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Josh, the Palestinians have been offered their own state in 1937, 1947, 1979, Oslo 1990’s, 2000 when Ehud Barak offered Arafat 97% of all the West Bank and all of Gaza, plus huge concessions in Jerusalem and Arafat said no and the process was derailed by terrorism. In 2006 Israel withdrew from Gaza and in 2007 Gazan’s elected Hamas a terrorist organisation that had spent billions of humanitarian money usually channeled through UNRWA on building tunnels. Again in 2008 Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians the entire West Bank and demographically divide Jerusalem and on every occasion the Palestinians said NO. Why… they want from ‘the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea’. As you have said the eradication of the only democracy in the Middle East.
Hamas rule Gaza. Hamas have no qualms on inflicting tragedy and destruction on Gazan’s. If they did care where were the bomb shelters?? Why do Hamas hijack the aid trucks and leave Gazans starving? Why do their ‘leaders’ live in safety and luxury in Qatar while Gazans live in bombed out buildings or tents?? You asked why don’t the Israeli’s flood tunnels - the answer because 130 hostages are being held in them. Well actually we don’t know how many are alive or dead as Hamas won’t tell.
Since the 2000’s the Israeli kibbutzim, towns and villages adjoining the Gazan border have been subjected to thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza. Can you imagine 15 seconds to get to a safe room. All this trauma would be over if Hamas handed over the alive or dead hostages and surrendered but they won’t because the ISIS Hamas and Palestinian Jihadists believe in death and destruction while the Jews believe in the sanctity of life.
And yes I too am a Zionist because we know through family history that we need our own safe place.
This elides the fact that Israel is a real country with millions of people (including 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel). It’s not some academic abstraction. The rhetoric about “destroying Zionism” or “eradicating Israel” is downright genocidal. AntiZionist, non-Zionist, Zionist - it doesn’t matter. The country has existed for 75 years. The first waves of immigration of European Jews to pre-state Israel started in 1890 (to say nothing of Jews who have lived there for millennia). It’s a real place with real people.
We need to deal in reality. We need to empower moderates on all sides of this issue and stop treating Israelis and Palestinians as mythical creatures who are either evil or pure as driven snow. Anyone who is unwilling to support - rhetorically, financially, or otherwise - moderates who can bring about a bette future are not helping anyone.
I think it's naive to think that the current Palestinians' hatred of Jews will ever diminish and they'll accept a Jewish presence in the Middle East. I'm a Zionist because Israel represents a haven for persecuted Jews from anywhere around world. As tough as life can be living there, it's our insurance against annihilation.
I find it strange (if not necessarily inaccurate) the way Josh frames the discussion around very specific geopolitical concerns that most Australians/Americans/etc. know nothing about (including most of the people who are protesting or otherwise acting out), and then arrives at a basic definition of Zionism as meaning there should be a Jewish state as if this is some radical conclusion. I would have assumed that this is what the word meant to most people.
Would love to hear an uncomfortable conversation with someone from Jewish Voice for Peace or If Not Now! A lot of anti-Zionist Jewish voices too that are interesting! Maybe a fellow Australian like Antony Loewenstein!?
How about we avoid labels and just stick to the principles of peace for everyone, striving to make sure everyone can peaceably find a home, a place of work, a place or worship? Can we not just do THAT?
Josh, your milk toast discussion is anything but an uncomfortablem conversation, except for listening to how you squirm and evade. You seem to kiss up to antizionists. Israel is imperfect in war and peace, but far better than most countries in general, and in particular when it comes to it's current existential threat from Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Perhaps you would be bette off debating what tea and biscuits are morally acceptable.
The slur at the end… “Jews have always gone to bed not knowing…” - you might have wanted to mention they could before they were expelled from Israel by multiple colonisations of the land, starting with the Greeks and the Roman’s…
And may Jews are successful because they value education and work hard, along with some other newer arrivals. Not only because that was the only thing they could do (finance and entertainment), it felt to me as though you were perpetuating some racial stereotyping there, along the lines of “Jews control the media (or insert another area”.
I also felt this was also an apology for being a Zionist, where no apology should be required. Just decency.
