Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Hi, folks. This is Dick Flax with a special episode of talking strategy, making history. We've got really an honor today to be able to talk with Shireen Sakale. She is someone who, well, she teaches history here at UC Santa Barbara, but she's a very, very notable and distinguished scholar of palestinian and more general kinds of matters. She has a book called Men of Capital, which explores economy, territory, home and body. The subtitle is scarcity and economy in Mandate Palestine. And now she's got a book coming out titled from Baltimore to Beirut on the question of Palestine. And she's trying to tell a global history of capital, slavery, dispossession. Sherene is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. She's director here at UCSB of the center for Middle Eastern Studies. She's co editor of Stanford Studies Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies series, and she's co editor of a publication called Jadaliya. She's also someone who in her young days, was one of the founders of what is now the national movement for justice for Palestine. Let's tune in on this conversation between Shireen Zulaika, Jaraka, Laramore hall and me, Dick Flax. Shereen, we're so glad that you're able to join us at a very busy and fraught time. Thanks for being here on talking strategy, making history. Welcome.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. It's my honor to be here.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: There's so many things that I know that you're both worried about and engaged with. And I thought maybe the best way to start is to ask you what's uppermost right now for you with respect to the Israel Palestine situation in the immediate.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: What I am thinking about more than anything is just for the day when the bombing stops, when the attack stops, when this interminable assault on palestinian life ends. I'm awaiting that day. It feels interminable. It often feels interminable. As you know, this is one of many israeli assaults on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
But this reality that it has now been, you know, 200 and what is it now, 47 days or 42 days? It just beyond fathomable, beyond belief that we are still witnessing this nuclear state assaulting a parched, wounded, broken piece of partitioned land, that's what's uppermost on my mind at this moment.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: I was going to ask whether there are personal connections you have with people there.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, this is a question we often get as Palestinians. Oh, do you have family there? And in many ways, I don't have immediate family there. My family have been, you know, where most of my people were expelled in 1948. And my spouse is who's a Palestinian with israeli citizenship who has family in the West bank and inside the green line. But I think of all these Palestinians as my family. And I think that, you know, what are the bonds of this kind of kinship that we have also exceeds the experience of being palestinian, although that experience really defines it. I think that there is a way that for people, people who are standing up for a free Palestine, they look at what's happening and they think, well, what's, what's, what's to stop that happening from, to me, you know, that that could be me.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: So you, you say you look toward the end of this horrifying, genocidal, if you will, situation.
We just, this weekend, just before we got on here, Biden has made an initiative, and I think there's a lot of puzzlement maybe right in the White House with what this actually means. So I'm wondering how you understand it and what you've learned about it.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: I'll be honest to say that this weekend I was at the archive unbound conference for the cedric and Elizabeth Romney yes.
Archive. And it was actually a really beautiful three days that enriched and empowered many people. And for me in particular, it really enriched and empowered me to recommit to black Palestine. Joint struggle, not solidarity, but joint struggle. And I do think there's a difference conceptually in how we might think about joint struggle as opposed to solidarity. So I'll be honest to say that I haven't actually gotten deeper into the Biden proposal. I don't trust anything Joseph Biden says. I think Joseph Biden, as he himself has said time and time again, is a Zionist. I think he is an outdated Zionist. I think he is somebody who stopped engaging the question and what it means for multiple generations, the question of Zionism itself. I think he stopped really thinking about it. The logic that he employs is a cold war logic, an outdated cold war logic that is deeply racialized, that doesn't see Palestinians as full human beings, that has armed and assisted for his entire career in us government, the ongoing denial of palestinian peoplehood and political rights. So I don't trust anything coming from Joseph Biden or his administration. And what I have paid attention to have been the now six officials who have publicly resigned from the Biden administration, and in particular the jewish american official who resigned saying that Joseph Biden has blood on his hands. And I think, you know, that's where I'm at, that he has blood on his hands, that he has been very crucial to the arming of this genocide through arsenal and also through the umbrella of impunity that the United States more broadly has offered the state of Israel since its inception in 1948, but most intensely in the last seven months. And here I'll say, you know, it's really hard to hear people, liberals telling Palestinians that they should vote for Joseph Biden because of Trump. I mean, no one should ask a Palestinian to vote for Joseph Biden. He will go down in history as being a force that armed and made possible this genocide, this ongoing genocide.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: I'd love to come back to the question of the palestinian american community, arab american community, just like all communities that are in opposition to the Biden administration's policy and sort of like how we think about that and the Trump, the looming Trump showdown. But before, I mean, Dick referred to the sort of Biden maneuvers this weekend as an initiative. I think I might be overstating it, but it seems that at best, like, the best way to read it is an attempt to sow some discord and open up some opening some breakages in the israeli government that the idea is to float this thing that allows anti Netanyahu parties to try to reconfigure the government around it. And then, like, that may be a totally steel man. Imagine, like, I'm giving him too much credit, but there are some commentators who sort of phrased it that way. But you are a student, a historian, professor of the history of Palestine, the history of Israel as a state as well.
