[00:00:17] Speaker A: Hi, folks, this is Dick Flax with episode 36 of talking strategy making history. This time Diraka Laramore hall and I had the chance to have a conversation with two people who identify with the left and are activists in that regard, but are also committed Zionists.
The conversation adds another set of voices to the array of folks that we've been privileged to hear and talk with since October 7 on this podcast. Who we're going to be talking with today include Vladimir Khalkhin. Vlad is a longtime staff member of the Anti Defamation League nationally.
As you'll hear, he does identify strongly as a leftist and we don't really get into discussing the ADL, as you will hear in particular. But we do get to hear his well articulated perspective on the problem of antisemitism and how to understand it. We're joined as well by Matt Finkelstein. Matt is founder and leader of an organization called Progressive Zionists of California and like Vlad, strongly concerned about antisemitism within the left. We're very grateful that they were willing to participate in the conversation. I think it's fruitfully contentious at times. I think it's going to be a rewarding experience for you to listen in. So here we go.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Hey, folks, we're going to get started with our discussion here on talking strategy making history. You may hear a little bit of dialogue from our occasional special guest, Ada, who's here with us. But today we have Vlad and Matthew. We introduced you to a little bit in the opening, and we're going to talk a bit more and sort of get into the question of how we can get to a broader and perhaps more strategic coalition, peace coalition around ending the wars and finding a just peace in the Middle east. And so part of that has been, of course, talking with people active in the palestinian solidarity movement and trying to pierce some of the misinformation and yeah, just bad faith reporting about their motives and strategies and so forth. And now we do want to talk about our issues within that movement and barriers, say, to participation in that movement from people who don't agree with some of the larger analysis or sloganizing that happens in the movement, but also to have maybe a little bit of a tougher conversation about and a frank exchange about what has been going on amongst progressive jewish folks who do support the existence of Israel, some progressive Zionists, and what's been sort of keeping them from having a bigger role and taking a little bit, yeah, sort of more responsibility for also making progress towards peace. With that, I wanna shut up and sort of open it up with a first question, because we've talked a bit offline, and Matthew and I certainly get into it quite often on social media, there's a critique, a criticism that comes quite often from jewish liberals and progressives, that the current palestinian solidarity movement crosses lines that it shouldn't or has adopted analysis or slogans that are either anti semitic or adjacent. And we haven't really given a space for an articulation of that critique. Like in good faith, we've definitely dismissed the stuff that we don't think is in good faith. What is that critique? What is that criticism? What do you see in here that is problematic and why?
[00:04:23] Speaker C: Okay, so first of all, the rocka, Dick, thank you guys for agreeing to.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Come on the show.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: And I also want to say, like, what a hassle it's been. And maybe this is worth mentioning because I think it's symbolic of the kind of struggle that we have as friends, even in coming together to talk about these difficult things in public forums. There have been several iterations of this conversation that have gone back and forth before we've been able to arrive at a format and a time and what it is that we're going to discuss. So there's a lot of sensitivities around that. And I want to start off by acknowledging what I see in you guys. First of all, for your willingness to have this conversation, to actually like platform Zionists, which is such a sin on the left these days, that the San Francisco pride parade had to announce to the world that it was not going to be including an israeli pride float this year. Oh, and by the way, that's not discrimination. That was a caveat that was in their announcement. It was very bizarre, and we're waiting on answers from them. But I say that only to just sort of give us a sense of what the landscape looks like right now, what it means to have this conversation, how fraught it is.
Secondly, I just want to talk about, well, go back to your point, Diraka, about what it means to be a progressive Zionist.
How are progressive Zionists supposed to feature in this conversation about the war? Should they be anti war? That's an important question. That's one that I'd like to drill down on specifically. So I want to plant a flag there and I want to return to that right. And then second of all, if there is such a thing as a progressive Zionist and in this fraud environment, what is the best way to include them when you have so many people that are mainstreaming, de platforming Zionism? I'll give you a great example you had on what I consider to be a fairly, at the cost of being redundant, fair guest by the name of Rose, who's a student at. What is it? Uc Santa Cruz?
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Santa Barbara.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Santa Barbara.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: Okay. And I remember a conversation you had with a diraca and you said, okay, you know there are progressive Zionists, right? And she says, well, I don't even know if that's really a thing. Right. Maybe it is. She was fair about it. She was fair about it. But I mean, I think that's very telling that the person that has been brought forward to characterize the campus state of affairs to the rest of us on this show is someone who doesn't have an imagination, even have an imagination for what a progressive Zionist is. So with that said, I'm going to give my bona fides here very briefly. I'm a co founder of progressive Zionists of California.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Matthew is speaking.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: That should be it is Matthew speaking. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
[00:07:03] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I should have.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Should have done an intro first. Usually it's how those things go. All right, so I'm a co founder of progressive Zionist California. We formed in 2017 after the largest meeting of the progressive caucus in the California Democratic Party. They spent probably close to 20 minutes in that meeting, that key meeting where we were formulating what our strategy was going to be statewide and all things. You're going to do 24 minutes talking about why Israel is an apartheid state, why Zionism is racism, and why the IDF is committing genocide, complete with a slideshow.
I was so shocked that I couldn't say anything because I'd given my heart to this movement. I just got back from Philadelphia with my fiance, Susan George, and an elected delegate for Bernie Sanders. The sense of betrayal was immense. Okay? And I tell you, I didn't have the willpower to say anything at that moment. I was so shocked. But my partner, Susan did. She got in front of the room and told everybody that if you. If you. If you endorse BDS, you're endorsing anti normalization. She said this the largest progressive caucus meeting of the California Democratic Party ever.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: Maybe. Maybe close to 300 people in there. And what that means is you're endorsing anti normalization, which means that if there's a Zionist amongst us, you can't platform that person. You can't talk to that person. Well, guess how many Jews are Zionists? An awful lot. An awful lot. I remember looking at the ceiling, feeling betrayed and shocked. And people started coming around us, thanking Susan for having been brave enough to have spoken out, and I said, in that moment, it kind of clicked. I was like, ugh, I can't ever let that happen again. There always has to be a voice for progressive Zionism in the room. And we're going to do everything we can to provision that voice, to staff those conversations and to be present. And we've been doing that stuff in progressive zionist California ever since. So a quick review. I want to get back to this question. Can progressive Zionists support a war? And how to include progressive Zionists? Those are the two flags I'm going to plant here, and then I'm going to go ahead and defer.
