The Palestinian Flag Has Become The New Red Flag - Einat Wilf

today I'm with anat wil an intellectual a former member of the CET the tragedy of the Palestinians is that whereas other Arab countries in the region have their own separate identity have their own history the Palestinians as their name suggests have been constructed only around the negation of Zionism only around the resistance to a Jewish state the Palestinian demand death to Israel they've learned to say it in words like justice and rights but fundamentally if you ask them I over 20 years have found three Palestinians who are publicly willing to say that they want to

live next to the Jewish state with all the implications three the Palestinian flag is the new red flag queer for Palestine Palestine is about clim CL change palestine's about fighting capitalism Palestine is about indigenous movement because it has become the new red flag of Utopia my name is Stefan Thompson I'm the founder of vrad 24 and I'm here in Israel in Tel Aviv on the ground interviewing a series of politicians intellectuals and experts around the Israel Hamas War and the broader problems of the region and also about the role that Israel plays in the broader

West and today with inat WL an intellectual a former member of the CET and an expert on the Israel Hamas Israel Palestine Israel Palestinian conflict struggle um and and broader clash and this is what I want to ask you is the the first question an is what is the war that is actually being fought now so the war that is being fought now is not the war in Gaza the war in Gaza is merely the current Arena in the bigger War and the bigger War has been the same War for the last century it's the

war that the Arab world and especially the Arabs of this area now known as Palestinians have been waging for the total purpose of no Sovereign Jewish State anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea everything else has just been instances of that symptoms of that but the war is waged for one purpose and one purpose only so that the Jews will not be Sovereign anywhere in this land um the reason that right now there's a war going on in Gaza is because Israel withdrew from Gaza the Palestinians for the first time in their history

the Arabs of the lant had territory that they actually controlled uh contrary to these fake maps of losing Palestinian territory when isra is withdraws from the Gaza Strip it's the first time that the Arabs of the Levant the Palestinians control territory and rather than say to themselves wonderful Gaza is a beautiful strip of land it sits on a Gorge gorgeous Beach it's at the crossroads of two ancient trade routes we're going to turn this into the Dubai of the Levant the Singapore of the Middle East true to their ultimate purpose they say excellent where they're

going to use Gaza to weaponize the entire Urban landscape of Gaza in order to turn it into a highly fortified machine for the purpose of in their uh view liberating Palestine from The River To The Sea so the reason that we have an arena in Gaza right now is that the Arabs have been using Gaza in order to continue the same war that they have been waging for the last cent cury initially to prevent the establishment of a Jewish State and when they failed to achieve that to prevent to basically undo it but what the

Palestinians or the Arabs of the Levant as you call them would argue is that if only they were given a state If Only They were given sovereignty and self-determination the same way that Jews have been given sovereignty and self-determination on the land of Israel this none of this would happen what do you what do you say to that so one of the things that Mark the way that the conflict is often told is a complete reversal of cause and effect the reason that Palestinians don't have a state is that they actually never pursued a state

whenever they faced a choice and they faced multiple choices in the last century whenever they faced a choice that they could have their own state but the Jews will also have their state next to them every time they rejected that opportunity and they went to war very violent and brutal one typically often when I look at the history of the conflict I uh bring a quote it's a quote by Ernst Bevin the British foreign minister after World War II he was not a friend to the Jewish people certainly not to those who wanted sovereignty and

he goes to the British Parliament in February of 47 to explain why Britain failed to fulfill the mandate date that it received unanimously from the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire collapsed to help the Jews achieve sovereignty in the land it did not betray the Arabs it created Jordan Syria France helped create sorry France helped create Syria and Lebanon Britain helped create Jordan and Iraq but there's no State for the Jews and he needs to explain why Britain is basically giving the Mandate back to the United Nations the heir of the League of Nations

and he says the following we failed because his Majesty's government is faced with an irreconcilable conflict he calls it irreconcilable now this is February 47 there's no occupation there's no settlement there's no blockade of Gaza there's no BB there's no right-wing government there's no state of Israel for that matter so all the things that we are told are the causes of Palestinian violence don't exist yet and he already calls the conflict irreconcilable and he goes on to explain he says in this land we have Jews and Arabs no one has yet called a Palestinian he

says for the Jews the top priority he calls it the point of principle is to establish Jewish sovereignty in the land so the Jews want to establish a sovereign Jewish State exercising the universal principle of self-determination for the Jewish people in their ancient Homeland very well the Jews want to State and then he goes on to say and for the Arabs the top priority and these are are not these are the Arabs that will later be known as Palestinians he says for the Arabs the top priority is to resist to the last the establishment of

Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land he's not saying the Jews want a state the Arabs want a state we just need the UN to help us divide the land that would work with the idea that all the Arabs ever wanted is sovereignty and statehood but he's saying something very very different he's saying as a matter of top priority the Jews want a state and the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state by definition irreconcilable this is why when the United Nations proposes several months later divide the land the Jews will have

a state in the lands that the Jews re claimed from malara and the desert the Arabs will have a state did Jews say sure we're not happy we were offered more than that but we'll take it because our top priority is a sovereign Jewish State and the Arabs say absolutely not we're going to go to war and we're rejecting this plan for partition which would have given the Arabs of the lant the Palestinians their own Arab sovereign state they're saying we reject it and we're going to go to war because our top priority and they

say that our top priority for the Jews not to have a state in any part of the land that's our top priority and this has only ever been the choice and the conflict every time that the Arabs were given a choice you can have your own State self-determination dignity self-governance freedom but it will mean that you live next to the Jews who will also have their state every single time from 37 to 47 to 67 to 2000 to 2008 every time that they were faced with a clear and concrete choice to have an Arab Palestinian

state in part of the land next to a Jewish state every time they reject that choice and go to war you call the the what what is the people who are referred to by Pro Palestine circles Palestinians you insist on calling them Arabs you you don't seem to use the term Palestinians why is that um I also use the term Palestinians but a few words about where this name comes from not a lot of people know that when the Mandate for Palestine is established in the wake of World War I there's a series of mandates

to help Arabs Jews uh Kurds Armenians Turks to establish States that's the idea the Empire is gone and now the people of the Empire will have self-determination and the British and French will serve as kind of interim tutors uh for that process so there's quite a few mandates and there's a mandate for Palestine and the Mandate for Palestine includes the following words recognizing the historical connection between the Jewish people with Palestine the Jewish people with palestin a historical connection well a hundred years ago everybody knew and this was unanimously adopted by the League of Nations

the body that represents the global goodwi after World War I so this is a unanimous decision to recognize the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine because a hundred years ago everyone understood that the word Palestine was merely the Christian Roman Colonial name given to the geography where the Jewish Kingdom once stood and where the Jews will once again have their state because the Mandate continues to use this language and it's the only mandate that uses the following language based on the historical connection this is the ground for the reconstituting of the Jewish homeland

in the land so the world understands that the Jews establishing a state in Palestine is the reconstitution of an ancient Homeland it is globally understood that the Jews are not foreigners not colonialists not Interlopers that they have a historical deep continuous connection with one land and one land only we call it the land of Israel but the Roman Colonial European name since Emperor Adrian is Palestine now when the colonizers finally leave when the British Empire is finally gone the Ottoman Empire is gone the Roman Empire is gone the Islamic Empires are gone and the British

Empire is finally gone the Jewish people do what every self-respecting people did at this moment of decolonization around the world they called themselves by their ancient name right the Gold Coast becomes Ghana I mean so we call ourselves finally we can throw off the name Palestine which was a foreign name and we call ourselves by our name Israel now what happens is this the Arabs of the land have failed to achieve their goal of no Jewish state right that was their ultimate priority no Jewish sovereignty resisted the last any Jewish sovereignty any part of the

land they fail the Jews are able to withstand the Arab Onslaught declare independence and call themselves by their indigenous historical name Israel so now the Arabs of the land some of them became refugees as a result of the war some just remain in place they now are looking for a name that will reflect their war and they increasingly take the name Palestine because what they want to convey they basically hijack the name in order to use the the historical connection because once everyone knew that Palestine was the historical connection with the Jewish people so now