Do you think it is possible to end the war before, say, Netanyahu or the israeli right are satisfied? Because what worries me is hearing them talk about we're not going to stop until Hamas is destroyed. They're not destroying Hamas with these bombs. So that seems like a license for forever occupation. Is there a chance to stop that? Is there another configuration of israeli politics that doesn't want to do that? That could happen?
[00:09:31] Speaker B: One can hope. I mean, I'll say two things. I'll say that definitely we see Netanyahu. And for people who have paid attention to Netanyahu over the last decades, for a long time, he was a figure who looked like he didn't age.
And in the last, like, if you see him at the Madrid talks in 1991 and you see him, you know, in 2018 or 2019, he looks pretty much the same in the last eight months. The man has aged so profoundly, and he's aged in ways that are directly linked to the demise of his own political career. So absolutely, the man is, I think that there is a really clear understanding that the day the war is over is the day Netanyahu is out of government. So absolutely, you know, there is a kind of, you know, mess around Netanyahu and everything he stands for. And perhaps the us government, perhaps the Biden, you know, initiative, shall we call it that, to be very generous, is attempting to, you know, place this rift between Netanyahu and others in the government. Perhaps. I will say that I think two things on this. Number one, Netanyahu is not alone. The problem, what you are seeing in the Gaza strip in this corner of a partitioned Palestine, is, in effect, a long duration of the same problem that Zionism had in the 1880s that it has today, which is how do we forge a jewish and democratic state on a piece of land where the majority of the people aren't jewish? It's the same problem.
And the premise has been to grab as much land with as few Palestinians on it as possible. And that continues to be the premise. Perhaps it happens in different ways, perhaps it doesn't. Okay, so that's one set of things. So I think it's very important. It's very, for me, there's a way that people do this in multiple contexts. Right. And this kind of is related to the Trump questions, that the problem is one person. The problem is one cult of personality. The problem. But no, the problem is the system. The problem is the way that it's structured. And I'll say a second thing about Netanyahu. In fact, people have said to me and people who are inside the green line now that actually Netanyahu is going to seem like the left after you see what kind of right wing emerges from this moment. Right? And so I think that this is going to last for a really long time. And that's why I'm saying I just want the bombing to stop, like the direct assault, because what we will face, you know, and I know we're going to talk about this later, the concept of the day after is going also to be so horrific. And it's a sort of now, I think, and not, I think that the moment that we're in is a very much us or them structure of thinking in israeli government. And people, you know, people will often say, oh, well, but Israelis are protesting in the streets against Netanyahu. Yes, they're protesting in the streets against Netanyahu, and they're protesting in the streets against, so calling for the release of hostages, but they are completely supportive of the war. All of the polls taken among Israelis have shown that the majority of people are in support of the war, and that's what we have to worry about. So I'll step back and say, well, where, again, do we place Biden in that, in this whole dynamic? I think there, too, we have to step back and look at the ways that the United States has essentially allowed Israel to be a bully.