[00:09:02] Speaker D: Well, if I can jump here, in here, this is blood.
I think about these issues from a very personal perspective. I came to this country as a refugee fleeing state sponsored anti jewish repression in the Soviet Union, which was at least nominally a leftist regime. So despite that fact, I have been a lifelong leftist. As long as I've had a political consciousness, I've considered myself a member of the left. But I cannot ignore, based on my own experience, that of my family, that of millions of Soviet Jews, that the left can have a problem with authoritarianism, with racism, anti semitism, misogyny. It's all there. And I think it does the left no favors to ignore that and to pretend otherwise. We have to be sober about our own political family and really do the work that needs to be done to ensure that our spaces are free from all of those phenomena. So knowing what I know about.
About antisemitism on the left, and, you know, my sort of, much of my life has been about trying to understand antisemitism as a phenomenon. This phenomenon that so radically upended the life of my family, of my community, and millions of people around the world, trying to understand how it operates, what it is, and to what end, crucially, to what end it is wielded by various political factions.
And so knowing that, knowing that a lot of the dynamics that we see on the left, and also to some degree on the right, around Zionism, around Israel, was shaped during the cold War, was shaped as a matter of cold war politics, and was really a sort of a proxy that the israeli palestinian conflict developed as a kind of proxy conflict between much larger actors. And part of the sort of rhetoric around that conflict and the way that it has been shaped and the way that it looks today was shaped by some of those cold war dynamics. And specifically the intelligence services of the Soviet Union expended tremendous resources trying to shape the way that people think about the conflict, about Israel, about Zionism, in ways that are deeply problematic and do draw upon reactionary propaganda of the, you know, of the regimes that preceded the soviet state, you know, and so I do think that there are ways in which to this day, we. That sort of what could be called a. The historical inertia of antisemitism, the sort of momentum that it has had historically has continued, including on the left, and will continue unless we really set ourselves to the task of critically analyzing the degree to which anti Semitism and anti semitic modes of thinking about the world suffuse our thinking about issues that we care about on the left more broadly.
[00:12:14] Speaker C: I just want to make sure that we get back to Diraca's first two points. Eventually, I'm planting a flag on the question of how to include Zionists in progressive spaces and what are progressive Zionists role in the anti war movement? Think that was distillation. Does that work? Daraka?
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: Okay. And then, Vlad, it sounds to me like. Like there's a conversation you're trying to have about the nature of antisemitism qua anti Zionism, and in the way that it suffuses the radical or extreme left activist spaces and the entire movement. Is that right?
[00:12:49] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, I would say that I think there's a conversation to be had about the degree to which our analysis of geopolitics, of economics, or of any other issue that we care about on the left is being distorted by sort of these anti semitic conceptions. Because in my view, at the end of the day, what anti Semitism really is more than just a kind of organic social prejudice, if you will, is it's an analytical model or an interpretive framework to try to understand and make sense of why the world looks the way it does, rather than the way that we wish it looked. Right. And antisemitism purports to give that answer by pointing at the Jews or the Zionists or whoever else. And I think in so doing, it actually undermines our ability to mobilize an effective analysis that can produce effective solutions to the problems that we perceive on the left.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: I'd like to actually hear a little more about that. So you've got me. And I think it's really interesting, the parallel between the way that the left kind of fell for the Soviet Union and sort of approach, there was this. And Dick and I have gotten into this quite a bit, right, because of his own history and so forth, the mythological entity of the Soviet Union. And so giving it having a double standards about it believing it's propaganda, et cetera. Right. And so there being a lasting imprint of that, because the way that the Soviet Union would talk about Israel very often and sort of, you know, and Zionism was. Was often anti semitic. Not only that, it's. It's outdated in Cold War and, like, their own imperial stuff. Right? So that's concrete. Like, I can. I can get that. But what is it that is going on today in the movement that you think is like an example of that antisemitism, that kernel of smuggled antisemitism, if you will?
[00:14:43] Speaker D: Yeah. So we could take one, one particular sort of meme, if you will. And that is the. The notion of zionist imperialism, according to numerous sources, but that includes the former head of soviet bloc intelligence, romanian soviet bloc intelligence. The notion of zionist imperialism was manufactured in Moscow and had its source, its origins in the protocols of the learned elders of Zion, which, of course, was a piece of political propaganda that had been created under a previous regime, a regime that was a tsarist sort of right wing regime. But propaganda is propaganda. And effective propaganda has a way of having a very long half life.
If it's useful, people are inclined to use it. Now, obviously, for a leftist regime, the fact that they are relying upon reactionary right wing propaganda is a problem. So obviously, you want to sort of hide your hand in terms of where you're sourcing your propaganda from. But moreover, the intended audience for this propaganda is also somewhat different. So you need to make sure that the propaganda resonates with the people that you're trying to influence. So essentially what happened was they took this notion of a global jewish conspiracy, right, to turn the world into a jewish fiefdom or colony, if you will.
And they gave it a sort of leftist polish, right. They applied to it language that would resonate with members of the left, and they called it zionist imperialism, essentially means the same thing, right? One entity trying to dominate individuals, territories, governments beyond their borders, and to extend their hegemony, their power, over others around the globe. It means the same thing, but it's framed in a way, in language that is going to be more resonant on the left than these old sort of reactionary ideas about a global jewish conspiracy, right? And so my concern, I mean, not only as a jewish person, right? Obviously as a jewish person, I'm concerned about where anti semitism can ultimately lead a society in terms of its impacts on the jewish community.
