What if the problem for the Palestinian people was not Israel, but the encouragement by the international community of a fantasy that, one day, Palestinians will return to Israel proper?
I came across Einat a few months ago. Her knowledge and clear articulation of the conflict between Israel and the “axis of resistance” helped me resist the line taken by so many of my lefty, feminist friends in Australia who in some cases come very close to outright support for Hamas, and in recent days for the Mullahs in Iran. One recently posted a comment on a Facebook thread, saying that women in Iran are better off than in America, that they get a better education, and that the idea that Iran was developing nuclear weapons was a lie created by Zionists. Actually, she didn’t write Zionists, but used the slur ‘zios’. I think for some their hatred of Trump and Netanyahu is so deep that they must see anything and everything that Israel everything America does as evil, and everything on the other side must be pure. And as Einat so clearly explains anti-Zionism is just a new word for Jew hatred.
There was consternation in my circles when I shared an article by Nova Peris, an indigenous Australian who supports Israel. Nova now is in the evil camp!
Nova would be a good person to have on your show. She has an interesting perspective and has visited Israel since October 7. She is quite clear that Jewish Australians have been some of the biggest supporters of indigenous Australians.
JH, here is how negotiations normally work. One side comes up with proposals and the other side comes up with a counter proposals. Over time the gap narrows and eventually an agreement is made. In this process both sides lose things they hold dear ("red lines") and get something that was really important to them in return.
I would like you to note that in all the proposals for a Jewish state alongside an Arab (Palestinian) state I have never heard any counter proposals from the Arab/Palestinian side during the actual process of negotiations. You bring up some points that would have been valid DURING the negotiation process. You expect such points above you make to be made public during the negotiation process with ebb and flows in the negotiations. Instead of that you have JH representing the Palestinian side some 17 years after the last proposal was made.
You have proved Einat Wolf's point. The negotiations for the Palestinians were never about negotiating, but an end in itself to see what Israel would offer with no counter proposals. All negotiations require 2 parties who actually want to interact to solve a problem. This only ever happened on the Israeli/Jewish side. The Palestinians have never said that they want anything other than non-existence of a Jewish state alongside a an Arab one and here lies the root of the problem. This explanation is clearly born out of their actions. Stop "Westplaining" as Einat said.
If this is supposed to be an intellectual, liberal and empathetic Israeli political position, then I can’t see there ever being an end to this conflict. Well done Josh for having the conversation. Keep going bud.
Wait until you’ll have listen how the moderate Palestinians sound like and more so how the PA (Not Hamas) school curriculum looks like. Here’s a report if you are interested
I thought she made very articulate points but was a bit condescending saying things like "very easy" when running counters. I think she's right, but she used language that in my opinion was a bit demeaning if you disagree with her. I feel like I could tell the moment Josh decided to just give up and let her talk herself out so he could get the podcast over with, and that's a tragedy in my opinion because it rendered all her excellent points a bit useless when they just started falling on deaf ears.
This podcast unfortunately will just go down as people who went in agreeing with her appreciating that she got to talk a lot, and everyone who went in skeptical to leave thinking she was condescending and long winded. I appreciate Josh not wanting to devolve the conversation into something like the Andrew Sullivan Batya podcast, but I really wish he hadn't given up on pushing back.
The problem was that he kept pushing back in the pretty much the same way, trying to poke holes in her main thesis (which of course she's effectively spent years being ready for), and didn't, in the moment, have some other potentially more generative way of responding. Not that this is easy for this topic, but Josh is one of the best, and he needs to step up in this regard IMO; we need him.
(It's called "Uncomfortable Conversations" - but those conversations better be at least potentially fruitful, too, or what's the point?)
Yeah and she did agree about the controversy in the West Bank, so it’s not as if she’s some far right ideologue. I’m sure she has a lot to say about the prime minister and his court cases, which are likely unpausing soon. Josh didn’t really push back because she made excellent points. People grab on to shit about the way things are delivered by her, as if that’s somehow important in this conflict. Try to hear the merit of the idea or argument and spend less time operating from a place of disgust. We all have our weird hang ups when it comes to people’s communication, behavior, etc. but mostly it’s about our own issues, not theirs.
