Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hi, friends. This is Dick Flax bringing another episode with Doraca Laramore hall of talking strategy, making history. And today we have the particular honor, so to speak, of having as our guest, the editor in chief of the magazine seen jewish currents, Ariel angel. This is the first of a couple of episodes we're planning to do about the Israel Palestine situation.
And it's a good way to start to have Ariel and jewish currents as the sort of kickoff, because jewish currents, in a way, is the organ, the published organ, so to speak, of whatever there is of a jewish left in the United States at this point. It's a magazine with about 75 years of history. It was started within the Communist Party framework. It had a series, two very venerable editors during that period. And it struggled with that relationship because the discovery that the Soviet Union was not only not a haven, but was actually a center of anti Semitism really impacted that magazine. But they maintained a certain independence with a very small readership, but a very loyal and aging readership. I was one of those readers from, I think, the time I was in college. I don't know how seriously I took it as a magazine to pay a lot of attention to, but I always tried to read it for a long time. It was edited by a really interesting scholar of jewish history and jewish life named Morris Shappies. And my wife Mickey was really a student of Morris Shappies for a number of years in the yiddish sort of educational world, coming out of the communist Jewish left in York. So. And then I did know that the magazine was taken over by Larry Bush, who was a new generation coming out of that tradition. He really transformed the magazine into a far more open and readable thing with a lot of art and poetry, as well as regular analysis and journalism and so forth. And he did something very brilliant, in my opinion, which was to decide, when he retired, to find a new generation of editors and people who would literally take over the magazine. And it wasn't important, as important as it used might have been in earlier decades, that that group of new people be linked directly to the particular tradition that the magazine came out of. It was something else. And miraculously, and I don't believe in miracles in a theological sense, but it is a kind of miracle that you guys. Ariel, who took over the magazine, did some wonders to it that I don't know that Larry expected, but that really have transformed it into something far more significant than it ever was. I should add, as a final caveat, that I'm a member of something called the council, advisory council, to the magazine. I'm not sure fully what that council was intended to do, but it is a kind of link to the past in some ways. That's one feature of it, I think, and that's good. And it's probably a good sounding board for the people who actually produce the magazine, to have some of us in that setting and we provide a link to communities. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring Ariel on today, because I want people to know about the magazine who don't now know it. So welcome after that introduction.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: So tell us, in your view, what is the magazine about now and what are you trying to accomplish and with what results so far as you see it?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Well, first of all, thank you for that introduction. And obviously, you know almost better than me about the long history of the magazine, but maybe I'll just talk a bit about the present. I think there is a way in which we obviously are inheriting a very different world than our predecessors, but we are trying to, in a way, restore a sense of the radicalism of our forebears to its pages. And for us, that has a lot to do with the question of Zionism and anti Zionism, the question of how we relate to the jewish state and the ways in which that has filtered into american jewish institutional life in the United States. Those questions live alongside questions of broader questions about capitalism in the United States, questions about feminism, abolitionism, all kinds of different ideas. And we try to explore all of it. We hold in one hand sort of questions of the jewish left, questions of the left generally in places where they overlap.
And that's really our major mandate in this moment. I mean, obviously, I'm speaking to you more than two months after October 7, almost three. And for us right now, that has been our major focus, both how the war on Gaza is being conducted on the ground and also how american politics feeds into that destruction, and also how that affects the way that politics is playing out in the United States particularly. Dick, you mentioned the weaponization of anti semitism, particularly on that front on campuses, in american jewish institutions, but largely just in american life, as we're seeing kind of a wave of repression. And I actually think it's interesting. We're talking about the history of jewish currents. Of course, the first editor of jewish currents, Maurice Shape, was imprisoned during McCarthyism, and I think we are actually seeing a second wave. Many people are saying that we're seeing a second wave of a different brand of McCarthyism in this moment as it relates to pro Palestine speech. So that has been a major focus of what we've been doing in the last couple of months.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: So there's many things that we might want to be able to get into with you, but I think maybe we should start with that phrase, weaponization of anti Semitism. I began to feel and use that term. I thought I almost invented it because I didn't hear anyone else using it. But when what was happening in the british Labor Party with Jeremy Corbyn as the leader, a rather far left by labor party standards leader, and suddenly know, it seemed there was this onslaught of criticism of him and the labor party from the jewish community in Britain, saying that they were anti Semites or soft on anti Semites. And this became a fierce and very destructive to the left wing of the labor party, which had been growing and strong and to the point of purging him from the labor party. I don't know what else. I haven't followed it closely, but I'm just using that as the maybe starting point of at least my awareness that there was a pretty organized effort, and it wasn't, even though it was all about anti Semitism. What it seemed to be about was an onslaught on the left using that issue.
So now, the next episode that really got me upset was the Anti Defamation League, which purports to be the arbiter of bigotry against Jews, the great defense framework, by the very nature of their stated mission against anti Semitism, almost the day after October 7, they send out a letter to hundreds of american universities demanding investigation of the student groups that support justice for Palestine on the grounds that they might be aiding and abetting terrorism. And when I read this, I thought, wow, this is exactly like the 50s, where left wing groups were literally banned on hundreds and hundreds of american campuses simply because they were said to be Communist Party fronts and so forth.
Fortunately, actually, I think the New York Times maybe did a good service right at that time, because I think they reported on what was this justice for Palestine student movement, and they described as very loose, very diverse, and really undermined the picture of these groups as somehow connected to Hamas, to that story. But nevertheless, the ADL, then that was coupled with this big episode at the University of Pennsylvania, where the president was being pressured to stop a conference on palestinian literature with palestinian writers on the grounds that anti Semites were going to attend it. And one of the people singled out, and I found this really bizarre, was the really great vietnamese american writer, Vietnam Wynn, who had also been in trouble at the 92nd street. Why? Because he'd signed some statements or favoring BDS, and he was a speaker at this Penn conference. Anyway, jewish donors started to really demand that the president, they were withdrawing donations and so forth. I'm going on more than I wanted to just to say these got me, I've been upset ever since these things started, and everything's gotten worse, of course, with the treatment of the presidents of universities by Congress and all of the rest of.
So you guys at jewish currents recognize similarly, there's a weaponization of anti semitism. I want to throw out one thought about that which hasn't been mentioned. I think there's a long project to try to wean the jewish american community away from the Democratic Party and from liberal politics.
That's a long standing thing which has largely not been successful. And I think that's one of the foundations. It's not simply about defending Israel, although that's really important, Israel's current israeli government, it's really almost a republican plot and a ruling class plot within the jewish world. I sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but I really think this has been a long standing dynamic. So I'll shut up now and Ariel and let you ruminate from where you're sitting about all mean.
[00:11:59] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: You've done a very good job of laying out the dynamics. First of all, I'll just say that the ADL has been really a leader in this for years and years, long before the Labor Party debacle. If anything, what happened with Corbin was sort of picked up from the playbook that was going on with the ADL since the, when they coined the term the new anti semitism to describe Israel related, quote unquote, anti semitism, and used that as a way to get professors fired from their jobs, to cancel speaking engagements of Palestinians, to generally make the palestinian narrative as such taboo within the american political discourse. And that dynamic has continued with more and more force behind it for a number of years. We've reported on the fact that, for example, anti boycott laws that exist now in, I think, something like 37 states in the United States patently unconstitutional. And, in fact, we reported on the fact that the ADL's own lawyers in their civil rights department advised them that these are constitutional, and yet they've supported them in almost every case.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: And so we're seeing how, and I'll.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Say also it's not just in the United States. We're seeing it very much in Germany right now, which is essentially banned. Protest completely is starting to know. It's talking about banning the kafiya and other symbols of palestinian identity.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: And we're seeing kind of in the.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Western world wholesale a sort of criminalization of palestinian narrative and palestinian identity on the basis of protecting Jews and warding off anti semitism. And, of course, this is very much about protecting the state of Israel from criticism. And I will say that there has been money flowing from the israeli government into, for example, outside campus groups. A lot of the stuff that's happening on campuses is not driven by students. It's driven by outside groups. And actually, there was just published the budgets of some of these groups, and they're enormous budgets, but again, they're not campus groups. And so there's a real agenda that's being pushed here to benefit the state of Israel. It's very unfortunate, of course, because this reinforces the relationship between Judaism and Zionism that many of us are trying to untangle, which is very, very difficult to do, in fact, also because the jewish establishment does not want to separate these things. They want them to be an overlapping category. And what it has meant is a sense that Zionism is an identity and not a political ideology, that Zionism is a piece of being jewish as opposed to a political ideology that actually in this country several generations ago was not very popular, actually, and is now is treated as completely hegemonic.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: So it really kind of stamps out.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Political diversity in the jewish community. It makes it invisible. But, of course, we are not the main victims of this. The main victims of this are Palestinians who are simply trying to tell their own story about their own oppression.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Right. Well, and so what I was suggesting, it's got even wider implications than just the defense of the state of Israel and the current dominating leadership there.
It's also about changing the political orientation and culture of the jewish community in the United States is what I think is an intention here. And that's what I was trying to get at.
[00:16:09] Speaker C: Well, I don't know if it's changing.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: The culture, because this has, well, I mean, for me, this has been the hegemonic culture that I've grown up. You know, it's like we'd have to actually do work to change it. Already the change has happened, I think.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Well, what I meant by that change of culture was not about Zionism, but about political liberalism.
That's what I think the part of the motive seems to be because it's so disturbing for the social movements, the progressive social movements, I think because jewish people have played an important part, leadership and powering so much of the social change movements down for a long time. And secondly, it's very bad for the Jews for having wealthy jewish donors. Asking to censor speech on campus is not a way to combat anti semitism. I can't believe there isn't discussion in the ranks that we're criticizing of. Is this really helping prevent anti semitism or is it fostering it?
[00:17:19] Speaker C: Well, I mean, the reason that that.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Question isn't being asked is because of the enormous kind of culture of fear, because most people have bought the conflation of, most jewish people have bought the conflation of Judaism and Zionism and have basically acceded the idea that Zionism is an identity as such, then, yeah, a lot of the things that are being, I mean, if that is your starting place, then a lot of the things that are being said on campuses would be threatening to, that they happen to be wrong.
But the fear is real. And I think that's really a political question in terms of what we do with that fear and how it's redirected. I think there's a way in which people on the pro palestinian left really don't like to think about it, don't really like to think about that fear, and don't think about it as the kind of terrain of our organizing, but it really is the terrain of our organizing, and it has to be. And we have to find a way not just to ignore it, but also to find a way to neutralize it, which also might mean speaking to it or like, thinking through what a framework or a vocabulary that takes it into account might be. That's a very hard sell right now on the left, I would say, except.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: For the data that indicate that younger generation of jewish Jews in this country are more alienated from Israel than we've ever seen.
[00:18:56] Speaker D: Can I jump in there? Because I think that is true. At the same time that something Ariel is saying is, I think, really important, which is critical. There's a range of political views that should be legitimate in our discussion when it comes to Israel. And the right wing conservative forces that we're talking about have been narrowing that range. And it doesn't even reflect the actual opinions of Jewish Americans, especially when you take into account Jewish Americans of all generations. But that's separate from or it's not exactly the same thing as the fear that Jewish Americans are feeling the vulnerability as well as the facts of anti semitism in the United States and in the world that are want to. I'm going to lining up a question here for you, Ariel, because I'm the guy that I'm sitting listening to this always happens. I'm listening to Dick talk about the Corbyn issue, and I'm sitting thinking like, yeah, but Corbyn, I think, has been or was soft on anti semitism within the labor party and within the british left. I think there were legitimate criticisms of them for that. I think that there's anti Semitism, disgusting, brutal, naked anti Semitism throughout british society and frankly, within the pro palestinian movement, and that had to be addressed. And there was a factional purge at the same time. This was the right wing of the party purging the left. It's continued. It's gotten way wider than corbinites and so forth, and people will, in bad faith, characterize everything that's critical of Israel as anti Semitism. Like, all of those things are true at the same time. And how do we balance those things? How can those of us who are not jewish sort of be in solidarity with people in the jewish community that are wrestling with those things? How do we stand up against anti Semitism on the left, in black communities, wherever it is, in all of our spaces? How do we stand up against it while also not sort of falling for this kind of rude, this trick that you guys have done a good job articulating or talking about, which is to smuggle in a bunch of right wing bullshit along with being wary of anti, or, like, cognizant of anti Semitism.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: I think it's a good question, but.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: I do want to go back just to make a clarification, which is that the fear that I'm describing is no less real for also being.
For not being rational on some level.
I just want to say. I'm not saying that that fear is in response all the time to real anti Semitism. I mean, the truth of the matter is, you see these polls and Jews are reporting an enormous amount of unsafety right now, and the numbers do not support that in terms of what they're actually going through. Like, they're financially comfortable, they're not being physically attacked on the whole.
They are not blocked from achieving certain things or, like, getting an education, getting a job, getting housing. So the fact of the matter is, a lot of the sense of anti Semitism is just that. It's a sense, and a lot of it does come from Israel related stuff. And I also want to distinguish the british context, the european context, from the american context. I don't think that America. I mean, I'm not saying that there's not anti Semitism in America at all. That is not what I'm saying. But I don't think that the european legacy of anti Semitism is quite the same as in America. So I just want to start there. But I think it's a good question about sort of, what do we do? What does it mean? And I think that the main thing to keep in mind is to always keep the power analysis in mind, which is to say that, yes, you can confront anti Semitism where in. In a given exchange and most of the mean. Shawl McGee, actually, who's a jewish academic, I think, currently at Dartmouth, writes about, know, anti Semitism is real. It is a real oppression. But in the United States right now, it is not a structural oppression. And I think we really do need to keep an eye on that, and that should affect how we respond to that within our movements, which is to say that these kinds of feelings of fear are not like, we can respond to people and be compassionate towards people, but we cannot build structures to respond to them when they don't correspond to a structural reality. I think that this is part of actually, like, a broader problem in identity politics, where we trust people to define their own oppression and to tell you what should be done about it. Actually, I think that that's the kind of question that we need to tackle.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Together in large coalitions.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: And sometimes people are not the best reporters or representatives of their own experience. Sometimes trauma is really a barrier in that regard. And the jewish community is dealing with a large amount of intergenerational trauma that has actually kind of muddied the waters here. So, again, I don't have a good answer to your question, but all I can really say is that we need to be, as others have said, soft on people and hard on structures and be able to listen to people and make space for their feelings without creating structural solutions for problems that are not structural.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: So I was going to ask you whether you think, for example, on campuses or within the pro palestinian world, groups like Jewish Voice for peace, do you think people are getting the point that you're making, the jewish folks in those movements getting the point that they shouldn't just be disdainful and dismissive toward the feelings of fear that are present among their fellow jewish students and so forth, but try to come to grips with, you think that's an idea that's out there?
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Yeah, look, I think that right now, in an all hands moment, I don't think that JBP has room, has time, or SJP for that matter. I mean, forget about it, to slow down and say, well, what are Zionists feeling right now? And how do we reach out to them.
They're trying to call for a ceasefire. They're trying to disrupt. They're trying to kind of get in the way of business as usual. I don't think that they necessarily have time to deal with the feelings of Jews on campus who are feeling threatened. Do I think that this is something that needs to be, that there needs to be an effort in the long term to try to bring some of these people in, especially young people, especially people on college campuses who probably have grown up in an environment where they've only heard one side of the story and can change their minds and maybe will in the coming years. Yes, I do think that. But to ask them to do it from this particular moment seems like a lot to hold because of the urgency.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: That's interesting. It's interesting that you. Yeah, and that completely makes sense. I think kind of across the board, everyone has sort of limited bandwidth as the carnage is continuing. But I was struck by what you're saying because I find myself spending a lot of time, to the extent I have a lot of time nowadays, but actually talking with Zionists, like progressive Zionists about the issue and trying to find language and a balance between empathy and tough talk about reality, but really trying to keep a friendship and a bridge going because I do see the mainstream discourse, jewish american or even diaspora wide, needs to shift. And in order to shift it, we've got to find that balance between. And then also, just like, I also really resonate what you're saying about identity politics, where on the one hand, I'm also trained in all of these techniques of allyship, of, like, I'm not jewish, so I can't tell you what real anti Semitism looks like, all these caveats, but also like, hey, this is real. The whole world is burning as a result of this. I get to have an opinion and I'm going to share it with you.