they hijack the name Palestine in order to give it the impression that it's an exclusively Arab name and they increasingly call themselves Palestinians so the reason actually that I do use the name Palestinian and also the Arabs of the Levant and the Palestine Arabs is that the name Palestinians actually reflects the hijacking and the desire to erase the Jewish connection with the land sometimes I say that the day that the Palestinians will end their Century long war against Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land they will probably no longer be called Palestinians they will

probably adopt a different name a name that is not about erasing another people but about something that is for themselves do you think that there is a possibility of peace between Israelis and Arabs and to to what extent are the Abraham Accords a success and a a a milestone in achieving that I always believe in the possibility of Peace uh looking at history people change ideas change Nations change so the possibility always exists but for the possibility to be realized certain ideas have to die and new ideas have to be born the idea that has

to die is that to be an Arab and a Muslim is necessarily to oppose Jewish self-determination now there's a long history uh of how Arabs and Muslims view Jews sometimes when uh I explain the conflict and people finally understand that it's only ever been about an opposition to Jewish State many people ask then why why this Century long obsession with the Jews not being Sovereign even in a tiny piece of land right because if the Jews would have received their fair share of the lands of the Ottoman Empire based on their population of the Empire

Israel would have been five times the size of what it is today so where is this opposition to the Jews not being Sovereign even in a tiny sliver of their ancestral Homeland and that goes back to history when the Arabs conquer the Levant in North Africa and the Middle East the Jews have already been exiled disposed possessed for about six centuries so when the Arabs come conquering they only find one kind of Jew weak dispossessed stateless in Exile and as far as they're concerned this becomes the way things are and they incorporate it into their

Theology and their sociology the Jews in the Arab and Islamic understanding are a people of lower status they're never the equals of Arabs and Muslims but they're also not complete infidels I sometimes joke that they got the first book right but not the sequels so you know we're going to give them this like middle lower status now over the centuries there were a lot of things that marked the Jews as being of lower status to the Arabs and Muslims uh but my two favorite examples is that Jews could not ride horses horses were a mark

of dignity they were a weapon of War Jews could only ride donkeys and of course they could not carry arms because their status that was called Dei meant that they were protected by the Arab and Muslim ruler sometimes they were more protected sometimes less but they could not defend themselves now when you look at the early images of the Jews uh who C who are in Israel inspired by Zionism inspired by the idea of self-determination what are the two things you immediately see in those images Jews are riding horses and they carry arms now imagine

the theological sociological historical shock to the Arab and Muslim system and seeing those kinds of Jews the instinctive response is almost violence go back to your place this you know this is not natural this is not normal so very very long time and the Arab palestin struggle as part of that it's the struggle to put the Jews back in their place this is the opposition to Jewish sovereignty wait a moment here you're not our equals you do not get to defend yourselves that's our prerogative now what the Abraham hords have started doing is to break

the mold and I don't think it's a coincidence that the countries that are normalizing relations with Israel or talking about it are the more successful Arab countries because ultimately an obsession with Jews with anti-zionism with anti-Semitism is the mark of failed societies it's the mark of societies that need someone to blame for their failings to show look it's because of them because of Zionism the Arab world is not where it should be now it's not a coincidence that the successful Arab countries are no longer in need of this session with anti Zionism to deflect away

from their failings because they're no longer failing so they are able to develop an Arab and Muslim identity that is proud that is futur looking and is not obsessed with Jews when the Abraham Accords were signed I co-wrote an oped with two young Emirates a man and a woman and it opens as follows we're proud Arabs we're proud Muslims and were zionists and they basically wrote and they said there's no contradiction between a proud araban Muslim identity and the recognition that the Jewish people have a historical connection to the land of Israel and that they

have the right to govern themselves by themselves in that land so for me the future I sometimes call it Arab Zionism or Islamic Zionism it is the Arab and Islamic proud Embrace of the Jewish right to self-determination so this is my long-term Vision sometimes I call myself a long-term peace activist and I genuinely believe that it's possible however long it takes the tragedy of the Palestinians is that whereas other Arab countries in the region have their own separate identity have their own history the Palestinians as their name suggests have been constructed only around the negation