Good conversation, great relative to this topic's usual quality, but also a missed opportunity. (This topic is difficult - more at 11.)
I tend to find Einat's thesis convincing, as far as it goes - what I mean by that is, history is rarely one thing. One pattern might exist and have the effects that it has and cease having those effects when its gone; but another pattern might emerge alongside it and change the equation.
I wish Josh had, if only for the sake of argument, proposed Einat's position on consistency of Palestinian rejectionism and Palestinianism could be pretty much entirely true, but that next to that there might be another truth: Palestinianism and its intractability might be real, but Messianic settler insanity and its grip on Israeli politics, especially in combination with Netanyahu, and perhaps bringing up rising anti-Arab sentiments in Israeli society both before and after Oct 7, might mean that even in a situation of surrender, the Israeli hardliners might find an excuse to keep up the pressure, to try to encourage "voluntary emigration" as Smotrich put it, so that they could keep the greater Israel dream alive. That perhaps internal Israeli dynamics really had changed, crossed something of a Rubicon since the second intifada and Gaza falling to Hamas. I would have liked to have heard Einat respond to a criticism of that kind. Instead, Josh spent most of the interview trying to find a way out of Einat's thesis, trying to believe that Palestinianism is somehow amenable to Israeli agency, which I think wasn't the best use at least of the second half of the podcast.
Einat described how Hamas militia moved above ground in civilian clothes integrated with, and hidden by the supportive population. As a person who has been actively involved in counter-insurgency military work in Africa this is classic Mao stuff where “the terrorist moves through the people like a fish moves through the sea”. When the opposing militia look like innocent civilians until they pull out an AK47 or an RPG launcher you have no idea as a soldier in uniform of who is friend and who is foe. In a densely populated urban environment this is unbelievably stressful and you spend every second of your life on patrol with your finger on the trigger of your weapon which is off safe mode. In this situation accidents will happen. Hamas, an organisation that excepts and actually wants civilians killed in the conflict because it feeds their propaganda machine, make sure that these “accidents” happen and then sits back as the Western mainstream media write reports supports the Palestinian mythology of vistimhood.
I mean intentionally funnelling financial resources to Hamas as Netanyahu has claimed is part of his strategy to undermine Palestinian statehood.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” 2019
You do know don’t you that Gaza uses the Israeli financial/banking services (the Israeli shekel is their currency too), energy production, water supplies and logistics for imports and exports. They do this because Hamas used the billions of foreign aid to feather their own nests and build the underground battlefield.
We need to wake up and stop blaming Israel and Netanyahu for all the problems of the Gazans.
You’re not actually engaging with my point, which is that Israel acts in bad faith and then claims the moral high ground when their actual strategy is to foster extremism to make any kind negotiated settlement impossible.
I acknowledge Hama’s culpability. You point to the extremism in Hamas then brush off examples of analogous extremism on the Israeli side. You take the rehtoric of Hams seriously but dismiss that of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as irrelevant ranting.
I’m not blaming Israel for all of Palestines problems but in my view it’s fair to apportion some blame, which you seem reluctant to do.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are vile people as are their supporters but the reality is they have little influence in Government especially on how the war in Gaza is conducted. As a group they are a small, noisy minority that does Israel no favour regarding Israel’s standing in the international community.
John I don’t necessarily disagree with your broad point about looking forward and I also probably agree about right of return.
But my main point stands, the Olmert plan still maintains an Israeli military presence in Palestine and it maintains Israeli sovereignty over key connections between disconnected portions of Palestinian territory. In my view that does not constitute a sovereign state. My only point is that when proponents of Israel say “we have offered them a state with everything they want multiple times”. I just want it to be acknowledged that state being offered does not meet many of basic criteria of a sovereign nation.
Furthermore, none of this excuses the destruction that Gaza has been subjected to. Don’t forget the Israeli leadership has cynically supported Hamas over the PA while also Jailing more moderate voices to make a diplomatic resolution more difficult.
The destruction of Gaza is a direct result of the decision Hamas took from the start of taking the billions to build a military infrastructure directly underneath the civilian infrastructure . They created a unique battlefield that was tightly integrated with the above ground civilian infrastructure with the inevitable result - civilian casualties that were still remarkably low thanks to the approach that the IDf took to conducting this war. As Einat said, we all the the choice of whether to contribute to the script of keeping the Palestinians in a state of victimhood or to speak up and encourage Palestinians to build an alternative model/ideology where Palestinians use their agency for good.
I agree to disagree on the proportionality of the response. Also worth mentioning that some of those billions have apparently been indirectly funded by Bibi, “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” Netanyahu 2019 at Likud Party meeting. My understanding is that Israel also supported proto Hamas groups starting in the 70s. If what I say is true Israeli officials may have unknowingly directly or indirectly funded and supported the October 7th attacks.
I'm not sure what you mean when you mention "...proportionality of the response..." .
Gaza has historically been significantly dependent on Israel for a range of essential services and infrastructure. The services include electricity, telecommunications, fuel and energy, water supply, health and medical supplies, food and consumer goods, construction materials, currency and banking and mail/package delivery. All this is because Hamas diverted all the billions into building the underground military capability for one purpose: to drive the Jews out of Israel forever.
Think how different the story might have been if there had been wiser, more sensible leadership in Gaza from 1947. They had agency and capabilities. It could have been the Dubai of the Levant as Einat said. It's time we stopped off loading all the blame for the problems of the Palestinians onto Israel.
I don’t think any reasonable person would say that there is not blame to be apportioned on both sides. You’re not engaging with my original point, which is that it’s untrue that Palestinians have been offered a sovereign state many times as Einat claimed.
With respect to your point about 1947, you are falling into the very trap you claim to want to avoid, you say we should look forward, yet you look backward. I’m talking about recent history where the Israeli government has intentionally undermined more moderate elements in Palestine and supported Hamas so as to purposefully reduce the likelyhood of a two state solution. Einat claims that even moderate Palestinians don’t want two states, my point would be that this is exactly what Bibi wants and is doing his best to foster this extremism in Palestine.
Undermining the political system in Palestine rather trying to support more moderate elements contributes to the dependency you describe.
I think there is also a fair amount of support for erasure of Palestinians/Palestine on the Israeli side, why else do you have people like Smotrich in positions of power. So I think it’s untrue to say that Israeli can 100% claim a moral high ground with respect to intentions.
The British were told to wind up the Balfour Mandate and ensure that the Arabs and the Jews as well as other minorities were set up with sovereign states. So countries like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Iraq were created. The Arab tribes that were later to brand themselves as Palestinians were offered Gaza and the West Bank - in 1947 - but declined because they wanted it all; “from the river to the sea”. They were greedy and hated the idea of living next to those filthy, stinking, thieving, untrustworthy Jews. Since then nothing has changed.
Did you actually listen to all of the podcast with Einat?
I signed up for premium just to listen to this podcast. From the Dakotas in the US with really very little knowledge of the middle east generally. Loved this episode. Coming into this, my thoughts on Israel have essentially been that I find it very hard not to have mostly a kneejerk sympathy for Israel, given they never seem to express a desire for an institutional policy of racial or religious destruction of another group, while many others do express this sentiment for them.
I find Einat’s historical/empirical case very convincing. If it is indeed true that Palestinian officials have repeatedly rejected peace offerings (assuming she is correct on this), it’s hard to know how to blame Israel whatsoever. Perhaps the history is more complicated, and they could have done more during negotiations - even if this is the case, as long as even a plurality of Israel’s negotiating partner’s polity believes Israel/Israeli’s should be completely destroyed, it’s hard not to put a preponderance of guilt/blame on Palestinians.
Thus, I really find her proposal of a true psychological surrender as necessary for moving forward as really compelling, unless somehow the palestinian population can be otherwise systematically convinced to let go of the anti-Jewish ideal.
Einat provides a forceful range of arguments and as. A non Jew she provides a broader context to understand the current situation in Israel/Gaza.The irony that left wing progressives are embracing well known Nazi tropes around sanitation ie cleaning up the world via assigning Israel to a “Rubbish bin “ is truely troubling.Giving these people the Benefit of the the doubt or that their. Heart is in the right place ,despite their ignorance (which river. ? which sea) is no longer tenable🇮🇪
She makes a lot of good points and it was good to hear. But she really talked over you and I wish she would have let you push back more. If nothing else, I find myself unconvinced by some of her assertions when there wasn't the ability for her to address the obvious questions that pop up.
My memory isn't great but the one that comes to mind is in regards to how she asserted the ratio of combatant to civilian killed is excellent and the lengths the IDF goes to to keep it that way. I believe that's based on that one article from the military analyst whose name I don't recall but I've seen other sources say that's completely wrong and the truth is quite different. I don't know for sure. But she didn't address it and takes only the most favorable sources. For all I know she's totally right. But Josh couldn't get a word in edgewise to at least question her and let her address the critiques.
Perhaps you are thinking of John Spencer an expert in urban warfare who teaches/trains soldiers in the US Army. There is also Andrew Fox a Middle East veteran in the British Army. Then there is Lt Col Jon Cornices (retired) of the IDF. They all provide had data to substantiate their opinions.
Her ending point, which I agree with, is why I think Josh's phrasing in the SMH was terrible. It doesn't serve Palestinians to play into a social game that ends with Jewish persecution. It just hurts Jews.
Josh claims that he did it for shock value or emphasis and then followed it up later with "until Israel reforms its behavior" or whatever. But the damage was done. He has unintentionally contributed to the legitimization of a hateful ideology.
I agree but happy to give Josh credit for genuinely embracing uncomfortable conversations. He looked quite uncomfortable through much of this. Kudos for him having her on his show.
Thank you for bringing Einat to my ears. The most polite, intelligent, empathetic and succinct argument I have heard on this whole topic
GREAT episode, Josh. (Even if she barely let you get a word in!)
Best iteration of the argument against the idea that all that's needed is to "end the occupation" that I've heard. She was very persuasive.
I came across Einat a few months ago. Her knowledge and clear articulation of the conflict between Israel and the “axis of resistance” helped me resist the line taken by so many of my lefty, feminist friends in Australia who in some cases come very close to outright support for Hamas, and in recent days for the Mullahs in Iran. One recently posted a comment on a Facebook thread, saying that women in Iran are better off than in America, that they get a better education, and that the idea that Iran was developing nuclear weapons was a lie created by Zionists. Actually, she didn’t write Zionists, but used the slur ‘zios’. I think for some their hatred of Trump and Netanyahu is so deep that they must see anything and everything that Israel everything America does as evil, and everything on the other side must be pure. And as Einat so clearly explains anti-Zionism is just a new word for Jew hatred.
There was consternation in my circles when I shared an article by Nova Peris, an indigenous Australian who supports Israel. Nova now is in the evil camp!
Nova would be a good person to have on your show. She has an interesting perspective and has visited Israel since October 7. She is quite clear that Jewish Australians have been some of the biggest supporters of indigenous Australians.
Agree Nova would be a great guest. Her foundation work with remote communities is really interesting too.
Best guest I’ve heard yet on the subject. Extremely knowledgeable and persuasive.
Thank you
I think, Josh, you'd enjoy the conversation more on this topic, if it was Haviv Rettig Gur as your guest.
I'll just keep asking every time this subject comes up!
I agree, Haviv is intruging. Einat too
JH, here is how negotiations normally work. One side comes up with proposals and the other side comes up with a counter proposals. Over time the gap narrows and eventually an agreement is made. In this process both sides lose things they hold dear ("red lines") and get something that was really important to them in return.
I would like you to note that in all the proposals for a Jewish state alongside an Arab (Palestinian) state I have never heard any counter proposals from the Arab/Palestinian side during the actual process of negotiations. You bring up some points that would have been valid DURING the negotiation process. You expect such points above you make to be made public during the negotiation process with ebb and flows in the negotiations. Instead of that you have JH representing the Palestinian side some 17 years after the last proposal was made.
You have proved Einat Wolf's point. The negotiations for the Palestinians were never about negotiating, but an end in itself to see what Israel would offer with no counter proposals. All negotiations require 2 parties who actually want to interact to solve a problem. This only ever happened on the Israeli/Jewish side. The Palestinians have never said that they want anything other than non-existence of a Jewish state alongside a an Arab one and here lies the root of the problem. This explanation is clearly born out of their actions. Stop "Westplaining" as Einat said.
If this is supposed to be an intellectual, liberal and empathetic Israeli political position, then I can’t see there ever being an end to this conflict. Well done Josh for having the conversation. Keep going bud.
Wait until you’ll have listen how the moderate Palestinians sound like and more so how the PA (Not Hamas) school curriculum looks like. Here’s a report if you are interested
https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/PA-Reports_-Updated-Selected-Examples_May-2021.pdf
I think you missed her points then
I thought she made very articulate points but was a bit condescending saying things like "very easy" when running counters. I think she's right, but she used language that in my opinion was a bit demeaning if you disagree with her. I feel like I could tell the moment Josh decided to just give up and let her talk herself out so he could get the podcast over with, and that's a tragedy in my opinion because it rendered all her excellent points a bit useless when they just started falling on deaf ears.
This podcast unfortunately will just go down as people who went in agreeing with her appreciating that she got to talk a lot, and everyone who went in skeptical to leave thinking she was condescending and long winded. I appreciate Josh not wanting to devolve the conversation into something like the Andrew Sullivan Batya podcast, but I really wish he hadn't given up on pushing back.
The problem was that he kept pushing back in the pretty much the same way, trying to poke holes in her main thesis (which of course she's effectively spent years being ready for), and didn't, in the moment, have some other potentially more generative way of responding. Not that this is easy for this topic, but Josh is one of the best, and he needs to step up in this regard IMO; we need him.
(It's called "Uncomfortable Conversations" - but those conversations better be at least potentially fruitful, too, or what's the point?)
Yeah and she did agree about the controversy in the West Bank, so it’s not as if she’s some far right ideologue. I’m sure she has a lot to say about the prime minister and his court cases, which are likely unpausing soon. Josh didn’t really push back because she made excellent points. People grab on to shit about the way things are delivered by her, as if that’s somehow important in this conflict. Try to hear the merit of the idea or argument and spend less time operating from a place of disgust. We all have our weird hang ups when it comes to people’s communication, behavior, etc. but mostly it’s about our own issues, not theirs.
Good conversation, great relative to this topic's usual quality, but also a missed opportunity. (This topic is difficult - more at 11.)
I tend to find Einat's thesis convincing, as far as it goes - what I mean by that is, history is rarely one thing. One pattern might exist and have the effects that it has and cease having those effects when its gone; but another pattern might emerge alongside it and change the equation.
I wish Josh had, if only for the sake of argument, proposed Einat's position on consistency of Palestinian rejectionism and Palestinianism could be pretty much entirely true, but that next to that there might be another truth: Palestinianism and its intractability might be real, but Messianic settler insanity and its grip on Israeli politics, especially in combination with Netanyahu, and perhaps bringing up rising anti-Arab sentiments in Israeli society both before and after Oct 7, might mean that even in a situation of surrender, the Israeli hardliners might find an excuse to keep up the pressure, to try to encourage "voluntary emigration" as Smotrich put it, so that they could keep the greater Israel dream alive. That perhaps internal Israeli dynamics really had changed, crossed something of a Rubicon since the second intifada and Gaza falling to Hamas. I would have liked to have heard Einat respond to a criticism of that kind. Instead, Josh spent most of the interview trying to find a way out of Einat's thesis, trying to believe that Palestinianism is somehow amenable to Israeli agency, which I think wasn't the best use at least of the second half of the podcast.
Einat described how Hamas militia moved above ground in civilian clothes integrated with, and hidden by the supportive population. As a person who has been actively involved in counter-insurgency military work in Africa this is classic Mao stuff where “the terrorist moves through the people like a fish moves through the sea”. When the opposing militia look like innocent civilians until they pull out an AK47 or an RPG launcher you have no idea as a soldier in uniform of who is friend and who is foe. In a densely populated urban environment this is unbelievably stressful and you spend every second of your life on patrol with your finger on the trigger of your weapon which is off safe mode. In this situation accidents will happen. Hamas, an organisation that excepts and actually wants civilians killed in the conflict because it feeds their propaganda machine, make sure that these “accidents” happen and then sits back as the Western mainstream media write reports supports the Palestinian mythology of vistimhood.
Haha why have them in the coalition then, do they not represent a meaningful constituency in Israel?
What are your thoughts on Israel government supporting Hamas?
What do you mean “support”?
I mean intentionally funnelling financial resources to Hamas as Netanyahu has claimed is part of his strategy to undermine Palestinian statehood.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” 2019
You do know don’t you that Gaza uses the Israeli financial/banking services (the Israeli shekel is their currency too), energy production, water supplies and logistics for imports and exports. They do this because Hamas used the billions of foreign aid to feather their own nests and build the underground battlefield.
We need to wake up and stop blaming Israel and Netanyahu for all the problems of the Gazans.
You’re not actually engaging with my point, which is that Israel acts in bad faith and then claims the moral high ground when their actual strategy is to foster extremism to make any kind negotiated settlement impossible.
I acknowledge Hama’s culpability. You point to the extremism in Hamas then brush off examples of analogous extremism on the Israeli side. You take the rehtoric of Hams seriously but dismiss that of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as irrelevant ranting.
I’m not blaming Israel for all of Palestines problems but in my view it’s fair to apportion some blame, which you seem reluctant to do.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are vile people as are their supporters but the reality is they have little influence in Government especially on how the war in Gaza is conducted. As a group they are a small, noisy minority that does Israel no favour regarding Israel’s standing in the international community.
John I don’t necessarily disagree with your broad point about looking forward and I also probably agree about right of return.
But my main point stands, the Olmert plan still maintains an Israeli military presence in Palestine and it maintains Israeli sovereignty over key connections between disconnected portions of Palestinian territory. In my view that does not constitute a sovereign state. My only point is that when proponents of Israel say “we have offered them a state with everything they want multiple times”. I just want it to be acknowledged that state being offered does not meet many of basic criteria of a sovereign nation.
Furthermore, none of this excuses the destruction that Gaza has been subjected to. Don’t forget the Israeli leadership has cynically supported Hamas over the PA while also Jailing more moderate voices to make a diplomatic resolution more difficult.
The destruction of Gaza is a direct result of the decision Hamas took from the start of taking the billions to build a military infrastructure directly underneath the civilian infrastructure . They created a unique battlefield that was tightly integrated with the above ground civilian infrastructure with the inevitable result - civilian casualties that were still remarkably low thanks to the approach that the IDf took to conducting this war. As Einat said, we all the the choice of whether to contribute to the script of keeping the Palestinians in a state of victimhood or to speak up and encourage Palestinians to build an alternative model/ideology where Palestinians use their agency for good.
I agree to disagree on the proportionality of the response. Also worth mentioning that some of those billions have apparently been indirectly funded by Bibi, “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” Netanyahu 2019 at Likud Party meeting. My understanding is that Israel also supported proto Hamas groups starting in the 70s. If what I say is true Israeli officials may have unknowingly directly or indirectly funded and supported the October 7th attacks.
I'm not sure what you mean when you mention "...proportionality of the response..." .
Gaza has historically been significantly dependent on Israel for a range of essential services and infrastructure. The services include electricity, telecommunications, fuel and energy, water supply, health and medical supplies, food and consumer goods, construction materials, currency and banking and mail/package delivery. All this is because Hamas diverted all the billions into building the underground military capability for one purpose: to drive the Jews out of Israel forever.
Think how different the story might have been if there had been wiser, more sensible leadership in Gaza from 1947. They had agency and capabilities. It could have been the Dubai of the Levant as Einat said. It's time we stopped off loading all the blame for the problems of the Palestinians onto Israel.
I don’t think any reasonable person would say that there is not blame to be apportioned on both sides. You’re not engaging with my original point, which is that it’s untrue that Palestinians have been offered a sovereign state many times as Einat claimed.
With respect to your point about 1947, you are falling into the very trap you claim to want to avoid, you say we should look forward, yet you look backward. I’m talking about recent history where the Israeli government has intentionally undermined more moderate elements in Palestine and supported Hamas so as to purposefully reduce the likelyhood of a two state solution. Einat claims that even moderate Palestinians don’t want two states, my point would be that this is exactly what Bibi wants and is doing his best to foster this extremism in Palestine.
Undermining the political system in Palestine rather trying to support more moderate elements contributes to the dependency you describe.
I think there is also a fair amount of support for erasure of Palestinians/Palestine on the Israeli side, why else do you have people like Smotrich in positions of power. So I think it’s untrue to say that Israeli can 100% claim a moral high ground with respect to intentions.
The British were told to wind up the Balfour Mandate and ensure that the Arabs and the Jews as well as other minorities were set up with sovereign states. So countries like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Iraq were created. The Arab tribes that were later to brand themselves as Palestinians were offered Gaza and the West Bank - in 1947 - but declined because they wanted it all; “from the river to the sea”. They were greedy and hated the idea of living next to those filthy, stinking, thieving, untrustworthy Jews. Since then nothing has changed.
Did you actually listen to all of the podcast with Einat?
This lady could talk the leg off a chair with a mouthful of marbles underwater
I signed up for premium just to listen to this podcast. From the Dakotas in the US with really very little knowledge of the middle east generally. Loved this episode. Coming into this, my thoughts on Israel have essentially been that I find it very hard not to have mostly a kneejerk sympathy for Israel, given they never seem to express a desire for an institutional policy of racial or religious destruction of another group, while many others do express this sentiment for them.
I find Einat’s historical/empirical case very convincing. If it is indeed true that Palestinian officials have repeatedly rejected peace offerings (assuming she is correct on this), it’s hard to know how to blame Israel whatsoever. Perhaps the history is more complicated, and they could have done more during negotiations - even if this is the case, as long as even a plurality of Israel’s negotiating partner’s polity believes Israel/Israeli’s should be completely destroyed, it’s hard not to put a preponderance of guilt/blame on Palestinians.
Thus, I really find her proposal of a true psychological surrender as necessary for moving forward as really compelling, unless somehow the palestinian population can be otherwise systematically convinced to let go of the anti-Jewish ideal.
Einat provides a forceful range of arguments and as. A non Jew she provides a broader context to understand the current situation in Israel/Gaza.The irony that left wing progressives are embracing well known Nazi tropes around sanitation ie cleaning up the world via assigning Israel to a “Rubbish bin “ is truely troubling.Giving these people the Benefit of the the doubt or that their. Heart is in the right place ,despite their ignorance (which river. ? which sea) is no longer tenable🇮🇪
She makes a lot of good points and it was good to hear. But she really talked over you and I wish she would have let you push back more. If nothing else, I find myself unconvinced by some of her assertions when there wasn't the ability for her to address the obvious questions that pop up.
What “obvious questions” do you have in mind?
My memory isn't great but the one that comes to mind is in regards to how she asserted the ratio of combatant to civilian killed is excellent and the lengths the IDF goes to to keep it that way. I believe that's based on that one article from the military analyst whose name I don't recall but I've seen other sources say that's completely wrong and the truth is quite different. I don't know for sure. But she didn't address it and takes only the most favorable sources. For all I know she's totally right. But Josh couldn't get a word in edgewise to at least question her and let her address the critiques.
Perhaps you are thinking of John Spencer an expert in urban warfare who teaches/trains soldiers in the US Army. There is also Andrew Fox a Middle East veteran in the British Army. Then there is Lt Col Jon Cornices (retired) of the IDF. They all provide had data to substantiate their opinions.
Her ending point, which I agree with, is why I think Josh's phrasing in the SMH was terrible. It doesn't serve Palestinians to play into a social game that ends with Jewish persecution. It just hurts Jews.
Josh claims that he did it for shock value or emphasis and then followed it up later with "until Israel reforms its behavior" or whatever. But the damage was done. He has unintentionally contributed to the legitimization of a hateful ideology.
I agree but happy to give Josh credit for genuinely embracing uncomfortable conversations. He looked quite uncomfortable through much of this. Kudos for him having her on his show.
Thanks for making this podcast available! Big fan of Einat. Very clever, articulate and determined.