And this is, you know, my colleague at Jadelia, Moyni Rabbani, has made this argument that this is when you basically feed a bully with full impunity in the face of international law, when you change your own commitment to international law to be in alliance with Israel, you know, you don't have anything left to stand on. You have nothing left. And this is the other thing that I think, you know, I mean, we often, you know, those of us who are historians of the Middle east and North Africa, we often narrate the history of Israel Palestine as one place to understand the rise of us hegemony. I think it is also going to be a place through which we can trace its erosion and the way in which Biden has not been able to take one position.
And his so called red line about Rafa. Right. That he was so, that flimsy one week, you know, I'm gonna not release one set of arms supplies. Right.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: That he went back definitely just floating the balloon to see what happened.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Looks foolish.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: The appearance. Let me interject that the appearance of that is worse than even you're saying, because it could even be construed the worst interpretation, that these words that seem to project a peace path are really a cover for continuing to aid what is genocidal? And the genocidal word I particularly apply, as did Aryeh Nair in this article in New York Review Books, to the starvation of Gaza, to the cutting off of aid, and that it's such a horrible failure on the part of the US. If we intend to get aid there, everything we've done has failed or backfired. And so the worst case is, that's really part of the plan. The trouble I have with that worst case is, is political Biden's fate as president is all locked up in this, and to continue to be literally two faced is to bring himself down. And I think the White House must have tremendous degree of preoccupation with that part of it. So I bring that up because let's talk a little bit about the movement in this country, which I know you identify with, I'm pretty sure, to say the least, and that you've had a chance to work with students here and maybe people elsewhere how do you assess that movement in many different ways? First of all, let's start with the, I think, extraordinary stereotyping, simplification and fabrication about the student movement and the repression in many cases that's been happening. But is that not the whole story at all? Is it? There's a lot. A lot. Well, I'd like to hear what you have to say about it.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Okay. But I want to disagree about your assessment of genocide. I don't think it's just about that article that made the argument about the starvation of Palestinians. First of all, Israel has placed the Gaza Strip under 17 years of blockade.
Any basic research that you do should show that actually Israel has been, you know, back in 2014, there was a leaked document called the red lines, which actually showed that Israel had been keeping a ceiling, a caloric ceiling, under which they were hoping to keep Palestinians in Gaza just hungry enough. Right. And that's why when you look at the images of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip now, they seem a little smaller because they have been under this force of the siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip. That's, number one, it does not. History doesn't start on October 7. Number two, I know this article that you mentioned has convinced a lot of people that it was genocide, and I accept that if that's what people needed. But frankly, I think taking seriously the South Africa righteous case at the ICJ, which evidenced very thoroughly, what do we need to evidence genocide, which is intent. And I think, you know, I think it was 35 pages of citations and quotes from israeli officials who were talking about the intent to destroy the entirety of the people of the Gaza Strip. So I think we must call this genocide. I think if we don't call this, and I think, frankly, what did Joe. What did Joseph Biden do when we started calling it that? He gaslit us for counting our dead. He gaslit us for counting our dead. He denied the number of dead. And the thing that Joe Biden communicated when he did that is that palestinian lives do not count. Palestinian lives do not matter. And in that regard, he never got the lesson of the BLM movement. He could pretend that he understood it, but he did not understand it. And that is why he and the Democratic Party and the establishment of the Democratic Party is out of step. And you know what? I can't feel sorry for them that they're not going to win the election because they got us here. Right. So just wanted to get that off my.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: I just wanted to say why I cited that Arya Nayar article because he's prominently jewish, and he's prominently expert on international crime. And the fact that he did that was a significant political move within the jewish community, at least.
And he emphasized the starvation side because that's the most evident, the most clear.
