A History of Jewish Anti-Zionism Nobody Talks About

Of course, Israel has a right to exist. I mean, it's a country, right? Well, no, it's not. It's a foreign settler colonial regime that was implanted there at gunpoint by the British and later by the Americans and the French that anti-Zionism among Jews is much older than Zionism. And this is where I start the book.

A lot of people who did know Jewish tradition and did care about it understood immediately how threatening this was.

Liberal Zionists are a stopgap against fundamental change, against radical change, against freedom for Palestinians, against an end to the occupation. They're a stopgap because they're, you know, they can be portrayed as easily satisfied, right?

The liberal Zionists are the real, they're the enemy. They're the enemy. They're the real enemy. There's not a liberal version of apartheid. Zionism is an iniquitous, evil ideology. There's not a Diet Coke

version of that. As somebody who worked in the mainstream media, I used to see that in action. But I remember working there and being struck by the fact that the leadership were all, I'm going to call it honestly,

white British public schoolboys. They're proud of belonging to the imperial hierarchy. They are toadies. They're sucking up to people in power. That's not what journalism should be. But unfortunately, for many people, that's what journalism is.

The BBC Middle East correspondent was doing a piece to camera for BBC. And she said Netanyahu was up against centrists and the centre-left, I think. She said Isenkot was low-key and softly spoken. As if somehow, if he got elected, this would be a return to the idea of Israel as a liberal democracy. They're desperate for that.

This is the man who came up with the Dahiya doctrine. This is the man who was in charge of the Israeli army during the right to return marches in 2018 when snipers were picking off Palestinians, including journalists, including a nurse. 183 people, I believe. And yet this is the man who is being presented as a liberal.

And even if you look at his position, his position on Gaza is that the job hasn't been done well enough.

This is a choice about how to administer who is the right person To administer a genocide and ethnic cleansing. And if you put it in that language, suddenly you realize that this coverage that we're seeing is naive, is generous.

But it's for suckers. The independent media, like Palestine Deep Dive, have been amazing at filling the space since the genocide began. And I always say that they're filling a space that's been abandoned by the mainstream. And that space is journalism. It's journalistic. It's actually the space where things are reported with accuracy.

For years, we have been told Zionism is inseparable from the Jewish identity, that it is the answer to antisemitism, and that opposing it is somehow an attack on Jews themselves. But what if that story leaves out a pretty major part of Jewish history? Generations of Jews opposed Zionism from the very beginning.

So why have their voices been pushed to the margins? That's a question at the heart of Benjamin Moser's new book, Anti-Zionism, A Jewish History. Through the lives of rabbis, intellectuals, politicians, and activists, Benjamin traces a long, complicated tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism. One, that it challenges some of the assumptions shaping today's debate.

Ben joins us today in the studio alongside Irish journalist Barry Malone as we dig into that history and what it means for the politics of Israel and Palestine right now. We will also look at the anti-Semitism debate in Britain and whether the future of Palestinians would be under a different Israeli Prime Minister.

Benjamin and Barry, thank you very much for joining us today. How are you? Thank you. Thanks for having us. It's great to be here. I'm very sorry. Our co-host Hala Hanina is not joining us today. She's on a leave, but she will join us next week. She says hi to both of you. Hello. Hi, Hala. It's a very interesting discussion today because we have American, Irish and Palestinian.

We don't have any British today.

That's unusual, is it? Nobody's perfect. It's unusual.

And we're all men. So now the feminist will hate us. Not so good. Anyway, Benjamin, I have to start with you. I want to congratulate you on this book. Really brilliant book, Anti-Zionism, a Jewish history. And I watched your interviews. I watched your interview with Piers Morgan, for example. And you did amazing.

I loved your interview. Did I? I'm glad.

I got lots of reactions.

To be honest, I was really surprised that Piers Morgan interviewed you. Yeah, I was too. And it was the first interview of the show. And it was not like a fight between you and other Zionist persons. So how did you find it?

I don't get into fights with Zionists. I mean, I did that my entire life. And I felt like I'm always open to talking to people who are on a... Journey as I was my whole life. You know, people who sincerely are troubled by what's happening to Palestine, what's happening in the name of the Jews. I'll talk to those people all the time and I do every day.

But going on television and screaming at some Zionist spokeswoman, it's just not my style. I'm a writer. I'm a historian. I don't do that kind of thing. And that doesn't change people's minds. There's a theatrical aspect to it. But it was very nice of him to have me on there. And I was a little bit surprised that it went so well just because I was so jet lagged.

Yeah, and it was surprising for Piers Morgan because hugely he brings guests to attack them and ask these like fiery questions. But with you, he was really good. And I think it was very important because he has an audience that we need to reach. And you explained Zionism in a very eloquent way. So I was very proud of you.

Oh, well, thank you. I mean, I think he's one of these people that probably is on the conservative side of things generally and probably was... Naturally pro-Israel for his whole life and who has seen this and who actually does have the status that he has, the number of viewers he has, means that he's allowed to do this.

I mean, a lot of the media won't have me on. They really won't.

That's really interesting. You're a very successful journalist and you say the media won't have you on. Why?

No.

Maybe I should ask.

Why not? Why will you not have me on?

I'm independent. Look, if I had power at the BBC, I'd have you on every day. Yeah, but I mean, I get on the BBC for every other book, but not this one. Yeah, well, that's the thing, right? It's like... You know, in the US, right, it's progressive except Palestine, right? You know, what you were talking about before was clearly palatable.

And once you start talking about Zionism, once you start talking about Palestine, you're persona non grata, right? I mean, it happened to Ta-Nehisi Coates. It happened to Greta Thunberg. Absolutely. I mean, she was the darling of Western politicians and

Western media. It's fine to talk about the climate. It's fine to talk about anything else. But that's changing. This is the great taboo. The moment you talk about Palestine, you're canceled. You're canceled by those people. Who are these people? Those people. Who are they? The people who are in charge of the legacy media.

Who are, even if they're not actually Zionists themselves, and I know a lot of these people, and a lot of them are very troubled, sincerely troubled by what's happening. But there are corporate and political incentives for these people just to kind of keep quiet. And this is the reality. I mean, this is what we're all up against.

But I think there's this incredible new media environment of which this is a part that is... Getting unbelievable amounts of attention and views from people who know they're being lied to by these people because it's so obvious and it's so disgusting. And, you know, people all have a phone. People see what's happening in Palestine.

And they also see who's not talking about it or who's lying about it.

Yeah, I think it's changing. You know, the independent media like Palestine Deep Dive have been amazing at filling the space since the genocide began. And I always say that they're filling a space that's been abandoned by them. And that space is journalism. It's journalistic. It's actually the space where things are reported with accuracy.

And I think that's the thing that a lot of people who work in the mainstream media don't get. They think that organizations like Palestine Deep Dive or Middle East Eye or Zeteo or Double Down News are activists, that they're biased. But actually, the truth is the opposite. The truth is that the mainstream media I think there's another thing that comes down to sort of individual journalists and the kind of people who are in leadership positions in those organizations, right?

So it's quite uniform in the BBC or in New York Times or even the news agencies like Reuters or AP. They're people who grew up You people are inherently warlike. Okay, look. Okay, I'll concede that. History doesn't lie. Righteously war, like resistance. But no, it's true. The way that they come out the world, I think it's very hard for them to break out of that framing.

So there will be people in the BBC who think you're an extremist.

Oh, no. Well, they tell me that all the time. And it's very interesting that you use the word abandoned. They've abandoned these spaces. And I think that the... I think the world history, you know, when we look at this in 100 years or 200 years, if we're still alive, you know, as a race of humanity. But I think that what's been so vital about the genocide and about what it's exposed about all of our media organizations, about our political parties, about our corporate incentives and the people who are in charge of all of these societies, because, you know, I've lived in a lot of different countries over the years and I know But a national level, on the level of the economy and of politics, Ireland is deeply complicit with the genocide.

That there is one thing, you know, like who is they? Who are these people? It's a hard question. But a friend of mine was in Mississippi, which is for people who aren't familiar with the United States, Mississippi is traditionally thought of as kind of the worst part of the country. You know, it's poor.

It's just the stereotype. You know, it's actually a lovely place. But, you know, you think of it as poor. You think of it as racist. You think of it as Jim Crow and all this stuff. And he's somebody who's worked in politics all around the world. And he said the number one issue in Mississippi – People want Zionism out of our politics, out of our economy.

This is Mississippi. So I know it's huge. And I know this is true. So you can look at a place like Argentina, for example, which is a very big Jewish country. You know, it's a very important, you know, Part of the global south. It has an absolute psychotic president. But if you look at the polls, Argentina isn't different from Spain or Ireland in terms of what actual people are seeing and what they're actually thinking.