But anti Semitism isn't just a harm to the jewish community. It is a broadly corrosive psychosocial and political phenomenon that has broad implications well beyond the jewish community. And one of those implications, I think, is for the left, is for individuals that are inclined towards social change. And by the way, that can be on the right as well. Right. Because certainly fascism is a revolutionary movement. It seeks to radically transform the society into a vision that's quite different from the revolution that the left envisions. But nonetheless, it is a sort of a radical approach to a radical vision for society. Right? And so antisemitism can be incredibly attractive to people who have this sort of social change ethos, because it is essentially about social change.
What antisemitism tells the world is that we could have all the good things. We could have all the nice things in the world, you know, we could have a wonderful world were it not for the Jews. Right? It always uses a language of liberation.
It presents itself as a kind of emancipatory politics. It weaves a social justice narrative to tell the world that we have come to save the race, the nation, the world, from the domination, exploitation and oppression of the Jews, of the Zionists, of whoever. What it functions as really is a misdiagnosis of social, political, economic and other problems, essentially undermining what could be an effective analysis that can produce effective remedies to actually create social change. Instead, it redirects our focus away from root causes, which are often structural and systemic in nature, and onto jewish boogeymen, essentially, and thereby undermining the efficacy of these movements, including of progressive movements. And that is how it has been wielded for many, many years, right? As a tool of subversion, against, in particular, against democratic movements, movements for greater equality, et cetera. That is indeed socialism of fools. The socialism of fools. Exactly. Exactly. And today I would say that anti Zionism, in its current sort of demonological form, that it has morphed into over many decades, I would refer to that as the anti imperialism of fools, right? Because what it essentially does is it operates in similar ways is it refocuses our attention when we think about, when we mount an analysis of the challenges facing our societies around the world, economic, political and other problems, it corrupts our analysis and it distorts us. It acts as a kind of red herring that ultimately undermines our ability to be effective. Right. People who embrace conspiracy theories to explain the problems of the world undermine their own ability to rationally and therefore effectively solve those problems. As Yidir Rosenberg reminds us, I'm sitting.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Here wondering, and I don't want to get too deep into this, the question I'm about to just mention which is, to what extent is that analysis of antisemitism work in understanding the discourse right now of the palestinian solidarity movement or the student encampments and so forth? I'm not sure that there's quite that degree of meshing there, but I guess the thrust of Diraca's introductory comments when we started was the way I hear them is we can litigate and debate Zionism as a valid expression, but that's not where we should be going. We need to find common ground. And the common ground to me is articulated by the notion that we have two people with claims to the same land. Neither are going anywhere. The only path is for them to fully accept each other as free and equal beings. And that's the basis of a peace movement, regardless of the history that is so contentious. So I don't know if I'm short circuiting a discussion, but in a way time, the time we have for us here needs a bit of that. So I don't know what.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: No, I think that's a good segue into those two questions.
What would be the role of people who are like, hey, I think Israel should exist, which I think we can all agree is like, that voice isn't being heard really much within the peace movement or the anti this war movement. And then the related question is like, is being against this war a fair litmus test expectation, etcetera?
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Let me just go ahead and one point, which is we just had this conversation just the other day on our podcast with Shireen Sakeley, who is a prominent palestinian figure intellectual. She ended our conversation saying both peoples have to exist on the same land. She did not say we have anything about displacing Jews. In fact, she made a big tribute to the elements of the jewish community that understand the palestinian cause at being very necessary to her emotionally. It was quite interesting.
It has been tremendously necessary for me to have the sense that there are allies and people hear us in the jewish world. So that didn't sound like anti semitism to me. So anyway, it gives me hope that she said that because there is here.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: I want us to basically, I want to get the scaffolding right on Diraka's question, okay, he's asking, is it possible for progressive Zionists to have a role in an anti war movement? And that begs the question, can a progressive Zionist support the war? Or whatever that means. I think that begs the additional question that you were asking about, what does the movement look like and does it possess properties that are intrinsically anti semitic? If so, what are those properties? Now we had from Vlad and broad strokes what anti semitism looks like and the way that it infects movement politics. But I think it would behoove us to get a little more granular and drill down in this response. And we could talk about why progressive Zionists have felt so alienated from this movement. Here, let's begin where some of these problems for us began. And that would be on Columbia campus. So who started that notion of an encampment on Columbia? That was a movement and a tactic that was produced by an organization, or actually, I'm sorry, it was a coalition. The coalition was called shut it down for Palestine. Now shut it down for Palestine is a deeply troubled network. It includes the palestinian youth movement, national students, justice in Palestine, us campaign for palestinian rights, Arab Resource and organizing center here in the Bay Area. They're all. They were all sponsors. They're all founding members. Excuse me, maybe not AROC. I got to double check that.
But there's about $100 billion in funding that we now know came to these organizations through the Singham Network in a study that was done by the Network Contagion Research Institute. We know that there are malign and foreign influences that are responsible for implementing some of these strategic initiatives, specifically the one on campus and the encampments.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Are there any malign and foreign influences funding the support for Israel movements and campaigns?
[00:24:51] Speaker C: Maybe we could talk about that. Maybe we could talk about that.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: I just. I'm stopping you because I feel like this is the kind of conversation we need to move beyond, because I think Dick and I would stipulate, and what I liked about some of the things VlAD was saying going historical, is that, like, every movement like this has unsavory characters, has people whose politics are awful, and has parts of the movement that take a, like, maximalist, revolutionary approach to everything, or like, I'm going to support the other side.
This is not the first peace movement or something it doesn't like. That doesn't seem different than the South Africa solidarity movement, the Central America solidarity movement, etcetera. So why don't we.
