between community. Which is going to Northern Ireland? Absolutely. And it happened at the same time. The process, the Osloa process was going on at the same time. What happened in Northern Ireland was there's a fragile, but there's peace. Maybe a cold piece, but there's peace.

What's happening in Israel-Palestine? It's a calamity. Okay, Ed, Ed, Alisa, quick break. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research, UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, cancer research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung

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visit cancer research UK.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Zavarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away, and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise.

People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975,

a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode.

And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Going on to the US, I've just come back from teaching in American University last week. And I'm not sure how much British listeners are aware just how extreme the situation has become in American universities. It's, on the one hand, you get Jewish students at Harvard reporting people ripping Jewish symbols down, people invading private lecture halls, screaming anti-Semitic slogans, feeling afraid, feeling that the classes being taught at Harvard are themselves anti-Semitic. So that's the experience of Jews at Harvard, very, very negative, very frightened. And on the other hand, I have Muslim students saying to me that there's now a thing called a canary list where if they are reported to have made what is considered an anti-Semitic statement, and many of them would say they haven't made any anti-Semitic statements, they get on a list, and then they can't get a job at McKinsey or top hedge funds in New York. A van is driven up to Harvard, literally showing the photographs and names of students who are supposed to have made anti-Semitic statements or in New York. endorsed Palestine in a way that only notes he literally sort of McCarthy-style witch hunts.

The names of people who are perceived as being anti-Jewish are published, their photographs, their home addresses. So on both sides, the thing has reached a kind of pitch of real weirdness. And I just want to be kind of reflect a little bit about your sense of what's happening in the US now. Yes, in a way, I'm glad I'm not going to university now, you know, where anything I might have done appears in the social media, never to be rescinded, the sort of things I did as a kid and you probably did, you know.

Particularly him. Particularly him. You're definitely looking at me there. So America's in a really tricky situation, not just in its universities, but in its social strata, its social economic background, and its political machinations.

In the universities, and you saw that with the resignation just recently of gay, right? The head of Harvard, and not just the other universities that the heads also left, that the woke culture, the wires about freedom of speech,

the incredible sensitivity to anything is deeply, worry. My worry is to what extent it's being transferred over here. I, in my classes, want my students to say inane, difficult, problematic, possibly racist things. So I can say, let's just stop. Let's unpack what you had to say. Because if they can't say it with me, I worry where they are going to say it, right? And honestly, it's that openness to be able to do that, which we seem to have lost in the United States. Even I find it tricky if I'm giving a class, somebody puts a phone and starts recording me because I don't know, I want to engage and

it kind of worries me when I make a joke. Is it appropriate? One of the courses we taught was for Metropolitan Police Officers and I started off with a really tricky joke and they didn't know whether to laugh. So we're at that point where everything is so sensitive. The point Rory's making is that he's feeling it much, much, much more profoundly in the United States. Do you think it is coming here as well? Because we talked to Jamie Rubin recently, American diplomat. And separate from the podcast, he was telling me something very, very similar stories about how this woke culture goes way, way deeper in America than it does here. But yet, we tend to follow America in so many ways. So is that coming here? I think it's coming here,

light. So we shouldn't be as alarmed as Rory is about what's happening in America? Correct. I think we've still got academic freedom and... Correct. I am not as alarmed at what's going on here as I am at what's going on the States. And obviously, I'm quite close to things in terms of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the States. And so no, yes, there are challenges here. There certainly are. And it's more difficult engaging in classroom dialogue today than 25 years ago when I set out of the Institute. Rory mentioned Michael Gove in his introduction and Gove's recent definition of extremism. What did you make of that debate? It's unbelievably divisive. It just shows how difficult it is. What may be extremist to you is not to me, how difficult it is

to do that. So why do you think they're doing it? One of my fears is they are weaponising Islamophobia and anti-Semitism for their own political ends and that it's going to become a wedge issue and that in particular Muslims and Jews have to stop that. It mustn't allow that to happen. And I do fear that with the election coming up. In some ways, having a Hindu prime minister is wonderful and a personal colour because I hope that lightens it a bit if you like. It might also give cover for it. It might give cover to it.