of Zionism only around the resistance to a Jewish State and there the challenge is much higher because they don't only need to kind of throw away anti-zionism they need to construct a new identity Arab Muslim letine that is not obsessed with the non-existence of a Jewish state there is one exception to successful Arab countries Qatar is immensely wealthy it's a very small but very gas-rich Nation its people have done phenomenally well they're also exceptionally talented we we see that with the the pr operations that they run be it in whitewashing their own their own crimes

or be it in influence operations under aljazera or AJ plus and yet they are violently anti-sm yes the Qatar has made a mistake uh I don't know to what extent Qatar is really a country it seems to be a kind of uh terrorist group with a bank account a very big bank account which they use very effectively but uh you're absolutely right Qatar has taken the direction of thinking that they will protect themselves and save themselves uh by adopting anti-zionism and anti-Semitism and spreading it to the world Al jazer in Arabic and English exists for

the sole purpose of kind of inserting this poison around the world and ultimately this causes tremendous damage to Israel and the Jewish people no question about that but ultimate oh but not just the Jewish people I mean the the fascinating thing about this is is that Al jaaz and AJ plus are also inflicting incredible damage on Western Society precisely so every society that was infected with anti-Semitism and anti- Zionism sees the same process happening first if it's not fought against there are no Jews left in that Society the Arab world from Morocco to Afghanistan in

the two decades when Arab anti-zionism were was at its height in the 40s and 50s and early 60s during those two decades from irao to Afghanistan no Jews are left and we're talking about a complete ethnic cleansing of communities that in many cases predated the Arab and Islamic conquests the Jewish community in Iraq went back to the Babylonian exile and then with but yet within a few years it's gone so the first thing that happens is that the environment turns hostile to Jewish life but ultimately you're right the society itself becomes sick and sometimes collapses

you cannot look at any society in the world that made anti-Semitism and anti-zionism a central feature of its ideology of its construction and somehow it was a good thriving flourishing Society I recently gave a talk to um uh congre members of the American Congress who were visiting Israel and I told them look you think that you defeated the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union might just defeat you because they've inserted into your universities into your system into the international organizations that uphold the postor War II order from the United Nations to the international court of

justice they have inserted the one virus that has proven itself guarant aned to drive societies mad now it's a powerful virus someone recently compared it to the ring in um The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings it's incredibly powerful anti-Semitism anti-zionism is very powerful because it Taps into centuries and Millennia of dangerous ideas that allow people to build power right tiny Qatar is using it to build a lot of power but like the ring It ultimately destroys its wear um I'm concerned about the interim that until Qatar is destroyed until the Iranian mola regime is

destroyed my concern is how much damage will they do to the Jewish people before they are destroyed by The Ring of anti-zionism and of anti-semitism that's my concern for the moment the the Iranian case is an interesting one because before the fall of the Sha before 1979 the Iranian Society was was actually very pro-israeli and the Iranian diaspora and the Democratic opposition and the monarchist opposition proves that that they are very there generally very friendly towards Jews very friendly towards Israel how did what is the role that the mullers and the AA is is playing

in in the region and and how big of a danger do you think that the Iranian regime is to the Jewish people and and to the state of Israel so over the years when I was asked about Iran I would always say that I'm no expert on Iran but I am very much an expert on who supported the Palestinians for the last century because the Palestinian goal has only ever been one complete resistance to Jewish sovereign in any part of the land what they always were able to do is to draw on the support of

every anti-semitic and anti-zionist Power in the last century so in the 30s and 40s they enjoyed the support of the Nazis they have complete collaboration with them today this is a very inconvenient fact so people like to pretend that the Muti the leader of uh the Palestinians and Hitler just had lunch once but it was a full collaboration with with the same values and the same ideology and in many ways we're still suffering from the fact that post World War II the Arabs were given a free pass from the process of accepting defeat and going