[00:25:39] Speaker C: There was never, like, the thing is that here we're talking about, like, specifically eliminationist ideology, and we're talking about organizations that have committed to this. At their core, these are the largest drivers of consequential vanguardist movements on american infrastructure, on college campuses. We're talking about primary drivers of the Columbia encampment. Right? These are not. These are not, like, minute figures, right? These guys matter. And they recently can. These same people recently convened a conference in Detroit. It was called the People's Conference for Palestine. This was on the header. I'm going to read this out loud. All backers of Zionism, Israel and us imperialism have been put on notice. The perpetrators of genocide and occupation have names and faces and the masses of people around the world stand against them in the millions. That is deeply threatening. You know, that. That's just a deeply threatening thing for us to confront as, like. As a unifying eliminationist ideology that's at the front and center of this movement over and over again at this awful conference, one of the largest.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: So that's more concrete that you're talking about. This is something that a movement, a pretty significant event in the movement had. And, like, language that they're using.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, like, this is on the, like.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: On the fire. Right, right. Welcome. That you're getting into the front door.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: And I can't. I can't tell you the horrible things that have come out of this. This conference, but people are. They're actively advocating for the destruction of the state of Israel. I want to talk about one more thing. On campuses, there is a. I think there's a kind of.
There's a conception that, like, preventing students from moving through different parts of college campus on the condition of their Zionism is a nonviolent movement. And I really want to dispel that. I really do. I think the moment you start infringing on people's freedom of movement or people who are trying to get an education, who are denied entry into the classroom on any condition, I think normalizing that as part of a social justice movement that's intrinsically anti semitic. And you may say, right, like. Or how about this? All right, let me. Let me just invert that for a moment. Was it islamophobic when people were stopping Sikhs more than other people at the DSA checkpoints?
[00:27:49] Speaker D: Right.
[00:27:50] Speaker C: Or not DC, at the airports.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: So TSA.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: TSA. Sorry, not TSA. We were just talking about DSA. That's why. Sorry.
The TSA checkpoints are even more stringent. No, but the TSA checkpoints, like, everybody knew. We all. We already knew that when you were stopping people who looked, they might be muslim more than others, we can already tell there was a grain of discrimination there. It would be none. It would be totally, like, non controversial. For me to say that was islamophobic on left, but for me to mention that it might be antisemitic to be stopping people and questioning them about their affiliation with the state of Israel as permission to pass on campus, that might be anti semitic. And it's like I set off a bomb, right? It's like everybody says, that's not possible.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: All right, Matthew, so suppose I said, I never heard the kind of framing that you did of those. Of those tactics. I've always assumed those were forms of kind of guerrilla theater to demonstrate what the checkpoint experience in Israel Palestine has been. And yes, very offensive, but it's a form of theater. So if we were to argue that it was deliberately aimed at making jews feel bad because they are jewish as an anti semitic act versus my interpretation, we could litigate this for a long time. I just don't know. I can't quite believe that the students, whether palestinian or not, jewish or non jewish, sitting in the encampments, talking to each other, over time, all of them are accepting the version that you're highlighting, which is a deliberate anti jewish, anti Israel's existence. Does it take all of them or just a few?
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Does it take all of them, or does this just take tolerating a select few?
[00:29:46] Speaker D: I actually don't think it requires any, because I don't think antisemitism requires deliberate, willful animus in the same way that, you know, other forms of bigotry don't. You know, we sometimes, too often, I think, reduce anti Semitism with the shorthand, you know, jew hate. That's not accurate. Antisemitism is not jew hate. Hate is a feeling. It's an emotion. Antisemitism operates independent of a feeling. It's a way of viewing the world. So, in fact, I would say the majority of anti Semitism that happens is not deliberate, willful, is not driven by deliberate, willful, anti jewish animus.
It is a particular way of trying to make sense of the world and why it works the way it does. So I don't actually think that the students that are engaging in, even if you do believe it's anti semitic behavior, I don't think they're doing it because they have a conscious enmity towards jewish people.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: And suppose that you were able to talk to those students right on the ground and said, you know, I can understand that you're doing this theater. I don't know whether you realize how offensive it is to do that. Is that a good, practical tactic for you to be continuing to? Do you think you would get a hearing if you said that?
[00:31:04] Speaker C: I do.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: I think you would get a hearing.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: There's been reporting on these incidents. Right. And it's something that I really wanted to drill down into because the way that they have been, yeah, characterized is, like, so horrific. And it really is a mix. And there's an example. There are examples of what Deke is talking about that are, you know, tied to the sort of historical development of anti apartheid weeks, but talking about the Israel Palestine issue. And so it's like, yeah, we're going to show people what it's like to have to go through checkpoints and those kinds of humiliations. So there's that going on. There's also the fact that these are encampments that have been attacked by police, infiltrated by all kinds of asshole provocateurs, and attacked by a mob of, you know, violent for 4 hours, attacked by a mob of violent, pro Israel loom. I mean, including fascists. And so, yeah, at UCLA. And so there was a whole bunch of decisions that were made that were like, how do we keep from being infiltrated? What do we do? What are questions we can ask now? Do I think some of those things were done horribly ham fistedly, or that, like, the person in charge at the, you know, at a given moment wasn't also anti semitic? I mean, we look, we also have that, that evidence of the leader at Columbia, right, who said all, said all these, was like, got high and said these horribly anti semitic and, like, racist, just anti jewish racist things. So we know that these are human beings and it's a mix and so forth. But if we can stipulate that there are people in the movement who are anti zionist, but by that, do not mean that Jews should be removed from the lands, do not mean that Jews should be massacred. You know, do not mean any of these, do not support hamas. I think we can stipulate that. That's a big constituency. I'm trying to find space that I think we could stipulate that there are people who think that Israel should exist and will exist, but also, like, don't think kids should be beheaded and incinerated or that Netanyahu should be supported, etcetera, etcetera. And I'm trying to find a way. Whereas we tend to get bound down and, like, pointing at each other's bad faith actors or extremists or whatever as an excuse not to talk. Does that make sense? I mean, it's like, I saw it first happen, actually, around the Iraq war, not even Israel Palestine, when the Stalinists who took over the peace movement, the anti Iraq war movement, wouldn't let Rabbi Lerner speak at an anti war rally. And it wasn't about Palestine or anything. It was about the Iraq war. He's against the Iraq war. And they're like, no, you're zionist. And I was like, well, that's a.