So we have this disconnect that we're seeing reflected in the media. But it's also on the level of politics. And as Ta-Nehisi says, you mentioned him, who's been such a great fighter for this cause. Ta-Nehisi has this saying. I mean, I heard it from him, actually. Then I heard it was actually from Andrew Breitbart, which I thought was kind of hilarious because I was going around quoting.

Ta-Nehisi Coates. And it turns out I was quoting Andrew Breitbart. But the saying is that politics is downstream from culture. So culture broadly seen, you know, maybe it's a musician like Macklemore. Maybe it's an actress. Maybe it's a, you know, it's a writer like me or, you know, we're all trying to create the context that makes political change possible.

All the while being aware that it's too late for so many people. But at the same time... This change has happened so quickly and these big organizations have just absolutely abandoned their own

Talking about the change that happens very quickly now, and going back to your book as well, you say that when you grew up in America, everyone in America was almost, almost everyone in America was Zionist, Jews or non-Jews. Everyone. Everyone was Zionist, in Europe as well, in Britain, everywhere. Now you also say that suddenly, we were talking about this before we started filming, you said now, You hardly find any Zionists in America.

It's amazing.

Is that true? What is going on?

I mean, of course there's Zionists in America, right? I mean, but a lot of them, first of all, a lot of them are Christians, and that's always been true. There's 40 million members of Christian Zionist organizations in the United States alone. There's only 15 million Jews in the entire world total. That's one country.

It's a big and important country, but it shows just how many Zionists are not Jews. But on the other hand... I grew up in a world where everybody was a Zionist. And that wasn't Jews either. I mean, that was black people. That was Hispanic people. That was Asian people. The only exception were Arabs and Muslims.

But actually, I didn't really grow up knowing very many Arabs or Muslims. I mean, not because I didn't want to, but that's just not my neighborhood or where I live. Houston, where I grew up, is actually, I heard there's more Palestinians in Houston than in Ramallah. Have you heard this? No. Despite the diversity of America, which was always there, Zionism was an absolute unanimity.

And this is so hard, I think, for younger people to understand how this was even possible. I find it fascinating that it was possible. But if you look at the first time in our nation that an anti-Zionist politician was elected, can you think who it was and when? You have to go all the way back to 2025.

And it's Soran Mondani. The first time in any nationally prominent politician could be openly opposed to Zionism was one year ago. And we all remember how they absolutely went bonkers saying he was an anti-Semite and he was going to ethnically cleanse Brooklyn or all this kind of stuff that we heard every day.

And now within a very short time, you see so in New York, you have people like Brad Lander, you have Daria Lisa Chevalier, you have... This woman in Colorado, this Ethiopian American woman, you have Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, like all of a sudden you're seeing these people not only existing somewhere, but actually existing in ways that we can see them.

And I think that we're in the middle of revolutionary time.

Yeah. And also, yeah, we understand that it took a genocide for the world to change so that we have like politicians like Abdul or Mamdani who are, I don't know if they're anti-Zionists or not, but finally we see that there are anti-Zionists who emerge in America and in New York. And that is recent, that's new.

But in your book, you say that anti-Zionism was there Across history, across time. Like a century ago, anti-Zionism was like popular. It was not contested among the Jewish people.

It was by far the majority among Jews.

By far.

And this is something that was totally forgotten. So when you... Say that you grew up in a world where everybody was Zionist. You have to realize this is a great achievement on the part of the Zionists. And this is something that in the annals of marketing and PR is almost unprecedented. Because again, if you think about politicians just talking about the United States, but you could switch in any other country for this, really.

This was a non-controversial thing. However... I think that's why I wrote this book in part is to say that even though all these people were not seen, were not known, they were always there. There were people from the very beginning and even from before the beginning of Zionism.

They were very, very anti-Zionists.

Well, I always point out, and people lose their minds when I say this, but it's true, that anti-Zionism among Jews is much older than Zionism. Because the Zionists, the first ideologues of Zionism were Christians. And they were Christians who had these ideas about the end of the world and the Jews go back to Palestine and Christ returns from the tomb and all this stuff.

Of course, for Jews, it has nothing to do with our religion. It has nothing to do with our tradition. And it was not only wrong from the Jewish religious perspective, it was quite threatening to Jews. Hmm. Because it was about basically ethnically cleansing Jews out of their own countries. And then if you're a Christian believer, you know how this ends when Jesus comes back is we all get thrown into a lake of fire.

Literally. That's what they believe. That's what they believe. And they still do. And they still do. Well, now they're actually doing it. But like, you know, you see these people like Mike Huckabee and all these. This is a very powerful strain in evangelical Christianity, Protestant Christianity. So...

So anybody who, you know, the Jews were appalled by this. We're talking about the end of the 18th century, the beginning of the 19th century. When Herzl comes along at the end of the 19th century, his big achievement is kind of Judaizing this Christian idea. But of course, and this is where I start the book, a lot of people who did know Jewish tradition and did care about it understood immediately how threatening this was.

Tell me about the writings of Theodor Herzl that you found in your father's home. And tell me exactly what happened that changed you from a liberal Zionist, as you described, growing up as a liberal Zionist to become an anti-Zionist?

Well, so Herzl was, I think if you grow up Jewish, you know who's Jewish, right? It's one of these things that, I don't know if the Irish probably know who's Irish, right?

What, you mean on site? Just, no, no, no, well, also. No, because we know that. Oh, yeah, of course you do. There's like a thing, Irish People always joke about that. Yeah, but it's true. You know, you're in New York and you spot another. You know, I remember sitting in Central Park on a bench and a guy, I saw him coming and I thought that's an Irish guy.

And he walked over to me and he said, hey, which part of Ireland are you from? So sorry, but I didn't know if you meant that. But yes, we do.

When I moved to the Netherlands many years ago, I was amazed that the Dutch could always see who was Belgian. And I thought, well, you people kind of look the same, right? And now that I've been there for 25 years, like, the Belgians look absolutely nothing like the Dutch. I'm shocked that I could ever make that mistake.

You couldn't, you know, if you know. So that's... But Jews are always, I think like a lot of minority groups, people are sort of proud of the famous Jewish figures, right? So you know who Albert Einstein is and all these people. It doesn't really matter if it's in sports or if it's in opera or if it's in whatever.

Herzl was one of these great figures. And I had this book that my grandfather brought with him when he flees Nazi Germany in 1938. And it's this big blue book. It's really big. It's really heavy. And it's important to emphasize it's heavy. It's not the kind of thing that you would take as a refugee unless it was really important to you.

And it has a portrait of Herzl on the cover. And he's looking and he has this long beard that he cultivates to look like an Old Testament prophet. And anyway, this book was just hanging around my grandmother's house. It was in my parents' house and it's now in my house. But it was one of these family heirlooms.

And I was quite touched by the story of this book that survives the Holocaust and it comes out. And it's the story of like Jewish resilience and survival. But I'd never read it. And when I finally, I mean, so you're asking about my evolution from liberal Zionism to Antizoidism, which is a whole story which I'll try to touch on a little bit.

I'd never read this. So I didn't really know that much about Zionism, except that it was this movement and Israel and blah, blah, blah, you know, the very basic stuff. But I hadn't ever really read the ideology of the early Zionists. And when I finally read this book a few years ago, I was already on this journey that I'd been on for a long time.

But as a liberal Zionist, so I talk about my, the time, and this has something to do with Ireland actually, but sort of at the end of this period. So I'm born in 1976. So when I'm 13, the Berlin Wall falls. So that seems great. The next year, South Africa finally starts to crack the apartheid regime.

All that same time in the 80s, especially in the 90s a bit, the Latin American dictatorships, which were very close to where I was growing up. They just kind of went away. You know, they just went away. And then the last big movement of that was Northern Ireland, which was one of these things that people thought would never be solved.

Suddenly it's solved. Now, during this whole period, you have the so-called peace process, which is... All these big conferences. Look at all these other problems we've solved, right? And they're working on this, and maybe this agreement isn't so good, and this agreement's not so good. But, you know, we're going to get there eventually.

And this was very—I think everybody thought that. I mean, Palestinians didn't think this, or at least a lot of the smarter ones didn't think this. But I think for a lot of people who were smart Palestinians, they also thought, well, okay, well, this isn't great, but this is a first step. So now we are 40 years past that almost, past Oslo, almost 30 plus years.