Also no mention of the fact there are few true potential partners for peace amongst those in Gaza or the West Bank. Or that there was really no such thing as a Palestinian people, in the prism of the lands previously controlled by the Ottoman Empire but divided after its fall
Hey Josh. First, thank you for all the uncomfortable conversations you've devoted to unpacking this horrific situation. I think one somewhat overlooked issue is the betrayal of the Israeli Left by some global leftists. This is part of the conversation about Zionism. The peacenik lefty kibbutz communities on the boarder of Gaza were people who spent YEARS opposing injustices social media influencers have recently discovered, and unlike those displaying their luxury opinions for pleasure, they did this at a very high personal cost; Because living on the boarder with Hamas was for years a nightmare and because Netanyahu and his governments labelled them traitors. Many of them did this as Zionists, who were incredibly committed to fixing what is wrong with Israeli policy. Vivian Silver, board member of B'Tselem, founder of Women Wage Peace, volunteer in Road to Recovery and Project Rozana, who was murdered on 7.10. Oded Lifshitz, a journalist and volunteer at Road to Recovery, who is still captive in Gaza. You read Lifshitz's razor sharp criticism of Netanyahu's policy in Gaza from a few years ago and think how absurd it is that someone living on the other side of the world thinks what they have to say is more significant and justifies ignoring people like him exist.
Zionism can be debated and criticised like any other ideology. But erasing the fact that Zionism has a Left is Netanyahu's life work and undermines the liberal justification of pluralism. There is a very sinister subtext here which says that things can't be fixed by supporting pluralism or opposition to a bad government and bad policy, if you are judged by people who have no skin in the game as essentially flawed, you should not exist. It's a paranoid-schizoid position.
Josh - what would an uncomfortable conversation between John Lyons (ABC) and Robert Spencer (Palestinian Delusion) sound like - do you think a facilitated discussion between these two (or similar) could happen going back to the Vidal or Baldwin style debates of the 60s and 70s - I wasn’t alive for some of them but it may be a way out of the echo chambers.
Unfortunately it Just makes me incredibly sad that leadership throughout the western and Arab worlds has been overtaken by self interest, greed and lack of empathy for others.
With all the education opportunities and with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that it hasn’t provided true leadership for the betterment of mankind. We can build infrastructure and inspiring healthcare and so many wonderful opportunities but I do despair for the generations after us, I hope they do better!
Josh, the Palestinians have been offered their own state in 1937, 1947, 1979, Oslo 1990’s, 2000 when Ehud Barak offered Arafat 97% of all the West Bank and all of Gaza, plus huge concessions in Jerusalem and Arafat said no and the process was derailed by terrorism. In 2006 Israel withdrew from Gaza and in 2007 Gazan’s elected Hamas a terrorist organisation that had spent billions of humanitarian money usually channeled through UNRWA on building tunnels. Again in 2008 Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians the entire West Bank and demographically divide Jerusalem and on every occasion the Palestinians said NO. Why… they want from ‘the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea’. As you have said the eradication of the only democracy in the Middle East.
Hamas rule Gaza. Hamas have no qualms on inflicting tragedy and destruction on Gazan’s. If they did care where were the bomb shelters?? Why do Hamas hijack the aid trucks and leave Gazans starving? Why do their ‘leaders’ live in safety and luxury in Qatar while Gazans live in bombed out buildings or tents?? You asked why don’t the Israeli’s flood tunnels - the answer because 130 hostages are being held in them. Well actually we don’t know how many are alive or dead as Hamas won’t tell.
Since the 2000’s the Israeli kibbutzim, towns and villages adjoining the Gazan border have been subjected to thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza. Can you imagine 15 seconds to get to a safe room. All this trauma would be over if Hamas handed over the alive or dead hostages and surrendered but they won’t because the ISIS Hamas and Palestinian Jihadists believe in death and destruction while the Jews believe in the sanctity of life.
And yes I too am a Zionist because we know through family history that we need our own safe place.
Never again is never again.
This elides the fact that Israel is a real country with millions of people (including 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel). It’s not some academic abstraction. The rhetoric about “destroying Zionism” or “eradicating Israel” is downright genocidal. AntiZionist, non-Zionist, Zionist - it doesn’t matter. The country has existed for 75 years. The first waves of immigration of European Jews to pre-state Israel started in 1890 (to say nothing of Jews who have lived there for millennia). It’s a real place with real people.
We need to deal in reality. We need to empower moderates on all sides of this issue and stop treating Israelis and Palestinians as mythical creatures who are either evil or pure as driven snow. Anyone who is unwilling to support - rhetorically, financially, or otherwise - moderates who can bring about a bette future are not helping anyone.