[00:33:50] Speaker D: Great, well, that's a really great point. And it goes to what I was going to say to dick, which is that I do think in some cases, with some people, you will get a hearing when you say, like, hey, I don't think you're a bad person. I don't think you have ill intent. I think you're here for the right reasons, which is that you care about innocent people dying and suffering and all the rest. But some of the ways that you're going about your advocacy are deeply problematic and harmful to the jewish community. I do think with some of those people you will get a hearing. And I say that because I've gotten that hearing. On the other hand, Diraka's point about Rabbi Lerner not even being given the chance to speak because he is the wrong kind of person. Right. The anti normalization that we've already sort of talked about, that happens on the left, where if you have views that are zionist, which is just simply means that you believe that an Israel, a jewish state in some form, ought to exist. That alone makes you Persona non grata and somebody who should not be platformed, should not be listened to, should not be engaged with in any way. So I think it's a mixed bag, Dick. I think some people are willing to have that dialogue, have that discussion to hear out people who have sort of countervailing views to those. And I think very much, I would agree with you, Daraka. I think we need a space. I think we need to bring those kinds of folks together because we're ceding the ground to arsonists on both sides, people who have seemingly very little interest in actually resolving the conflict in order to create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians and instead are seem largely driven by will to punish. Right. Their politics are punitive in nature rather than coming from a place of love for humanity, trying to establish a better future for jewish and palestinian children. And I think that that is my other sort of reason why I'm so concerned about the antisemitism that occurs in these movements around these issues is because, again, it fundamentally undermines our ability to resolve the conflict. We're not going to solve this thing if we continue to engage in these wild fantasies and irrational thinking. By that I mean anti semitism, islamophobia, anti arab racism. What we need is a practical, mature politics that gets back to basics about what is at the root of the conflict, what did the people really need on one side and on the other side? Where do we draw the borders? How do we share the resources? How do we ensure safety and security for Jews, for Israelis, for Palestinians, for Arabs? Right. Those practical matters, much of that has actually already been worked out and negotiated. If we can just stick to and keep the focus, laser, laser tight on these very pragmatic, practical issues, rather than going off on these fantasies about, you know, zionist imperialism and Jews drinking palestinian baby blood, that is never going to produce any kind of resolution. Right.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Let me throw in just to follow up what you just said, led, which is to say to Matthew, the story you started with about the caucus meeting where that horrifying exclusion of Zionists and so on, and you were rendered grieving and speechless. That really touched me. And it's very much important to realize that experience, how that would shape not only your own feeling, but what people's understanding, left wing Jews who are Zionists might have been experiencing even down to now. And that's why I put emphasis on the possibility that something, okay, that we need to go forward rather than simply.
You're right.
One question, one point I did want to make and put on the table before we talk about the day after kind of question, which Vlad was alluding to, is what I alluded to at the beginning.
There's a kind of mccarthyism, or flavor of McCarthyism in the way that some of the jewish organizations and jewish donors have been acting in relation to the universities. And we see this at Columbia, at Harvard, at the University of Pennsylvania. Those congressional hearings, let me just propose that. Is there a tendency to take the allegation of antisemitism and weaponize it against the left? That the real intention of raising the charge of anti semitism for some people is not so much a concern for the jewish people as to move the jewish voting population into the republican party away from the democratic. And that wealthy donors have that. The Adelson network, which there really is, I believe, has that interest. And that is being played out frighteningly to me because I thought we had won these battles over decades in academia. What is the battle? Simply that when you discipline people's political expression on campus, you're running into hot water. Therefore, what we need is due process. We need to substitute education for discipline at times, if there's anti semitism evident in a campus situation, my impulse is that faculty members, that we have to seize that as a moment of education and deep discussion, not just identify the anti semitist anti Semites and punish them, but the whole discourse is on the second. And that is something that I'm kind of obsessed with right now because I think due process is critical in terms of how people, if you're going to punish people, there's got to be a hearing, there's got to be evidence, there's got to be charges that are clear. And then the penalties have to be proportionate to what they've done to deny someone the right to graduate because they were part of a rule breaking political expression, that's a very questionable thing. For example, to call the police at Columbia without consulting the faculty Senate, even though the rules were there to do that, was a big mistake, horrifying on the part of that president. I could go on and on about this. So I wonder whether you have any thoughts or comments about that, and how can we deal with that within the jewish community? Because I think if for no other reason, that this is not good for the Jews. How does it look to students that the source of their repression is money coming from major jewish donors? How does that get separated from the anti semitic tropes? How does that reality get separated from the tropes?
[00:40:42] Speaker D: Well, I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I wonder if Matthew wants to jump in first, make sure he has opportunity to speak.
[00:40:49] Speaker C: Well, to be honest, my first thought when I heard him ask this question was, what is Vlad going to say to this?
[00:40:55] Speaker D: Then I can jump in a couple of things. So I think what you've described as this sort of mccarthyist phenomenon, I think happens on both sides, right? The effort to root out the evil Zionists that are lurking behind, you know, every, you know, they're behind every rock and tree waiting to get you right. That that, that happens. You know, there is a kind of paranoid tendency in anti Zionism that I think is characteristic of anti Semitism more broadly. So I do see that on both sides. Right. And I, and I am concerned about, you know, the ways in which these things are handled on campuses, including anytime you call police in, there's obviously potential for violence. I think that needs to be done very judiciously, very carefully, very thoughtfully, and if not as a last resort, then as a second to last resort. The second question, though, the question of the weaponization of anti Semitism. There is a very longstanding phenomenon that is certainly present within the history of antisemitism, but it's, I think, common to many different kinds of bigotry or oppression or whatever term you want to apply where when the member of a targeted group raises concerns that an anti Semitism, a racism, a sexism has happened, that there is often a counter charge that they are pulling the anti Semitism racism sexism card in bad faith in order to XYz some nefarious agenda, some trying to cover up the crimes or the wrongdoings of some group, etcetera.