But thankfully, the Anderson left the party, right? how much worse it would have been if somebody like that stayed within the mainstream politics. So it's a really tricky one because, for example, the government's decision to take funding away from the interfaith network. Yeah. It was founded, this body on the ground trying to bring little communities together. It's not, it's national, but it's like little communities in Bristol, in the north, in Bradford, wherever. Around the whole of the UK, the government promised out at $150,000, not like pocket money. And they would draw on it and it's about to close.

I mean, this is the sort of thing we should be investing in, not just financially, but supporting. What, Roy, can I say, what did you make of Gove's extremism initiative? Yeah, I'm very worried. And maybe to be more explicit than Ed, because it can be. I think this relates to the fact that you see again and again at PMQ's Rishi Sunak leaning over and saying Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Stama were very close and you can see Stama's body language a bit uncomfortable. And I'm worried, with the Conservatives behind in the polls going into an election, they're desperately trying to define the Labour Party as being Jeremy Corbyn's anti-Semitic party

and trying to mobilize a group which Lee Anderson was speaking for who think there's some existential fight against Islam at stake and they're going to try to challenge Labor to either take them on on this or even more dangerous to my point of view that Labor gets pulled onto their side because they don't want to get into that discussion. And the response... But the response is, I think, that I'm very, very well, that we're going to end up demonising Muslims.

I want to pick up your point about demonising Muslims because I think there are some encouraging signs. We're having this conversation during Ramadan, about two weeks in a bit less. And what I've noticed is although the number of iftars that are being hosted by churches and synagogues have declined, they're still happening. That's really encouraging because that's a kind of solidarity.

It's about crossing a threshold. It's why I take my students into a mosque across that threshold. It's not as you might think it is and the synagogue. So there are these little positive signs. And I think sometimes we underestimate how well we do multiculturalism, multi-faith. You know, we're very good at criticising ourselves rightly, and there's a lot to criticise. But why they're weaponising that. You know, Swelowbramon is out the whole time, say,

Sunnuck has said multiculturalism isn't working. As far as I'm concerned, I say absolutely loudly and proudly, multiculturalism is a success. I'm an Arsenal supporter, as we said before the show. My son supports Liverpool. So when Mosala scores and prostrates on the ground as a Muslim, What do Liverpool supporters chant? If he scores a few, I'll become a Muslim too.

It's great. Very different from what I was brought up with when I went to the Arsenal, right? There are so many things. I've mentioned about Rishi being Prime Minister. You look at the different celebrities of different faiths, different cultures. We are now a multicultural society. Back in 1960, one in 150 people were not Christian. They were basically a Jew.

Now it's one in 10, British. One in 10. We are all minorities. I think that's incredibly liberating that we're all minorities. Because you don't have a majority culture that can tell the minority culture from a faith perspective, this is how to do it. Just to say recently, Nigel Farage, who I'm sure is, you know, fun, absolutely massive Christian at heart and lives out Christian values every day of his life.

But he recently slagging off the Archbishop of Canterbury, when is this man going to understand we're a Christian country? Well, when is the Archbishop of Canterbury not criticizing the government? There is something about the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury to hold... Absolutely. hold the government and others. So they're weaponising Christianity as well now. Yeah, but there's always been criticism.

Maggie Thatcher criticised the Archbishop of the Falklands War. So that's not a new phenomenon. I don't think it's a new phenomenon, but the weaponising of Christianity as a minority religion. I think the weaponising Christianity, less of a minority religion but being persecuted. Right. So it's when Christians are being persecuted in Pakistan or you bring in other parts of the world. The Archbishop cares about that.

I'm not sure that Nigel Farage does. I think you're right. I suppose one of the conceptual things, which presumably Michael Gove is getting to, is this idea that somehow by talking to extremists, you legitimize them. My question to you is, how do you get that balance right? Because we also hear Alice's friend Jonathan Powell say, ultimately you have to talk to terrorists, right, to bring peace. So how do you get this balance right between people who say you've got to talk to the extremists and people who say you mustn't talk to them? You need wiggle room.

I personally have wiggle room. I'm just an academic. I'm a teacher. I'm a leader in interfaith. I can meet pretty much anybody. Have you met Hamas? I've met lots of problematic people in Doha. Right.

I've met people who I fundamentally disagree with, whose views may be, I don't know, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, whatever. I will meet anybody as long as I don't feel threatened. But I have that wiggle room that perhaps politicians don't have so much. They have to use conduits. But yes, everyone has to make out that own mind who they can and can't meet. But is it smart of governments not to engage? I would have thought actually governments need to have the wiggle room. They need to say this is a list of people we won't talk to when they're citizens from a own country, whether they're Islamists or they're even the far right.

I mean, obviously, you know, somebody like me, very worried about the far right, but I suppose my instinct would be you need to be able to probably talk to Tommy Robinson as well. You need to be a... Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Stephen Yaxley, that's called him by his real name. Whether the government sit down officially, publicly and talk to them is one thing, but they should certainly be understanding where they're coming from and have people who are talking to them, right? The foolishness is to pretend that you can't talk to anybody. I mean, you know, boycards. I'm really not a fan of that.

I'm a fan in building relationships, as you can tell. And that means talking to people who you fundamentally disagree with. You would be alarmed at the moment if there wasn't, however, circuitously, some kind of direct contact going on between Hamas and the Israeli government. There is. Right. I know there is. Yeah.

And it would be a terrible mistake on both sides if there wasn't. There has to be. It was interesting you mentioned Qatar as when you were talking about who might put this together. Because a few years ago, I'm sure we would have said the United States. as probably the only broker that could maybe do this. But you think Qatar takes the lead here? The US has always been criticized for not being a balanced player,

but particularly under Trump, but not only, has been seen more and more as simply a supporter of Israel and a defender of Israel. Of course, Qatar is probably more aligned for Palestinian cause. It certainly funds Hamas in the Strip

and Gaza Strip. It's very good at looking two ways at the same time. Which again is important in a peace process. It is, it is. So it won't be any one state. It would be a combination of states. But I do worry,

If there's one thing I worry about is with the possible election of Donald Trump for a second term in terms of what the impact will be in that part of the world, because it could well lead to the end of one or two countries. One thing that I keep coming back to is Jewish friends of mine, close friends of mine, angry with me listening to the podcast because they think I spend too much time talking about Gaza. And they think that that is fueling anti-Semitism and that I'm failing to express enough sympathy on anti-Semitism. It's a very, very powerful recent article in the Atlantic.

on anti-Semitism in the US. And of course, David Badeal, who even if you talk a lot about this, many Jews saying there is absolutely no need to draw any connection at all between what Israel is doing in Gaza. And anti-Semitism, in fact, David Badeal often says, I don't know anything about Israel, I'm not interested in Israel, and talk about Israel, I'm talking about Jews and Ad-Jew's Jews. Nonetheless, those things do seem to be more complicatedly related, particularly at the moment.

Do you have any sense of what advice you can give? give to me and Alashtra, or indeed actually to a responsible politician today on how you find the language to say what Israel is doing in Gaza is cruel and a catastrophic mistake and it's not going to eliminate Hamas and it's going to cause horrifying problems for Israel and the targeting is no good. People are suffering and Hamas conducted extreme and appalling atrocities and this anti-Semitism and the sub-Samaphobic, but somehow makes sense of this in a way that doesn't sound like you're not listening to anyone. Well, I can't do it in a soundbite.

And it is all the ends that you put together. And the problem is not just the however many digits there are for a tweet nowadays. But people want things done very, very quickly, and they want things summarise very, very easily. And it ain't possible. So when I'm pushed something like that, can you explain it simply? I'm sorry to say, the answer is, no, I can't. Give me a bit of your time, and I'll explain it. And I'll go through it with you.

And I think to have the courage to say that, rather than simply come up with something that is platitude or something that is so short, that, of course, it leaves something out. So the bottom line is it's incredibly complicated, and that doesn't mean that you ignore the terrible suffering of Palestinians, and you ignore the dehumanizing language that politicians, particularly in that part of the world, seem to adopt so easily. The calamitous regime and the government of Netanyahu's calamitous, it seems not just for me, my view, not just for Palestinians, and particularly in Gaza right now, but for the state of Israel. That's my personal view. But you have to get a sense of the complex. of it. And you do that with a little bit of a having a relationship, right? Having built up a

little bit of trust. If I go into a room with a group of Muslims, the first thing I do is not talk about Israel-Palestine. I talk about what do we have in common. And then talk about difficult things. Maybe you go into theology of land. Why is Mecca and Medina holy? What's special about Jerusalem? Begin to get there. You don't go there straight away. And unfortunately, in politics, I don't know. I can ask you this question. Everything seems to be transactional. You know, I give you this, you give me that. But in religion and dialogue, that's not the case. It's not transaction.

It's relationship-based, and it's different, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, listen, I agree with you. I think the world is crying out for politicians who are able to say, this is really complicated, but then demand the time of, be it an interviewer or the public, demand the time to be able to explain a bit of the history, explain some of the choices and some of the complexities. I'm not sure that it's all transactional. I do think that the combination of a different form of political communication allied to social media and the pressures that brings to the debate have made

it a lot harder to do. But I still think that good politicians have the capacity to set this agenda. I wish some of them would make longer and deeper speeches about this. Be fair, I think Biden has, actually. One of the things that you do notice in the states is the generational split as far as Israel's concerned. So the Biden generation is much more aware of that history of Israel, the vulnerability of Israel in its early years, supporting Israel, it being bipartisan, you know, and then the next generation, perhaps our generation, sort of much more aware of the complexity, Israel as a power, less vulnerable than it was, and the difficulty relationship with Palestinians.

And then you have our kids' generation. You just can't understand how... No, no, nothing other than Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Yeah. And Israel still, in many ways, the government of Israel and the people of Israel still see themselves as a minority. Yeah. And I get that because they're surrounded by a majority.

Remember Prince Hassan of Jordan saying to me when he met Shimon Peres. Mr. Perez, you're your Lord Highness, you don't know how difficult it is for us Israelis. We're surrounded by enemies who want to throw us into the sea. And Siddy Hassan said, I understand Mr. Perez, but you don't know how lucky you are. You are surrounded by enemies, but I'm surrounded by friends. It's not easy, right? It's not an easy neighborhood. I think Tariq Ahmed and the House of Lords gets, right?

Because he has got special responsibility for the sacred sites in Jerusalem. He gets the complexity of it. And that's really important. You've talked about this concept of the transfer of conflict. What do you mean by that? What are you're trying to get at? I'm trying to get at the fact that now that we are of such a multicultural society, when something happens in India, there could be riots in Leicester,

as there were in 2022 between Hindus and Muslims. Driven from India. Driven from India. The war in Gaza has driven the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia we see today. Back when there was the Rushdie affair in 1992 or the destruction of the market, mosque in Iota in India the same year, there weren't riots here. There were riots about anger of the Muslim community about the satanic verses. Don't get me wrong. But in terms of interfaith, pressures there weren't. That's happening now. Things transfer so quickly from one place to the

other. It could be Gaza, it could be Karachi, could be anywhere, could be Washington. And it's a real challenge for us in the political sphere, but also in the religious sphere, because suddenly you're under pressure because of what somebody said. What do you do about that, though? You try and say stop. You try and breathe. You try and say this is not as simple as you think. Again, it's... Can I finish with this, Ed? What I'm not seeing at the moment from any of the major political leaders

are people saying our priority now is to bring communities together. What I'm seeing is people condemning, condemning extremism, condemning marches, condemning attacks. What I'd like to see is people saying, actually, we are facing a serious threat of intercommunal tensions and violence and that my political priority is to actually ease that. I'd like to see the same, but I'd also like to say on the ground there are some really good things happening. There are synagogues and churches holding Iftar's example.