And as you said, we're in the middle of a genocide. So clearly this didn't work out. So I think you could still be a liberal Zionist in that time and kind of wish Israel well and also wish Palestine well. Just like you would think, well, I don't have to not like white people in South Africa to think that there should be a democracy in South Africa.

But like the problem is you're not actually answering the question. And the question is always the anti-Zionist question, which I come to later, is one of the third rails of the media. And this is also why, you know, I don't get platformed in these same ways because I asked this question and I do it quite proudly and quite obnoxiously, I think.

Which is, does Israel have a right to exist? No. This sounds like, well, you're a terrible person. Like, does France have a right to exist? It's a gotcha question. Right. Does Japan have a right to exist? You think, well, okay, well, yeah, of course Israel has a right to exist. I mean, it's a country, right?

Well, no, it's not. It's a foreign settler colonial regime that was implanted there at gunpoint. By the British and later by the Americans and the French, don't forget the French and the British, because Americans get blamed for this, but actually the British and the French really got it going. You know, did this foreign group have the right to come to Palestine, which was 95 to 97% non-Jewish, and not only come there as immigrants, which nobody had a problem with.

The Palestinians were quite clear about this, and there'd always been Jews in Palestine, and nobody bothered them. But they don't come as immigrants. They come as conquerors. They boycott the Palestinians. They destroy their economy. In 1948, they ethnically cleansed them the first time. They submit them to decades of brutal occupation.

In 1967, you have another ethnic cleansing. You have then the more decades of the most brutal occupation in the world culminating So to me, when you say, does Israel have a right to exist? Does Zionism have a right to exist? That's the question. It's not what's your thought about Zionism. It's like, what is Zionism?

What has it actually meant? And when you ask the question that way, you have to say, no, of course not. And that is a question that I think people for the first time in my world have been asking in the last few years. But in my book, I say people have been saying this forever. Yes.

They're asking that question here as well now, I mean, because it was a taboo, right? It was. It was. There's a hesitation, a slight pause, any attempts to add some nuance. If you didn't just say, yes, you are a bad person, you are anti-Semitic. And that is changing here now a little bit, actually a lot, because, you know, I'm sure you're aware.

We've had this Green Party motion in this country that they voted that Zionism is racism. We're now into the third week of a media cycle attacking the Green Party for that. It's an incredible moment to see it.

It is interesting, though. One of the things that they've been very successful in, and I think this is what the Green Party discussion, if you can call it a discussion, is about. A lot of it is about language skirmishes. So are you allowed to say this word? Are you allowed to say that word? I even got into it the other day on this TV show that we were talking about a bit earlier.

I said I wasn't really prepared for it because I didn't quite realize it. I had just got back to the UK, so I hadn't really followed it. But I said, well, I don't know if Zionism is racism in the sense that it's not the same thing as racism. But I said Zionism is certainly racist, and it always has been, and it was very explicitly racist.

You didn't have to dig deep. I think when I was working on this book, one of the things that really surprised me was how in plain sight all this history was. You can go to the library and you can find it. So when I say it's a suppressed history, it's not suppressed in the sense that they burned the libraries or the archives.

It's just they managed to create skirmishes around language. So you didn't actually answer these questions. And they've been very, very successful at that. But it's one of the reasons why I go out and say these things because I don't want to have... Language determine at a time when all these people are dying.

Every day people are being killed. Okay, so racist versus racism, whatever you want to call it, it's a wicked ideology. It's an evil, evil thing that has killed so many people. And even the people whose lives haven't been ended by it have been destroyed. I mean, you see, we're looking at the, I think it's the largest collection of child amputees in the world is in Gaza.

That's UNICEF.

That's what we're talking about here. So when you get into the like, is it racism or racist or is it raceome or raceome, you know, whatever, like you can do it however you want to do it. But it's, I think it's just very important. And so you see, why did they succeed so well in making everybody think that Zionism was inevitable?

That is the question I really want to ask you, Barry. Why did they succeed? I mean... As Ben just described it, Zionism is very clear ideology. It's racist ideology. And now we're talking about the history of Palestine and Israel, the Jewish people who came to Palestine. They were not there as refugees or immigrants.

They were as conquerors. And the history of Palestine and Israel is very clear. So what is so difficult for the ministry media to understand? Why do they... I honestly, I always come back to how the media frames struggle.

Why the media frames stories particular ways and where the media is based, where the most powerful media organizations in the world are based, right? So the most powerful international media organizations in the world, the ones who have resources, the ones who have massive audits, Audiences, again, they're made up, staffed and run by people who share a similar background, as I mentioned earlier.

And as somebody who worked in the mainstream media, I used to see that in action. So when I worked at Reuters, you know, and I actually think Reuters have been, they've had massive problems with how they frame the genocide and the terminology that they've used. But they've been far from one of the most egregious organizations in the way that they've covered it.

But I remember working there and being struck by the fact that the leadership were all... I'm going to call it honestly, white British public schoolboys. Right. That was the leadership of Reuters when I was there. And I would get on a sort of a morning call and I couldn't tell one person apart from the other because this was the days before like Zoom or Teams or whatever.

You know, we were. On the phone, we could only hear voices. And so I would just hear all these posh British voices and I wouldn't know who was speaking. And like at the time, it felt like their idea of diversity was me, you know, some Irish guy or like a woman, just one posh woman, right? Right. So the point is that they come up with a particular view of the world because that's how these things have always been reported.

And what they would always firstly deny people who work at BBC or New York Times or anywhere is that what happens is that the politics of the government in the countries where they are based filters down into the way that they view the world. So you will see, for example, very different coverage of British or American allies Versus British or American foes.

Right. And it's so apparent in the language, in the tenor of the coverage. So, for example, you know, like Saudi Arabia. Right. Saudi Arabia is reported very differently to Iran. Exactly. I think that's a very valid comparison to make is the way that Iran is reported, the way that Saudi Arabia is reported.

Even if you look at, you know, you're talking about language, you know, look at the way that Iran is always a regime. It's the Iranian regime. It's the Saudi government. Also, you know, Iranian leaders and, you know, also like Kim Jong-un. And, you know, this is not to defend Kim Jong-un. This is to defend accuracy in journalism.

Kim Jong-un is called a dictator. He's portrayed as this bumbling fool, this sort of inherently dangerous world leader where when you see the U.S. and South Korea carrying out military sort of exercises, That is always framed by the Western media as they are preparing because of a threat. Well, look at

the Kims in North Korea. They're actually not that different from the Arab Gulf regimes in terms of they're these like very repressive monarchies. Yeah, and Saudi, you know—

Yeah, Mohammed bin Salman is always portrayed as this young reformer. He's a young reformist. And then there's another thing that the British media loves to apply, which is British educated. So Bashar al-Assad, they would always say, British educated, Bashar. As if that makes him better or more sophisticated.

In America it's Harvard educated.

Yeah. You know, and they'll have some, I remember when I was a kid, you know, spending a lot of time in Latin America, they would always have like Harvard educated minister so and so. And it would be like the guy who was like destroying the economy and wrecking to like reformulate. So it's language.

That's what I just wanted to come back to. It's framing its language, I think, that has allowed that propaganda to succeed. And then another thing is just, as you were talking about, it's constant propaganda and actually constant intimidation. Like I've worked at media organizations where every day, you know, there are messages coming in from, you know, what are Israeli front organizations that say that they're monitoring.

I've had complaints made about me to Reuters by these organisations when I worked there. Now, fair play to Reuters, they dismissed them all because all I was doing If you're enjoying

this show, please don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe on YouTube. And if you want to support our work, we warmly welcome you to become a paid subscriber. Your support helps us build independent Palestinian-led media in a world which never needed more. Find the link in the description below.

This is not only about the media, but also the political class. I mean, when the Green Party motion was passed, Andy Burnham, our prime minister, said it's racist, it's anti-Semitic. So I want to ask you, Barry, is there any awareness of anti-Zionist Jewish traditions in our political class or not?

I really don't think so. I really, really don't think so. And, you know, illustrated by the fact that, you know, you say that there are certain shows you can't get on. But, you know, in terms of the political class, I think that when we hear them speaking again, they believe that. That it's a fundamental fact that Zionism is not racism, that Zionism, you know, one of the things that you hear all the time is they'll say, well, Zionism means different things to different people.

Oh, this is classic. Classic. And it's like we hear that from the political class. Okay, I mean, I don't know if you would... I don't think you buy that, Benjamin. But it's like, okay, but how has it materially manifested in reality? But it's another one of these lines.

And it's exactly what we're saying about these other lines about does Israel have a right to exist or these things that the reason they ask these questions is to establish whether you are in the in crowd or the out crowd. So I'm Jewish. I have what you said. I have a different accent in this country than I do in my own country.