through denazification but when the Nazis are defeated they are replaced by the pan arabist and like I said the pan arabist turn Palestinians into the secular Theology of what it means to be a proud Arab and Muslim and the consequences of that are no Jews from Iraq to Afghanistan and then the pan arabist are defeated and they're replaced with the Soviets and the Soviets take anti-zionism Global I sometimes joke that sarus Russia and the Soviet Union don't get enough credit for taking Jew hatred Global for inserting it into the institutions from the United Nations to

the Academia where it flourishes in the west today and then the Soviet Union is defeated and the ayatolla Malo regime of Iran ultimately becomes the new sponsor of the Palestinian war against Jewish sovereignty so the good news in all of that is that with a fairly high level of certainty I can say that the Mala and Ayatollah regime will find itself defeated in a hot or cold war and in the same dustman of history as its predecessors the Nazis depan arabist and the Soviets the bad news the thing that concerns me is on the way

to D dment of history on the way to being defeated they cause a lot of damage to the Jews which is my immediate concern and To The World At Large and my question is where are we at this moment has much of the damage already been done are we just in the beginning of the kind of damage in global Mayhem that they can do but again in terms of a long-term Vision I have no doubt that once the ayatolla and regime Falls the people of Iran will once again be our best friends you are a

labor politician and it's it's quite ironic today that the left which usually is standard bear of progressive values and of Tolerance has now become a standard Bearer Across the Western World of normalizing to some extent anti-Semitism be it Jeremy kin in the labor party in the UK or be it the squad in the Democratic party in the USA H how is it that these these figures of once tolerant parties that were not associated with being against any minority group have now become in many ways violently anti-semitic and and most certainly viant anti-zionist the mistake we

make is looking at the progressive or very extreme left left as if it is the liberal left it's not it's the classic illiberal left it's the left of the Soviet Union that literally wrote the book on anti-Semitism the protocols of the Elders of Zion with sarus Russia and then replaced it when anti-Semitism became discredited with the more respectable anti-zionism that's what's flourishing in the left today so the idea of an illiberal left has always come together with very strong anti-zionist anti-semitic views and the danger is is that they don't understand what they're participating in that

many of them I think genuinely believe that they're fighting for a good cause that anti-zionism is really important uh and what they're not understanding is that they are parting old ideas that have been hatched decades ago if not centuries ago that are equating Israel and Zionism with every evil known to man from colonialism to imperialism to white supremacy to Nazism and genocide so the equation of Israel and Zionism with every evil known to man from colonialism to imperialism to apartheid white supremacy genocide and Nazism has always been in the service of imagining a Utopia I've

called this process of equating Israel Zionism and the Star of David with every evil known to men as the placard strategy because you see it on placards on in anti-israel demonstrations but it's also the UN in Academia you can get a PhD in Zionism is colonialism and after October 7th I saw a new placard which said keep the world clean and it had the image of a star David in a trash bin and when I saw that placard I said Bingo we've reached the logical conclusion of what has been building now for decades this equating

of Israel and Zionism and the Star of David with every evil known to men and the idea is and that's one of the most ancient and dangerous ideas is that there is a clean world out there a world of Utopia it's not a coincidence that all the evil words are equated with Israel Zionism and the Star of David and all the good words Freedom equality Justice and rights are equated with the anti-zionism with the Palestinian identity so what people are faced with is the notion that there is a clean world out there a world of

Justice equality freedom and rights and the only thing that stands between us in this messy terrible world and this to opian world is the collective Jew and the collective Jew therefore has to be placed in the trash bin by any means necessary and this is the most ancient and most dangerous idea certainly when it comes to the Jewish people but to the societies who become obsessed with it and someone recently said that the Palestinian flag is the new red flag and when I heard that I thought oh that's actually true that that's when that's why

you begin to see queers for Palestine Palestine is about climate change Palestine is about fighting capitalism Palestine is a bad indigenous movement because it has become the new red flag of Utopia there is a global Utopia and like in all the historical Utopias there is always what stands between us and salvation us and a perfect world is the collective Jew and that's what we're seeing in the left it's not the classic liberal left it's an illiberal left which has its own very dangerous history we've seen this massive normalization we see it in the west we