Research of the Wolf Institute has shown very recently that the effective dialogue starts from the bottom up. It may be that you meet the Pope or the Grand Mufti or the chief rabbi. That's a nice photo opportunity moment. But actually the change comes from the ground, from street relations. And there are a lot of problematic things happening, but there are some good things happening. So again, I hang on to a sense of optimism about what might be. I would love our political leaders to say, you know, let's bring our communities together and mean it. I'd like them to invest in that.

There are many, many good politicians who are going out there within our communities, who understand the local community. The constituencies help that. It fosters that. We don't have a constituency system, for example, in Israel. It's just national or in the states. It's so big. But yeah, there are some good things happening here.

My last question is going to contain a couple of fastballs. So Rory mentioned that your chair of the Commission on the Integration of Refugees, I'd like your take on the current attitudes to refugees in our politics and more broadly in the country. And the second one just outside the off-stump, faith schools, where you are on that. I'm not a fan. Okay. So the Commission on the Integration of Refugees recently issued its report. with 16 recommendations, 14 of which were unanimous.

Now, this commission is 22 people, both left wing and right wing. We have Tory, we have Labour, we have policy exchange, we have refugees, we have fake leaders, we have people who do not agree with each other like Brenda Hale, Lady Hale, and David Goodhart. They sit on the same commission, they agree the system is broken, and they say, what can we do to fix it? We've published a series of recommendations that have been costed, are evidence-based with hearings all around the country. And actually, there's such good practice that's going on. Again, it's actually acknowledging what is working well. For example, homes for Ukraine.

There are 150,000 or so Ukrainians here. 73,000 are in people's homes. That's remarkable. It's not about taking somebody's home away from somebody else. And, of course, living in somebody's home means that you're going to integrate more quickly. One of our recommendations was that people should be able to access work from six months. At the moment, you can't work at least until 12 months and then only on the job shortage occupation list. It's bringing people together across these bound.

is having a serious and forgive me adult conversation with people who disagree with each other, but want the asylum system to work and doing it with people who spend time with refugees around the country. It's remarkable what consensus has been achieved on a very difficult topic. So is this Rwanda debate just kind of going on over there and it's got nothing to do with what you've been talking about? First of all, the Rwanda debate is ongoing. And even when it becomes law or has become law, it's going to go through a various courts of appeal. Whatever happens, there will be refugees.

We can't stop refugees, whether it's a Ukraine scheme or Hong Kongers or others, we need better ways to integrate them into our society. At the moment, the average, excluding the special cases of the 20,000 Afghans and so on, is about 50,000 a year. Yeah. Now, let's be honest, we're not going to stop the boats. What we've got to do is have proper, safe and legal passage. That's a different subject outside the commission, but we have to integrate it better.

And these recommendations, as I say, are cross-party. you know, it's a real example of what can be achieved. And faith schools? Ha. A few years ago, I was vice chair, thankfully, not chair, of a commission on religion and belief. There are some excellent faith schools, right? In fact, the majority of faith schools are probably excellent, right?

But we made a statement that the children coming out of faith schools should have some encounter with an understanding of others, whether it's a 20% number, a percentage within a faith school or something like that. At that time, the Cardinal of Westminster, and the... the chief rabbi sent me separate letters, but had obviously got together condemning that recommendation. And it was a wonderful example of Jewish Christian relations in action, but not quite the type I had hoped for. Personally, as long as faith schools ensure their children don't just learn about another faith, but their children engage with children of other faiths, ideally in the same school,

then I'm absolutely for them. I'm not in favor of 100% based faith schools whose graduates do not engage with and do not understand and do not encounter children of other faiths. Amen to that. Thank you so much your time. It's been a real privilege. Thank you. Thanks very much. Really enjoyed it. Pleasure. We often talk about guests, Alsa, and obviously we love to get serving politicians or senior ex-politicians. But it's also good to remember that politics in any country isn't just about the elected people. It's about people who are really engaged communities, who are chairing commissions, since the case on refugees, who are trying to provide some of the kind of,

I guess some of the leadership outside of parliament. Anyway, what do you reckon? I thought he was great. I mean, I like his passion, I like his knowledge. I like the fact he's very clear about he explains things. And he's not afraid of saying what he thinks. Clearly is not a fan of Netanyahu. Clearly is not a fan of some of the things this government has been doing in relation to refugees or in relation to this definition of extremism stuff. What I liked about him was that he's essentially saying, unless you have whatever's happening at the top level of politicians shouting each other and people killing each other, which is horrific, you have to have this other stuff going on. He thinks I'm a bit hung up on process, but his dialogue is the process in a way. That has to lead somewhere.

You need people like him. And I was hopeful that when you said, have you met people from Hamas? And quite clearly the answer is yes. You need that. You need people who are doing that. Listening to this just quickly, any reflections on echoes of Northern Ireland and community and faith groups engaging there? Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, look, very, very hard to imagine how it's happening in the wake of, as he says, horrific events of October the 7th and the horrific action inside Gaza since.

So both sides very, very polarised. But there were definitely moments when there was utter polarization and very publicly expressed hatreds when there would be people in and around. all of those events still talking to each other. I think some of the women's group stuff was amazing, that they just kept going with trying to kind of build bridges across the divide. Now, I don't know how much of that's going on. We see the top-level stuff most of the time, don't we? That's the point he was making, the sort of people we talk to about this,

are the people in politics where it's very, very difficult at the moment. But, you know, you need people like that who will be useful at certain stages to politicians who are trying to get this thing done. You presumably thought a lot about this after 9-11. I mean, the question of community relations and how to reach out to Muslim communities and how to deal with extremists and how to create better. I mean, any lessons you took from that?

What were the challenges? What were the things you remember most in that period? I remember that we essentially asked Tessa Jowel, RIP, to focus on nothing else, pretty much, for quite a while. And was she good at it? Very good. Yeah, she was very good. And what made her good at it?

What made her a good choice? Very interestingly, exactly what Ed was saying, very good at listening to people and very good at giving a sense of understanding other people's story and bringing people together. And the other thing that I remember on 9-11 itself, coming back from Brighton, where Tony had been making this speech to the TUC and having this sort of huge meeting with the whole kind of everybody was, you know, police, security services, military, the whole thing. and one of the first things on the agenda being extra security around Jewish sites and Jewish areas, but also an understanding that there would have to be proper protection of Muslim communities as well. So seeing it is the combination of policing and that kind of community dialogue. And it's interesting, I think the organisation that he mentioned, whose funding was being cut, I've got a feeling that that was one of Tony Blair's things that he drove that.

quite hard that kind of because Tony's obsessed with this interfaith stuff. He sees it as the key to solving a lot of the problems of the world. Finally, do you think it's helpful that we now have a far more diverse group of political leaders? I mean, we're doing this interview just in the week in which we now have a black political leader in Wales, we've got a Muslim political leader in Scotland, we've got a Hindu political leader in the United Kingdom. Do you think that that helps, that it means that we now have a generation that's got more empathy, more understanding, these things? Well, I hope so. I hope so, but I do worry. You know, you made the point about, and Ed made the point about how this is being weaponised. And I do think Michael Gove was up to quite

Michael Gove tricks last week. And I worry that Rishi Sunak is enabling and empowering this. So yes, on the surface, I think it's fantastic. I really believe that multiculturalism is a British success story, but it's quite odd to have this British Hindu prime minister and Soella Braverman, former home secretary, essentially running this line that multiculturalism has failed. I find that very, very odd and quite troubling. Well, thank you, Ed, for an interview. It's good. I enjoyed it.