But believe me, in my own country, I have the right accent. I would be interchangeable with anybody else on the pre-Zoom era. You know, I check all those boxes. And as long as you do that, you're okay. And so there's all these incentives to keep you on that track. And you know, of course, if you're Jewish, but also if you're American, you know that to do these kinds of things, to talk in this way is to put you outside of beyond the pale of respectability.

Now, it's really interesting. Like in my book, I talk about Hannah Arendt. And she writes in her famous book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, about the Nazi, they call them the Sprachregelungen, the language rules. And she says what in normal parlance would be called a lie. So they say, they don't say we're sending these people to Auschwitz to be killed.

They say we're reassigning them to agricultural labor in the East. Everybody knows that's a lie, but you don't actually say what it's about. And what she gets in trouble for, and this is one of the things that I really do explain in the book, is she violates one of the other major, major language rules, which is in this book, she talks about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis, Zionist involvement in the Holocaust.

This is an absolute third rail. Now, she does it quite subtly. But people are always doing this very subtly. Another person I talk about in the book is this Israeli lawyer named Felicia Langer, who was this absolutely incredible, intrepid woman who becomes the first and the leading lawyer who represents Palestinian clients in Israel.

And she starts this really after 67. And... In her memoirs, which go on for thousands of pages, nobody ever read them. I mean, there were only three bookshops in Israel that would sell them. She had to publish them herself. She later flees, immigrates to Germany, which is an interesting little comment on the only democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish woman was freer in Germany to speak and to write than she was in Israel.

She does something really interesting in this book or in these books, which you start noticing, which is that she will So in 1939, when the Germans invade, they flee into the Soviet Union, which was a horrible thing, but it's slightly better than the Nazis, although really slightly. And so, She'll tell this story and then she'll say, my husband said this about how they were treated in the Nazi camps and how it looked like this prison.

And there's this one phase where she is in a prison in Israel. And she sees the Palestinian prisoners have their heads shaved and they have numbers written on them. And she says to a guard... Does this remind you of anything from our past? So again, she's not saying it. She's asking. And he says, well, if you knew how many Ahmeds and Mohammeds there were and how confusing that is.

Oh my God. And so she says, if you knew how many Rubensteins and Bernsteins there were and how confusing that was. She just leaves it there. So she gets very close to this line, but she knows that if you cross the line. So I've been, my principle in my practice is I want to cross that line. I don't want the respect of people I have no respect for.

I think that my heritage as a person of A descendant of Holocaust refugees, a person who took the legacy of the Holocaust seriously, who thinks that never again should mean never again for everyone, that I don't want to be bound by the rules that people who I think are fucking Nazis are trying to put on me.

I think that's so powerful. I think that's tremendously powerful that you are deliberately, you're saying that you're deliberately crossing that line. Those lines that, you know, you were never allowed to cross because there's such taboos. I think you need people to go out and deliberately cross. That's right.

And they have changed the conversation already. And I remember when sort of the days after the motion, he went out and he appeared on BBC, the Today programme, big prestigious programme. And, you know, he was asked the usual, does Israel have a right to exist? Which, by the way, I think journalists should be mortified to be asked.

I think they were doing it perfect. I think they're through it now. And so that's what you're deliberately doing, right? Yeah. Well, and Zach Polanski is interesting. I think it's similar to my position. So I'm Jewish and I have this...

I have a sense of security. I have security in a lot of different ways, right? So Palestinians don't have that security. Muslims definitely don't have that security. I don't get any sort of, you know, physical threats to me, although it's possible that it could happen. But there's something about... Needing to push that Overton window.

But I think that what they need to keep doing is keep pushing it and not be apologetic. Because the minute you're apologetic to Zionists, they come leap on you. I mean, the sorts of things I get, the sort of sewage that I get... Poured onto my head every day. But I actually, I made the decision that I didn't really want to toe the line.

And I think that the Greens did the same thing. I very much hope that they won't backtrack. I think it would be really devastating if they did. But again, I don't think they need to dig their heels in with this. If I were the Green Party, I would just say, yeah, next question. Because yeah, of course, Zionism's racism.

Moving along, what's your next question? Because otherwise you get stuck in this rhetorical quicksand where you're always defensive. I don't feel defensive. I feel offensive. I have nothing but loathing and contempt for the people and the institutions that have allowed a genocide to happen in my name with my money.

Day after day after day, month after month, we're watching what's happening. You want to get in a fight with me about my choice of words?

I think a lot of viewers in the UK and outside of Israel might be

pretty shocked to hear what you just said.

Wow. We don't know where to start.

We don't know where to start. We're going to kill them. She can say it out loud. I know.

She's from Texas, by the way, just like I am. She's from Texas. She's from Texas. No, for real? Yeah, look at her. Does she look indigenous to the Middle East? She says God promised

them this land.

I mean, how can people actually see that? Here's my positive spin on this person.

Yeah.

I've been saying this for a long time, that Zionism is over. And one of the reasons they're over is that this is about she looks stupid and she, you know, I mean, she's expressing it in a more teenage kind of way, but this is kind of what they are reduced to. This is how people see them across the world.

And when I talk about growing up in a liberal Zionist world... People thought that Israelis and Israel was a reasonable cause. It was something that people should support. They didn't think that everything about Israel was good. Cause I'm really clear about that. Like we were pretty, even our bad media, you know, you could see what was happening to the Palestinians.

Everybody knew that, but we still had this idea that this is going to end. And this is basically this unfortunate conflict. Now this girl, I've seen her a hundred times. Everybody in the world is making a reel with her. She is internet famous in a way that she'll never live down. And this is how it's going to go for the rest of their lives.

This is how everybody sees Israel now. And if you think back to just a few years, so you're Palestinian, obviously, so you didn't really see all of our terrible media as much as we were forced to see it. But this kind of crazy person would have been Arab. For my whole life. The equivalent, some crazy ISIS member or somebody, you know, with like, you know, some weird headgear or somebody with a funny accent.

You wouldn't have these people. The Jews, the Israelis always looked reasonable. And now this is, this is who is, this is what Zionism has come to. Made to look reasonable. Well, of course, made to look reasonable because there's a big casting, so to speak, where they chose, you know, we're talking about how the media selects, which voices get platformed and which don't.

So now that we have this alternative media ecosystem and we have somebody just walking up to some person and putting her on the internet, putting her on Instagram or on YouTube, That narrative has just—it's not just evolved or been nuanced. It's collapsed. And so I think that every time these people open their mouths—and, you know, they open their mouths all the time.

It's actually amazing. I was watching some soldiers the other day. They were on holiday somewhere. Talking about how many people they killed in Gaza and stuff. And you think like three years later, you still haven't realized that people are coming for you. And we are coming for them. I think it's very, very important to say that, and I can speak for a huge part of the Jewish community, the Jewish anti-Zionist community.

We are going to never forget this. People have a computer where they can record these things. The Palestinian organizations like the Hind Rajab Foundation is coming for these people. There's nothing left to defend in Zionism. When I was a kid, you could maybe not like Zionism. You couldn't like this politician or you couldn't like this minister or this policy.

But Zionism was beyond touch. You couldn't touch it. And now not only can you touch it, but there's going to be nothing left of it.

I think it's a mask off moment in like a whole series of mask off moments that we've had since the genocide began. And, you know, obviously there were mask off moments, but I mean, since the genocide began, these mask off moments have made the mainstream, well, not mainstream, And I think it puts the lie to the notion that you often see in the Western media that this is somehow Netanyahu's war or that somehow there are like a huge number of Israelis who are against this.

The genocide, which, you know, all you have to do is look at polls and that does not hold up in any way, shape or form. You can see that Israeli society is firmly behind this. And, you know, even if you look at the Netanyahu and Gaddy Isincott, his number one rival for... The so-called left candidate.

Well, exactly. On BBC yesterday, the BBC Middle East correspondent was doing a piece to camera for BBC. And she said Netanyahu was up against centrists and the centre left, I think. She said Isincott was low key and softly spoken as if somehow if he got elected, this would be A return to the idea of Israel as like a liberal democracy, which we know is nonsense.

But it's, you know, but it's the BBC saying this. And so people will take it seriously. So I think, you know, these mask off moments are actually really important. Because they put a lie to that propaganda that it's only the far right, that it's only Netanyahu, that it's only Ben Gavir. No, the views of Israeli society are profoundly problematic.