I think it's naive to think that the current Palestinians' hatred of Jews will ever diminish and they'll accept a Jewish presence in the Middle East. I'm a Zionist because Israel represents a haven for persecuted Jews from anywhere around world. As tough as life can be living there, it's our insurance against annihilation.
I find it strange (if not necessarily inaccurate) the way Josh frames the discussion around very specific geopolitical concerns that most Australians/Americans/etc. know nothing about (including most of the people who are protesting or otherwise acting out), and then arrives at a basic definition of Zionism as meaning there should be a Jewish state as if this is some radical conclusion. I would have assumed that this is what the word meant to most people.
Would love to hear an uncomfortable conversation with someone from Jewish Voice for Peace or If Not Now! A lot of anti-Zionist Jewish voices too that are interesting! Maybe a fellow Australian like Antony Loewenstein!?
Whilst I agree with most of your comments, sadly the situation is far more complex than you might imagine. Eg on the idea of flooding the tunnels.
Please take a trip to Israel ( as I did in December) and hear the people ( left and right)
How about we avoid labels and just stick to the principles of peace for everyone, striving to make sure everyone can peaceably find a home, a place of work, a place or worship? Can we not just do THAT?
Josh, your milk toast discussion is anything but an uncomfortablem conversation, except for listening to how you squirm and evade. You seem to kiss up to antizionists. Israel is imperfect in war and peace, but far better than most countries in general, and in particular when it comes to it's current existential threat from Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Perhaps you would be bette off debating what tea and biscuits are morally acceptable.
Josh. Please use the correct words, Jews are from Judea. 'West bank' is a misnomer by the Jordanians
The slur at the end… “Jews have always gone to bed not knowing…” - you might have wanted to mention they could before they were expelled from Israel by multiple colonisations of the land, starting with the Greeks and the Roman’s…
And may Jews are successful because they value education and work hard, along with some other newer arrivals. Not only because that was the only thing they could do (finance and entertainment), it felt to me as though you were perpetuating some racial stereotyping there, along the lines of “Jews control the media (or insert another area”.
I also felt this was also an apology for being a Zionist, where no apology should be required. Just decency.
Also no mention of the fact there are few true potential partners for peace amongst those in Gaza or the West Bank. Or that there was really no such thing as a Palestinian people, in the prism of the lands previously controlled by the Ottoman Empire but divided after its fall
Hey Josh. First, thank you for all the uncomfortable conversations you've devoted to unpacking this horrific situation. I think one somewhat overlooked issue is the betrayal of the Israeli Left by some global leftists. This is part of the conversation about Zionism. The peacenik lefty kibbutz communities on the boarder of Gaza were people who spent YEARS opposing injustices social media influencers have recently discovered, and unlike those displaying their luxury opinions for pleasure, they did this at a very high personal cost; Because living on the boarder with Hamas was for years a nightmare and because Netanyahu and his governments labelled them traitors. Many of them did this as Zionists, who were incredibly committed to fixing what is wrong with Israeli policy. Vivian Silver, board member of B'Tselem, founder of Women Wage Peace, volunteer in Road to Recovery and Project Rozana, who was murdered on 7.10. Oded Lifshitz, a journalist and volunteer at Road to Recovery, who is still captive in Gaza. You read Lifshitz's razor sharp criticism of Netanyahu's policy in Gaza from a few years ago and think how absurd it is that someone living on the other side of the world thinks what they have to say is more significant and justifies ignoring people like him exist.
Zionism can be debated and criticised like any other ideology. But erasing the fact that Zionism has a Left is Netanyahu's life work and undermines the liberal justification of pluralism. There is a very sinister subtext here which says that things can't be fixed by supporting pluralism or opposition to a bad government and bad policy, if you are judged by people who have no skin in the game as essentially flawed, you should not exist. It's a paranoid-schizoid position.
Josh - what would an uncomfortable conversation between John Lyons (ABC) and Robert Spencer (Palestinian Delusion) sound like - do you think a facilitated discussion between these two (or similar) could happen going back to the Vidal or Baldwin style debates of the 60s and 70s - I wasn’t alive for some of them but it may be a way out of the echo chambers.
Thanks Josh for a clear explanation of Zionism.
Unfortunately it Just makes me incredibly sad that leadership throughout the western and Arab worlds has been overtaken by self interest, greed and lack of empathy for others.
With all the education opportunities and with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that it hasn’t provided true leadership for the betterment of mankind. We can build infrastructure and inspiring healthcare and so many wonderful opportunities but I do despair for the generations after us, I hope they do better!