see it in mainstream politics and not just on the left obviously we've been focusing on the left because I think it's much more visible in the west right now especially with with elhan with Rashid LA with AOC with how far do you think it will go in in in Western societ we we know about the Arab world that's something that we know about we know about the non-aligned countries that generally speaking they will side with the islamists but but in the Western World specifically how far do you think this can go as in do you

think this will reach sort of near Hitler levels or is this going to be you know just a sort of mildly unpleasant strain of it so over the last few years I participated in these high-profile debates as to whether anti-zionism is anti-Semitism and I lost them all because all you need to do is parade a Jew who says oh I'm against Zionism and they're like look there's your Jew he's against Zionism it's not bad Jews so when I came out of these debates and they were always very kind of emotional I um I said okay

this is not some theoretical matter oh we're debating this or that I realized it's an urgent practical matter so I decided to research what happens to countries societies political parties that turn anti-zionism into their governing ideology and here the historical record is clear with no exceptions wherever anti-zionism Rises to become the ideology of a place two things happen step one the environment turns hostile to Jewish life even when they say we have nothing against Jews we love Jews Jews are great even Jews might be at the Forefront of some of these movements the environment turns

hostile to Jewish life and if this is not fought against and stopped at the end no Jews are left now when I say no Jews are left it doesn't necessarily mean the crematorium as I said in the Arab world from Morocco to Afghanistan the Jews were ethnically cleansed when anti-zionism became the central ideology of the Arab and Muslim world but the difference between the Arab world in the 50s and Europe in the 30s is the existence of the state of Israel so this time the Jews of the Arab and Muslim World actually had a place

that wanted them had a place to go um you can see this repeating itself in Venezuela in Poland in ' 68 whatever remaining Jews were in Poland after World War II who believed in this communist socialist Brotherhood Utopia a wave of anti-zionism in 1968 basically removed all the Jews from Poland many of them committed suicide by the way so you have it again and again you see it in Corbin's labor party Corbin genuinely thinks he's not anti-semitic he's your classic Soviet anti-zionist I just want Utopia but yet despite his claim that he has nothing against

Jews and he's not anti-semitic within hours of becoming the chair of the labor party the labor party became a cesspool of Jew hatred and Jewish members of parliament from the labor party felt that they had to leave so it always works the same way now the question is is the way West doomed in that sense to that scenario and there are four places right now where the future of this will be determined Canada US France and Britain this is where Jews live outside of Israel in all these places we see the rise of anti-zionism to

be a respectable structural idea the one reason for hope that I have about Jewish life in those countries is that each one of those countries also has a very good history of philosemitism of supporting Jews so for example during the dryfus affair in France a lot of people forget that France was split there were many French people who rallied to support dry fist to go against the Betrayal uh that was against dry fist so France was split Britain has a long history of philosemitism Canada has the French and British history and America has a long

H strain in history of philosemitism so my question is for those four countries will enough people non-jews at the end of today Jews cannot fight this alone we're small people will enough Jews in Britain Canada France and the US rise up to say we're sorry this is not Canada this is not the us this is not France this is not Britain we're not going to allow these ideas to dominate our society that's the only way that it can get pushed back there's um there's a lot of there's an over representation of of Jews in in

the US for example today we're looking at 63% of American Jews are voting for Camala Harris and by extension for lucer borders for more liberal policies there is in a way is there a case to be made that very liberal Jews living in the west that are pushing and and and helping elect very liberal officials who've aligned themselves with these certain forces are acting in in their own not in their own interest but against their own interests so there was a an old joke about how Jews vote in the United States that they make money

like episcopalians but they vote like Puerto Ricans and that was always kind of the Paradox of Jewish voting for Democrats despite being successful and supposedly having the interests of wealthy Republicans and the answer to that was very simple the Jews were actually buying an insurance policy what does it mean it means that Jews knew that when societies are in crisis when societies collapse they are often the first scapegoat right we talked about anti-Semitism and anti-zionism being the mark of failed societies of societies and crisis that are trying to blame someone else for their problems so

Jews have very internalized the idea that it's important for societies not to collapse so historically they support uh Health Care welfare policies that are supposed to stabilize societies because in doing so in their minds even if it's unconscious they're buying an insurance policy against the collapse of that Society with which they will be the first victims of the question is is some of that changing uh is the Democratic party more about the illiberal left and less about liberal policies of so stabilizing society and I think what you're seeing from many Jews today is that they're

not really sure what their political home is anymore and that in itself is already pretty scary and dangerous because the feeling of Jews that they're homeless is the precursor to be politically homeless is the precursor to be generally homeless so again the question is whether both the Democratic party and the Republican Party whether enough people in both parties will rise up to say sorry this is not America and we're not going to allow these ideas to make it to the mainstream because it doesn't end well for the Jewish people and it doesn't end well for

the society at large you you've talked a lot about Jews being a minority in in Western societies everywhere and the well well they're not a minority in the state of Israel wait yeah that's we're desperately trying to preserve that yes well actually this is a very perhaps more interesting question it's a question of demographics Western demographics are absolutely awful no Western Society except for Israel is at above replacement level rates why why do you think that is uh the Jewish people in English there's a lot of names people Nation tribe Collective but in Hebrew there's

only two letters that say Isel and it's a category and it's a notion that predates the modern Notions of nation and people so in that sense the Jews are both Western but of the ancient world we are modern but we're still a tribe so along lot of the paradoxes that you will see in Jewish life have to do with the fact that we're not only Western we're not only modern we're also ancient we're also tribal we belong both to the old world and to the new world so as a tribal Society uh we still have

this notion of family children and then we combine it with modern living so Israel for example is uh like there's almost nowhere in the world where you have such a preponderance of mothers of three kids and more who have careers phds uh this is something that is both ancient and modern the world is now very firmly on the Palestinian side public opinion is is I think even people who were initially on the Israeli side are very tired there's a a sense of boredom I think if you look at it very objectively very unemotionally if you

separate yourself from the conflict I do think that this is how most people look at it they're tired they've seen too many photos of Destruction they've seen too much pallwood real or not they've seen a lot of suffering of of Palestinian people of Arabs in Gaza and and they sort of had enough what do you think is the is the future that's coming not not just to not just to Gaza but just also to the West Bank and just only to to the Palestinian minority that has been raised up and has become this sort of

martyr at the the altar of public opinion if they seem to have enough we've certainly had enough we have been fighting sacrificing for a century because the Palestinians the Arabs here are devoted to our non-existence to the fact that we will not have a state so we would love for it all to be over the problem is that just like the Iranian regime says death to Israel that's not a negotiable Demand right it's not something that we can exactly negotiate unfortunately that's still the Palestinian demand death to Israel they've learned to say it in words

like justice and right but fundamentally if you ask them are you willing to accept that the Jewish people as a people have a historical connection to this land that they have the equal right not exclusive not Superior the equal right to have their own state to self-determination in part of the land you will not find Palestinians who say yes to that I over 20 years have found three Palestinians who are publicly willing to say that they want to live next to the Jewish state with all the implications that they're not refugees that there's no right

of return three but other than that this is not an Israel Kamas War Kamas is merely the representative and the executor of the Palestinian vision of no Jewish state so if they're exhausted we're exhausted because we're living it we've been living it for a century we just want to be Sovereign in our ancient Homeland we're happy to live next to an Arab Palestinian State going back for a century every time that there was a proposal for two states the Jews said yes as long as one of the two is for the Jews and the Arabs

have always said No and went to brutal and violent War if one of the two states is for Jews and that has to end so if people talk about the day after in Gaza and what will be the future my answer is very simple the gazans the Palestinians have to end their Century long war with Zionism they have to end this destructive idea that there should be no Jewish sovereignty anywhere between the river and the Sea and they need to develop a constructive idea of living next to a Jewish rather than instead of it we

would love nothing more but as long as their ideology is from The River To The Sea no Jewish State that's not something that we can negotiate that means that we always have to fight and we will dearly love to stop fighting but as long as the ideology is various versions of death to Israel that doesn't leave us much choice but to fight a not will thank you so much for time I really really appreciate it thank you thank you