And it's good that it's being revealed. It's a completely fascist society. Exactly. And I think that the worst thing that could happen in these elections is if Netanyahu loses. Because we're speaking a lot about media criticism here. That will give this narrative of, oh, it was this one bad guy. When I was working on this book, one of the things that really stood out to me is how many Israeli leaders, prime ministers, presidents—we're not talking about just somebody in the army—were not only terrorists in the sense of they had ordered an attack on something— But they actually participated in terrorist attacks where civilians were slaughtered in the dozens or the hundreds.

And so what you see is a farce of this election campaign that everybody knows is a farce. They know there's no difference between these people. And yet we are subjected to this coverage as if this is a democratic election in a democratic country. I mean, already they are aware that more than half the population for racial reasons is not allowed to vote or half the population under their control.

So I think that when you... I think it does challenge these journalists in a way that they're not willing to be challenged. They're not willing to call the lie on this.

Yes, there are some Israelis who stand against the genocide, but they're a tiny number. But when you look at sort of the mainstream media, you would believe that that was a huge amount of Israeli people. Well, they show these demonstrations.

Right, exactly. Everybody's out in the street. But that was never about... They don't protest the genocide. They have never protested the genocide.

Of course not.

They're protesting something else. Yeah, exactly. And yet it's made out like they're protesting Netanyahu because of the genocide. You would, I think, as a casual viewer, you see these protests, you would think that, right? But it's not. It's like about the judiciary.

I have to clarify that we are recording this episode on the day of the election. And it will be released a day later. But I want to go back, Ben, to something that woman said. I don't know. And she said, this land is promised to us by God. But going back historically, when we read Theodor Herzl, Palestine was actually his fourth option.

It wasn't even his first or second option for where Zionism should take place. How can we reconcile this? Well, I don't listen.

I'm not somebody that is trying to reconcile like Jesus gave me your apartment, which is basically the Zionist argument, right? And literally in the sense of like your apartment, you see what they're doing in Hebron. They'll go room to room through people's homes. You know, Mohammed Al-Kurd, who's now here.

Settlers are in half of his house in Jerusalem. So it's not just an abstract, this land. It's literally somebody's apartment. Somebody who has a house, who has an address, who has a bathroom and a bedroom and a closet. And the idea that people believe this is just so strange to me. And it's one of these ideas that I think is taken seriously.

Just like these elections, like quote unquote elections. Well... I mean, I don't take that seriously. I descend from all kinds of people from all over the world. I'm not going to move back to Germany and knock on somebody's door and say... You need to be out of my apartment by 2 p.m. because my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was not from this house, but was from like this general region maybe thousands of years ago.

So please get out of here by noon. This is as hilarious as when Arabs go to Spain and say, okay, we lived there a few hundred years ago. Don't do that. It's like crazy. Yeah. Well, no, if the Arabs went to Seville or Cordoba and were like, yeah, I mean, this is something that, in fact, one of the great lies about European immigration policy now, this idea of the great replacement and, you know, the Muslims are coming to take us over.

The Muslims actually are not coming to take over France or Spain or Italy.

Not interested.

Thank you. Well, I mean, I wouldn't mind Spain or France or Italy if God wants to give them to me. I'll take it. But, like, I have to say, you know, as Henry IV said, Paris is worth a mess. I'll take it. However, when you're looking at who is actually doing this, It's the European white settler colonial peoples who are doing this to the Muslim world, as they have been doing for many centuries now, from Algeria to Indonesia to every other Muslim country that was colonized.

And it's interesting. Actually, in my book, I talk about how the Palestinians in the 19th century are very much aware of this. When Zionism starts, when Herzl starts, they, of course... They're not stupid. They know what happened to Algeria. They know what happened to Egypt. They know what happened to Iraq.

They know what happened to Libya. And in all these cases, including Algeria and Libya, for example, Libya is one of those colonies that people kind of forget about. But actually, the Italians claimed Libya because it was part of the Roman Empire. Just as the French claimed Algeria based on these other pretexts.

Now, none of them claimed this at first. They thought, okay, we want these people's country. So we're going to make up some cockamamie story and go in there and say this. And this is exactly what the Zionists have done. So, you know, is this girl, is this a theologian? Is this like a rabbi? Am I supposed to listen to this with some sort of respect?

But strangely enough, and this is including a lot of Christians, as we've discussed, they actually do take this seriously. But I don't have to take it seriously.

But it's dangerous though. Of course. When we talk about it right now, we talk about like a stupid gal here or there, but actually these people are very dangerous. But I think it's dangerous because we take them seriously.

And this is, again, coming back to this journalist thing. If all these people on the BBC called bullshit on this so-called election in Israel— And so this is a ridiculous thing in Latin America, where I spent a lot of time as a young person. They used to say our elections are a choice between AIDS and cancer, which was that was an elegant way of putting it.

But it was kind of true. I mean, boy, I have to tell you, Biden versus Trump sure felt like that to us in the United States. But this isn't even because that's a choice between two bad politicians you don't like. This is a choice about how to administer, who is the right person to administer a genocide and an ethnic cleansing.

And if you put it in that language, suddenly you realize that this coverage that we're seeing is naive, is generous, but it's for suckers. And I think that Zionism has often thought, and it's been helped by all these media people, they think you're an idiot.

Almost every story that I saw this morning or yesterday about the Israeli election, there was two words that were used very often. One was consequential, right? This is the most consequential Israeli election in a general. Oh, I saw that on The Guardian. That was The Guardian, that was BBC, that was Reuters.

And then another thing, so there was consequential, and then there was existential. Like this is somehow an existential election, but you're choosing between two people who essentially have the same position, right? Yet, Eisenkot is being portrayed as this liberal. This is the man who came up with the Dahiya doctrine.

This is the man who was in charge of the Israeli army during the Right to Return marches in 2018 when they were picking off Palestinians, when snipers were picking off Palestinians, including journalists, including a nurse, 183 people, I believe. And yet, this is the man who is being presented as a liberal.

And even if you look at his position, His position on Gaza is that the job hasn't been done well enough because Hamas still exists. And if he gets if he becomes prime minister, he will finish the job. He will wipe out Hamas. He said, give me 18 months. How the hell is that existential consequential? You're choosing between two people who are essentially going to pursue the same policy.

He also supports the number one issue is in the Israeli election.

They're trying to save Israel by scapegoating Netanyahu. I mean, the liberal designers. Well, actually, Netanyahu is quite a good...

But you know what the number one issue is in Israel?

Yeah.

Do you know this? Just curious. What are voters most concerned about? I do not know. The economy. Of course. That's the thing. So everything that we're talking about and that the whole world is talking about and has been for year after year after year... Not even an issue. There's no difference between these parties.

And so doing this is quite culpable on the part of the media here and elsewhere. By portraying this as consequential, it's utterly inconsequential.

Because you're saying that the only thing they disagree on is the economy because they don't disagree on Gaza and the genocide. They don't.

Maybe they disagree on Gaza. On how they want to kill more people. Administering the genocide.

Who's going to administer the genocide more efficiently? Okay, well, you know, tomato, tomato.

He hasn't done it well enough because Hamas still exists. Give me 18 months. It's like, yeah, you're right. There's no difference. It's administering a genocide.

What do you guys think about liberal Zionism? Oh my God. This is your question. This is my question. I always ask this question. I think the liberal Zionists

are the real, they're the enemy. They're the enemy. They're the real enemy. I would say the focus on these monsters, you know, the Ben Gavirs and the Netanyahus and all this, this creates a space to their so-called left where you say, well, those are the right-wing people. They're the far right. They're the extreme right.

They're the settlers. They're the this. Now, on the other side of that is in the US or in the UK, you talk about like the two-state solution. You talk about... The peace process. You talk about negotiations. You talk about the left-wing, all this. All of that gives cover to Zionism. And it's very important to say that just as there's no left-wing version of misogyny or there's no left-wing version of slavery, there's not a liberal version of apartheid.

Zionism is racism. Zionism is an iniquitous, evil ideology. There's not a Diet Coke version of that. And so if you say that there is, you are offering cover to people like me. I will raise my hand and say, I believe this my whole life, that there was something salvageable in this project. And if you say that, you are then allowing someone That there's this political spectrum, that there's these elections, that maybe Israel is going to work out better.

It's going to be, you know, it's reformable. Zionism is by its very nature exterminationist. It's by its very nature racist. And those things can't be reformed. They have to be eliminated. So in my book, I talk about anti-Zionists. These are not liberal Zionists. And it's not, I wouldn't say that anti-Zionism is just another step along the scale.

It's a very fundamental difference. We say that Israel was from the very beginning a bad idea. It's not a state that has problems, which every other state in the world has problems. It's a state that is a problem. And when you say that, you do place yourself out of the pale of settlement of reasonable people.