You know, bombing can be considered a war, act of war, but which could be a humanitarian crime. He's arguing just to cut off the capacity of people to live is, in fact, by definition genocidal. And the. And, you know, I don't. I'm not arguing at all with any of the things you just said about the history.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: No, I understand. Yeah, yeah, no. And I've had a lot of, you know, colleagues say to me, oh, this is what took me to the other side. But I'm also trying to push back on that logic, on that no good.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: It very good.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Of who, when, who says, what does it become legitimate? And, you know, jewish anti zionist voices have been doing this for years, and this gets me to the movement. Okay? So the movement I was very honored to be part of. There were two students for justice in Palestine that were established 25 years ago. One was at NYU and one was at UC Berkeley, and they were being established at the same time without us being in conversation. And I was one of the people at NYU who established the first SJP there. And I have been since, you know, part of the people who have been responding to the call in 2005 from over 250 palestinian civil society organizations, which effectively called the situation and the condition on the ground apartheid, and took up the lessons from the struggle in South Africa to call for boycott, divestment sanctions, with this three specific demands of ending the occupation of full citizenship rights for everybody in the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordanian river, and to grant the right of return to the descendants of the refugees of 1948, of which I am one. So since that time, we have been building and working and conducting, you know, doing things like Israel apartheid week, and learning and standing in joint struggle with multiple movements, with indigenous movements, with black movements, with labor movements, you know, with undocumented workers and undocumented migrant labor. And this kind of effervescence that we see in this moment is a product of that 25 years of labor, of that 25. Five years of work. And it's work that has come through in strategy, in language, in even the way that we understand liberation. It's been a really beautiful thing to be part of. And I think it's really important when the history of this year is written that we understand that there is a kind of much longer history. And the history that I'm narrating, you know, which I'm starting in the early 21st century, has its own much more longer history in organizing, in student organizing on behalf of the liberation of Palestine in the United States. That could start, you know, that actually we could go earlier and start with the general Union of Palestinian Students, the first int Fada, the Palestine Solidarity committees that were taking place at that time. We could even go further back to the late 19th century when a lot of migrants from the eastern Mediterranean actually were fighting for Palestine in the wake especially of the Balfour declaration of 1917. So we stand on the shoulders of giants and we have to honor that history. That is a much longer one. This year has been phenomenal in the kinds of, I mean, this is how politics works. You're in this kind of deep grief and then there's this capacity to mobilize and organize. And, you know, I just came back from our UAW 4811 strike, which is an incredible and brave move here throughout the UC's. And I was just, we were just doing a rally across, around the campus and marching around the campus and, you know, making our demands clear. And it struck me again, as it has struck me many times, what the last eight months have taught me is the difference between the university as an institution and the university as a campus and the university as a campus is ours to liberate, is ours to shape. And I think it's been, with all of the grief and the depletion and exhaustion and rage and sadness, it has been so incredibly revolutionary to understand our spaces in this, in this different, and to see them in this different light. And I think it's taught me so many things. And I've been such a, I've been so honored to be a student of that movement on this campus. And I've, I've also been really honored to take part in a national network of faculty for justice and Palestine. I, I'm also in the steering committee of that national network, and we have over a hundred branches across the country at this point, which is, I can't tell you, you know, that that kind of phenomenal effervescence has been such a source of hope and fortitude. And I don't think, again, I think this gets me back to the point about joint struggle. I think in every single one of these instances, if we can hold on to the idea that standing for Palestine is standing for so much else, that the freedom that we are thinking through in Palestine is also the freedom that we are thinking through here, that we are standing for and that we are working for. And I think seeing these younger generations who are themselves facing climate catastrophe, economic devastation, impoverishment, the total erosion of the social contract, just coming together and fighting for each other in this way has been really one of the most beautiful things I've ever scene.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:15] Speaker C: So one thing that you said, and maybe we can segue into talking a little bit about the election and so forth, our overall frame for this podcast is about the left and big strategic questions for the left, how to think more strategically, how to win more, how to use power better, etcetera. And, you know, this has been both a galvanizing issue for the left and a divisive one in a sense. And something you said that I think is 1000% true, as someone who's very, very integrated in democratic party circles, is how out of touch party leaders and elected officials are on this question, this whole conversation that you are talking about, this whole development, the movement over the last 2030 years that has raised palestinian liberation up in the sort of agenda of the left, they've missed this. They've completely missed this. And there's a lot I could say that's just very negative and unforgiving about how they've missed it and why. And I think, yes, the knee jerk devaluing of palestinian lives versus israeli lives is just like the backdrop to all of that. But one thing is that, and I think I'll be self critical, like, this was me a bit, too, is like a lot of us being stuck in a reality of the nineties peace process and that opening and sort of still thinking about what's going on on the ground in those terms that like, oh, we're like, we can still get people back to the table. There's still this, like, you know, general plan, like overall plan, or path to a two state solution and so forth. And just like, not paying attention really, to, like, how eroded those possibilities have become, how right wing israeli politics has become, the destruction of the israeli left, all of those things. So how do we, again, this is a long introduction to the election is going to happen. I am one of those people who believes that the situation for Palestinians and everyone else gets worse if Trump wins. It may be their fault that they lose, but there will still be the consequences. With all of those things together, I'm not interested in, as you said, in like, trying to go and convince Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden, as much as I need good talking points to help convince my fellow Democrats to update my fellow Democrats and get them to be able to talk about and act on this issue in a way that, like, doesn't alienate Palestinian Americans. Like how. And so if you're me in that case, how do I get these people who are. Yeah. Sort of like thinking about things in a, say, just cold, post cold war frame and are not up to date and to try to get them to. Yeah. Be able to break out of these bad paradigms?
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Well, first I would say if I were you and doing that work, I would really do a survey and assessment of my own complicity. Right. So even in the way that you're narrating, like, the nineties. Right. It's not about the left that got eroded in Israel. It's about the labor regime established more settlements than the Likud regime after 1983. And the US was off writing all of that. They were, you know, stamping all of that. And it was the Democratic Party. It was a bipartisan commitment to making any palestinian state an impossibility. I will remind people again here, my favorite quote on this is by Itzhak Shamir, who was a right winger who had started, you know, he was a hawk. He was part of the, you know, pre 1948 militias. And then he began in the Madrid process, which was the precursor to the Oslo process. And afterwards he was interviewed by an israeli periodical called Dawar, which said to him, why would you, a hawk, ever be, you know, at the table with Palestinians? Why would you ever give up the idea of greater Israel in that way? And he said, our plan was from the beginning to stay at the negotiating table, to defer final status issues, water, right of return, settlements, you know, sovereignty, etcetera. And until a palestinian state on the ground had become an impossibility. That was the map beginning in 1991, and the United States and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party took active part in that process. You can't take active part in things and then come and pretend, you know, when this kind of genocidal, when this genocide is happening, oh, now, what should we do? Oh, now, woe is me. You have to reckon with your own complicity. The Democratic Party must reckon with its own complicity. And what is it that the zionist establishment now is so worried about? They are worried because they've lost their own children, because jewish american youth are no longer buying these products, that you must stand with everything Israel does or else you are self hating that Judaism and Zionism are the same things, that you can't critique the state of Israel. Right. So I don't know how I would like, I don't know what at this point can be done for. And with the Democratic Party. I can tell you, as somebody who grew up in this country, I remember very well. I was an undergrad when the Clintons were.
[00:32:09] Speaker C: Me, too.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I remember, like, don't stop thinking about tomorrow. The Fleetwood Mac song was. And I remember fighting people back then and saying, the Clintons aren't going to be any good for us. And I remember thinking about it in terms of two basic things, the access of women of color to reproductive rights and Palestine. And it was clear as day then, you know, and you and I both know that the Clintons were singularly responsible for moving the democratic party to the center, you know?
[00:32:41] Speaker C: Oh, for sure.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: And now I don't know if the democratic party is recoverable, honestly. I actually think the democratic party should look to the lessons of the Labour party in Israel. That Labour party was the most dominant ideological force in zionist life beginning in the 1920s or even earlier. 19 oh, 719 oh eight, all the way till the seventies, and now they barely have a seat.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: Yeah, but that's not going to happen to the Democrats.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: I'm just saying maybe it's something that we might said. Maybe it's something you could say to your colleagues as a warning.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: Well, I mean, I actually really appreciate the tougher line that you started with about talking about complicity and the mistakes that were made, you know, because we've got to explain to people how we got here and that it wasn't because there's a stupid narrative out there that's like all palestinian fecklessness and like, that was it. But, but do you think that everything about the Oslo era, those efforts, everything was purely cynical or you don't, you don't think that there was anything about it that was a sincere attempt to move the ball forward on two states. So I, it's an honest question.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: You, you know, I hear you.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: I hear you, I hear you, I hear you. No, I'm a, I'm a historian, so I try to stay away from, like, judging intentionality. But I've spent a lot of time looking at the Oslo accords. And the Oslo accords, in many ways were an extension of the kind of rule that Palestinians have lived under since arguably 1917. And what is that order? What is that logic? It's a logic of deferral. It's a politics of deferral. You are not yet ready to rule yourself. We are going to do Xyz until you are ready to rule yourself.
If you look at the declaration of principles that started Oslo. So it started with a declaration of principles. Right. And then that was Oslo one, and then Oslo two was all of the negotiations. What were the declaration of principles? The PLO recognizes Israel's right to exist. Israel recognizes the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians. There was, from the very outset, no mutual recognition. No mutual recognition cannot be the grounds upon which any kind of possible just solution can come from.
[00:35:12] Speaker C: You mean a recognition of a state of statehood and independence? Right. I'm just clarifying. Yeah.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Or a peoplehood. Right. And if you look at Oslo two, I mean, the story of Oslo two is the story of dispossession. Right. I mean, it is actually the structure through which Palestinians were and continue to be even more dispossessed of land. And this is why even at that time when Oslo happened, you know, people like Edward said were opposed to it.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: I remember I was, whatever, 17 or whatever, however old I was, I don't even remember. And I remember my friends in high school being like, oh, we thought you'd be so happy. You know, we were high school friends and it was college time. And I was like, no, I'm not happy. Like, let me explain to you all the reasons why. So, you know, I think Oslo was a station in which there was a decision. Let's go to the negotiating table and let's switch now to a strategy of going to negotiations. And I think for the palestinian side, very drastic mistakes were made to sign on to this kind of agreement. It basically inaugurated Palestinian Authority authoritarianism. It was basically also, you know, the demise in many ways, of the Plo as we knew it then. And it was essentially a calculation that, you know, we will become subcontractors to the israeli colonial project. That's what it was.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: So we are going to run out of time before we get to the day after kind of question. And I think that's really important at this point to try to get what you and people that you're engaged with, Palestinians and people in the movement. What would you take to be a path that would actually be a path with some hope in it?
[00:37:13] Speaker C: I know that's all a burdensome question, indeed. Tell us out of hope.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: I mean, one way to hope is to begin with us, the three of us in this conversation. Like, that's the key to hope. The key to hope is the rally that I just came from. The key to hope is the movement across the world, the global movement, the BDS effervescence, the, you know, the intense work of jewish voice for peace and not in our name, and, you know, the bravery of people who are standing up for being on the right side of history. That's what gives me hope in terms of how do I imagine it's a very. I am so scared. I am so scared. I am waiting and praying every night for the bombing to stop. And I am terrified for what happens after, for what it means for people who are under famine, for what it means. We've lost Gaza. We've lost it. It's gone. It will take decades to rebuild all of that. You know, Gaza is 4000 years old. I don't know if people know that it is a city that is 4000 years old. And we have lost it. We have lost not only all of the modern infrastructure of education and, you know, things like sewage or we've lost the hospitals, we've lost the universities, we've lost it. What does life look like in the face of that destruction? I have no idea. I have no idea. But I think that whatever it looks like, there has to be an insistence on palestinian peoplehood and palestinian freedom. And the hope that I garner from this moment is that the global movement will be louder than the forces who are keeping us in this hell on earth.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: And I would say, coming from my own jewish perspective, which has always been an anti zionist perspective, that's how I was raised in the jewish Marxist, you might say left. I'm a red diaper baby. So I've never understood Zionism as making coherent sense as a place for jewish identity to be nourished. How can a state represent a moral, religious framework of identity and belief? How can a state represent that? That's very. The worst place you would put your hopes in would be a state. That to me, from the beginning has been my question about Zionism, not about the people have come to Israel, they're going to live there. So I would say the only thing I kind of add to what you just said is we've got to have a situation coming forward in which both people accept the fact that both people are going to stay there and therefore they have to live together, and the framework within which there are different ideas about that. The thing that when I say hope, I'm coming from a jewish place. There are not only jewish voice for peace, which has been very bold and clear. But the good thing about the post October 7 for the jewish world, I think, is it's forced a real examination of the question I just posed about how does jewish identity in the so called diaspora take hold? And that's what I think that all this younger generation of jewish kids is really searching for. They've given up completely anything that would put Israel at the center of their consciousness. But they want to be Jews, which is really kind of amazing. My granddaughter is a sophomore at UCSB. Our mother is not jewish, but she came here, decided to identify as jewish. She can't stand going over to hillel because it's such a closed space, but she's got a lot of the right attitudes. She wants to be jewish and figure that out. So there's a magazine called Jewish Currents we interviewed. I don't know if you followed that.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: I've published in it, actually. Yeah.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Well. Really? Okay, well, see, I'm on a board of, an advisory board with that. And I'm very excited because this generation of young people who are now running it are very thoughtful. And they come from this younger generation. They're not just red diaper baby types like I am. They're actually rethinking their whole, what they're about. And so, and then Peter Beinart, who's with them, seems quite remarkable. Masha guests and some of these people are very brilliant intellectuals coming from the jewish community. But really fundamentally and daringly so this is what I'm sort of hopeful about. So there's an organization in Israel called standing together. I don't know how much you've had much to do with. And they have recently been organizing ceasefire demonstrations, not just the anti Netanyahu and pro hostage stuff. And they had a humanitarian guardian, that's what they called it, activity where they were protecting aid deliveries into Gaza from the settlers. They claimed just yesterday they put out an email message, standing together did that we have won this as a settler. Well, at least temporarily. The settlers have given up on their efforts to interfere with that. Not that that's a tremendous breakthrough, but it's part of what they now have defined. So you have any comment on any of that?
[00:43:04] Speaker B: I do. I mean, I want to say there. I also want to, like, call for a long duration of jewish anti Zionism that we could actually date with the bond. Right.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: That's where I come up.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And that we can date also from some religious traditions that have, like from the beginning where the opposition to Zionists them. I think that also. I think there is the red diaper baby tradition, and there's also the queer tradition. I mean, I organized in post September 11 New York, and the organizations that I was working with and kind of cut my teeth on were jews against the occupation, which started as queer jews against the occupation. So there's so many lineages that we have to honor so many critical voices that we have to honor. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, one of the things that gives me so much joy of this year is that we now have a UCSB jewish voice for peace on this campus. And being in kinship and community with JVP and being in kinship and community with jewish anti zionist kin has been a source of my own strength and hope. And I think there is no way forward without understanding our liberation as inextricable from each other on this campus. JVP and SJP together say palestinian liberation is jewish liberation. And I think that is a way for us to really critically think about our histories, our kinship, and how our freedom is absolutely inextricable.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Well, that sounds like a place to bring our conversation to a conclusion. For now, babies await attention from fathers. That's one thing going on. So, so appreciative of this opportunity to talk to you, Sherene, and hope that, you know, we can continue in various ways to be connected. I want to thank people for listening, as usual. And if you thought this was a fruitful conversation, please share it with other folks.
[00:45:39] Speaker D: She deep has Anati.
Where your heart be not will accept that. Give us my daughter.
They say if you die.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: When the.
[00:46:05] Speaker D: Day is done, what will be left behind?
Only you and me with our future sisters wine. We live within no one. We feel each other's pain because of you. I know we must choose a different way.