You know, when Black Lives Matter confronted President Clinton and they said, you know, we want you to take accountability for the impacts of your 1994 crime bill on the black community, his response was, you don't really think that I. You know, that this is a racist policy. You're just trying to defend and cover for the people who take the lives that you say matter. In other words, you're trying to cover up black criminality. This was his response. And I think it was at that point that Bill Clinton was taken off of the campaign trail for his wife, Hillary Clinton. So this is a long standing phenomenon, so longstanding, so common, in fact, that sociologists have given it a term, the Livingstone formulation, at least as it applies to charges of anti semitism. Again, I can cite historically, Hitler himself went around claiming that he was unfairly being targeted by the jewish conspiracy with false claims of anti semitism. He was definitely not an anti semite. And in fact, he sued newspapers that called him an anti semite and won. Goebbels has a track on this, where he talks about how Jews use the charge of antisemitism to undermine their political enemies.
Henry Ford said that the Jews do this, and it has led to the worst imposition on free speech in the United States history. David Duke says this over and over and over again. In other words, this is.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: But sometimes it's not that, right? I mean, like, again, as a black person, I feel you. I mean, this is true. It happens all the time. I hate it whenever anybody's like, oh, you're playing the race guard. I'm like, what? I'm just talking about race. But, like, you know, in the OJ trial, that shit was. That was a. That was played. You know, that was. That was very cynically so.
[00:44:12] Speaker D: I do. I do think there are people who are willing to do those kinds of things. I am not delusionable, delusional about the nature of humanity and their willingness, our willingness, our willingness to sometimes throw our values, our principles out the window in order to achieve some political, economic or other end. Right? So it does happen. I'm sure false charges of rape are also real. But if that's what we spend the majority of our time talking about, when we are talking about the sexual assault epidemic on campus, when we're talking about racism when we're talking about anti Semitism or Islamophobia. If the majority of that focus is about the bad faith charges of that, which I think are the extreme minority in these cases, then we're probably not that serious about actually dealing with sexual assault, with anti semitism, racism, etcetera. I allow that it happens. I think it is far less frequent than a lot of people try to make it out to be the Republican.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: The non jewish Republicans that are doing it. What about, like, what happened in Congress? So, and, like, what's her name? I mean, the.
What's her name? Stefanik, who, like, is a jew hater. I mean, like, that she's a problem. She's fascist. But she, this is a perfect opportunity to beat up on the left. So there's two fascists I talked about that attacked the kids in UCLA. Right? They've also posted, like, hitlerian nonsense, but they see this as an opportunity to go after the left. And, like, so that, that's the other piece of Dick's question that I feel like is really important is the, like, laying down with dogs question. If you have a concern about anti semitism in the movement, fine, fair enough. But then if, like, you're sort of. Yeah, shoulder to shoulder with Stefanik, like, knocking out academics for, you know, to score MAGA points, it's like, well, no.
[00:46:09] Speaker D: So I think in general, what I would say is that people have a really difficult time seeing anti semitism, racism, misogyny, whatever it is, inside their own political family. It's really hard to take a look in the mirror and be honest about what you see there. People, you know, because people say, like, oh, well, you know, on the right, anti semitism is very obvious. It's swastikas, it's sieg heils. It's calls to gas the Jews. But on the left, it's so subtle, it's, you know, it's hard to recognize. No, it isn't. It's hard to recognize if you're on the left and most Jews are on the left, right, because it's hard to recognize problems within your own political family. But people have no problem recognizing it across the aisle. And that is true on the left as well. Right, because you also have people who are quick to identify anti semitism when it's people who don't share their politics. But as soon as you call out somebody who shares their politics for anti semitism, suddenly they lose all sophistication with which they otherwise analyze issues like racism, anti Semitism, et cetera right. Suddenly they can't see it. George Blairwell in 1945 wrote a really great essay about anti semitism in Britain. And one of the most, I think, astute points he makes in that essay that I recommend people to read is that he says that the analysis of the beginnings of any treatment of antisemitism, any effort to try to understand it, should begin with the question not what is it about antisemitism that appeals to those people with those politics and those views, but rather what is it about anti Semitism that appeals to me and my political family, right. People who share my politics and worldview? I think that's right. I think that is where all of us should be starting because, first of all, because we're best positioned to have an impact in those spaces where we have connections, where we have standing, where we have cachet. Right. Like, I'm going to be less effective speaking to people with right wing politics than I am speaking to left wing politics because I'm not of the right. I'm of the left. I share their values. I share their, you know, sort of analysis of the world and. And power dynamics, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's largely what's happening. Do I think that there are also bad faith efforts to. To use anti Semitism to score political points? Yeah, I think that's also that.
[00:48:19] Speaker C: And I just want to, like, jump in here because now that I've heard Vlad say all that, I feel jealous. I should say something. God, no. But in all, in all seriousness, though, like, I have always said that, like, we are not in a very strong position to complain about the burning cross in front of our neighbor's yard when we have a Hezbollah flag and a Hamas flag in ours and there's hostages buried underneath it. Okay. It makes our position of criticism that much more difficult. We have a lot of internal house cleaning to do. Let me talk for a moment, if I can. I'll go back to this question of what were to do with, with these potentially false accusations of anti semitism. Certainly that's. You're not making. That's not being said in jest. That really is happening. You're right. What to do about that? I would just say this much. The landscape is extremely confusing right now. There's, like, billions of dollars that are going into various universities from Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes. There's a study that was done by Lee Jessam and others at Rutgers that exposed a network of billions of dollars of cash going into institutions that are. And here's the thing. This is the catch, right. Wherever that money concentrated the most, and usually to fund Middle Eastern studies departments, guess what happened? There were much, much higher reported, correlated incidents of anti semitism.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: We're talking about as a fundamental driver, people, professors and entire departments that are partisans in delivering eliminationist ideology that's been wandered through the highest levels of our education system and legitimated. That's a problem, Dick.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: See, this is where we've been agreeing that it's good not to, at this point in time, over litigate certain debates. But.
[00:49:57] Speaker C: Okay, I'm not trying to do that.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: No, no, wait, wait, wait. I'm not criticizing you. I just want to say if. If one is discussing in a academic context the problems, contradictions within Zionism, is that anti Semitism?
[00:50:16] Speaker C: No, I mean, obviously, generally speaking, though. But my point to you is that in this environment, right, which is so riddled with people who are very obviously, you know, partisans on behalf of an eliminationist ideology sponsored by. They exist. They exist. They're real. Okay. There's a lot of people who are doing the work, who are trying to ask those basic and good questions. But in this immediate environment, it gets really hard to distinguish what's what. And it's the reason that we get, you know, DeSantis in Florida that have these wide, sweeping authoritarian approaches that are actually appealing to people. Because at least this moron can make sense of this otherwise complicated situation. Right? Like it is a complicated situation. But until we address some of the underlying systemic problems and the finances and we actually have an investigation, and God willing, that's under a Biden administration and not a Trump one. But until we get that done, this question is going to be very convoluted of what is real anti semitism and what is fake and who knows, right? Who's actually having an earnest conversation in this environment. That's very difficult to tell sometimes.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: So suppose I were to say that Netanyahu's hope politically is for Trump to be the president and that, well, I.
[00:51:29] Speaker C: Would counter that the extremists who are driving the campus in Cabot's, the ones we were talking about earlier, shut down Foustland. They want Trump, too, because the intifada had better marketing under the orange guy.
[00:51:40] Speaker A: Well, I don't know. That's a hypothesis, which I don't.
[00:51:44] Speaker C: All right, well, okay.
We don't have to take that one as gospel. All right. I'm not. That's not necessary.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:51:50] Speaker C: All right, so the question is, like, I want to go back to something you were talking about earlier with regards to whether or not there's a place for progressive Zionists, how to include them. And can a progressive zionist support the war? So I want to be clear about my convictions here. I support the defeat, the isolation and the removal of Hamas, the degradation of their resources. I support anything that's going to prevent them from becoming a quantity again.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:52:18] Speaker C: And as for how the war is being handled, like, I can tell you that during the era of the Goldstone report, which I think came out in, like, what, 2018? I want to say 2016. I can't remember now, but I remember when that report was issued and the UN condemned Israel for its behavior in war. And I thought to myself, well, this is an absolute horror show. In fact, South Africa used the Goldstone report as the basis of its complaint and filing against Israel and in these current charges, and it was in 2009, I was way off. But later on, the author of the Goldstone report, a south african judge himself, came out and admitted and said the new findings have come to light. Everything I said in this report, iron edge, pretty much that's not included in South Africa's case, right. Against Israel. Right now, that part isn't included at all. So the reason I'm mentioning this isn't just so I can yammer on about it. It's because I have become, since that moment, really, I've been much more patient in terms of waiting for the truth to come out. Truth takes a long time to come out.
Anyone who wants fast and simple solutions, you're not going to find too many of them in this world. You want to jump to conclusions about what Israel's behavior is and has been in this war? Well, it's going to take a while before there's things we can't know. And jumping to conclusions is really dangerous. We saw what happened at the al Ahi hospital, right? There was a bombing in their parking lot, and it was from, like, islamic jihad, for God's sakes. It wasn't even Israel that hit the parking lot. Dude. There were riots in Ramallah that almost tore down the government because people were so busy blaming Israel. It was the largest riot in Ramallah's history. Like, we literally almost lost the West bank because of that lie. There were people in Turkey tearing down the fences of a NATO establishment. Do you know what would happen if NATO had to open fire on turkish citizens? So huge questions in front of us there, right? My point saying this, is that it's really dangerous to buy into the hype. There are real political consequences when we do.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: There's also like a really, really high daily death rate. So it's not like we have the time to just be like, wow, we'll just like, wait.
[00:54:24] Speaker C: Well, let me, let me poke back at that. When one other conflict, let me poke back at that. What other conflict do you know of where the death rate was updated daily.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: Like that only the Iraq war, the, the afghan war, while we cared until we stopped caring. But like, yeah, it happens.
I just wanted so on this question of the war, and I think this is like a good one to wrap up and we can maybe combine, like, this war and then how to move forward. Like you and I get into it. Matthew on the line about this, we talk, you know, in direct message and also publicly and all of this stuff. And, you know, so we can all, we disagree, agree to disagree, all of these things. To me, I would say that the caveat that you started with, you know, of this, like, I support a military action that would do x, Y and z. Now, is that what's happening now? I'm not sure is a really important dis, like that distance is important. And what I would argue is that the bigger that distance becomes, the bigger the distance between, like, you know, I support Israel's right to defend itself, but let's talk about this war. The more room there is, I think, for that kind of dialogue and, and bridge building that we're talking about. But when I see people, I just can't help but think are like, no better. And frankly, like, as you say, like, when things come out, are going to feel bad defending things that just are, like, indefensible.
And, and I think there's such a strong argument from an israeli point of view, from, is the interest of the average israeli point of view against this war and what's happening that that doesn't get out nearly enough. I guess what I would say is, without trying to litigate everything about the war here, I think everybody's views are clear. What I would say as an appeal is that, you know, it's to think about and be more vocal about, like, what is the distance between what you think would be a justified military action and what is in fact happening even with what's been, what is not, what is stipulated, what it is, isn't even disputed.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we're running out of time.
Ada is very strong on this.
We're right on the table. The President Biden, a Democrat, has put on the table a path to ceasefire and maybe a path to resolution. There's very little organized support for this happening.
That seems to me, he's claiming somehow that it comes from Israel, this plan.
And I don't know whether this is highly brilliant, intelligent chess playing or a big mistake, but it seems to me that we could unite a lot of people in the jewish community, maybe the majority, around an effort to support Briden's peace initiative, for example, and putting on the back burner for the moment, all of the very fierce questions that we've touched on with each other here today. And we have, you know, we've just scratched the surface. We haven't talked about the right wing in Israel. What is that about? We haven't talked about, I alluded to Netanyahu's political goals. They are very scary to me. And they don't, you know, to endorse the war is to endorse that we don't know. So anyway, let's get final wrap up from each of you a couple of minutes. Thank you. I really appreciate the fact that you guys were willing to engage, not knowing what traps we were laying for you. And I think we've had this experience on all our podcasts of reaching the end, agreeing that there might be a way to unify people of good intention and progressive inclination on a peace path. So maybe we can get that kind of resolution here. You want to say anything?
[00:58:25] Speaker D: Sure. The first thing I want to say is actually to go back to something that your previous guest, Shereen, had said, and that is that, and I've said this before and have said it publicly and privately to individuals. And that is that I don't think that anybody in the world can better understand the 2000 year, year yearning the jewish people for that very same piece of land better than Palestinians.
Nobody understands better what it's like to be exiled from that land to yearn for it, to want to return to it, to love it, to feel that one's identity is wrapped up with it. I don't think anybody can understand that zionist yearning better than the Palestinians. And I think that is part of the incredible tragedy of all of this. This not only that it's cousins killing one another, but actually that these two people are actually so deeply aligned in their love for this piece of land and yet, you know, aren't coming together on the basis of that love, but rather are killing each other on the basis of that love. So that's the first thing I would say, is I think there's a tremendous ground upon which we can come together as Jews, as Palestinians around that mutual shared sense of, of belonging to the land, of love for the land, etcetera the second thing that I'll say is that, again, I just think that we need to get back to a mature politics focused on practical realities of this conflict and what is needed in order to move us towards a resolution. What are the needs of the two people that will have to share this land? As you said, there's no future in the region without Jews. There's no future in the region without Palestinians, which means that we're going to have to figure out how to live together. And that means figuring out, again, practical realities. Where do we draw the borders? How do we share the resources? How do we ensure security and dignity and human rights? All of those things. But those are things that can be worked out. Right. It's those cosmic battles that can never be solved. Right. Once you get off into these notions of holy war or these notions of anti semitic or islamophobic conspiracy theories, et cetera, that's where we undermine our ability to actually create a better future for our children. So I guess I'll leave it there. Leave it on a hopeful note, I guess.
[01:00:43] Speaker C: Thank you, and I really appreciate that hopeful note. Now for something totally hopeless. So let me just say that the politics of unrestable grievance are not attractive or useful politics, and they do not attract a useful outcome. And I think, more to me, the thing that said that more than anything else, is the insistence on the fabrication of the permanent refugee status. The sense of alienation that permeates palestinian politics is deliberately structured into it. From the time the children are born, they're taught that, like in the unrust schools, they're taught that they are alienated from the land that is promised to them, that it's right over there, it's right next door, it's in Tel Aviv, whatever. And I think that's a terrible way to live. It's a terrible way to live to feel that something is totally wrong and irreplaceable. I think that. But to me, the problem that we're having in Palestine is no different than the problem that we're having in this country in terms of the way that our politics are situated. And in both cases, the structural recommend, the structural recommendations are the same. Right. Get away from the politics of endless and entrenched and unrestable grievances. It's not useful. It doesn't generate anything that's civilizationally directed. Okay? It just generates things like Hamas, the willingness to inflict self harm in order to prove some kind of self righteous point. And for what? To lead to destruction of your own people. And we're seeing the same unrestable grievance rating in our politics here in this country on the left, the sense that there's a historical justice that can never be corrected. And for what? For what? Where does it lead us to as a country, as a people, as a nation? So I think that if you want to know what, but what my positionality is in regards to progressive politics, I think when people are ready to start having those kinds of conversations, like I want to be at the table, we try to be at the table. We've been kicked, I've been kicked out of a lot of rooms, man, in the progressive caucus and in other places, I've been kicked off of zooms and everything. But we keep on coming back because we really do believe that the power of dialogue and discourse, the willingness to hear opinions that you may not be comfortable with.
[01:02:52] Speaker A: Right.
[01:02:52] Speaker C: But it's important that you hear them and humanize them rather than turn them into zionist demons. I think that's probably an important part of the process. And I'm committed to every single category on the left, man, I want universal healthcare. I want to lower the cost of college intuition, tuition and make it, or make it free.
These are dreams that are really important for us to recognize as a country. Part of the reason we're not recognizing them is because we're putting the unrestable grievances, historical grievances, in front of all that, and we're surrendering our real agenda on the left to those causes. That's not an acceptable organizing principle. Doesn't promise anything. I promise you that. Thanks for having us on.
[01:03:30] Speaker B: I think that was, you just opened up so many cans there on your way out, brother.
[01:03:37] Speaker A: Well, I think, I think we can, you know, I think I like what Matthew was just saying. I would add one thing, which is fight for that same dialogue within the organized jewish community would be a good thing to keep in mind. And I mean, just for example, if Hillel was an open space on campus like mine, it would be a different situation entirely on campus. And I say that with the backing of people who were founding figures in my years of Hillel back, you know, 30, 40 years ago, who are dismayed by what's happened there. So that that would be just one thought I had.
Can we wind this up with a, with a, again, great gratitude for you guys and hope to be in touch with you over the coming period. Thank you, Ada, for that final word and everyone listening. If you thought this was fruitful, please share it with other people. Please support
[email protected]. tsmh and we'll be back soon enough. Take care guys.
[01:05:02] Speaker C: Ali tan haya le mele anavini. Ali tan vashakti avalani ODK azalay lam.