Yeah, I think they're a stopgap. I've always thought that liberal Zionists are a stopgap against fundamental change, against radical change, against freedom for Palestinians, against an end to the occupation. They're a stopgap because they can be Portrayed as easily satisfied, right? So if we look at, say, people who would present themselves as liberal Zionists in the West, for example, right, in the UK, in the US.

So with the situation here, you know, there was a massive boost in the Green Party when Polanski first came along and they were articulating all of these policies on the genocide that people really agreed with. People who were disillusioned by what they saw as the Labour government's sort of material and diplomatic support for the genocide and they moved the Green That's it.

That's what they say. If you look into the detail, if you actually go through the statement that he made, he apologised for two things only, right? He apologised for Kirstammer going on radio and essentially justifying a war crime when he said that Israel had the right to block water and water. And energy to Gaza.

He apologized for that. And he said that they called for a ceasefire, but too late. Right. That's it. That's all he apologized for. He didn't apologize for anything else. He didn't apologize for the arms, the F-35 components, the diplomatic cover, you know, the surveillance.

Is the RAF still flying?

And so, you know, that satisfied a lot of people. That was enough. And then the sanctions on the West Bank settlements, which are a drop in the ocean, which are nonsense. I think the other thing about West Bank settlements is like it's the easiest thing. It's the easiest thing because you give the Israelis plausible deniability because these people are somehow rogue.

Even though we've seen that when pogroms were being carried out last week, Israeli soldiers were with these settlers who were attacking the Palestinians the other. So I just think that they're like a stopgap against real change because once you satisfy them in a political sense, say in this country, you can stop down.

You know, you can say, well, we've done enough because guess what? All of those people in the Green Party went back to Labour. It's like the people who the genocide has been like a bit too far. So they're like, oh, when we see 20,000 children being killed, that makes me a little bit uncomfortable.

That's too far. But this is also to talk about liberal Zionism even more. I think one of the things that we've seen and one of the really dangerous things about the liberal Zionists is that They are in fact quite critical of Israel in many instances. So, you know, just, you know, not to make it so caricatural, but like the New York Times will regularly publish devastating, terrible things about what's happening in Gaza.

They will. There's no question. And there's also a lot of people who work there, journalists, editors, reporters, all kinds of people who are sincerely horrified by this. And that comes out in the writing. However, the basic line of the newspaper is always these are excessive. Exactly. These are crimes.

Well, a crime, you know, Australians can commit crimes, but you don't think we should get rid of Australia, right? Brazil has all sorts of social problems. It's interesting. In my book, I talk about Jacob Israel Dehan, who's the first Jew killed by Zionists in Palestine in 1924. So who was Dehan? First of all, he's the author of the first gay novel in Dutch, which is what he's most famous for in the Netherlands, 1901.

He gets disillusioned by European culture during the First World War when everybody's slaughtering each other. He thinks, let's get out of here. He goes to Palestine in 1919 as a Zionist. And he starts reporting on their excesses, right? And he thinks we shouldn't, for example, in Tel Aviv, not allow Arabs to come to the hotels, which was true because there was apartheid from the very beginning in Zionism, always.

So, okay, so you can address that and you can say, well, okay, well, maybe we'll let Arabs come to our hotel, right? That still doesn't change the nature of what Zionism is. And as he evolves, it's only a five-year story. As he evolves from being a critical Zionist to someone who's really opposed to Zionism, he places himself outside of the allowed language rules, and they kill him.

And to this day, I think it's very interesting, interesting is maybe not the word, relevant, that... Israel has killed more journalists than I think any country in the world by far. Dehan is the first. And actually the first is a Jewish journalist, not a Palestinian journalist. But you have to be able to say this whole thing stinks to the high heavens.

Everybody... His pretending that it's something reformable. And I think to your point, you know, the more you do that, the more you entrench Zionism. So actually, these critical articles, these critical postures from people, it

actually helps. Because those New York Times journalists don't question the fundamental project. That's right. Well, that's what I'm

trying to do. That's what I'm trying to do. But it's something that is... Very counterintuitive. And I think that for those of us who grew up with Israel as just another country with problems, it's a smokescreen and it's very hard to see past it. I mean, it took me a long time. I was thinking today, when did I first hear the word Nakba?

I'm somebody, well, I don't know the day and the week, but I was probably in my late 30s, I would say.

Wow.

Wow. You have to understand how total the censorship was. And it wasn't the censorship that some, you know, like in Latin America, you had like a general or a colonel sitting in the newsroom. And before you published the article, the general had to read it and say, you can say this, you can't say that.

In my book, I say that Zionism instills a little censor in everybody's head.

We have a video from Zeteo. And I think you would love to watch this video and comment on it. It's of Mike Tapp. Good old Mike Tapp. Great. Let's see the video.

I assume you've spoken to Jewish organisations and British Jews about this motion? Absolutely. What have they been saying to you? Many are very upset. Many feel like they are being singled out. There is a climate of antisemitism growing in this country, largely due to the act Those two things are extremely separate.

We must continue to make sure that people understand that. I'll always stand up for the Jewish community to ensure that they are not experiencing antisemitism. The same with the Muslim community and every other minority in this country. That's what we should always do as politicians. Have you spoken to any Palestinian organisations before you owe your letter?

No, I haven't, no. That's quite telling, don't you think? No, not really, because, well, I haven't spoken to any Jewish organisations, but there's Jewish people that I've spoken to. Have you spoken to any Palestinian people about this? No, I haven't. Only because I don't know any Palestinian people. But I will say, one of the anti-Semitic... Don't you think that is quite telling?

No, not at all. The reason I raise it is because if one of your concerns is that it is potentially racist to oppose Zionism, a lot of Palestinians, if not most Palestinians, would say they are anti-Zionist. So my question to you is, are you saying they're all racist as well? Well, look, and you'd have to have that conversation with a specific Palestinian, which I'm more than happy to do, by the way, as to what their perception of Zionism is.

Do they oppose a two-state solution? No, many of them would be opposed to an ideology that dispossesses them of their homes and doesn't allow them to return. And by your argument, you'd be saying... And this is where we start to get into the weeds, right? Because if you're starting to say that Israel shouldn't exist as a nation, then in my view, that's racism because that's anti-Semitic, right?

And I'd happily call that out in the same way that if you believe that Palestine shouldn't exist, and that's also racist as well. The practical application of Zionism has resulted in ethnic cleansing, has resulted in people being displaced, that in reality, and your own government says it, has resulted in ethnic cleansing.

So I'm struggling to see how you could possibly have an issue with that motion, given that you say that yourself... What you're doing there is you're making a false equivalence. Just because something bad is happening off the back of, and there is Zionism, doesn't mean it's as a result of it. That's the Israeli government that are committing those acts.

That's not Zionism. I do believe that there should be an Israeli state that's Jewish, which is a safe place for Jewish people. And they absolutely deserve that. At the same time, I want to see Palestinians live in peace without that constant threat. And that's really important, which is why I'm looking for that two-state solution.

I think that's where the government also sits. And in this country, which is where we have a lot more control, we have to ensure that any hint of racism across the board is stamped on. Do you believe, given that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Bet Salem, which is based in Israel, have spoken quite a lot about the apartheid that takes place in Israel, the fact that you could be a Jewish citizen of another country and you would be able to get citizenship in Israel, but you could be a Palestinian who lived in that land before you've been moved from your home and you can't be a citizen there.

Do you believe those things are fair? And this is where we've got to, for me, a two-state solution is also equality, you know. And this is the thing, my knowledge of that, I didn't know that. But what I will say to you is that on the face of it, that doesn't sound equal to me. And a two-state solution must have that equality as well.

He did not

know that. He did not know that. Well, what do you think of this? Ignorance and also blindness at the

same time. I think that Mike Tapp is not the government's best and brightest, but I don't think he's unrepresentative. And one of the things that's, you know, and we were talking about that earlier, right? This might report to the Green Party to the police. He which? That's the guy. Yeah. Yeah. He's yeah.

Like I say, he's not the best and the brightest, you know, but he he he would not have been asked those questions anywhere else. And I think that's what took him by surprise. You know, he went on Zateo and he was forced to think about things and forced to answer. I think that was really, really interesting because Zateo there showed up the problem that we have with the mainstream media not putting those questions to him.

And how sort of like blasé he was about like, no, I didn't speak to Palestinians. You know, I don't know Palestinians. Like he didn't see that that was a problem. He sure understands it now because it's gone viral and he's faced a lot of criticism. But I think it speaks to a sort of a really important issue, which is that...

