0:03

This is Citations Needed with Nima

0:06

Shirazi and Adam Johnson. Welcome

0:09

to Citations Needed, a podcast on

0:11

the media, power, PR, and the

0:13

history of bullshit. I am Nima

0:15

Shirazi. I'm Adam Johnson. You can

0:18

follow the show on Twitter at

0:20

Citations Pod Facebook, Citations Needed, and

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if you are so inclined, you

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can become a supporter of the

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show through patreon.com/Citations Needed podcast. All

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your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated

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as we are 100% listener funded. Yes,

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as always, if you listen to the show and

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you like it and you haven't yet, please, please,

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please subscribe to us on Patreon and helps keep

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the episodes themselves free and the show sustainable. Ex-officer

0:50

Amber Geiger testifies in wrong

0:52

apartment murder trial. I

0:54

was scared to death, an ABC

0:56

news story reported in 2019. Starbucks

1:00

files complaints with Labor Board,

1:02

accuses union organizers of bullying

1:05

and harassment, reported

1:07

Food and Wine magazine in April 2022. Labor

1:11

MPs fear for safety

1:13

as pro-Palestine protesters target

1:15

offices. The Guardian reported

1:17

in November 2023. Over

1:20

the last few years, we've seen the rise

1:22

of a phenomenon we're referring to today as

1:24

elite cry-bulliism, in which people

1:26

in power engage in political manipulation in order

1:29

to portray themselves as victims. Routinely,

1:31

we hear that armed American police fear for their

1:34

safety around unarmed civilians or they sob on the

1:36

stand at the trial. Lawmakers

1:38

increasingly say they fear for their

1:40

safety in the face of routine

1:42

nonviolent sit-down protest and corporate executives

1:44

are being unfairly treated by bully-ish

1:46

union organizers. It's a

1:49

sleazy manipulative tactic that not

1:51

only flattens, but flips power

1:53

dynamics. By claiming to

1:55

have been bullied or traumatized by those

1:57

who oppose them, wealthy and influential figures

1:59

suddenly transfer form themselves from

2:01

victimizer into victim. Meanwhile,

2:04

by the same perverse logic, they

2:06

characterize their actual victims, be they organizing

2:08

workers or peace activists who merely seek

2:11

to stand up for themselves, or

2:13

people killed by military and police

2:15

violence, as the

2:17

victimizers. On today's episode,

2:19

we'll explore the rise of ruling

2:21

class cry-bulliism, how elites increasingly traffic

2:24

in the language of anti-bullying and

2:26

therapy speak to indemnify themselves from

2:28

criticism, examine how cynical distortions of

2:30

power relations retast the upholders of

2:32

colonialism, labor abuses, and police violence

2:34

as the oppressed, and the people

2:36

who dare to object as the

2:38

oppressors, all in an effort to

2:40

silence dissent from the justifiably angry

2:42

masses. Later on the show,

2:44

we'll be joined by two guests. The

2:46

first will be Mari Cohen, associate editor

2:48

at Jewish Currents. In practice,

2:50

the ADL is doing everything it can to

2:53

back up Israel's right to do what it wants with

2:56

impunity. For example, if the

2:58

United States government were to try to

3:00

condition aid to Israel or were to

3:02

more harshly criticize Israel, the ADL is

3:04

going to come out against that on

3:06

all sorts of counts. And they're also

3:09

trying to classify basically most Palestinian political

3:11

expression as anti-Semitic. We'll also

3:13

be joined by Sari Mocteze, professor

3:16

of English and comparative literature at

3:18

UCLA, a scholar of

3:20

British romanticism, imperial and urban culture,

3:22

and colonial and post-colonial theory. Professor

3:25

Mocteze's writing has appeared in academic journals,

3:28

as well as many publications such as

3:30

the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post,

3:32

the Guardian, and the London Review of

3:34

Books. The author of

3:36

six books himself, his latest is

3:39

Tolerance is a Wasteland, Palestine and

3:41

the Culture of Denial, published

3:43

in 2022 by University of

3:45

California Press. We could

3:48

talk about feelings all day, but as somebody

3:50

who also has feelings, I'm not

3:52

nearly as interested in my feelings as

3:55

I am in the fate of the 11,000 children

3:57

who've been killed in Gaza and their mothers and

3:59

their fathers. and the schools

4:01

and the houses and so on. So I'd

4:03

rather talk about what's happening to actual people,

4:06

materially speaking, because that's far more urgent than

4:08

what I'm feeling or anybody else is feeling

4:10

on American campuses, given our position of relative

4:12

privilege. The term cry-bullism is

4:14

a fairly recent one. It's been around for

4:16

about a decade. It's been written up in

4:18

publications like the Spectator, Jerusalem Post, the

4:21

LA Times even had a mention of it. The

4:23

term has been used by both the left and the right to

4:26

criticize a tactic of interpersonal

4:28

or political manipulation. Broadly speaking,

4:30

it describes the concept that

4:32

someone engages in abuse, intimidation,

4:35

or foul play. And then when they get called on it, they

4:37

immediately recoil and feign that they themselves are

4:40

the victims or they themselves are being bullied.

4:42

What we'll argue in this episode, and what I

4:45

argued in my piece that I wrote on this

4:47

for The Nation on January 17th

4:49

of this year, in an article

4:51

entitled, We Live in the Golden Age of

4:53

Cry-Bullism, what I argued there and what we'll

4:55

argue today is that it's a tactic

4:57

that is increasingly being used by those

4:59

in power, those in charge of large

5:01

corporations, those who are

5:03

billionaires, and those who promote, for

5:06

example, a ethnic cleansing in Gaza,

5:08

as we'll detail, that they

5:10

themselves are in fact the one subject to

5:12

bullying. In an effort to subvert power dynamics,

5:14

a topic we've talked about on the show

5:17

a lot, and play the role

5:19

of victim, it's a tactic we'll argue

5:21

that we believe it emanates from PR

5:23

shops. It is a PR response tactic.

5:25

It is a PR crisis response tactic

5:28

that is increasingly being used by elected

5:30

billionaires, union busters, and all

5:32

sorts of people who themselves are major

5:35

bully assholes. Well, yeah, exactly, right?

5:37

If you have the power and then there's any

5:39

sort of pushback, you instantly go

5:41

to the fainting couch and

5:43

cry that you are yourself being victimized.

5:45

So let's get into some of these

5:47

examples. Examples of this phenomenon

5:49

really started to escalate after the 2014

5:52

Ferguson protests and

5:54

the many demonstrations against police violence

5:56

that followed over the ensuing months

5:58

and then years. A narrative. of

6:00

police fearing for their safety and

6:02

politicians worrying on their behalf, began

6:05

to surface as a way to

6:07

counter and delegitimize protests against police

6:09

violence and brutality, and of course,

6:12

to then seek even more

6:15

sympathy for police themselves.

6:18

In 2016, Political Magazine surveyed

6:20

71 U.S. mayors about

6:22

policing in their cities, finding that

6:24

more than half of them said

6:26

they were, quote, very worried about

6:28

the safety of their black citizens,

6:31

but nearly three-quarters of mayors say

6:33

they now fear for their officers'

6:35

lives as well, end quote. Politico

6:38

published an article on August 8, 2016,

6:41

summarizing its findings with this headline,

6:44

quote, America's mayors say,

6:46

we're afraid for our

6:48

police, end quote. Now,

6:50

of course, U.S. mayors on the whole are

6:53

ideologically aligned with police departments, but Politico played

6:55

an instrumental role in crafting this narrative as

6:57

well, that the people with the guns and

7:00

the weapons and the military grade technology with

7:02

virtual immunity to pretty much do whatever they

7:04

want were, in fact, the ones under siege

7:06

and under threat. When crafting this

7:09

narrative, they asked this question to the mayors on their poll.

7:12

They wrote, quote, how worried are you for the safety

7:14

of your police? How worried are you

7:16

about the safety of people of color in your city when

7:18

they encounter the police? The framing of

7:20

the first question introduces the notion that somehow

7:22

the general public is endangering armed police, who

7:24

needless to say have all the social and

7:26

political power, as I mentioned, where

7:28

the general public, especially those who are poor

7:30

and black and brown, obviously have far less

7:33

power and far less protection under the law.

7:36

Now the reported number of police that were killed

7:38

on the job as a result of felonious acts,

7:40

e.g., someone sort of killed them, right, rather than

7:42

getting in a car accident or slipping and falling.

7:45

In 2015, per the FBI, it was 41, while

7:47

police killed at least 1,152 people that year, according

7:52

to the Mapping Police Violence Project. So here we have

7:55

police officers, 41 of whom died

7:57

on the job in the entire country, as opposed

7:59

to 1,000. and the general

8:02

public who were killed by police.

8:04

And we're given the implication that

8:07

the police are the ones that are kind of under siege.

8:10

The idea is that this is part of a broader narrative

8:12

that police protests were per

8:14

se putting police in danger rather than

8:16

trying to reform or defund the police

8:18

that they were in fact menacing threats.

8:20

And you'll see this conflation of left-wing

8:22

protest with violence or

8:24

something that's sort of vaguely menacing

8:27

throughout this episode. If you protest

8:29

violence, you yourself are therefore being

8:31

violent against the people who are

8:33

being violent. Because what they want

8:35

is total submission and acquiescence and

8:37

obsequiousness and anything short of that is considered a

8:39

danger to them in some very vibes-based

8:42

way. In subsequent years, police

8:44

and vigilantes have taken advantage of

8:46

this kind of dough-wide, vulnerable characterization

8:48

expressing fear and trauma in order

8:50

to elicit sympathy. It's

8:52

been especially common when police

8:54

officers themselves are defendants in

8:57

high-profile murder trials. All

8:59

of the following have cried to the

9:01

media and then again on the stand

9:03

while testifying about why they killed their

9:05

victims. These include Darren Wilson,

9:07

who shot Michael Brown in the back

9:09

in Ferguson, Missouri, Amber Geiger, the off-duty

9:11

Dallas cop who walked into Botham Jean's

9:13

apartment and shot and killed him, Brett

9:15

Hankison, the detective who was part of

9:17

the raid-on and murder of Breonna Taylor

9:19

in Louisville, Kentucky, and Kyle

9:21

Rittenhouse, who killed two people protesting the

9:24

police killing of Jacob Blake in Kenosha,

9:26

Wisconsin. This list, of course, is far

9:28

from exhaustive, but it demonstrates

9:30

a clear pattern. When cops

9:33

or pro-cop vigilantes kill

9:36

people, who is the

9:38

victim ultimately? Who feared for their own lives? Not

9:40

the people who were dead, no, but the people

9:42

who killed them. And this is a reoccurring pattern

9:44

because they're probably instructed to cry because that's how

9:46

you sort of solicit victim status, right? It's to

9:48

make yourself look like you're under tremendous

9:51

amounts of pressure and you had no choice. This

9:53

is implied in a lot of the split-second

9:55

decision rhetoric we see around local police coverage

9:57

of police shootings. The idea is that the

9:59

first The person who did the killing is, in fact, itself

10:02

a victim of some horrible circumstances. It's a

10:04

propaganda term typically associated with Israel, which we

10:06

can discuss a little later, called shooting and

10:08

crying. Gail Hochberg described shooting

10:10

and crying as a soldier being, quote, sorry for

10:12

things I had to do. This, quote,

10:15

nonapologetic apology was a

10:17

self-critique model advanced in Israel and many political

10:19

reflective works of literature and cinema as, quote,

10:21

a way of maintaining the nation's self-image as

10:24

youthful and innocent. And

10:26

a similar dynamic plays out in the script when there's a

10:28

high-profile police shooting there. They cry on the stand. They go

10:30

to the media, talk about how they feared for their lives,

10:32

how scared they were, which again is what

10:34

you would do if I was a PR agent with no soul

10:36

and you handed me $500,000. That's

10:39

exactly what I would tell them to do. That's the coaching advice

10:41

that you would give. That's exactly what

10:43

I would give. That's exactly what I would tell them because you

10:45

need to solicit sympathy in the media. And

10:47

so what happens is the media then covers that

10:50

sympathetic and pity portrayal. And

10:52

because they're not doing material analysis, there's no

10:54

sense of the actual power dynamics that are

10:56

at play, both systemic and on an individual

10:58

basis. And they take the crocodile tears at

11:00

face value. They take the crocodile first, which

11:02

in case you may not know, we as

11:04

the most cynical show on earth do not.

11:08

We think they're largely contrived. Now,

11:10

corporate heads have also adopted this

11:13

approach, particularly when confronted about forms

11:15

of exploitation that they are routinely

11:17

engaged in. This was certainly

11:19

the case in early 2022 after

11:22

BuzzFeed published the names of

11:24

the previously pseudonymous founders of

11:26

NFT company Board Ape Yacht

11:28

Club. By this point, NFT

11:30

had garnered plenty of criticism as

11:33

to quote BuzzFeed's reporter Katie Natopoulos,

11:35

quote, a speculative bubble

11:37

at best and a scam at

11:39

worst, end quote, and board Ape's

11:42

refusal to identify its founders had

11:44

for a while, at least, been

11:46

a means of evading accountability. But

11:48

after the names were released, Nicole

11:50

Mooniz, the CEO of the company

11:52

behind Board Ape, was interviewed

11:54

by D3 Network. Let's now

11:56

listen to a clip from that interview, the

11:58

first voice you'll hear. is that of

12:01

the interviewer the second that of Moon is.

12:04

Folks in the community when this happens said you

12:06

have to be careful because there's safety issues. Can you

12:08

explain why? People

12:11

who have made a lot of money

12:13

in crypto and

12:16

it's attracted some nefarious characters

12:19

and it has

12:21

put people in severe

12:25

jeopardy. There are

12:27

kidnappings. Just very very

12:29

bad stuff happened and

12:31

there is an honestly a misconception

12:34

that the founders of this company

12:36

are crypto whales and

12:43

releasing their identities and

12:46

frankly only giving us 30 minutes was

12:51

very very dangerous for

12:54

them and their families. Yes

12:57

so clearly she sounds very concerned

12:59

Adam. Needless to say we should

13:01

note none of these people who

13:03

were named in these reports have

13:05

been kidnapped let alone murdered but

13:07

this idea that naming people

13:10

who are responsible for

13:12

bullshit as a form

13:14

of then doxxing and threat to their

13:16

families is certainly a way to evade

13:19

accountability. Well it's similar to Elon Musk

13:21

who said that when there was a

13:23

guy tracking his private jet that that

13:25

was a form of doxxing and bullying

13:27

and providing quote-unquote assassination coordinates. So

13:30

anytime the rabble through the sort

13:32

of lightest bit of satire or mockery it is

13:34

immediately turned around as a violent threat because again

13:36

that's exactly what I would advise them to say.

13:39

Now Starbucks is taking this to the next

13:41

level. Starbucks much of which we're discussing was

13:43

when it was CEO was Howard Schultz who's

13:46

now no longer the CEO but his

13:48

tenure both the first and second

13:50

one really kind of mastered this mopey anti-union

13:54

anti-labor therapy speak and

13:56

crybully ism to the

13:58

point where one wants to back their head against the

14:01

window. So they did this repeatedly, especially during the 2022,

14:04

2023, and now 2024 union efforts

14:06

to unionize Starbucks and to get Starbucks to actually

14:09

recognize the union and to have a contract. According

14:11

to one April 2022 filing with the NLRB, Starbucks

14:16

claimed that organizers exhibited behavior that was,

14:18

quote, reasonably expected

14:20

to physically intimidate and bully partners

14:22

and customers in retaliation for their withholding

14:24

support for workers united, unquote. That same

14:27

month, Mae Jensen, the Starbucks vice president

14:29

of labor relations, which is to say

14:31

their resident union buster, accused

14:33

union organizers of bullying and intimidation.

14:36

Now, all this occurs while Starbucks

14:38

is notoriously bullying workers who try

14:40

to form unions, the National Labor

14:43

Review Board rulings have

14:45

found that the company committed routine federal

14:47

labor violations, including worker intimidation, discriminatory rules,

14:50

and unlawful discipline and termination

14:52

of union organizers to undermine

14:54

union efforts. And over one eight month period

14:56

in 2023, Starbucks

14:58

lost 16 of the 17

15:00

NLRB rulings, accusing them of

15:03

violating labor law. One

15:05

October 2022 article quoted

15:08

Mae Jensen, the resident labor

15:10

union buster at Starbucks. So

15:13

Starbucks commissioned an internal poll and found

15:15

out that their workers loathed them and

15:17

their executive friends. They had very, very

15:19

unfavorable opinions about corporate executives. And then

15:21

Mae Jensen, they called an employee meeting,

15:23

both in person and over Zoom, in

15:26

which she said, quote, I actually find it

15:28

heartbreaking that our mission and our values are being

15:31

questioned in the space of labor relations. I really,

15:33

really want to instill to everyone that we

15:35

have not lost our way. It's just really,

15:37

really hard right now. Unquote. She

15:40

feels really bad about it. Can't we just

15:42

like all hug it out? Yeah. So obviously,

15:44

this is just manipulative claptrap. You're the person

15:46

in charge, you get paid probably very high

15:49

six figures, if not more, to

15:51

undermine union efforts in the hundreds of Starbucks

15:53

stores that have tried to unionize your jobs

15:55

to wake up every morning and

15:57

lessen worker power to make them more precarious.

16:00

So again, you've got to remember Starbucks also

16:02

withheld healthcare and specifically transforming

16:04

healthcare to their many trans employees for

16:06

those who tried to start unions, which NLRB also

16:08

fined them quite a bit of money for. So

16:11

this is a company that has created material

16:13

harm to its workers, both with its anti-union

16:15

activities withholding benefits from employees who tried to

16:18

unionize, which is a clear violation of people's

16:20

right to unionize. And then

16:22

they turn around. When a poll says, of course,

16:24

their employees hate them because they're anti-labor dickheads, and

16:26

they say, you know, we're having a, we really

16:28

hurts us. We're really hurt. And

16:30

Howard Schultz had many of these Zoom meetings, some of which

16:32

he actually cried in the Zoom meetings where he was talking

16:34

about how hurt he was that people wanted to join a

16:36

union. This of course is a somewhat

16:39

shoddy manipulation tactic. Now I think in the case

16:41

of Howard Schultz, he kind of, I think from

16:43

what I understand, people who've worked with him anecdotally

16:45

say that he's genuinely like has a Messiah complex

16:47

and believes his own bullshit. So it's possible these

16:49

are the only ones in this episode that were

16:51

not totally crocodile tears. He's not

16:53

completely deluded into thinking that he's, well, he thinks he's everyone's

16:55

father. And this is, this is a

16:58

typical thing one sees when a corporate megalomaniac is

17:00

confronted with unionization. When they say that they view

17:02

them as their family and that they're the sort

17:04

of patriarch, they really, really think that. And

17:07

they think that they're a benevolent dictator. And

17:09

which is why it's such a betrayal. It's

17:11

a betrayal, right? It's such a betrayal. It's

17:13

speaking against the family. So politicians,

17:15

of course, do this as well, especially

17:18

when confronted about their support of

17:20

Israel's genocidal attacks on Gaza. We

17:23

keep hearing this in recent

17:25

weeks, recent months, that being

17:27

called out for supporting this

17:30

ongoing genocide, nothing cleansing, that

17:33

act of being called out is itself a

17:35

threat. Right? So a

17:38

November 16th, 2023 Axios article

17:40

reported that, quote, protests and

17:42

threats over Israel-Hamas war rattle

17:44

Congress, end quote. The

17:46

piece was wholly sympathetic to US

17:48

policymakers stating this, quote, members

17:50

who were in the building described being

17:53

gripped by a fear and uncertainty some

17:55

of them haven't felt since January 6th.

17:59

They crossed the line. where they were

18:01

trapping ingress and egress and trapping

18:03

people. Representative Debbie Wasserman

18:05

Schultz, Democrat from Florida, told

18:07

Axios, it was disturbing. Another

18:10

lawmaker present framed it as

18:12

part of a broader trend

18:14

of unusually aggressive tactics from

18:16

the pro-Palestinian side, saying, I

18:19

have had death threats, been doxxed,

18:21

protested, end quote. Now,

18:24

buried halfway down in this article

18:26

was a quote from the organization,

18:28

if not now, noting that the

18:31

protests were all peaceful and

18:33

police had in fact been

18:35

the instigators of any violence. But

18:37

Axios quickly moved on to

18:39

emphasize the vulnerability of U.S. lawmakers,

18:42

stating that they were quote,

18:44

experiencing a surge in threats and

18:46

disturbing incidents, end quote. Across

18:49

the Atlantic, the Guardian effectively offered the

18:51

British version of this same thing with

18:53

a November 17th, 2023 article, headlined quote,

18:58

labor MPs fear for safety

19:00

as pro-Palestine protesters target offices,

19:03

end quote. Now,

19:05

target here is a rather

19:07

charged way to describe protesters

19:10

demonstrating outside the parliament minister's

19:12

offices after those ministers, including

19:15

Keir Starmer, voted against a

19:17

ceasefire. The Guardian

19:19

noted that quote, some are pressing

19:21

Starmer's office to help them put

19:24

extra security in place and even

19:26

help move constituency offices if necessary,

19:28

end quote. The paper

19:31

added that the office of the

19:33

shadow wealth secretary, Joe Stevens, was

19:35

quote, dobbed with red paint by

19:37

protesters who also attached posters saying

19:39

she had blood on your hands,

19:42

adding that Stevens said the act

19:44

was quote, designed to cause fear

19:46

and harassment, end quote. Again,

19:49

graffiti is a nonviolent protest tactic as old

19:51

as protests, saying you have blood on your

19:53

hands and doing demonstrations invoking violence to show

19:55

that people are funding and arming violence. It's

19:57

not a threat of violence towards the people.

20:00

referencing the violence that they're supporting

20:02

and leveling against

20:05

the 14,000 dead children in Gaza. It's

20:07

calling out what that person is supporting.

20:09

Right, and these are old tactics that

20:11

are being presented as some new sinister

20:14

escalation when they're not. These are traditional

20:16

nonviolent protest tactics, anti-war tactics. Now,

20:19

in an especially disingenuous move, this

20:21

same Guardian article included a quote

20:23

from Siobhan McDonough, chair of the

20:25

Women's Parliamentary Labor Party, saying

20:27

this, quote, When we are

20:29

in an atmosphere where two MPs have died

20:31

in recent years, then people do

20:34

have reasonable concerns about their safety and

20:36

the strength of our democratic system, end

20:38

quote. Now, it's

20:40

true that two MPs have been killed in recent years,

20:43

but neither was killed by anyone affiliated

20:46

with this cause. One, Joe

20:48

Cox, was killed in 2016 by

20:50

a white supremacist. The other, David

20:52

Amas, was killed in 2021 by

20:55

a reported Islamic State sympathizer. Those

20:58

are very different than being

21:00

confronted by protesters over your

21:03

support for Israeli

21:05

violence against Palestinians.

21:08

And to evoke those tragic murders

21:12

is certainly a cynical way to

21:14

divert attention from what the protesters

21:16

themselves are trying to call attention

21:18

to. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Senator

21:20

John Federman has been

21:22

basically doing two things in the

21:25

media over the past four months.

21:27

Number one, discussing his history of

21:29

mental health problems, especially since stroke,

21:31

which is in and of itself,

21:33

obviously good, perfectly fine. But at

21:35

the same time, doing the most

21:37

trollish pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian, tweeting

21:39

out Fox News articles, smearing

21:41

Muslims, opposing the humanitarian pause

21:43

back in November, which is to the far right

21:45

of the actual White House, and the Israelis, it

21:48

turns out the Israeli War Minister cabinet, or

21:51

softly opposing. You said he was open to it, but said he

21:53

thinks it would just give Amas time to rearm. It

21:55

has been extremely far to the right

21:57

and very insensitive and glib about Palestinian

21:59

law. lives, has supported a wholeheartedly

22:01

Israel's killing of almost 30,000 people over 14,000 children.

22:06

Meanwhile, he goes on Embassy News, ABC

22:08

News, CBS News, and MSNBC to discuss

22:10

his mental health problems and to sort

22:12

of center his own issues

22:14

with depression, which again, in and of themselves,

22:16

there's nothing wrong with that. But in the

22:18

context of his cheerleading of

22:20

the destruction of Gaza, it comes off

22:22

as a little bit disingenuous and a

22:25

little bit jarring, especially when one considers

22:27

the devastating state of mental

22:29

health in Gaza that he has supported

22:31

destroying. Yeah. And to that

22:33

point, Dr. Arafat Abu Masha'i, head of

22:35

the mental health department at the Al

22:37

Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Bala, told

22:39

the LA Times in January 2024, quote,

22:43

in every tent we inspect, we

22:45

find children who compulsively suck their

22:47

fingers, wet their beds, suffer from

22:49

speech difficulties, lose their appetite,

22:52

have nightmares, cannot sleep, end

22:54

quote. In the same article,

22:56

the LA Times added that before the

22:59

Israeli attacks on Gaza, quote,

23:01

Gaza had a single inpatient

23:03

psychiatric hospital and had only 40

23:06

beds. Bombardment knocked

23:08

the facility out of commission early in

23:10

the conflict, leaving families to care for

23:12

relatives with severe mental health issues, even

23:14

as they move frantically from one locale

23:17

to another trying to find safety. Out

23:20

of the six community mental health

23:22

centers across Gaza that had distributed

23:24

psychiatric medications, five were forced to

23:26

close their doors within the war's

23:28

first weeks, health officials said. And

23:31

telemedicine counseling appointments, a lifeline

23:33

for those living in remote

23:35

areas, quickly fell casualty to

23:37

frequent communications blackouts, end

23:39

quote. So the juxtaposition between

23:41

the self-pitying, I struggle with mental health,

23:43

meanwhile I'm cheering on the destruction of

23:45

the entire medical system

23:48

of an entire people, is simply

23:50

too much hypocrisy for one to sort

23:52

of ingest, I think. If

23:54

one's going to play the role of

23:56

clear-eyed, hardcore pro-revenge. realist

24:00

who thinks we should kill presumably tens

24:02

of thousands of Palestinian children and to

24:05

completely cause untold trauma for hundreds of

24:07

thousands of people who again have watched

24:09

their Their mothers die

24:11

their fathers die their roof caved in

24:13

being stuck under rubble millions

24:15

of people traumatized basically they

24:18

can't also kind of play the role of Sensitive

24:21

human sort of in touch with his mental health guy

24:23

as well. Like it sort of seems like you have

24:25

to choose one of those especially

24:28

since you have no consideration for a mention

24:30

of the devastating effects on mental health that

24:32

killing thousands of people tens of thousands of

24:35

people and Displacing millions of people would have

24:37

I mean not not a word about that

24:39

John Federman has not commented on the on

24:42

the mental health consequences of his support of what

24:44

the I See Jay calls quote

24:46

plausible genocide at all And so I think this

24:49

juxtaposition when one plays the role of kind of

24:51

smug asshole bully Who wants

24:53

to bomb Gaza non-stop for as long

24:55

as not Yahoo sees fit and

24:58

then meanwhile? Virtually every other media appearance

25:00

he has is him talking about

25:02

his struggles with mental health I

25:04

think this so cynicism and people

25:06

I think for probably justifiable reasons We'd

25:09

be remiss of course if we didn't mention Bill Ackman who's

25:11

probably one of the most high-profile Crybolias of

25:13

recent memory Bill Ackman is

25:15

a billionaire hedge fund manager who

25:17

spent the better part of November

25:20

and December trying to get multiple

25:22

university heads fired and multiple Obscure

25:24

college kids basically barred from getting any kind

25:26

of employee especially members who signed a letter

25:29

at Harvard Law School Getting

25:31

them fired and prevented them from working at

25:33

prestigious law firms He

25:35

has railed against so-called woke academia

25:37

has targeted pro-palacean voices both big

25:39

and small mostly small He's

25:42

a major behind the scenes player who's withheld

25:44

funding to kind of punish anyone who has

25:46

any pro-palacean leanings whatsoever And

25:49

he was a central mover in the effort

25:51

to get Harvard president Claudine gay fired under

25:53

the auspices of plagiarism Which they were first

25:55

engineered after they couldn't get her fired for

25:57

being too soft. I guess on Palestinian protests

26:01

So after he helped manufacture a

26:03

plagiarism scandal for Harvard President Claudine Gay,

26:06

Business Insider reporters did what reporters

26:08

should do, which is they held powerful people to their

26:10

own standard. And then they

26:12

found out his wife, Mary Ochsman, turns

26:15

out was actually quite a serial plagiarist in

26:17

her PhD, pretty dispositively so, not really much

26:20

room for debate. It's pretty much copy and

26:22

pasted from Wikipedia. And

26:24

then Ackman went on a multi-day, I

26:26

think at this point probably multi-week meltdown over

26:28

this and made veiled

26:30

references to his wife being

26:33

suicidal. So immediately this is someone who tried

26:35

to get multiple people fired for months, right?

26:37

And in some cases succeeded. I mean it's

26:39

powerful enough to have succeeded. He succeeded, right.

26:41

His wife, who's had many puff pieces, she's

26:43

a public figure. She's an MIT professor, has

26:46

had dozens of puff pieces written about her.

26:49

She's not like some obscure wallflower.

26:52

He wrote, quote, I have tragically seen – this

26:54

is a reference to the Business Insider coverage –

26:57

I have tragically seen too many suffer and

26:59

commit suicide in similar circumstances to the one

27:01

Niri has experienced. These media

27:03

tactics have to stop as they can destroy people

27:05

or worse well before they have a chance to

27:07

defend themselves, unquote. So

27:10

here's someone who tried to get people fired. You

27:12

know, getting fired can ruin your life. It ruins

27:14

your reputation, right? Claudine Gay forever will be known

27:16

as a plagiarist, right? Fair or not fair. That's

27:18

what you will be known for. This man just

27:20

casually ruined or tried to ruin dozens of

27:22

people's lives. And the second

27:24

his wife is called out for committing the same

27:26

crime that he criticized Claudine Gay for, which is

27:28

plagiarism in a PhD, he then turns

27:30

around and makes small bean – makes

27:32

her a small bean. He refers to her repeatedly as an

27:35

introvert, says she doesn't like the attention. Of course, she was

27:37

an introvert when she had multiple profiles written

27:39

about her, puff pieces or did

27:41

a TED Talk, right? This is not

27:43

some obscure, like, sheepish housewife. But

27:45

then it's a tragic situation where

27:48

there is suffering involved and you

27:50

have to defend yourself and

27:52

quite possibly your life may be

27:55

in danger because

27:57

suddenly you are in

27:59

the spot. spotlight, right? You are the one

28:01

who's being held to account for something.

28:03

And so that is being turned around

28:06

and made into, you know, the new victim

28:08

status, you know, Bill Ackman can victimize whoever

28:11

he wants. He can attack whoever he wants,

28:13

doesn't give a shit about if they're suffering

28:15

or if they need to, you know, defend

28:17

themselves. Right. Exactly. The lie getting around

28:20

the world before the truth gets his boots on.

28:22

He doesn't give a fuck about that. But once

28:24

it's his own wife, he's like, Oh, you

28:27

know, thinking of children. She's in the

28:29

fetal position. She's small beans. She's on

28:31

the fainting couch. She's a victim. And

28:33

it's like, no, you're a billionaire. I'm sorry, you can't

28:35

do both. And that's really the kind of point, right?

28:37

Like, if you want to be evil, and I wrote

28:40

this in my piece in the nation, like I said,

28:42

you know, say what you say what you will about

28:44

the dollaces in the bushes and the architects

28:46

of Pax Americana, right? They sort of

28:49

loomed over large maps and smoke cigars and drink

28:51

scotch in back rooms. But at least they didn't

28:54

whine to us, right? At least they didn't want

28:56

to be our friends or us be

28:58

their therapist. It's like, if you're going to be evil and

29:00

try to get people fired, right, if you're going to be

29:02

a billionaire hedge fund manager, then don't

29:04

also try to get me to feel sorry

29:06

for you. That's right. Sikes and Pico were

29:08

not the victims of colonialism, folks. Yeah, like

29:10

if you're going to be a union buster,

29:12

like be William Burns or the Pinkertons, like

29:15

go go out and like stab some Italian

29:17

anarchists, like be, you know, be evil. Don't

29:19

go to a conference call, zoom call and

29:21

start sobbing about how your employees don't let

29:23

this. It's not only manipulative and grading. And

29:25

as well, hopefully, you know, as well as

29:27

talk about other guests, it's also quite effective.

29:30

But more than anything, it's just very undignified. It's

29:32

like if you're going to be a monocle wearing

29:34

top hat, evil, rich person, just be evil.

29:36

Don't try to also be my friend, or

29:39

have me be your therapist. It's unseemly. It's

29:41

embarrassing. It's undignified. And it's unseemly. We used

29:43

to have proper villains. And now we just

29:45

have this Mopi jerk offs. And I hate

29:48

it. Yeah. And part of this, Adam, is

29:50

also about really kind of weaponizing very real

29:52

issues and then turning it into something that

29:54

it's not. I know that's like a very

29:56

vague thing to say, but what I mean

29:58

is like taking, let's say. studies about

30:00

anti-Semitism, very real anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish

30:03

hate. This has been documented

30:05

time and again, the work

30:08

of people like rights advocate,

30:10

Eric Ward have shown that

30:13

anti-Semitism really undergirds so much

30:15

of white nationalism, white supremacy,

30:18

and kind of how

30:20

that really pervades so much

30:23

of hate rhetoric, of hate speech, and

30:25

actual real world violence as well. So,

30:28

the idea that then documenting and

30:31

addressing very real anti-Semitism is

30:34

used again and again by

30:36

primarily groups like and specifically

30:39

the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League,

30:41

dedicated to fighting and eradicating

30:44

anti-Semitism in our society and

30:47

at the same time using that platform

30:49

and that prestige that it has, the

30:51

reputation it's cultivated for nearly a hundred

30:53

years to actually in so

30:56

much of what it does advocate

30:58

in favor of the policies

31:01

of the Israeli government and serve

31:04

as a pro-Zionist organization,

31:06

not merely a domestically

31:09

focused anti-hate group. Yeah,

31:12

I think on the subject of crybolism, I

31:14

don't think any group in

31:16

the United States of recent years

31:18

has perfected this formula more than

31:21

the ADL by refocusing so

31:23

much of the attention on these ginned up campus

31:26

controversies and away from specifically

31:28

what the sort of meat of the

31:30

argument is, which is violence and dispossession

31:32

of Palestinians into

31:35

this kind of abstract issue

31:37

of basically any criticism of

31:39

Israel, any substantive criticism rather

31:41

than like process criticism is

31:43

viewed as being per se racist in hate speech.

31:45

And I think you really can have a conversation

31:48

about the weaponization of crybolism

31:50

without talking about the ADL in its

31:52

history. This is an organization that has

31:55

disparaged the Black Lives Matter movement for

31:57

Black Lives. Of course, it disparaged the Black

31:59

Lives Matter movement. Panthers and other black liberation groups

32:01

in the 1960s and 70s. And

32:05

this is, and now the remote is

32:07

to sort of disparage any kind of

32:09

pro-Palestinian advocacy as being per se racist,

32:12

which is really, I think, a mode

32:14

of crybolism worthy of discussion in its

32:16

own right. To dig

32:18

into this a bit from the perspective

32:21

of how the ADL weaponizes anti-hate work

32:23

to silence critics of genocide will now

32:25

be joined by Mari Cohen, associate

32:28

editor at Jewish Currents. Mari

32:30

will join us in just a moment. Stay with us.

32:42

We are joined now by Mari Cohen. Mari, thank

32:44

you so much for joining us today on Citations

32:47

Needed. Thank you for having me. Yeah,

32:49

thank you so much for coming on, and thank you for

32:51

the work you've done in this space. It's

32:53

not the most glamorous work, but it

32:55

is important. I want to

32:58

begin by discussing the recent backlash to the ADL.

33:00

It's been brewing for, I think, a couple years

33:02

now, but I think in recent weeks it's gotten

33:04

more cute. Now, the ADL,

33:06

I want to begin by what this ADL

33:08

stated mission is, how it's

33:11

broadly seen by the public and

33:13

how it's increasingly being criticized by left-wing

33:15

and even liberal Jewish organizations who

33:18

viewed it as this kind of veering

33:20

into overt political, if

33:22

not geopolitical, advocacy. And

33:24

it's somewhat, I think even from my perspective, somewhat

33:27

bizarre embrace of Elon Musk and Jared

33:29

Kushner in a more overt way, and

33:31

how that's kind of created an identity crisis

33:33

among the organization itself, but also this important

33:35

role that kind of does need to be

33:37

filled, which is making sure

33:40

people aren't defaming Jewish people in the United States

33:42

and elsewhere. Absolutely. And

33:44

it's definitely been a really interesting time in

33:46

terms of these criticisms of the ADL that

33:49

have been present on the left

33:51

for a long time are now

33:53

kind of being taken up more,

33:56

even by liberals, maybe people who would be

33:58

considered more in the center-left. There's

34:00

actually a lot more backlash brewing from

34:02

quarters of the Jewish community and, I

34:05

think, of the American public more broadly

34:07

that might not have been as opposed

34:10

to the ADL previously. So there's a lot happening

34:12

there. And a lot of that, I think, comes

34:14

from the actions of their

34:16

current CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, who's

34:19

like a former Obama White House

34:22

staffer who took this job.

34:24

I think in 2015 has

34:26

kind of a penchant for going rogue at stadiums

34:28

and just causing a lot of drama. So

34:31

it's a very interesting time, I think, for this

34:33

organization. But just like going

34:35

back to the basics of the mission,

34:37

the ADL was founded a little bit

34:39

over 100 years ago. It

34:42

was founded in response to the lynching

34:44

of Leo Frank in the early 20th

34:46

century. He was the

34:48

manager accused of the murder of a young

34:50

white factory worker girl.

34:54

And so it's been holding this role for

34:56

a long time. The state

34:58

admission is basically, as it says on

35:00

the website, to stop the defamation of

35:02

the Jewish people and to

35:04

secure justice and fair treatment to all.

35:07

And so basically, the goals are

35:09

fighting anti-Semitism, but also really

35:11

kind of acting as a civil rights

35:14

organization more broadly to kind of also,

35:16

it says, to fight

35:18

hate against other minority groups and

35:20

people who are disenfranchised. So

35:22

that's what they say they do and they're seen by

35:25

the public as the kind of

35:27

main, the most credible organization fighting anti-Semitism,

35:29

or at least they have been historically.

35:31

And if you look at the press,

35:34

TV news, New York Times, just

35:36

in general, when there's something happening related

35:38

to anti-Semitism, the ADL has called in

35:41

to give the expert quote on what

35:43

this means and why it's anti-Semitism. So

35:45

they're basically kind of given that role

35:47

of being the credible voice. Yeah,

35:50

they have a really, really strong

35:52

brand, actually. You know,

35:54

I'm curious about how that brand

35:56

butts up against the

35:59

ADL's role. And I would argue

36:02

not just under Jonathan Greenblatt's leadership,

36:04

but certainly under Abe Foxman as well

36:06

before him, of being a really

36:09

powerful arm of the Israel

36:11

lobby and serving such

36:13

a powerful role in the conflation of,

36:15

say, anti-Semitism and

36:17

anti-Zionism. Where do you

36:20

see those lines getting blurred and how

36:22

that allows the ADL to align itself

36:24

with those that maybe don't have the

36:26

best interest of Jewish people

36:28

or other minorities in mind? So

36:31

that's something that's been going on for a

36:33

long time, which is the ADL has been

36:35

like an ardent advocate of the Israeli state,

36:37

especially I would say probably intensified in like

36:40

the post 1967 period, but

36:42

they've been sort of opposed to anti-Zionist

36:44

and Israel critics basically since like the

36:46

state's founding. And this

36:48

has often made them have

36:50

a contentious relationship with, you know, Arab,

36:52

Muslim and black activists and with leftist

36:55

organizations. So they've gotten a lot of

36:57

critique on those grounds for a while.

37:00

And basically like the way that they argue

37:03

this is there's like a couple

37:05

aspects of it. They basically say

37:07

they say we're not opposed to criticism

37:09

of Israel, we're opposed to anti-Zionism.

37:13

And their argument on that, which is

37:15

like what a lot of mainstream

37:17

Jewish groups argue, they basically

37:19

say that it's anti-Semitic, because

37:21

if you don't believe that the state on

37:23

that land in the region of Israel, Palestine,

37:26

if you don't believe that it should be

37:28

a Jewish state, that it singles out Jews

37:30

as the only people who don't have the

37:32

right to have self-determination or to have their

37:34

own state. And so they

37:36

basically say that that's a form

37:38

of anti-Semitism. They'll also argue that

37:40

because the state already exists now

37:43

as a Jewish state, they say

37:45

that being anti-Zionist means that you

37:47

Want all the Jews or Israelis who already

37:49

live there to die or that they have

37:52

to leave or that you're like advocating sort

37:54

of genocide against them. And So those are

37:56

like the types of arguments they use to

37:58

kind of get from anti-Zionism. There's limited

38:00

them. And then the other thing too

38:02

is that sometimes and light green by

38:04

the civically said that this and like

38:06

a meeting with his staff and twenty

38:08

twenty two that we obtained audio from

38:10

and wrote about Jewish parents but he's

38:12

basically arguing that there's a lot of

38:14

anti semitism in the world and that

38:16

talking about being anti Zionists and like.

38:19

Talking. About into Zionism. It just has

38:21

the potential to fuel his I semitism

38:24

and can rile people up. And so

38:26

for that reason it's just like too

38:28

dangerous to talk about it or to

38:30

encourage it. Yeah. That like a

38:32

somewhat of a strenuous syllogism where you

38:34

say, exert vocals and who's just been

38:36

together for his home in the West

38:38

Bank, the my family's lives, and for

38:41

whatever decades, hundred years. And

38:43

then I say i don't believe that I don't

38:45

have a right. You're simply because I'm not Jewish.

38:48

That that as a form of hate speech according

38:50

to be ideal definition. Research. Me a

38:52

somewhat absurd which is the says or denying

38:54

whatever Jewish sovereignty you're Jewish supremacy for want

38:56

of a better term on another would reject

38:58

the terms that effectively what it is it's

39:00

or ethnic supremacy between the river in the

39:03

seats or beliefs in the west bank will

39:05

sort of punt on god I supposed to

39:07

the time being in terms of land claims

39:09

but that strikes me as a little absurd

39:11

sort of Palestinians very existence. Is.

39:13

Seen as being anti semitic in many ways

39:15

and indeed many slogans to that effect are

39:18

viewed as by details being anti semitic because

39:20

to be Palestinian almost by definition of to

39:22

be anti zionists. Which is to say especially

39:24

one believes in the sort of you and

39:26

mandated right of return or the very least.

39:29

It. Is not a supremacists claim? It's the say

39:31

yes. I think everyone between the river and see

39:33

should live as equal. People. That.

39:36

That itself as a sort of Prado

39:38

genocidal claim. And obviously that strikes me as

39:40

a little asymmetrical, because obviously the the inverse

39:42

is not never true. a Jewish Israeli thing.

39:45

From. The river to the see will have Israeli sovereignty

39:47

is not seen as is anti. Palestinian.

39:50

Form of racism. Mostly because I

39:52

believe in pregnant. I'm wrong. That.

39:55

The A D L believes either implicitly

39:57

or at least through the transitive property.

39:59

That. Palestinians don't really

40:02

exist and to the extent to which they have a state

40:04

it's kind of a charity. It's kind of like a sort of gratuity

40:06

they've been given. I think in practice

40:08

that is true. I mean obviously if you

40:11

ask Greenblatt, that's not what he'll say. He'll

40:13

say, well I'm pro-Israel and pro-Palestine and of

40:15

course I think there should be a two-state

40:17

solution. But I mean in practice the ADL

40:20

is doing everything it can to back

40:22

up Israel's right to do what it wants

40:25

within community. You know for example if the

40:27

United States government were to try to condition

40:29

aid to Israel or were to more harshly

40:31

criticize Israel the ADL is going to come

40:33

out against that on all sorts of counts

40:36

and they're also trying to classify basically most

40:38

Palestinian political expression as anti-Semitic. And so

40:40

Greenblatt has been in interviews where he

40:42

said, well yeah I understand why a

40:44

Palestinian who you know was kicked out

40:46

of their home might feel like they're

40:48

anti-Zionist and so he's like come close

40:50

to acknowledging it but then in practice

40:53

if you look at what the organization

40:55

does and what it says

40:57

they're basically saying there's actually no

40:59

way that Palestinians could have political

41:01

expression, could have anti-Zionist expression in

41:03

a way that they find acceptable.

41:06

Yeah that sort of millions of Palestinians just kind of

41:08

woke up one day or kind of mindlessly racist is

41:10

I think the sort of general formulation and this is

41:13

the way they frame it. They sort of routinely do

41:15

polls of the Arab world and a Palestine saying look

41:17

how anti-Semitic they are. It's like well yeah I mean so

41:19

is Europe and so is North America, so is everybody.

41:22

I mean does that mean that everything that motivates their

41:24

anti-Zionism is inherently racist and I think this is where

41:26

it gets a little bit messy and it sort of

41:28

makes people feel uncomfortable. And I sort

41:30

of want to talk about this which is when

41:32

one conflates the geopolitical outcomes of

41:34

a particular nation with a form of racism like

41:36

for example we've done half a dozen episodes on

41:38

this show criticizing Saudi Arabia but no one's ever

41:40

criticized us of being anti-Muslim. What

41:42

they'll say is they say well it's the only

41:45

Jewish state. The assumption is that Palestinians are kind

41:47

of interchangeable I guess with Syrians and Jordanians and

41:49

Egyptians as if Palestinians have

41:51

some other state right that's the sort of interchangeable

41:53

Arab narrative we've talked about but I

41:55

want to talk a bit about what the sort

41:57

of methodology is. They've been criticized for when

42:00

they do these anti-Semitism reports, A, especially

42:03

of late, they've been doing a lot of

42:05

campus anti-Semitism studies that are based on the

42:08

perception of the respondents.

42:10

They'll sort of simply say, I feel, you know, X,

42:12

Y, and Z, and that becomes the kind of evidence

42:14

they use. And then B, of

42:16

course, there are histories, we touched on earlier, there are history

42:18

of conflating pro-Palestinian comments with anti-Semitism in

42:21

a way that if you go through the actual

42:23

data, it becomes difficult to kind of parse the

42:25

difference. Yeah, they've

42:27

been doing that for a long time. But I

42:29

do think it is important to note that they've

42:31

really kind of even escalated the conflation since October

42:33

7th. It's been interesting to

42:36

track this historically, one of the big

42:38

like watershed moments, I guess, for all

42:40

of this was in May 2022, when

42:42

basically at the ADL's annual summit, Green

42:45

Black gave a speech and he basically

42:47

announced that the organization was going to

42:50

go after anti-Zionists.

42:53

And I guess the anti-Zionist left with

42:55

more fervor. He announced that

42:57

the organization would be classifying students for

42:59

justice in Palestine, Jewish voice for peace,

43:02

and CAR, Council on American

43:05

Islamic Relations, as extremist groups,

43:08

and said that they would consider them to be the

43:10

photo inverse, that's the term he is,

43:13

to be the photo inverse of

43:15

the anti-Semitic far right. Previously,

43:18

we know that like the ADL had been doing this

43:20

conflation for a long time, but still during the Trump

43:22

years, they really did focus a lot more on

43:26

white supremacists, the far right, them being

43:28

in Bolden and Charlottesville. Like they were at least

43:30

coming out and saying that's where the real threat

43:32

is, even though they were still doing a lot

43:35

of Israel advocacy stuff. And then in May 2022,

43:37

they really are like, no, we're going to go

43:39

out, sure the anti-Zionists just as much. And so

43:41

that was kind of like a stated policy shift

43:43

and caused like a lot of buzz, and

43:46

actually caused them descent within the organization

43:48

from employees, as we learned and wrote

43:50

about as Jewish currents. But even

43:53

then, like when they were doing their annual

43:55

anti-Semitism audits that they release, and there's like

43:57

a lot of problems with those

43:59

audits. And the scientific methodology is

44:01

not what they say. And kind of it's

44:03

because the ADL is also doing its own

44:05

fundraising. And it's making the case for itself

44:08

as an organization. So in recent years, every

44:10

year, they're like, this is the most antisemitism

44:12

we've ever seen. But a lot of the

44:14

methodology they use means that you can't really

44:17

make a one-to-one comparison with what they did

44:19

the year before, because there's changes

44:21

and the data gathering. So that's a

44:23

pet complaint of mine. But anyway, so

44:25

even in those audits, there

44:27

was definitely some conflation of anti-Zionism

44:30

and antisemitism happening. But even

44:32

after they made that policy change in 2022, they

44:35

weren't tracking all anti-Zionists or

44:38

anti-Israel protest incidents as

44:40

antisemitism. They were basically like, we're only going

44:42

to track it if we can prove it

44:45

negatively impacted a Jewish person or something

44:47

like that, which is very strange. But

44:49

basically, they were incorporating some campus incidents

44:52

because they were like, it's going to negatively impact

44:54

the Jews on its campus. But in

44:56

general, they weren't really tracking anti-Israel

44:59

protests very much at all.

45:01

And basically, since October 7, they've started

45:04

doing that more. And so they've had

45:06

a map on their

45:08

website of antisemitic

45:10

incidents. And they include this whole section

45:12

of anti-Israel rallies. And

45:16

I guess they've argued they're saying

45:18

that they categorize them as rallies that

45:20

have support for terror. But it's really

45:22

unclear what that means. At

45:25

one point, looked in the data a

45:27

little bit. It's not always clear which

45:29

rallies they're tracking and what rally that

45:31

is. But it seems like a lot

45:33

of general pro-Palestine actions are being tracked

45:35

in that data. So basically, since October

45:37

7, they've really started including a lot

45:39

of anti-Israel protests as examples of

45:42

antisemitism. One of the

45:44

things I want to talk about is the

45:46

Trump-invented, quote unquote, Abraham Accords,

45:48

which is effectively the codifying

45:50

of long existing partnerships between

45:52

Israel and US allied,

45:55

US-backed, US-funded Arab dictatorships in the

45:57

region. And so the Abraham Accords,

45:59

they're Accords, which the ADL not

46:01

only supports, but also says that

46:03

it supports not just because of

46:06

that it's a quote unquote peace accords for

46:08

countries that were never at war ever. Yeah,

46:11

exactly. Or rather have a minute

46:13

war in 70 years. They really need that piece

46:15

of cord. They love the photo op of like,

46:17

well, who could be against peace? Yeah. The

46:20

fucking foreign minister for UAE is like the sort of

46:22

MSB or like the Arab post. They

46:24

were elected in a big election. All the Arabs had. But

46:28

the Abraham accords, according to the ADL

46:30

is also essential for

46:32

the fight against antisemitism.

46:35

And basically what this says

46:38

is by supporting the Abraham accords,

46:40

not only is this, you know,

46:42

big win for peace, big win

46:44

for Israel, but also it does

46:46

entrench Israeli apartheid and occupation of

46:48

Palestine. You are supporting a

46:51

status quo or potentially worse

46:53

with more annexation, deeper occupation,

46:56

full scale ethnic cleansing. And all of

46:58

this, you know, occurred and has been

47:00

maintained prior to October

47:02

7th. Now this

47:04

kind of links to what

47:06

you mentioned, Mari earlier about

47:08

the ADL's own checkered past,

47:10

right? It's a pretty shameful

47:13

history of not supporting certain

47:15

civil rights movements, even as

47:17

it claims to be

47:19

a civil rights organization or speaking

47:21

out against say, movements for liberation

47:24

around the world. For example, it's

47:26

spying on South African anti apartheid activists in

47:28

the 70s and 80s. And

47:31

the ADL accusing Nelson Mandela, of

47:33

all people, for being quote unquote,

47:35

totalitarian and quote unquote anti American,

47:37

all because at the time, apartheid

47:40

South Africa was a key Israeli

47:42

ally. So can we just talk

47:44

about how the ADL's now recent

47:46

focus on whitewashing Trump policy,

47:49

right? That the Abraham

47:52

Accords and other things and conflating

47:54

these quote unquote, accords, peace accords

47:56

with as it says, promoting

47:58

tolerance and fighting. anti-Semitism in the

48:00

region, what do you think it's

48:03

actually doing as it kind of

48:05

supports certain policies over other policies?

48:08

I think the Abraham Accords thing

48:10

is very relevant especially right now because

48:13

one of the big items

48:15

of ADL news is that the

48:17

ADL gave an award at its annual

48:19

conference. It gave an award to

48:21

Jared Kushner because of his role in

48:24

helping negotiate the Abraham Accords and this

48:26

is actually something that kicked off a

48:28

lot of dissent and complaints from people

48:30

in the ADL orbit, maybe more like

48:33

liberals or center-left anti-Trump people who might

48:35

have been on board until then but

48:37

they're just like really they think it's

48:39

like really terrible that the ADL gave

48:41

this award to Kushner but obviously that

48:44

shows that that's a

48:46

big priority for Jonathan Greenweft

48:48

ADL to come up the

48:50

Abraham Accords that that is

48:52

very much in line with

48:54

their general approach and

48:57

it leads to some like weird stuff too

48:59

like in so the annual

49:01

anti-Semitism audit that they put out

49:03

in 2023 you're covering like

49:05

anti-Semitism that had happened in 2022 they had like

49:07

a section at

49:09

the end of it which was how

49:11

to fight anti-Semitism what you can

49:13

do to help end it

49:15

and it's this is like a report that's about

49:18

anti-Semitism in the United States and then like one

49:20

of their calls to action was support

49:22

the Abraham Accords which I thought

49:24

was kind of wild because it was like where did that

49:26

come from but you know their

49:28

argument is oh this is going to like lead

49:31

to more tolerance of Jews

49:33

in the Middle East because these

49:35

governments have normalized relationships

49:37

with Israel and that's obviously not

49:39

what we've seen right you think

49:41

about like the World Cup in

49:44

Hunter and like all of that stuff where

49:46

there are all these displays of Palestine solidarity

49:48

and the Israelis were upset and everybody was

49:50

like oh no wait actually even though there

49:52

was the Abraham Accords and a lot of

49:55

these nearby countries and you know or like

49:57

Morocco normalized relationships with Israel but I think

49:59

the Moroccan soccer team, they'll

50:01

do some pro-Palestine solidarity displays.

50:04

The people were not going to

50:06

forget. People who often have

50:08

historically and traditionally been more in solidarity with Palestine

50:11

aren't just going to forget about it just because

50:13

their government decided that they're going

50:15

to make these agreements. Yeah,

50:17

because the whole thing is quite goofy. I mean,

50:19

again, Saudi Arabia has a pool rating and Gaza

50:21

has less than 6%. I'm pretty

50:24

sure it's actually marginally better than Israel.

50:26

Famous lover of Jews, the Saudi government.

50:28

The EDL would say, yeah, but anti-Zionism

50:30

is a fringe position within the Jewish

50:32

community, or non-Zionism even.

50:35

Now, statistically, that is true, although it's kind

50:37

of eroding. A quarter of American Jews, for

50:40

example, according to a recent poll, said

50:42

that they thought that Israel was in apartheid state.

50:44

Almost 40% of those under the

50:46

age of 40 said

50:48

that Israel is in apartheid state, which is a pretty

50:50

surprising number and sort of not

50:53

good for the long-term trajectory. And also, I've

50:55

always found this argument to be fatuous because

50:58

a small percentage of Americans are going

51:00

to oppose American imperialism or American violence,

51:02

right? Yeah, people are shitheads. Okay, so

51:04

what? I mean, anti-colonial positions

51:06

are always fringe. That's kind of their

51:08

very nature. But I want to

51:10

sort of talk about this idea that the

51:12

EDL has this legitimacy crisis, that

51:15

it speaks on behalf of all American

51:18

Jewish people in what

51:20

it would look like to have a group

51:22

that was maybe not as overtly about running

51:24

past block for a net in Yahoo,

51:27

but maybe was actually concerned with documenting

51:29

anti-Semitism as such rather than as

51:31

a kind of bludgeon to protect the left flank of

51:33

Israel. Yeah, I mean, I think

51:35

that this moment shows us that it probably would

51:38

be helpful to have an

51:40

alternative. I mean, you know, among scholars on

51:42

the left and people who think about hate

51:44

crimes and oppression in the state, you know,

51:46

there's different schools of thought around what it

51:48

means to like talk about hate crimes and

51:50

to track hate crime, and does just using

51:52

this frame of hate, frame

51:55

it as this more like individualized

51:57

problem of passion rather than structural

51:59

discrimination, structural hate. So, you know, there's

52:01

questions in that mode about what does it

52:03

mean to have organizations that track quote unquote

52:05

hate crimes. So like there's stuff

52:07

to think about there, but I do

52:10

think it would be useful to have

52:12

a more credible organization that is not

52:14

about running interference for Israel to talk

52:17

about anti-Semitism. First of all, because I

52:19

think that we need a way to

52:21

talk about it that rejects this conflation

52:23

of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. And

52:26

it's important to have credible

52:28

voices organizations doing that. Also,

52:30

because there is a problem

52:33

of anti-Semitism in the United

52:35

States, you know, I think that today in

52:37

the US, it's like probably not

52:39

really like institutionalized anti-Semitism,

52:42

there's not really barriers to

52:44

accessing housing, jobs, other

52:46

resources for Jews, and Jews have

52:48

like good amount of access to

52:50

protection by the state and everything.

52:52

So like, it's not institutionalized, but

52:54

there still is this anti-Semitism that

52:56

can flare up and

52:58

cause violence and especially coming from a

53:00

lot of these white supremacists and right

53:04

wing neo-Nazi type groups. And

53:06

so that is a real thing to think

53:08

about. And also, you know, I think it's

53:10

something we see sometimes like in the movement

53:12

for Palestine, there are these more anti-Semitic grifters

53:14

that can kind of like worm their way.

53:16

Yeah, there's a lot of those. Yes. And

53:18

this is like people who have been on the line

53:21

in the last few months have probably seen this happen.

53:23

So I think it is helpful to have a group

53:25

that's like educating about anti-Semitism so that we can make

53:27

sure that those people are not just

53:29

like in the movement saying that they care about

53:32

justice for Palestine, but actually, they're just like using

53:34

it as an excuse to hate Jews. And also

53:36

because there is this long history of anti-Semitism in

53:39

Western thought and history. And

53:41

you know, it's like, we're thinking

53:43

about the ways in which like different structures

53:45

of anti-Semitism and conspiracism could be like getting

53:47

into our thinking and all that like I

53:49

think it's important. And so I think it

53:52

would be great for there to be a

53:54

better alternative. It's challenging because groups that take

53:56

kinds of perspective often do not have as

53:58

much access to funding obviously. aren't necessarily

54:00

going to be considered as credible by mainstream

54:03

media. There are groups, right, some groups right

54:05

now that try to do some of that

54:07

type of education, especially maybe sometimes more on

54:09

like a local level. For example, like JFREG,

54:12

Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

54:14

in New York has some

54:17

kind of an anti-Anti-Semitism curriculum and

54:19

they do some education on that.

54:21

There's a group called Parseo that

54:23

has like an anti-Semitism curriculum from

54:25

like a left justice-based lens, antisemitismcurriculum.org.

54:31

But, you know, in terms of like

54:33

a larger, more centralized group, I think

54:35

it's definitely something that we might see

54:37

emerge just as the ADL continues to

54:39

have this credibility crisis. I think it's

54:41

going to be a need and I'm sort of curious if

54:43

that is something that's going to pop up. Mari,

54:45

I'm so glad that you brought that

54:47

up, the idea that anti-Semitism is an

54:49

undeniable foundation of white supremacy, but that

54:52

of course winds up

54:54

being used as a

54:56

bludgeon against anti-Zionism, right, in

54:58

that conflation. But of course, the work that

55:00

Jewish Currents is doing, the work that Jewish

55:02

Voice for Peace is doing, the work of

55:05

a lot of these other groups, of JFREG,

55:07

as you mentioned, is essential to showcase

55:09

that there is an alternative way of thinking about this.

55:12

It doesn't have to be the ADL

55:14

way or nothing. It's been so great to

55:16

talk to you about this. Mari Cohen, Associate

55:18

Editor at Jewish Currents, and Mari, thank you

55:20

so much again for joining us today on

55:23

Citation Scene. Yeah, great to be with you.

55:25

Thanks for having me. Yeah,

55:33

I think so much of this is about people

55:35

wanting to play on terrain they're comfortable with. And

55:37

of course, if you're talking about

55:39

whether or not the president of Harvard

55:41

plagiarized 15 years ago, it's a

55:43

very comfortable place to play in, regardless

55:45

of the substance, right? Because so long as

55:47

you're having that conversation, you're not having other

55:50

conversations. And I think that's

55:52

where these things, when you have this sort of fire

55:54

hose of bullshit, you're constantly on the defensive, debating the

55:56

substance of this, you know,

55:58

citation or this preposition. that qualified

56:00

this thing and it's like, well, obviously this is

56:02

not really that important. It's

56:05

maybe section F, page 15. It's

56:08

a story, right? It's

56:10

a story of the president of Harvard plagiarized,

56:12

but should it be

56:14

the nonstop torrent of coverage for

56:16

weeks on end? Right. It's

56:18

because it's actually about something else. It's very much about something

56:20

else. Right. And so I

56:22

think, yeah, this idea also of who

56:25

wields power in whatever narrative is

56:27

being promoted is really essential to

56:29

this. Right. You know,

56:31

as we were just talking about with our

56:33

guest, Mari Cohen, the idea that multiple things can

56:35

be true at the same time. There can be

56:37

very real antisemitism and also antisemitism is not

56:39

the same thing as anti-Zionism and genocide can

56:41

also be happening at the same time. Right.

56:44

There can be different power dynamics in

56:47

our society operating simultaneously.

56:50

And it really is important to try

56:52

and dissect those. And so to discuss this

56:54

issue of power dynamics and how those play

56:56

out in this concept

56:58

of cry-bulliism, we are now going

57:01

to be joined by Sari Moctis,

57:03

professor of English and comparative literature

57:05

at UCLA, a scholar of British

57:07

Romanticism, imperial and urban culture and

57:09

colonial and post-colonial theory. Professor

57:12

Moctis' writing has appeared in academic journals, as

57:14

well as many publications such as the Los

57:16

Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and

57:19

the London Review of Books, the author of six

57:21

books himself. His latest is Tolerance

57:23

in a Wasteland, Palestine and the

57:26

Culture of Denial, published in 2022

57:29

by University of California Press. Professor

57:31

Moctis will join us in just a moment. Stay

57:34

with us. We

57:44

are joined now by Sari Moctis. Professor

57:46

Moctis, thank you so much for joining us

57:49

today on Citations Needed. It's my

57:51

pleasure. Thank you for having me. So I

57:53

want to begin by talking about something we've been

57:55

spending the better part of 30 minutes discussing, which

57:57

is this idea of kind of inverting the victim

57:59

narrative. in inverting power dynamics. You

58:02

wrote in your essay, A Context-Dependent Decision,

58:05

that the power dynamic inversion, that in this

58:07

scenario, quote, we have entered in a sense

58:09

an alternate reality, passing through the looking glass

58:11

and into a realm where the chain that

58:13

ties signifier to the signified has been sundered,

58:16

when the same lies and distortions are repeated

58:18

again and again, they begin to take

58:20

on a sense of reality. So I wanna begin by

58:22

discussing this dynamic where the whole

58:25

discourse kind of becomes, from our perspective, extremely

58:27

meta. There's a sort of controversy, there's

58:29

always smoke, but there's never really any fire, or at

58:31

least there's like a little ember of fire, but not any

58:33

significant one, where everything becomes about

58:35

the controversy, then the reaction to the controversy, then

58:38

the reaction to that reaction, and whether or not

58:40

you've condemned to this thing, or this theoretical thing

58:42

very often, so very sort of hypothetical. We

58:45

saw this obviously most profoundly in all the sort

58:47

of bizarre, supposed campus at

58:49

these images and controversies around the Ivy

58:51

League show trials in front of Republicans

58:53

in Congress, but I wanted

58:55

to talk about this looking glass dynamic, especially

58:57

as this was going on in the same

58:59

time, of course the average person saw

59:02

dozens of images of children being pulled out of

59:04

rubble on their phones, I think

59:06

making people feel slightly crazy, and I think understandably

59:08

so, that there's sort of two alternate realities going

59:10

on. And I wanna

59:12

sort of talk about this inversion of

59:15

victim and victim status by creating alternate

59:17

realities like you discussed, which your essay

59:19

goes into much more nuanced detail that

59:21

I'm sort of conveying here. Can we

59:23

begin by discussing that victim and victimizer

59:25

inversion, if you would? Yeah, I mean,

59:27

let's go to those congressional hearings that you

59:29

were just talking about, Adam. The hearings in

59:31

which the line that kept coming up again

59:33

and again and again in the

59:36

mouth of Elise Stecenek was when

59:38

she asked one of these university

59:41

presidents after another, do you condemn

59:43

the demand that there be a

59:45

Jewish genocide on campuses in

59:47

the US? And of course, nobody, the

59:50

amazing thing is, nobody had called for a Jew,

59:52

like nobody had said any such thing. Nobody had

59:54

made this demand. Nobody has expressed

59:57

that sentiment. That's a line that

59:59

was not uttered. But because she kept

1:00:01

saying it it's one of these things with the

1:00:03

more she said it the more real it seem

1:00:05

to become so was interesting about it is that.

1:00:08

The. Although this sort of, this

1:00:10

manufactured controversy around anti semitism

1:00:12

as being. Propelled. By organizations

1:00:14

like the A D L The Anti

1:00:17

Defamation League. Part of the point of

1:00:19

it is the deal demise criticism of

1:00:21

the Israeli State. Conflating,

1:00:24

Watson. Market of dictionary definition of

1:00:26

anti semitism in other was anti

1:00:28

Jewish Racism Anti Jewish prejudice. With.

1:00:31

Criticism of Zionism A criticism of Israeli

1:00:33

policy for as far as the A

1:00:35

Deal is concerned, these all equally forms

1:00:37

of anti semitism. Which. They say

1:00:39

which is they They say any kind of

1:00:41

existential critique of Israel versus a kind of

1:00:44

process Pretty cry just to clarify for audience

1:00:46

of of their definition that yours. It's their

1:00:48

definition, It's exactly their definition. rights of part

1:00:50

of function. Redefining the term is the divas

1:00:52

you demise criticism of the Israeli state. spicy.

1:00:55

In. The context that we have. right? Now

1:00:57

in the context of genocide, you know which is a

1:00:59

very problematic thing. In other words, if you savor what's

1:01:01

happening is set aside this it but that's an anti

1:01:03

semitic claim for you'd say that which is sort of

1:01:06

you know, such as. Through. The looking

1:01:08

glass. Like with through the looking glass we're

1:01:10

deep into some time have we gone into

1:01:12

outer space for on mushrooms where they were

1:01:14

flying? You know this is we've completely detached

1:01:16

from reality as be recognized. The.

1:01:18

For talk about ten or eleven

1:01:20

or twelve thousand murdered children. Let's

1:01:23

talk about. How people from a

1:01:25

certain background claim to seal on campus?

1:01:27

And of course, That. Background is

1:01:29

also very much up for steaks because a

1:01:31

lot of the people, a lot of the

1:01:33

students in particular and a lot of the

1:01:35

cycle the after say as well that are

1:01:37

coming in for criticism at the hands of

1:01:40

the A D L are in fact to

1:01:42

students and Jewish faculty to assert that they're

1:01:44

going after non Jewish people. They're equally happy

1:01:46

going after Jewish people like for example let's

1:01:48

just they don't just go after for example

1:01:50

Stp Students For Justice in Palestine the also

1:01:52

go after Jp T Jewish Voice for Peace

1:01:54

which has a strong campus presence. on

1:01:57

many campuses across the country and as far as the a

1:01:59

the eldest answer JVP is

1:02:01

basically an anti-Semitic organization. It's mad

1:02:03

and it's completely insane. It's gone

1:02:05

off the rails into strange forms

1:02:08

of insanity and delusion. Because

1:02:10

apostasy is always the biggest sin, right? Because it

1:02:12

undermines the narrative. Yeah, of course. You

1:02:14

know, part of this has to do with the not

1:02:17

only distraction kind of misdirection, don't look

1:02:19

over there, look over here. But

1:02:21

as we've been discussing, a lot of it

1:02:24

is predicated, and you've noted this in your

1:02:26

own writing, on sort

1:02:28

of solipsism, right? That is how

1:02:30

a given party feels, or how safe

1:02:33

they perceive their surroundings to be.

1:02:35

Perceptions that are, of course, informed

1:02:37

often by the very

1:02:40

racism and chauvinism that they are claiming

1:02:42

is kind of then directed at them.

1:02:44

So that kind of distraction

1:02:48

shines a light on themselves because

1:02:50

of how they feel and away

1:02:52

from lived reality or,

1:02:54

you know, ongoing genocide, ongoing slaughter,

1:02:57

an absolutely horrific body count that

1:02:59

just continues to skyrocket. So yes,

1:03:01

there are two realities, but one

1:03:04

is kind of meta and internal,

1:03:07

whereas the other is very

1:03:09

much material and measurable. And

1:03:11

seeing this gap kind of

1:03:13

widen, and then how not

1:03:15

only the kind of

1:03:17

quote unquote media conversation then focuses

1:03:19

on the meta one, which we

1:03:21

see all the time, but then

1:03:24

let's say take the media campaign

1:03:26

back in December, what we've been

1:03:28

calling plagiarism gazi dominated liberal discourse

1:03:31

for weeks and weeks when Harvard president

1:03:33

Claudine Gay and her various quote unquote

1:03:35

scandals were the top five featured stories

1:03:37

on the New York Times homepage eight

1:03:39

days in a row, plus another three

1:03:41

days that month. And as

1:03:43

this was happening, of course, thousands upon

1:03:45

thousands of real human beings were being

1:03:47

slaughtered in Gaza, and their deaths were

1:03:49

presented much lower down on

1:03:52

the page, if they're at all and always

1:03:54

in more anodyne terms. So can you please

1:03:56

talk about this reliance on solipsism?

1:04:00

and how these kind of self-definitions of

1:04:02

victimhood, often untethered to objective reality as

1:04:04

we've been saying, are used to further

1:04:06

this tactic of what we've been calling

1:04:08

on this episode, crybolism.

1:04:11

Yeah, I mean it's two things, Nima. I mean you

1:04:13

put your finger on two things at once which we

1:04:15

should maybe disaggregate a little bit. The first

1:04:17

thing is of course the question of

1:04:19

how people on campuses across the country claim

1:04:22

to be feeling, right? And of

1:04:24

course the thing that needs to be said here is, you know,

1:04:26

people have feelings, all kinds of people have all kinds of feelings.

1:04:28

I don't know, but the point is in a

1:04:30

situation where it's not just people

1:04:33

feeling in Gaza, people in Gaza are

1:04:35

literally being subjected to, as

1:04:37

the International Court of Justice has already alerted us to

1:04:39

this, they're being subjected to a

1:04:41

very real process of genocide. So

1:04:43

if we're going to weigh people's feelings

1:04:46

and sentiments as opposed to an actual

1:04:48

material set of circumstances involving genocides, involving

1:04:50

the extermination of thousands and thousands and

1:04:52

thousands of people, I know

1:04:54

which one we should pay more attention to right

1:04:56

away. It's not to diminish feelings, it's that if

1:04:58

you're weighing mere feelings or claims

1:05:00

about feelings as opposed to the actual extermination

1:05:03

of an entire human group, I think it's

1:05:05

the latter that's more important, at least as

1:05:07

far as I'm concerned. And the

1:05:09

thing is also feelings, like people don't have a

1:05:11

monopoly on feelings. Everybody has feelings. If we want

1:05:13

to talk about feelings, I could tell you what

1:05:15

it's like to feel as a Palestinian on an

1:05:18

American university campus, and I can speak, I'm not

1:05:20

just speaking for myself, I'm speaking for colleagues who

1:05:22

are Palestinian. I can't really speak for them,

1:05:24

but you know what I mean, I can summon their

1:05:26

feelings because I've talked to them. Colleagues who are Palestinian,

1:05:28

I could talk about students who are Palestinian, or students

1:05:31

who are Arab American, or colleagues who are Arab American,

1:05:33

who feel incredibly isolated, incredibly

1:05:36

alone, incredibly disregarded by

1:05:38

their universities. We have to remember, we're also

1:05:40

talking about a context in which, from the

1:05:42

beginning of this crisis in Gaza, the beginning

1:05:44

of October, all of the

1:05:47

American, or at least most of the

1:05:49

major American universities, were very, very quick

1:05:51

to issue statements condemning Hamas, condemning the

1:05:53

harm brought to Israeli civilians early in

1:05:55

October. And a few of

1:05:57

them may have had sort of post scripts about, oh yes,

1:06:00

and by the way, a few Palestinians were

1:06:02

also hurt, and alas, it's too bad. But

1:06:04

obviously, their primary concern was the Israeli civilians.

1:06:07

But then since then, since October, in other words,

1:06:09

for the past four months, when

1:06:12

we've seen over 100,000 people

1:06:15

killed, wounded, or disappeared under the rubble

1:06:17

to an unknown fate, we've seen 80%

1:06:19

of Gaza's housing destroyed. We've

1:06:22

seen every single university in Gaza destroyed.

1:06:25

We've seen 250 schools destroyed in Gaza.

1:06:27

We've seen 2 million people displaced from

1:06:29

their homes in Gaza. We've seen mass

1:06:32

use of phosphorus and heavy artillery

1:06:34

and heavy bombs and so on and so

1:06:36

forth. Another word from these universities. So

1:06:39

if we want to talk about feelings, let's weigh

1:06:41

the feelings of a whole population of students and

1:06:43

faculty and staff at American

1:06:45

universities whose feelings are entirely disregarded,

1:06:47

whose humanity does not even register

1:06:49

enough for universities to say, oh,

1:06:52

we also express our fear and our concern

1:06:54

and our worries about this population, not just

1:06:56

another population. So we can talk about feelings

1:06:59

all day. But as I said, as far

1:07:01

as I'm concerned, as somebody who also has

1:07:03

feelings, I'm not nearly as interested

1:07:05

in my feelings as I am

1:07:07

in the fate of the 11,000 children who've been killed

1:07:10

in Gaza and their mothers and their fathers

1:07:13

and their schools and their houses and so on. So

1:07:15

I'd rather talk about what's happening to actual

1:07:17

people, materially speaking, because that's far more urgent

1:07:20

than what I'm feeling or anybody else is

1:07:22

feeling on American campuses, given our position of

1:07:24

role as a privilege, first of all. That's

1:07:26

one angle of this, Nima. The other angle

1:07:28

has to do also with specifically

1:07:31

with – we're talking about the coverage, the New

1:07:33

York Times coverage now. It kept

1:07:35

saying, let's go on talking about this

1:07:37

artificially boosted and generated and sustained

1:07:40

crisis of anti-Semitism and then the Claudine Gay.

1:07:42

Did she plagiarize? Did she not plagiarize? And

1:07:44

then did the wife of so-and-so plagiarize and

1:07:46

saw all these kinds of things instead of

1:07:48

talking about the genocide taking place in Gaza?

1:07:50

You're right. It's also part of what's at

1:07:52

stake here. But we have to remember

1:07:55

that the New York Times, specifically the New York Times –

1:07:57

I mean, there are other newspapers, too, that

1:07:59

are – that are playing a similar role, but not

1:08:01

quite like the New York Times, of

1:08:03

consistently obfuscating and covering up and

1:08:06

engaging in all forms of denial

1:08:08

at the level of sentence construction, at

1:08:11

the level of constructing headlines, at the

1:08:13

level of grammar and syntax, at

1:08:15

the level of putting this story over that

1:08:18

story to cover up the lens support to

1:08:20

the genocide in Gaza. I mean, you might almost

1:08:22

say it's stretching a little bit, but

1:08:25

there's a kind of almost kind of complicity

1:08:27

on the part of journalists who are so

1:08:29

willing to turn a blind eye to the

1:08:31

catastrophe that's being inflicted on the people

1:08:33

of Gaza by the Israeli state to

1:08:36

cover for it. I would say it's arguably, or we

1:08:38

should think about it, as some

1:08:40

kind of version of complicity, maybe not

1:08:42

legally speaking, but something along those lines.

1:08:45

Yeah, I want to talk a bit about the sort

1:08:47

of use of solipsistic criteria, because this is how the

1:08:49

ADL kind of pumps up its numbers. If you look

1:08:51

at their crisis of anti-Semitism on

1:08:54

campus, it is perceptions. It's based on how

1:08:56

people feel. And they deliberately conflate,

1:08:58

again, criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism by

1:09:00

definition and routinely. And this is something

1:09:02

that they've been a lot

1:09:04

of, increasingly a lot of left-wing Jewish organizations have

1:09:06

criticized them for. Jewish Currents has run several pieces

1:09:08

doing that, where it's like, you really got to

1:09:11

stop doing that, because it is diminishing anti-Semitism, which,

1:09:13

as you note, is almost certainly up since October

1:09:15

7th. I think it's probably a fair assumption that

1:09:17

if you look through their database of incidents,

1:09:19

for everyone that's some bullshit about someone on

1:09:22

campus in free Palestine being indexed as a

1:09:24

hate crime, there are other hate crimes that

1:09:26

actually do exist, right? The problem is that

1:09:28

it's very difficult to distinguish the difference. And

1:09:30

this is the very sleazy waters that groups

1:09:32

like the ADL play in. And they

1:09:34

lost a lot of liberal legitimacy by embracing Elon Musk,

1:09:36

because Elon Musk did what John Hagee did 20 years

1:09:39

ago, which is that you can say the most anti-Semitic

1:09:41

shit in the world, as Elon Musk does, so long

1:09:43

as you pledge your

1:09:45

political fidelity to a state. In this case,

1:09:47

that happens to be Israel. And you get

1:09:49

an indulgence. All your anti-Semitic sins are then

1:09:51

forgiven. Again, John Hagee said

1:09:53

that the Holocaust was Jews' faults, but

1:09:56

as long as he showed up to the APAC conference

1:09:58

and did Christians for Israel, it didn't really matter. what

1:10:00

he said, right? This I think has gotten

1:10:02

more naked, more obvious, especially now that the ADL has

1:10:04

called on the federal government to investigate Palestinian

1:10:06

groups on campus, which is a huge escalation that a

1:10:09

lot of liberals really kind of said, okay, well, this

1:10:11

is enough with these guys. By the

1:10:13

way, Adam, not just investigate student groups on

1:10:15

campus, but specifically investigate student groups on campus

1:10:17

as part in terms of material support for

1:10:20

terrorism. Which can put you in person for

1:10:22

decades, right? Yeah, exactly. It's not just sort

1:10:24

of, you know, let's suppress this

1:10:26

version of free speech. If specifically let's

1:10:28

get these people, these students, specifically students

1:10:31

who are obviously by definition in

1:10:33

the sense of in the position

1:10:35

of vulnerability, let's have them prosecuted

1:10:37

for the material support of terrorism. It's an

1:10:39

outrageous thing that they're doing. But

1:10:41

yeah, I mean, the thing about antisemitism, I mean, it's a

1:10:43

couple of things. One is all of

1:10:46

what the ADL is trying to do

1:10:48

by conflating anti-Semitism and antisemitism. And

1:10:50

by deliberately, it's not just a mistake,

1:10:52

it's deliberately obscuring one with the other.

1:10:55

So it becomes impossible literally, it's like even

1:10:57

if you want to find out how much

1:10:59

of this is actual dictionary old dictionary, meaning

1:11:01

like some previous moment dictionary,

1:11:03

how much of this is old antisemitism,

1:11:06

like genuine antisemitism, and how much of

1:11:08

it is this redefined version of antisemitism

1:11:10

that the ADL is trying to pursue?

1:11:13

It's basically impossible to tell. And secondly,

1:11:15

if there were real antisemitism in the

1:11:17

old, what I would consider the proper

1:11:20

definition of the term, if there was like an eruption

1:11:22

of actual old school

1:11:24

antisemitism, you know, we might get to

1:11:26

the point where it's like Peter calling Wolf, you know, that people

1:11:28

might disregard, they just say, oh, well, there goes the ADL again.

1:11:31

And maybe there's a time when we

1:11:33

actually do need to rally your forces

1:11:35

and respond to actual antisemitism. It's incredibly

1:11:38

dangerous, it's incredibly irresponsible. And

1:11:40

if I, you know, I think you're right that

1:11:42

a lot of Jewish people and organizations are saying,

1:11:44

you're abusing this term, and you're abusing a term

1:11:46

that people need to be on the alert, like

1:11:48

any other kind of racism. It's not special in

1:11:51

that regard. All forms of racism need to be

1:11:53

taken seriously. But You know, since

1:11:55

they're a Jewish organization, that should be their particular

1:11:57

kind of concern, I would say. Difficult

1:12:00

to track and they're making it more and

1:12:02

more and more likely that if there were

1:12:04

actual anti semitism people just say oh there

1:12:06

they go Again, the talking about anti Zionism.

1:12:08

The. Using up all of the kind of credibility

1:12:11

that they might have developed over time, and

1:12:13

they're blowing it in an effort to protect

1:12:15

the foreign state. That's what this also comes

1:12:17

down to. The. Occurs in their

1:12:19

minds. So called Jewish right to

1:12:21

self determination is inextricably tied to.

1:12:24

Anti Semitism so if you deny again this is

1:12:26

or the does it have a H or a

1:12:29

definition that has been rejected by for years even

1:12:31

the White House because of a sort of it

1:12:33

takes you to a very kind of messy a

1:12:35

logical place where you kind of been yourself and

1:12:37

pretzels where it's again if you apply to sort

1:12:40

of standard of racism to criticizing nation states that

1:12:42

would be almost be virtually impossible for any other

1:12:44

country is resort of would be able to function

1:12:46

for obvious reasons right. Now. He would

1:12:48

be and just exactly on that point

1:12:50

Adam for example that claim that to

1:12:53

criticize Israel Israeli policy will resign this

1:12:55

ideology for that matter is to criticize

1:12:57

all those things is to the anti

1:12:59

Jewish. Within. To criticize South

1:13:01

African Apartheid said the anti white my

1:13:03

that same logic to criticize. The. Policies

1:13:05

of the Iranian state is to be anti

1:13:07

she ought to be. To criticize The Saudi

1:13:09

state has to be at this. And then

1:13:11

of course one can distinguish principal criticisms. Of.

1:13:14

The Saudi, the Iranian, the American for

1:13:16

that matter, the Francis an African or

1:13:18

any state. From. Racism directed

1:13:20

towards a particular ethnicity of sub

1:13:22

population or religious grouping a whatever

1:13:24

it is. What? I wanted to

1:13:27

ask is that in some ways with the

1:13:29

else doesn't has done historically as they can

1:13:31

I use the language of liberalism especially kind

1:13:33

of moderns, more maybe more squishy standpoint, epistemology,

1:13:35

liberalism kind of against itself and I actually

1:13:37

think because there's a lot of about perception

1:13:39

that's what matters. But I don't think anyone

1:13:42

with rare exception would say that like lived

1:13:44

experience matters but it has to be married

1:13:46

to some kind of material reality right? like

1:13:48

a bunch of Trump or can say that

1:13:50

the election was stolen on you know, twenty

1:13:52

twenty. but that doesn't that that's the lived

1:13:54

experience or their perception. but we're not gonna

1:13:57

like indulge that per se because there's of material

1:13:59

react it's that one's lived experience, quote unquote,

1:14:01

has to be tethered to, right? And

1:14:03

I think that the ADL's kind of

1:14:05

exploited that vulnerability maybe in liberal discourse

1:14:07

by focusing on perceptions. And again, what

1:14:09

makes it frustrating, of course, is that

1:14:12

this level of kind of self-definition is

1:14:14

not afforded to sort of Palestinian,

1:14:17

much less Arab or Muslim students. It

1:14:19

only sort of is permitted for one side. Yes,

1:14:22

exactly. And as I said, if we

1:14:24

wanna start policing feelings and protecting feelings,

1:14:26

everybody has feelings. Everybody has feelings. So

1:14:29

if we're given a choice between trying to go

1:14:31

into people's heads and figure out what are they

1:14:33

actually feeling as opposed to what they say they're

1:14:35

feeling, we're never gonna end. But on the other

1:14:37

hand, we can look at material circumstances as documented

1:14:39

by UN agencies and

1:14:41

Amnesty International and so forth.

1:14:44

We could see exactly what's happening on the

1:14:46

ground in material terms in terms of the

1:14:48

destruction of it, basically the destruction of, first

1:14:50

of all, the biggest Palestinian city by far

1:14:52

has been destroyed. It's been leveled to the

1:14:54

ground with everybody in it practically. And

1:14:57

as I said, more than 100,000 people killed, injured,

1:15:00

wounded, lost under the rubble. I mean,

1:15:02

what's happening is cataclysmic. And now, of

1:15:04

course, on top of that, with the

1:15:07

US and the UK and the other

1:15:09

genders and mental powers stopping their funding

1:15:11

of Anurwa, however temporarily, that means stopping

1:15:13

feeding people who've been already reduced to

1:15:15

the edge of starvation. I mean, it's

1:15:17

incredible. To me, that's much

1:15:19

more important to talk about than what people claim to be

1:15:21

their feelings are here in this first

1:15:24

world environment that we're living in. Where, as

1:15:26

I said, everybody has feelings. Feelings, nobody has

1:15:28

a monopoly on feelings. Yeah, I

1:15:30

wanna kind of say on this idea

1:15:32

of vibes getting so much attention and

1:15:34

kind of connect it to something you

1:15:36

said earlier, sorry, which is really

1:15:38

about the New York Times or

1:15:40

about kind of mass media in

1:15:43

general glomming onto certain things. And

1:15:45

kind of dig into one aspect of this,

1:15:47

which is, you know, and as you've noted,

1:15:50

many of the ways that these kinds of controversies,

1:15:54

let's say, cries about anti-Semitism,

1:15:56

get further hyped up, comes

1:15:58

from reporters. and commentators

1:16:00

kind of playing to the public's

1:16:03

ignorance over not just

1:16:05

the facts of like what we're

1:16:07

seeing, but then doing this really

1:16:09

xenophobic, like Arabic words are scary,

1:16:12

right? Like if anyone says intifada

1:16:14

or anyone says anything about martyrdom

1:16:16

or you know uses a spooky

1:16:19

phrase like from the river to

1:16:21

the sea, this is

1:16:23

the cause for like hue and cry. This

1:16:25

is the pearl clutching time, go to the

1:16:28

fainting couch and the same thing kind of

1:16:30

happens with Palestinian history as well. Palestinians are

1:16:32

often presented as people who just kind of

1:16:34

appeared out of thin air, you know, at

1:16:36

any given point that suits a narrative, you

1:16:39

know, whether they appeared in the 60s or

1:16:41

they appeared in you know 1982 or all

1:16:43

of a sudden in 2007 Gaza, you know,

1:16:46

emerged from the earth fully formed, you

1:16:48

know, just people living in an open-air

1:16:50

prison who are mindlessly bigoted and angry

1:16:53

for no particular reason. So can

1:16:55

we talk about how both history

1:16:57

and then language are

1:17:00

continuously and consistently distorted,

1:17:02

kept from any kind

1:17:04

of context, often

1:17:06

in order to trigger this kind

1:17:09

of lizard brain of western media

1:17:11

consumers, you know, get people kind

1:17:13

of freaked out because there are

1:17:15

certain words being used and so

1:17:17

therefore you get to make these

1:17:19

connections between someone saying intifada and

1:17:21

someone obviously calling for genocide, right,

1:17:23

and like yet another way

1:17:26

of then dismissing the reality that is

1:17:28

laid out before us and instead getting

1:17:30

us to focus on something that might

1:17:32

make a few white people a little

1:17:34

uneasy somewhere. Yeah, I mean

1:17:37

some white, a very selective group of white

1:17:39

people, that's self-selected group also,

1:17:41

this obsession with the word intifada

1:17:43

is truly remarkable. It's

1:17:46

a word that came into the English language in

1:17:48

the 1980s, from the Arabic

1:17:50

obviously, to refer to

1:17:52

an overturning, a disburdening, a

1:17:54

removal of an oppressive presence

1:17:56

or weight basically, an

1:17:58

unshackling you could also say. In

1:18:01

the instance in which that word entered into the

1:18:03

world, it specifically had to do in that case

1:18:06

in the 1980s with the nonviolent

1:18:08

Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation in

1:18:10

the late 1980s. Actually

1:18:13

beginning in Jabalieh refugee camp in Gaza,

1:18:15

incidentally. And then there it

1:18:17

was, minding its own business as a word

1:18:19

for all of these years. And then suddenly

1:18:21

this fall, we're told, oh,

1:18:23

this word means it's a call for

1:18:25

Jewish extermination, extermination of Jewish people. I

1:18:27

was like, wait, where did you

1:18:29

get that from? You're going to tell us that you

1:18:31

know Arabic and you're telling us what this word means?

1:18:34

Or in other words, we come back here.

1:18:36

This is almost like a theoretical argument about

1:18:39

where meaning comes from because the insistence on

1:18:41

the part of organizations like the ADL or

1:18:43

the AJC, a similar kind of organization, is

1:18:45

that they get to determine the meaning of

1:18:47

the words that I'm using. I

1:18:49

don't get to determine the meaning of my words. They get

1:18:51

to determine the meaning of their words. You

1:18:54

remember the incident going back actually to Alice

1:18:56

and Wonderland where Humpty Dumpty sitting there, and

1:18:59

then Humpty Dumpty says, when I use a word, it

1:19:01

means exactly what I mean it to me, neither more

1:19:03

nor less. It's like I get to determine the meaning

1:19:05

of the words that I'm using. But this is

1:19:07

sort of like a flip side, Humpty Dumpty. This

1:19:09

is where Humpty Dumpty is saying, oh, the

1:19:12

words you're using, I get to determine the meaning of the

1:19:14

words you're using. That's not how language

1:19:16

works. I mean, there are rules about

1:19:18

how language functions. There's the history to

1:19:20

language. There's studies of language. There's a

1:19:22

way of thinking about language in a

1:19:25

rational, historical, cultural-rooted sort of sense. And

1:19:27

what we're seeing again as some

1:19:29

of the other stuff we've been talking about so far is

1:19:32

this will to say, no, we're going

1:19:34

to suspend all of the rules, and we

1:19:36

now uniquely are going to abrogate to ourselves

1:19:38

the right to unilaterally determine the meanings of

1:19:40

the words you're using so that we can

1:19:42

impute to you these malicious motivations

1:19:44

that even if you say you don't have them, we're

1:19:46

going to say, no, but yes, you do. As

1:19:49

opposed, again, this is the extraordinary thing, as

1:19:52

opposed to, and now we can maybe segue to the

1:19:54

river to the sea. Nathan Yahu

1:19:56

used that phrase the other week, he said it. It's not

1:19:58

new today. unique to

1:20:00

him, it's not even his invention. That

1:20:02

word, that phrase rather, was first used

1:20:05

in a systematic sense in

1:20:07

the 1977 Likud Party Charter,

1:20:09

the one of 1977, which said, between the

1:20:12

river and the sea, there will be only

1:20:14

Jewish sovereignty, which is exactly what Netanyahu said,

1:20:17

in other words, in all of what we call

1:20:19

historical Palestine. There will only

1:20:21

be Jewish sovereignty. Non-Jews are not welcome.

1:20:23

There's no room here for a non-Jewish

1:20:25

form of sovereignty. There's also no room,

1:20:27

by the way, if there's a

1:20:29

uniquely Jewish form of sovereignty, what that means

1:20:32

is it cannot be a democratic space, which

1:20:34

includes non-Jews. And that's also what he's talking

1:20:36

about. He's talking there about, and that's what

1:20:38

the Likud Party means too, they're talking about

1:20:41

a monopoly on sovereignty, which is of course,

1:20:43

exclusivist and racist and a form of apartheid

1:20:45

or an expression of apartheid. And

1:20:48

all these people who are screaming and shouting

1:20:50

about Intifada, about the river to the sea,

1:20:52

when Palestinians use those expressions to mean a

1:20:54

democratic state or an uprising against

1:20:56

oppression, suddenly they fall silent when an

1:20:59

actual apartheid state or the actual

1:21:01

leader of an apartheid state is

1:21:03

using the term to talk about

1:21:05

and to celebrate apartheid. It's extraordinary.

1:21:08

Suddenly it's no problem. We have no issues with this, no

1:21:10

worries. It's all fine. There's nothing to say about it. Or

1:21:13

there'll be some sort of like selective condemnation,

1:21:15

but it's very compartmentalized to just the Likud

1:21:17

Party and rather than existential to the actual...

1:21:19

Anytime anyone in the Israeli government

1:21:21

says something overtly genocidal, they're always treated like they're just

1:21:24

bumbling interns with no power. That's a sort of slight

1:21:26

of hand that's constantly going on. So like all these

1:21:28

people say, well, we need to displace God since we

1:21:30

need to push them into the Sinai. And then for

1:21:32

weeks people say, oh, that's, you know, that minister of

1:21:34

intelligence or that minister of president, they're really not that

1:21:37

powerful. And then the Washington Post report of the Netanyahu

1:21:39

said that they was lobbying both CC

1:21:41

and France, the UK and the US to push, quote

1:21:43

unquote, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the Sinai desert.

1:21:45

And then people come along and say, oh, wow, you

1:21:47

know, that's just them blowing off steam. It's like, he's

1:21:49

the prime minister. Does anyone have power? The whole

1:21:51

country is full of nothing but junior vice presidents.

1:21:53

Just on that specific point, the most powerful part,

1:21:56

one of the most powerful parts of the South

1:21:58

African presentation at the ICJ... was

1:22:00

when they went through all of the very

1:22:02

clear incitements of genocide on the

1:22:04

part of Israeli leaders from the Prime Minister,

1:22:07

the President, all the way down to common

1:22:09

foot soldiers and they documented how common

1:22:11

foot soldiers in Gaza understand themselves exactly

1:22:13

to be embarked using exactly the same

1:22:16

phrases, the gender-sideal phrases, that their leaders

1:22:18

have been using and obviously had instructed

1:22:20

them that's how they're supposed to

1:22:22

think about this operation but again, let's not

1:22:25

talk about that, let's talk about how people feel here on

1:22:27

American campuses allegedly about words that

1:22:29

they claim to have a monopoly on the interpretation

1:22:32

of. Well, yeah, because if one

1:22:34

accepts the logic, I mean, again, I don't doubt

1:22:36

that many, many people do genuinely feel like words

1:22:38

like intifada or from the river to the sea

1:22:40

are anti-Jewish because again, if

1:22:42

you accept this kind of ADL logic that

1:22:45

one's identity is tethered to a nation state

1:22:47

or a kind of territorial claim, any

1:22:50

claim, I mean, again, if you ask the ADL,

1:22:52

if you sort of pin them down, they'll sort

1:22:54

of say that a Palestinian who has been evicted

1:22:56

from their home in the West Bank and forced

1:22:58

into a refugee camp even today, that

1:23:00

if they claim that their home ought not

1:23:02

have been taken by Zion a settler, that that

1:23:04

itself is a form of anti-Semitism. That's the

1:23:06

sort of logic of, quote, unquote,

1:23:08

denying Israel's quote, unquote, right to exist. Of course,

1:23:11

there's always an implied words right after right to

1:23:13

exist as a Jewish state, which is to say

1:23:15

exclusively sort of at the exclusion of non-Jewish

1:23:17

people. And so if you sort of accept

1:23:19

that logic, that it kind of would make

1:23:22

sense they would view words like intifada as

1:23:24

violence because any kind of violent resistance that

1:23:26

makes any sort of claim to right of

1:23:28

return or any kind of even

1:23:30

equal citizenship within the country necessarily becomes

1:23:32

genocidal sort of by definition. All right,

1:23:34

because the existence of Palestinians like living

1:23:36

and breathing is therefore a threat. The

1:23:38

existence of Palestinians is per se racist,

1:23:41

right? Like a Palestinian existing is racist

1:23:43

by definition. The only way they can

1:23:45

not be racist is to say I'm

1:23:47

officially Jordanian. No, or simply

1:23:49

to cease to exist, which is of course

1:23:51

that's what genocide is, right? I mean, the

1:23:53

point is that that's ultimately what in the

1:23:56

Zionist dispensation on the ground in Palestine, the

1:23:59

Zionist dispensation. has that the Palestinians

1:24:01

are a problem insofar as they continue to exist.

1:24:04

And that's obviously what's happening in Gaza now

1:24:06

is an attempt to de-exist them, hence genocide,

1:24:08

right? To take away the possibility of their

1:24:10

existence and the basis for their life as

1:24:12

a human community, right? That's part of what's

1:24:14

going on. Yeah, I think

1:24:17

as we've been discussing these sort

1:24:19

of layers of like meta-commentary, it

1:24:21

just becomes all the more

1:24:23

clear that training the microphone in your

1:24:25

own direction or the camera on yourself

1:24:28

is such an obvious but also a

1:24:30

very effective tactic of then making sure that

1:24:33

no one is paying attention to what is

1:24:35

on the other side of the camera, right?

1:24:37

Like if you can get it to just

1:24:39

keep focusing on you, then let's

1:24:41

talk about me. Like this

1:24:43

makes me feel uncomfortable. This makes me feel

1:24:45

like I'm under threat. This is

1:24:48

making me sad. This is making me, you

1:24:50

know, and so therefore

1:24:52

let's not actually

1:24:54

talk about what is going on.

1:24:57

Yeah, exactly. I think that

1:24:59

we've seen this. I mean, you have

1:25:01

been writing about this for decades and we've been seeing

1:25:03

this for decades. And I think that

1:25:05

there is something even

1:25:07

more stark about that right now

1:25:10

because it is so clear. I mean,

1:25:12

it's always been clear, but

1:25:15

it is so clear what is

1:25:17

happening in Gaza. And the intention

1:25:19

behind it is so like

1:25:22

there's no more veneer, which

1:25:25

makes I think this insistence

1:25:28

on, well, let's talk about

1:25:30

how these students in

1:25:32

up-hall Manhattan feel. It's

1:25:35

becoming even more stark. It's not

1:25:37

even these students because this is the thing also,

1:25:39

again, about the ADL, you know, this insistence that

1:25:42

when they talk about Jewish students to list that

1:25:44

or the other, there are lots and

1:25:46

lots and lots of Jewish students who are in SJP

1:25:49

or JVP or other similar organizations. So this

1:25:51

idea that they have a monopoly also on

1:25:54

representing Jewishness, the other day

1:25:56

we have a commemoration here at UCLA for

1:25:59

like a… individual for the suffering of Gaza.

1:26:01

I spoke and other colleagues spoke and some

1:26:03

students spoke and so forth. One of the

1:26:05

most moving speakers was a Jewish

1:26:07

student, I think in JVP if

1:26:10

I remember right, but certainly a Jewish student who

1:26:12

said that her Judaism compels her to

1:26:14

take a stand on behalf of Palestine.

1:26:17

And I'm sure you've seen the extraordinary

1:26:19

statements produced by Jewish students at Brown

1:26:21

University. Really, really powerful, incredibly

1:26:26

moving and gripping, just

1:26:28

brilliantly written, incredibly

1:26:30

ethically strong and politically

1:26:33

razor sharp in their political intellect too.

1:26:36

And saying our Jewishness is what

1:26:38

forces us to take the

1:26:40

side of the oppressed and the downtrodden and the

1:26:43

racialized victim in this case. So

1:26:45

this idea that HDL can claim that it

1:26:47

has a unique monopoly on the interpretation of

1:26:49

words, it has a unique monopoly

1:26:51

on the interpretation of slogans, it has a

1:26:54

unique monopoly on what it means to be

1:26:56

Jewish, what Jewishness stands for and so forth,

1:26:58

it's all completely outrageous. If I were Jewish,

1:27:00

there would be steam coming out of my

1:27:02

ears because of this appropriation of my identity,

1:27:04

my culture, my beliefs, my values, my religion

1:27:06

as well. In the name of a country

1:27:09

that's not only an apartheid state but is

1:27:11

now embarked on this genocidal project. Well,

1:27:13

because Zionism and its kind of adherence

1:27:15

to this idea that there's this Jewish

1:27:17

monolith is inherently anti-Semitic

1:27:20

as an ideology and yet

1:27:22

weaponizes anti-Semitism to deflect

1:27:24

any kind of criticism whatsoever

1:27:26

about its own ideology. Yes,

1:27:29

in fact, by the way, in the

1:27:31

early history of Zionism, which is

1:27:33

of course the European, this is the other

1:27:35

thing, people always talk about, no, Zionism is

1:27:38

a European concert that emerged from Europe. It

1:27:40

has to do with Europe that was imposed on

1:27:43

the Middle East. It's not from the

1:27:45

Middle East. It didn't involve anybody from

1:27:47

the Middle East entirely, a European concoction

1:27:49

at the peak of European imperialism. That's

1:27:51

where Zionism comes from. But in its

1:27:53

moment still of formation and in

1:27:55

particular in the context of the early 20th century

1:27:57

Britain and the moment in which the

1:27:59

British British government was beginning to move towards or

1:28:02

had just issued what was called the, later

1:28:04

it would be called the Balfour Declaration in

1:28:06

which the British government pledged its support for

1:28:08

the creation not of a Jewish state

1:28:10

mind you but of a national home what they called,

1:28:12

it's a very ambiguous term, a national home for the

1:28:14

Jewish people. That could mean all kinds of things but

1:28:16

anyway. It also says in Palestine.

1:28:19

Yeah, the creation in Palestine of a national

1:28:21

home for the Jewish people, it being clearly

1:28:23

understood as nothing be done to prejudice the

1:28:25

rights of the existing non-Jewish population who of

1:28:27

course at the time were 93% of the

1:28:29

population but leave that aside. The

1:28:31

only Jewish member of the British cabinet at the

1:28:34

time that called Edward Montague said

1:28:36

but how does that make me feel

1:28:38

that somebody who regards himself as a

1:28:40

Jewish Britain, somebody who's British and

1:28:42

Jewish you know because I think that my

1:28:44

country is Britain and you're telling me that

1:28:47

my country is this other place over there

1:28:49

and you're basically telling European Jews you don't

1:28:51

belong here you belong over there. He's saying

1:28:53

this undermines everything that we as a Jewish

1:28:55

community in that case in Britain but

1:28:57

in other European countries as well. What we've been

1:29:00

working on for all this time is to be

1:29:02

able to become, to be fully recognized, to

1:29:04

be right carrying citizens of

1:29:06

Britain or Germany or France or whatever the country is

1:29:09

in question and what you guys are saying is no

1:29:11

we don't belong here. And he said

1:29:13

this is a complete outrage. Not only are

1:29:15

we going to go to somebody else's country and

1:29:17

uproot it as Montague presciently pointed out but you're

1:29:19

also going to make Jewish Britons and Frenchmen and

1:29:22

Germans and so forth feel alienated from their own

1:29:24

countries. You're also going to give ammunition to European

1:29:26

anti-Semites who are then going to jump on this

1:29:28

and say look, aha, they don't belong here after

1:29:30

all. They should be going over there. It's

1:29:33

a perfect storm. Again, it reminds me so

1:29:35

much of the sort of bully gotcha questions

1:29:37

like do you recognize Israel's right to exist with the

1:29:40

implicit as an explicitly Jewish state or as you write

1:29:42

the sort of inherently contradictory Jewish

1:29:44

and democratic. It's like well wait a second.

1:29:47

One thing it reminds me of is that

1:29:49

like this idea that like people can't be

1:29:51

wrong. I mean again if someone says like

1:29:54

If a white person says like the term black

1:29:56

power scares me, I view it as being racist.

1:30:00

I'm not saying that adding in some liberal less circles

1:30:02

people do like. well that's ridiculous You don't you for

1:30:04

you don't get the really decide that whereas I think

1:30:06

in this case it's like if I could say well

1:30:08

you know something Free Palestine A busy get the market

1:30:10

Free Palestine as anti semitic. First. Like. You.

1:30:13

Can't have any kind of slogan

1:30:15

at all. That. Has any kind

1:30:17

of liver to repurchase. And another verse at

1:30:19

which you just mentioned in passing. Mrs. Important

1:30:21

is the thing about Oh so you oppose

1:30:24

the Jewish People's right to self determination. As

1:30:26

I know I have nothing to say of

1:30:28

the to People's right to self determination that

1:30:30

entitled to it. That's not the issue, the

1:30:32

issue is the right, the sensitivity some of

1:30:35

somebody else has landed somebody else as expense.

1:30:37

That's and it becomes a problem you

1:30:39

know? had Palestine been. The. Land

1:30:41

of that the people. For people without land as

1:30:43

he claimed it was designed to said is in

1:30:46

Europe in the nineteenth century. Maybe this would be

1:30:48

an issue, but it wasn't the plan. To the

1:30:50

people, there were people there. So. The

1:30:53

problem isn't the idea of juice of

1:30:55

determination as to self determination as somebody

1:30:57

elses expense and somebody else is left.

1:31:00

That's. The issue and so they always tend

1:31:02

to turn it into these abstract things rather

1:31:04

than the material circumstances to which we must

1:31:06

attend. Because we don't live in abstractions, we

1:31:08

live in material reality. And as if we

1:31:10

can't ignore the Syria reality in the pursuit

1:31:12

of these voting ideas like something out of

1:31:14

swift you know, the Gulliver Strapless. I forgot.

1:31:16

Who is this A Certain people that live

1:31:18

know like it'll everything's upside down. The live

1:31:20

in the clouds of with and it's just

1:31:22

that's kind of where these organizations like the

1:31:24

it's A the A want to take us

1:31:26

this to this never never meant he sees

1:31:28

another the amid he can all. Of these

1:31:30

imaginary kind of. Crazy. With talk

1:31:32

with Alice in Wonderland fucked with Calipers travels.

1:31:35

Never. Never that I'm he would just this

1:31:37

is it's an alternate. Much as an

1:31:39

alternate reality. It's an alternate universe. We.

1:31:42

Suddenly, Newtonian physics. No one that works the

1:31:44

laws of motion no longer apply. Gravity. Disney

1:31:46

what it used to mean. I get to

1:31:48

choose selectively with a gravity does as work.

1:31:50

I mean, it's of World of Madness in

1:31:52

almost every sense of the term. Yeah.

1:31:55

I may I see you've. You've. Gotta hit the

1:31:57

idea that as long as we live in this kind

1:31:59

of thing, The see space where reality

1:32:01

is meaningless. Then we can just

1:32:03

mythologize ourselves in to come place

1:32:05

and see rights and our what

1:32:07

we're seeing right now as I

1:32:10

complacency and that willingness to refuse

1:32:12

to engage with reality is what

1:32:14

is allowing this genocide to continue.

1:32:16

I mean and just as as

1:32:18

an extension of you know the

1:32:20

past. Century. Of colonization

1:32:22

that has century of ethnic cleansing. we're

1:32:24

just seeing it kind of inevitable. I

1:32:27

guess he had me either. I don't

1:32:29

want to say I'm. Conclusion:

1:32:31

Because you know it, it, it

1:32:33

absolutely will not be despite Netanyahu's

1:32:36

the wishes. But I think there's

1:32:38

this trajectory that relies on this

1:32:40

mythology that relies on this fantasy.

1:32:42

and we're seeing it aided and

1:32:44

abetted by media. And by, you

1:32:47

know, political commentators and politicians. Sit

1:32:49

media. which also explains the generational

1:32:51

gap that we're now seeing that

1:32:53

you don't know where Murphy he

1:32:55

didn't in the Us because younger

1:32:58

people. Call. It a cheap

1:33:00

with don't read the Bloody New York

1:33:02

Times. They get information from more reliable

1:33:04

the more reputable sources than the New

1:33:06

York Times and Cnn and Npr. Anonymous

1:33:08

or Bbc. Nobody. Looks the best

1:33:10

of it. Older people may look at

1:33:12

those kinds of outlets younger people don't and

1:33:14

which is why they're better informed that people

1:33:16

who are still. Drinking. The Kool

1:33:19

Aid of the New York Times Less

1:33:21

than half of my time like litter,

1:33:23

the almost half my day glued to

1:33:25

Arabic Disease and Arpino various air other

1:33:27

Arabic channels. There's a whole other reality.

1:33:30

That. Takes place in Arabic language

1:33:32

media of all costs. You know

1:33:34

that's not censored, not subject interdiction

1:33:36

faceted censorship. There are talk shows

1:33:38

that are. Spectacular.

1:33:41

Into range of opinions they provide

1:33:43

in the diversity in the tenacity

1:33:45

in the force of the arguments

1:33:47

are to see unfolding in in

1:33:49

the scope of the analysis based

1:33:51

on deep deep information what's actually

1:33:53

going on on the ground. And.

1:33:55

then you come to the never never land of the

1:33:57

new york times and see and it's a whole other

1:33:59

world And I'm not sure how much

1:34:01

intercommunicability there is between these two different universes.

1:34:04

They really do belong to different universes in

1:34:06

a sense. But the good news is that

1:34:08

younger Americans in general, they don't look at

1:34:10

that stuff. Organizations like the New York Times,

1:34:12

they don't, that's not what they're reading. That's

1:34:14

not what they're getting the information, which is

1:34:17

why they're better informed. Jake Tapper's not their

1:34:19

go-to. Well, which is why those

1:34:21

alternate sources, I think, are deemed so dangerous

1:34:24

now. Yes, exactly. This has been amazing.

1:34:26

Before we let you go, one

1:34:28

last question, which is, you write prolifically,

1:34:31

you are the author of many books.

1:34:33

Do you have something going on that

1:34:35

our listeners can look out for, either

1:34:37

coming out, either something short form, or

1:34:39

maybe there's, you know, what's your next

1:34:42

book? What can people look out for

1:34:44

you in the coming days? I'm

1:34:47

working on two book projects. One

1:34:49

is about Palestine that's still kind of embryonic

1:34:51

and it's still being formed. Another

1:34:53

book on modern and postmodern London.

1:34:56

I'm writing the pieces that I wrote for the

1:34:58

online edition of Nplus1 in the fall. I got

1:35:00

to come out in the print version

1:35:03

of Nplus1 with a new kind of framing piece

1:35:05

that I'm writing that I'm excited about. And

1:35:07

also this past fall, my brothers and

1:35:09

I started a new podcast called Mactisi

1:35:12

Street, named after a street in Beirut. And

1:35:15

they're both academics like me. So one is

1:35:17

at Berkeley, one is at the American University of Beirut.

1:35:19

And we talk among ourselves, but

1:35:21

we've also interviewed a range of people

1:35:23

from Richard Falk to Hassan Abbasid to

1:35:26

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur

1:35:28

on Human Rights in Palestine and many

1:35:30

others as well. And so I'd encourage

1:35:32

people to give it a submissive. What wonderful.

1:35:34

We will all look out for that. We've been

1:35:37

speaking with Sari Mactisi, professor of

1:35:39

English and Comparative Literature at UCLA,

1:35:42

a scholar of British Romanticism, Imperial

1:35:44

and Urban Culture, and Colonial and

1:35:46

Postcolonial Theory. Professor Mactisi's writing

1:35:48

has appeared in academic journals, as well

1:35:50

as many publications, such as the Los

1:35:52

Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian,

1:35:54

Nplus1, and the London Review of Books,

1:35:57

the author himself of six books, his

1:35:59

latest in the book. is Tolerance is a Wasteland

1:36:01

Palestine and the Culture of Denial,

1:36:03

which was published in 2022 by University

1:36:06

of California Press. Sorry, thank you so

1:36:08

much again for joining us today on

1:36:10