[00:28:25] Speaker C: Well, also, you're an American whose tax.
[00:28:28] Speaker D: Dollars are going to anyway, finding all of these things. So it was really interesting for you, and it was good for me to hear you saying there's a time and a place for all of these conversations.
It's understandable. They can't all happen at the same time. There's a sort of hierarchy of needs here of stopping the military action in Gaza. But I do think we need leadership inside and outside the jewish community to be like pied pipering people away from the cliff. I mean, that's just like what it felt like. A lot is like people saying things. I'm like, bro, you would never say that in any other context or about any other group of people, you're losing your mind here. Your soul, really, your values. If you're devaluing palestinian lives like this because you're mad or scared at this moment or cheering on republican congresswomen as they beat up on academic, like any of that stuff, that's not you, brah.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: It's a real culture of grievance right now. And what it does is it posits Jews as the biggest victims in all of this, even as Palestinians are undergoing what many people are calling a genocide.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: And you, Ariel, you've written, and I share this, how scary it is in a way, to hear some of the arguments that the pro Israel, ordinary folks use. They're so blind to what you would have thought, just like what Doraka was indicating, blind to values that they probably were expressing several months ago about the world, that kind of apologetics. One thing that I've thought in terms of movement tactics is that the ceasefire demand is a unifying one that can in fact, reach a lot of Jews who are otherwise not ready to endorse the palestinian agenda, but do believe that this is not the way for Israel to be behaving and that we need to end the war as quickly as possible.
It's a unifying demand and a basis for some of the communication that we're talking about. Does that make sense? Ceasefire, because the early stages of this whole development were focused on which cause do you support, Israel or Palestine? And I think we're at a different point at this now, and it's a healthier point, which is it's not good for the Jews, for Israel to be doing what it is doing.
It is not good for our human values. It's not good as an understatement anyway.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: I wish I felt that that was widespread in the jewish community, but I do not feel that that's the case, at least generationally.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I have.
Go ahead. Sorry.
[00:31:33] Speaker D: Can you share more about.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Yeah. There's been a conflation basically of these campus politics with what's going on on the ground.
[00:31:39] Speaker C: And it doesn't make a whole lot.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Of sense, especially because if you're concerned about safety, the fact that 1100 plus people were just killed within Israel, nothing comparable has happened to Jews anywhere else in the world since the Holocaust. So Israel is probably the least safe place to be a jew at this moment in particular moment in human.
Yeah, I mean, I think that certainly at the institutional level there is broad support for this war, certainly generationally, Gen X and above there is broad support for this war.
It breaks down generationally, and it also breaks down among Jews who are not synagogue goers, people who are, quote unquote, unaffiliated.
But generally, I do think that support is high and that the narratives that people have had to consume in order to justify it are also sort of narratives that, as we've discussed, askew the broader context and have divorced them from reality because it requires them to look at what's happening, to look at sort of like the wanton, indiscriminate destruction, and say, well, Israel must have a target. Israel must be pursuing a military goal here. There's an end that we just don't see. And in experts, all the policy experts and everything that we've seen coming out of the israeli government shows that there isn't an end that we haven't seen. There is no military plan, and that the bombing has been completely indiscriminate. But I talk to people in my family, for example, who talk about how Israel's been so humanitarian, they've evacuated a million people from the north to the south, where it's safe. They did that out of the goodness of their hearts. And actually, it's Hamas that's stealing all the resources. It's not that there isn't enough. It's not that they've limited access to food and water, turned it off completely, as it were. It's that Hamas is storing it and stealing it. So the kinds of narratives that can justify this are the kinds of narratives that completely divorce them from reality at this point. But I do, the thing that scares.
[00:33:58] Speaker D: Me the most about this moment is that people who really should know better than believe is, and this government, which is a fascist, it's, in any other country, these same people would dismiss them. They would dismiss Trump. There's no way that these folks would know cheering on a war led by a Trump administration or giving that administration a blank check. And yet you hear people say these bizarre things, like, well, first we have to beat Hamas, and then we'll have an election and get rid of, like, but he's leading the war. Like, the people that say genocidal things are the ones in government doing it. And when people's loyalty to a country trumps their politics, that's always when my spidey sense tingles the most, like, whoever it is.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Well, I won't go deeply into what you just said, but it's a pretty deep point, because I've always felt the view among liberal Zionists that we can have a jewish democratic state is an oxymoron.
[00:35:09] Speaker D: Well, I don't, for the record, I don't go that far necessarily. Like, I'm agnostic on the know. It's not for me, it's not my. But the, clearly, this is like this state, this government, this Israel shouldn't be given unqualified support. Nobody who's like a human being should dispute that. And yet here we are and having this conversation with people who are our friends.
And I think there is actually a very clear parallel on the other side and the completely uncritical analysis of palestinian authority, whether it's the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, that happens on the left and what kind of Palestine will be free? And all of those questions also get subsumed behind a national question. Actually, let me pick up there, Ariel. Is there anything that is animating the palestinian liberation solidarity movement, which I think all three of us are in sympathy with? But is there anything going on over on that side that concerns you as a progressive left jew human being?
[00:36:20] Speaker C: I mean, look, every movement, the palestinian national movement and the palestinian liberation movement are extremely diverse. They're extremely broad. And I think that actually the amount of discourse that most of the american left sees of the palestinian conversation is like a pinky nail, and that's the truth. And so there's sort of like a caricature at this point of palestinian politics that is just constrained by essentially not knowing the terrain, not really not speaking Arabic, knowing who the players are in this conversation, and essentially taking 19 year olds on campus as like the statesman for the palestinian national movement, which is wrong. The people that I speak to generally are talking about a revived PLO that would unite the factions, that would get rid of the corrupt pa, and that would move towards essentially a negotiated solution in one form or another. I think people are talking about a revived PLO and leaving behind the corrupt pa, uniting the factions of the palestinian liberation movement and moving towards a negotiated solution. And what that looks like is to be determined. There are people in the palestinian national movement who want a two state solution still. And there are people who recognize that, like me, that that is sort of geographically impossible at this point and are moving more towards a framework of equality, reparations and right of return in whatever form, in terms of what things that. And I'm behind that. And I think that that sounds good. And I think that the people who are going to do that are sort of the vanguard of the palestinian movement, with input from the palestinian street, essentially. And to be honest, I think that I haven't heard a single person most people that I talk to are saying that the PA at this point is too corrupt to be united under Mahmud Abu Mazan, but certainly under Marwan Bargudi, who's in prison. That would be a completely different circumstance. Everybody says that Hamas needs to be included in the PLO. They are a very popular piece of palestinian society. Some people say without the military wing, some people say with the military wing, all of these conversations are taking place. And we do have to remember that even groups that we think do terrible things historically have been at the negotiating table and have made deals that lead to a lasting, just peace.
[00:39:11] Speaker D: If you exclude terrorists from any Middle east peace deal, it's not a peace.
[00:39:16] Speaker C: Deal on either mean or from any.
About. Think about the IRA or the ANC or basically anybody.
[00:39:26] Speaker D: Yeah, that's what I meant.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: Or the. I mean, like, the terrorists on the israeli side are also going to have to be at the.
So in terms of what bothers me, in terms of what I see in the Palestine movement, I think that what's frustrating is just the question of what kinds of conversations can be had and can't be had. I think that there is a sense of siege, which is literal in the case of Gaza, but it also means that there needs to be an appearance of unity at all costs, and that shuts down valuable conversations that need to be had. Maybe they can't be had from within this moment as the bombs are still dropping and tens of thousands of people have already been killed, and this will continue. But we are going to have to have these conversations, and some of them are about violence. And what the terms of that violence is, are about the role of Jews in the movement. And are we just kind of like silent allies or are we stakeholders essentially? I just think that these are really open questions that the palestinian movement is going to have to take up. I do think that there are a lot of people in the palestinian movement who feel that it actually doesn't matter what Jews think, that it's too hard to convince Zionists and that it shouldn't be their job. There's like a whole other population of people that can put pressure, that there isn't a huge barrier and they haven't left reality, and it's hard to argue with that. But I would say that for Jews on the left, that's not really a question as far as I'm concerned. I feel like we have to find a way to speak to at least parts of the jewish community, the parts that are possible to move. We can't leave that conversation entirely even if we don't face it primarily.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: So I would take off from that to ask you about something that has caught my attention and fascination, which is called standing together. And I think you've done a little reporting about them. Or maybe this seems to me a new thing in Israel, because it's not just an experiment in communication between Jews and Palestinians that have gone on periodically and have some value, I guess. But this is a politically conscious effort to create a new left in Israel, as far as I can define it. And it's based on the recognition that both Palestinians and Jews are there. That's standing together, meaning neither is going to leave. Let's figure out a joint politics based on full equality and collaboration and grassroots organizing, which to me is also another rather novel element of what they're trying to do. What do you know about and am I being too romantic, or is this a promising development?
[00:42:36] Speaker C: I think you're being too romantic, unfortunately. I wish I didn't have. I think standing together is great. I think they're doing amazing work. I think that if you're listening to this podcast, you should support them 100%. But at this point, the left in Israel is completely minuscule.
And I think that the way that a sort of progressive american, especially liberal Zionists, kind of hold up this shrinking, minuscule, repressed community and basically act like we can support the whole of what's going on as long as we're supporting through these groups is delusional. Because the fact of the matter is they don't have broad support. And the other fact of the matter is, with a group like standing together, you're still within a 48 framework, that is, you're still talking about palestinian citizens of Israel. There is not room generally to issue beyond those never defined borders to the West bank to know on a certain level, something that has to happen first is for the palestinian body to have some unity in order to be a real political force. And until we're talking about that, then it's really hard to imagine what partnership with Jews on equal footing actually looks like, because it's hard to imagine how they come to the table as sort of equals on some level. Not equals like obviously under the apartheid system, but know, because palestinian citizens of Israel are cut off from Palestinians in Gaza and from the West bank. And I agree with you completely. Like, any solution needs to come from people who are recognizing that both peoples are there to stay and that no one is going to leave. And I think Omdim Biachad is a great kind of vehicle for that message. And is modeling how we do that. But I mean, maybe I'll be proven wrong and maybe October 7 just looks like a total free post. October 7 in Israel just looks like a free fall into fascism. But actually we're going to move in another direction. Once people recognize that it hasn't made them safer and the war is unpopular and BB is unpopular, there are these seeds that things could go in another direction. But the fact of the matter is israeli society has been moving in this direction for a really long time. And I just don't see those trends reversing overnight. And again, not to say that we don't abandon our leftist brethren on the ground, israeli, jewish and palestinian, but I think that we would need to see a partnership that transcends those borders. And right now the system does not allow for that.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: So as far as you know, the people within standing together don't have a method or a clear plan for making that connection. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.
[00:45:48] Speaker C: Well, it's just not part of their mandate.
So they've been around for many years, and before this, their primary terrain of organizing was not necessarily on occupation stuff. It was about disability. They were kind of like a move on or something in the US, feminism, social services, which is a great strategy. I mean, they built up support through kind of bread and butter progressive organizing that would be more popular than thinking about a political solution to the Israel Palestine situation.
And now because of October 7 and everything that's happening, more of their energy is going in that direction, which I think is great. And honestly, I've been really inspired by.
[00:46:42] Speaker D: What they've, well, also I've heard from friends over there that they were very good about injecting the issue of the occupation and palestinian rights into the discussion, into the protests against Bibi and against the constitutional reforms.
[00:46:59] Speaker C: Yes, but again, even in that regard, they were completely marginal and nobody will deny that. Who really watches those things closely? There was certainly a possibility there. And just by their presence and the presence of the antiocupation bloc more generally in those protests, there was certainly a normalization of some of that as part of this broader kind of centrist or center left movement. But that was never the character of the movement. And for the most part, palestinian citizens of Israel generally did not attend those protests because they were so militaristic and those groups were often physically attacked during those protests. So I just don't want to overstate the extent to which it's impossible to overstate how grim it is.
[00:47:50] Speaker D: We're going to be checking in with some folks in Israel and love to pick your brain about other people you think we should be talking with, would also like to get some ideas of links we can put in the show notes and so forth, where people can get more information, especially, you said, about getting a better picture of palestinian democracy, like the debate going on within palestinian society about strategy and politics and the future and so forth, which is completely obscured in the whole discussion, I think, in the United States.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: So before we let Ariel go rest, which I know is important, what would you say the magazine looking toward in the immediate coming time?
I should say I'm very impressed with how you've been able to reach out to people like Peter Byrt, who I think is one of the great guides to thinking in all of this. And he's got an editorial slot in jewish currents. And I see that Masha Gesson is now on the board of directors of jewish currents. So you are really becoming what I guess your ambition is, is to really be a center for a jewish new left, if you want to put it that way. Anything you'd like us to know about coming forward for the magazine?
[00:49:12] Speaker B: Honestly, right now we're just trying to hold on. I mean, it's been a really hard couple months, and everybody's exhausted. And we had a whole issue planned on Florida, where we were actually going to dig into basically the seeds of american authoritarianism and Ron DeSantis.
And that's still extremely important, but it feels like it exists in another dimension right now from what we're mostly looking at. And so that's a big bummer because we've been planning that issue for a year and it's been pushed back. So, honestly, I don't have a ton to say.
We're going to keep trying to contest the space of jewish politics more broadly, trying to give people a different way of thinking about trying to give them a bridge out of the way of thinking that they are in right now, while also not catering to them, because the people who are already on side need intellectual leadership. And that's really the balance that we are.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: And you're doing a great job. You really need to be told that, I guess, to boost you up who are listening to this. And what we put on our, what we'll put on our sites is that the website for jewish currents is a pretty much daily place for a lot of very important reporting and writing. It isn't just the quarterly magazine, which is book length phenomenon, when you get it, which is extraordinarily interesting and exciting to immerse in, but the website itself is a major force, and I assume there's a world out there in Brooklyn of actual human beings who get together. And I'm imagining that from what I've been able to understand, there's a widening actual audience of especially younger people who are out there in the world, as well as consuming what you're doing. I'm very grateful for everything that you're doing, and I almost want to protect you and not have you burn out. Please.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Well, I will say that if you're listening and you're interested, definitely check out jewishcurrents.org and subscribe. We have a membership program now with a lot of events, and you'll get merch and fun.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: I check that out for sure. I might be in touch with you guys about trying to create some membership efforts out here in California and Barbara, so definitely thanks again for taking the time with us. And there's a lot of issues we haven't, of course, delved into because maybe one of not positive, but a feature of this situation is the need, I think all three of us have that are shared by a lot of other people. We need to figure out so much stuff.
We need constantly getting more informed and being in touch with what other people are thinking particularly seems important in a way I don't think I've ever experienced in this particular crisis. So very glad to make this connection, Ariel, and I hope that, by the way, that this episode can somehow get featured on your website as a link to that once we get it out. So thank you very much.
[00:52:48] Speaker D: Way to hustle, Dick. That's good. Yes. Thank you for taking the time. This was really wonderful and educational.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: All right, thanks a lot.
[00:52:55] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:52:56] Speaker B: All right, talk to you soon. Bye bye.
[00:53:26] Speaker E: Lost am I in my memory of my forefather's legacy.
I am one of you.
You are one of me.
Why don't we set the people free?
How I grieve to see fulfillment of prophecy.
Naive of me to think that things would change while man remain the same.
You.
Shalom. Salam.
Shalom. Salam. Shalom. Salam. Shalom. Salam.
We take the blame for the blood of our children who those vengeance.