Palestinians do not get a look in in the mainstream media. They are not interviewed in the mainstream media. Centre for Media Monitoring did a deep dive, a piece of research on BBC's coverage of the genocide and the number of Palestinians interviewed. And you can go back years. I mean, you can go back years.

But even if you look at, you know, let's just take it back to like 2014, right? The 2014 Israeli bombardment of Gaza, were Palestinians interviewed about that? No. 2018, the right to return, were they interviewed there? No. The Sheikh Jarrah protests, what was that, 2021, were they interviewed then? No.

During the genocide, is it important to have Palestinians on? No. And it's because Palestinians are somehow, I always say this, they're somehow inherently, you know, Suspect to people, to Western journalists. And there's one I always remember, one like example of this was when Sreen Abu Akhla was killed, you know, hugely famous, much respected Al Jazeera correspondent.

I was working at Al Jazeera at the time. And, you know, I remember that when it was covered in the media, you know, you looked at these big organisations and they said that they couldn't verify what happened, that they didn't know what happened. And so what they were doing, Was they were giving the Israeli government line.

So they would say, you know, a Palestinian American journalist was killed. Here's what Israel had to say. But we can't verify yet. There were millions. There was like a whole group of Palestinian journalists on the scene. He volunteered to do it too. He didn't even

ask, do you know any Palestinians? He said, well, actually, I don't know any Palestinians. He didn't even get asked that. Speaking of not the brightest bulb, but still, and this is very common, I was just going to add to that, in the United States in the three years of the genocide are Sunday talk programs, which are the most viewed programs for news every week.

The number of Palestinians who have been included on those is zero. Zero. That's crazy. And this is quite, this is systemic. I'd like to, can I do a little pitch for another book? I know I'm here to talk about my book, but there's a book that I, since we've talked about this, I really admire by a woman named Asal Rad, R-A-D, called Don't Say Palestine.

And this, I love what she does is she goes into here, word for word, into headlines on how this stuff is shaped. And it's absolutely fascinating.

It's a great book and she's a fantastic media critic, isn't she? And it's, you know, you were talking about, you know, language earlier, the specifics of language. And that's exactly what she does. She will just show how one word is problematic and replace it with the right word, which again brings you back to like when I was a young news journalist in the mainstream media, accuracy was drilled into me, like drilled into me.

And I've been in newsrooms where we've spent 45 minutes debating a headline. Like these headlines don't happen by accident. You know, and it's great to see her pull it apart.

You know, how like Palestinians die, Israelis are killed, et cetera, et cetera. And if you do that through every sentence of every word of every newspaper and every broadcast, you have an extremely distorted picture of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

We have a tweet now. Okay, so this is... Ed Miliband, and he talks about the new government's review that was led by Sarah David Bell into antisemitism in schools and colleges. And Ed Miliband saying antisemitism is a social society We are committed to stamping it out. We have accepted all 27 recommendations of the bill review, including encouraging schools and colleges to adopt the IHRA working definition.

We will continue to promote it internationally. Barry, tell us about this new report and Semitism report and some of its misleading parameters.

Well, it's massively flawed. It's massively flawed. And people have dug into this. And specified why. They've looked into it in great detail. They've looked into the footnotes. They've looked into the methodology. Two people I would recommend maybe who've done this is Richard Sanders on Double Down News did a brilliant takedown.

And of course, you know, Richard Sanders and Owen Jones were called anti-Semites for even questioning this report. I was called an anti-Semite, a raging anti-Semite and told I was obsessed with Jews. So you can see that this is what they're throwing at people who question this report, that if you question it at all, you're anti-Semitic.

And you know what? It's not a comfortable position for people to be in that a report comes out and... It purports to show this gigantic problem with anti-Semitism in schools and colleges. Again, it falls apart when you look at it in detail. But it's an uncomfortable position to be in where that happens.

And then you say, actually, hang on here. This is not as big a problem as this is being portrayed to be. And this report is heavily politicized. And like, let's be clear about what they're doing. They're making antisemitism its own category of prejudice or racism. So all of the other forms of prejudice in this country, whether it's racism against the black community, whether it's Islamophobia, which I think a lot of people argue is the most pernicious form of racism in this country.

They are all grouped together in sort of anti-racism education in school. And, you know, I'm not questioning that. I don't think every strand needs to be specific in some way. But anti-Semitism has been taken out of that and made its own category. And you can really, really see the political... The political reasons behind that, the weaponization of that.

And what I found really interesting is when you look at the people who've debunked the report and when you look at the debunks, they're getting pushback from people who do not engage with the sidebar. Substance of their articles, the substance of what they've debunked. And these are like some very sort of esteemed journalists.

So there's a journalist, I forget his name right now, but he's a Financial Times journalist. I think he's like a political columnist or editor at the Financial Times. In certain sectors of journalism. And he has been out on Twitter attacking Owen Jones and the others who have debunked it. But all he's doing is slinging that they're anti-Semites, slinging that they're denying this because it fits their political And he hasn't engaged with the substance of the material.

But it's like you don't have to. You don't have to. All you have to do is smear people.

And it's interesting. I just have to say two quick things about it. I think this IRA definition, first of all, just coming back to our previous theme, this is about legislating what language you're allowed to use. So again, what is one of the things that we discussed earlier? You're not allowed to just compare Israel to the Nazis.

You're not allowed to compare Zionism to Nazism. All right, take it or leave it. People can compare it or not. The reason people have done this ever since the beginning of Zionism is because Zionists have often acted like Nazis. Be that as it may, as a Jewish person, I can say about this... Elevation of antisemitism to a special category of racism, even though everybody knows, every honest person in this country knows that Jews are not under threat in this country.

Jews are one of the wealthiest and most protected classes in this entire country, as they are in the United States, as in a lot of other countries. Now, everybody is in favor of... We're in favor of laws that are against homophobia. We're for laws that protect women. All these categories, fine. This already exists in legislation.

To single out the Jews in this way is extremely unhelpful to Jewish people because it makes people resent us. It makes people seem like we're all, you know, we need some sort of special nanny state looking over us. And this is something that a lot of Jewish organizations have, of course, encouraged. And it's quite lamentable to see Ed Miliband, who has, you know, we have to give him a bit of credit for the things that he has spoken out about in the recent times.

But to go into this thing, it's so gullible. It just makes him look like an idiot.

But totally, the problem with these suggestions is that they don't only go after, they don't go after real anti-Semites, they go after anti-Zionists. And also at the same time, when you see The media and the political laws go after anti-Semitism only when it's associated with the left or with the Palestine Solidarity Movement.

But when it comes from people who are on the far right, much less attention goes to them. And this is really problematic. Why are they doing this?

Well, it's interesting to ask if this would ever happen for another group. Now, forget Muslims. I mean, I think that Islamophobia is, you know, we have in America, we have Trump saying Abdulalala and saying like about Abdul Syed. Yeah, he's Mohammed. I call him Mohammed. You know, can you imagine saying about a Jewish candidate?

I call him slow-mo. I call him all slow-mo. I call him all Cohen, and everybody clapping. That would never happen in a million years. So what you're doing is trying to create not only a special class for this so-called anti-Semitism, but also exclude a lot of real victims of racism and real victims of all sorts of other exclusions.

And it's something that I think everybody sees through. And I think it's very, very dangerous for the Jewish community. But again, they're not doing this for Australians. They're not doing this for the Germans or the Italians or any other group in the world. They're doing it for Zionists and for Israel.

And it really shows just how, again, I want to say... I think if they called bullshit on this and said this is a ridiculous report, there has been, what, I don't know, 40 articles I've seen about different things about this report that are wrong and that are lies and misrepresented.

And obviously debunked. And if you apply honesty and logic to reading those debunks, you cannot question it, right? But you don't, as you say, you don't need to apply logic if all you're interested in doing is smearing. But again, it's like the level of, you know, it's just about, you know, journalism, right?

Basic journalism. As a journalist, I can read a piece of journalism and I can parse it and I can see whether it's accurate or not. So for an FT journalist, not to... Even try to do that and engage with a piece of journalism in order to criticize it just shows to me that it's almost like it's because you don't need to.

But I also think that like if people did it, people would be excited that they did it. That includes journalists and also politicians. I think that if Ed Miliband had come out and said, this is ridiculous. This is totally stupid. Forget it. And this is, again, I really do think that there is this kind of conspiracy thinking about Jews.

Because if you said, this is ridiculous, but they're scared. He knows this is ridiculous. But he feels like he has to do this. And why does he feel he has to do it? And I do think it has to do with some idea that, like, if I don't do this, the Jews are going to come for me. And sure, some of the Jews are going to come for you because they're organized into this Zionist psychopath organization.

Ecosystem in which they exist. But a lot of us, a lot of us as Jewish people would be extremely grateful for somebody to speak out and say, this is absolute bollocks. I can't believe that our community is being represented by these crooks and psychos, but they won't.

And they're taking every recommendation. Every single one. All 27. Why? Because it's like you say, if they rejected even one, It would be an avalanche

against the

government. Well, 100%. But, you know, they're accepting all 27 because they have to, because they're scared

not to. Imagine if the Muslims came with some list of 27 things you have to do or we're going to keep you alive. They wouldn't. I mean...

One of the recommendations, I think, they're making wearing Palestinian badges at school illegal. Watermelons. Watermelons. That's crazy.

Which I actually said on Twitter that I had been, I used to do... I used to be like a reading helper at a school in London. So I would go in and read with kids who are falling behind in their reading. And I distinctly remember Ukrainian flags being all over that school. And not just like as part of school projects.

I remember there like being a board out in the corridor and it was like the kids were drawing Ukrainian flags. Totally uncontroversial. They were being taught about it. And there's actually a government scheme here. That links Ukrainian schools with British schools and the kids all talk to each other and the kids in the UK learn what's happening in Ukraine.

Yeah, not controversial at all, but God forbid a teacher wear a watermelon pin because that's anti-Semitic.

Well, it's because the countries and the groups that are allied with the imperialist powers get a pass and everybody else doesn't.

Thank you. So we will have to finish now. But before we finish, there is a video for Lubna Spitan. We want to watch it together. The rogue and racist IHRA definition, that's not there in place to protect Jews from discrimination for being Jewish, but to protect a racist settler colony, Israel, which in itself is anti-Palestinian racism.

It is designed to silence dissent, to silence criticism of Israel, what it's doing, what the world is witnessing, and how we as Palestinians are being silenced and gaslit and vilified Into a corner when we are witnessing the annihilation, the cold-blooded murder of our families, of our people, and we're told here to consider The feelings, and this is, let's be clear, not about the feelings of Jews, but the feelings of Zionists.

Are we to sit here and consider the feelings of those who slaughter our people while we are watching as our loved ones, as our children are burnt with phosphorus, having to endure amputations with no anaesthetic, having their limbs torn and shredded, their bodies burnt by phosphorus, being starved to death.

And no, the mainstream media, instead of talking about this, you know, where if it was on the other side of the fence, On the other side of the apartheid wall, you can guarantee this would be headlines in the mainstream narrative. But our lives as Palestinians have been vilified and dehumanized as though we're so cheap.

We don't matter. Our children don't matter. Our doctors don't matter. Our journalists, who even the same journalists here have no solidarity with their fellow journalists who are filming their annihilation for the world to see, for a whole entire people traumatized I mean, why are we not talking about those feelings?

The feelings of those Palestinian children who are clinging to the graves of their parents at night. They have no home to go to. Being starved, having to watch as their friends, they grow up with no hopes even for a future. And they're asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? We don't get to grow up.

This is the reality of Zionism. This is what it does to our children. And to have to sit here and even talk about this and try to bury my feelings so I can eloquently and diplomatically shield my anger, my rage, my anguish that every Palestinian is feeling is an insult, is an insult to anyone who pleads or calls for equality.

While they weaponize these definitions to silence our voices, state repression on the increase. This was European crimes that we are being forced to pay for. We were not the persecutors of the Jews and should not be made to pay a price for the crimes of Europe. Not to try to justify now and improvise and deny us our safety, our rights.

This was always wrong. This was imposed by this political system. British arenas with their Balfour Declaration who had no right to give away our homeland. And this, our motion confronts all that was wrong, all of this injustice, the injustice they wish to bury, they gaslight, they deflect from the reality of it.

They call our motion anti-Semitic when it is they who are still anti-Semitic. It was never the Palestinians. We lived side by side. My grandfather himself next door to his Jewish neighbor who he played cards with every morning. Like this was Palestine. And what we should be seeing in any institution that truly values equal rights is to do away with these non-legally binding definitions.

Is to implement the Equality Act 2010, which is legally binding, which is a way to tackle all forms of discrimination equally without creating hierarchies of racism or superioritising one group of rights over others. This in a just society is what we should be implementing. Everybody's rights should be acknowledged.

Lubna is a very strong person. I've never seen her emotion like this before. But actually, this actually reminds me of last week when I was invited to speak at the conference for the Zionism is Racism motion organized by the Greens for Palestine. And before I came to say why as a Palestinian thinks Zionism is racism, we were harassed by GB News.

They were following us, me and Lubna, and we were asked One question and only one question. What about the feeling of the Jewish people? I mean, I really had to really think a lot about this question from GB News. Because look at me, they're coming after a person to harass a person who Israel murdered his entire family.

They murdered my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, my nieces, my nephews. My relatives had destroyed my home. They made me like a refugee my entire life. I lived my entire life under siege when I was in Gaza. Zionists and Israel made my life hell, literally. Like they've done all the crimes against me and against my family.

And then even in this country, in the UK, I am the one who's asked about the Jewish feelings. The Jewish people were not asked about the feeling of the Palestinians that Israel murdered. I am the one who was asked about the Jewish feelings. And as a Jewish person, how do you feel about that? Should I just explain myself to you guys when I say Zionism is racism, when I describe the ideology that killed my family?

I think it's a horrifying ideology. I think it's a wicked, evil ideology. No,

it's absurd. I mean, it's insulting. It's demeaning. It shows very simply the hierarchy that's applied. Lives matter more than Palestinian lives to these people, to political leaders in the West, to the media in the West. You know, we know this, but to see it applied to you and Lubna in such a offensive way.

Way to see it applied to people who've gone through the tremendous loss you've gone through, as if the tremendous loss that you've experienced is somehow commensurate to hurt feelings of the British Jewish community is so offensive that it underlines, as Benjamin says, this sort of, it underlines the Pernicious, evil nature of the ideology that underpins all of this.

It's just, yeah, it's a hierarchy of lives of peoples that I can't believe has been accepted for so long.

But why do media have to do that to us? Like as a journalist, I am a journalist and that person who asked me, he was a journalist working for GB News. Why did he need to do that to a Palestinian? Knowing or not knowing my story, why would they do that to themselves and to us as well?

They're proud of belonging to the imperial hierarchy. That's what they aspire to. They're not adversarial. They are toadies. They're sucking up to people in power. That's not what journalism should be. But unfortunately, for many people, that's what journalism is.

They don't care about your feelings. They don't care. That person, that news channel, they do not care about Palestinians. They do not care about Palestinians being killed. I'm clear about this. That kind of person who came up to you, they do not care. They do not care about Arab lives. They do not care about Muslim lives.

All they care about is, again, they make a hierarchy. Western lives, Israeli lives are more important than Arab lives, than Muslim lives, than Palestinian lives, than Iraqi lives, than Lebanese lives. And that's just the truth. And that guy had a political agenda. He was coming after you for a gotcha.

And he probably, even if he knew... What's happened to you, Ahmed? And what's happened to your family? I think he would have asked you that question anyway. And you look at this like tremendous lack of feeling that the media applies to Palestinians. Like one of the most egregious things I have ever seen a journalist do and one of the most egregious things I've ever seen on television is you remember, I think it was like a couple of weeks into the genocide when, was it, Hossam Zumblat went on Newsnight and he said, Began to talk about how several members of his family had just been killed.

So he talked through this. He talked about the loss. He talked about children. He talked about members of his own family. And the presenter immediately turned to him and just said offhand, well, sorry about your loss, but surely you cannot justify the Hamas attacks on Israel. That is how one of the most famous journalists in the UK responds to a Palestinian talking about how members of their family were killed.

You know, it's like it's such a hard question. You know, you said... Why would they do that? I don't know how to answer it really, but he demeans himself by asking you that. And I think it's, honestly, I think it's built on decades and decades and decades of racism and dehumanization.

Thank you very much, Barry. Thank you very much, Ben. It was a pleasure speaking to both of you today.

Thanks for having us on. Yeah, thank you. It's great to be here. You do such important work.

Thank you very much. Inshallah, soon we will have another meeting. Or another interview to talk about your next books, inshaAllah. InshaAllah. Thank you. Thank you very much. And our audience, thank you very much for watching us today. If you watched the episode in full, thank you. If you haven't watched our previous episodes, please go back and watch them.

And stay tuned for our next episodes. Every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Thank you and bye-bye.

[music]

A History of Jewish Anti-Zionism Nobody Talks About | Benjamin Moser & Barry Malone

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin