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Thank you very much. Okay.

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So we are in the last tunnel. And my name is Valerie.

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I'm from King's College, London, and I'm really happy and honoured to be the chair of this panel of two of my colleagues,

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friends, teachers and and in many ways,

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I think the two first panels that we had really serving as a great foundation

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do both conceptually and and I think theoretically and historically in a way,

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a and and I want to start with presenting officially,

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but of the speakers and then I will start maybe beginning with an entering point

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because the title of our conversation is Is it just a minute or just a fraction?

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Yes. Israel on the uses and misuses of a discourse in Judaism, in Israel.

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But this kind of topic have really a lot of many entry points.

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So I would suggest one entry point and then we'll start our conversation.

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So our first speaker is professor who doesn't have he's a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University.

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And in my opinion, and not only mine, he's one of the most important and influential critical terrorist in Israel.

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His main research areas are social theory, sociology of knowledge, translational studies, postcolonial theory with specific interest on nationalism,

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ethnicity and religion in the past eight years is specialising in translation studies and in translation practice from Arabic to Hebrew,

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already published dozens of books and and short stories.

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And he's the founder of MK2.

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It's a book series and translator and translators form and Yehuda published in numerous books and articles that I not have time to mention.

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All but in the context of our discussion, I want to mention two and one is the Arab Jews postcolonial with the reading of Nationalism,

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Ethnicity and Religion, published by Stanford Press 2006 and Beyond the two state solution,

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a Jewish political essay was published in 2012 Polity Press.

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And the second speaker in our panel is most of you know better a coffee.

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Edgar is the Stanley Lewis professor of Israel studies here at Oxford.

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Is research a revolve and revolves around issues of Jewish identity, religion, politics and secularism.

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His focussed on placing Israel in theoretical and epistemological frameworks that bears obvious relevance beyond the specific case history.

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His scholarship is multidisciplinary in context encompassing Jewish, political, cultural, religious and media studies is a constant.

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It concentrates on Israeli social politics, and especially Israeli Judaism,

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and on the epistemological, historical and political dimension of Israeli Israeli identity.

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In the context of our discussion, it is important to mention two of his recent books one Sovereign Jews that was already mentioned Sovereign Jews,

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Israel, Zionism and Judaism, and it was published in 2017 and the others.

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Is the book on traditional? I don't have now a very important book on traditionalism.

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It will be, I think, very important to our discussion.

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So I want to start with the entry point to our discussion.

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And I'm in the recent several years, mostly outside of Israel, and I'm following from outside mostly, but coming to visit quite often.

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But what's happening in the Israeli discourse, and we are in a very political time,

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but in the I would say in the last six, seven years, I met I noticed that the word or the term had attached.

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That means regionalisation in the making something we will talk about the step because it's very specific

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but it's it's yeah a simple translation would be religion zation but it's becoming very common.

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You see it in newspapers when you're coming to dinners with family and so on and so forth.

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So it's caught my eyes because I knew that the first one that coined this term was You Shouldn't Have in this book in 2003 in Hebrew,

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both Jews and had the really specific meaning into it.

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And it was part of the post-Cold War secular criticism and the criticism of the binary between religion and secular.

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So it was and I knew that, funny enough in 2006 because it became very.

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It's sort of a spread.

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It was that the official naming authority in Israel that these were the Hebrew academia and Hebrew language academia had to address,

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determine and define a new meaning into the term.

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Even though they gave reference to your vote. But I think they had the reverse definition that they took it as the opposite of secularisation.

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So indigenisation is the opposite of leadership. And in many ways that put, again, this division between religion and secular that you try to avoid.

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And I think the new re-emergence of this world in the public sphere in Israel is taking the second formation of the formation into it.

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And it's not it's not surprising that they're out of there.

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They're the leading force in this kind of conversation is the most liberal newspaper that maybe some of you know, it's out.

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It's that if almost daily you can see in the leading in the world and that that will be

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there every almost every day daily and even version of our what in the Hebrew and English.

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The one person they do, they will translate. Oh, that's interesting. So it's more very it's not a bit wistful.

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So but but for them in that and again, it's it's I think it's a panic.

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We will talk about it later. It's it's okay. We can call it the panic.

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It's it's a panic that now the new elite of the religious community or the religious

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forces are taking over and they're making all of the Israeli to education,

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to the army, to politics. They're making all the Israeli society become religion or religious and more accurately and and and by by doing so,

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they are changing the character of the secular Jewish state, of the Jewish of Israeli society that we all cherished and was from the beginning.

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So that that that the threat to our, you know, liberal European,

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secular and and I even joked with you that in one of our conversation that even because it was you can count

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thousands of times that the water that that was UNICEF told him because he he coined the term if you get to,

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you know, commission for every time someone will he will be really a rich person.

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So I want I want to start with this that but I want to put it because I think both of you what's interesting

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about it it's something that you but we only the leading scholars about the topic that we're going to talk.

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Yeah both of you are public intellectuals you address this kind of issues from

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not only from an academic distance election and by is involved intellectuals and

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determined that that for you it's it's it's have a political meaning for you you a

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hope it will be salty the traditional it's another political it's not only academic.

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So I want to if you can both of you to start talking about the issues that we're going to address is,

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of course, the connection between religion, secularity and nation state in Israel.

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But from from this point of view and from your own experience.

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So, you know, thank you you first for this introduction.

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Yes wife the had a business doesn't work it doesn't work in English.

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Well it's what you call secularist anxiety earlier or a moral panic or I mean, there is a panic.

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There is a panic. And interesting, interestingly enough, the carrier of of that campaign is mainly HIV-AIDS,

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which is the maybe the Israeli equivalent of The New York Times or whatever, the most liberal newspaper.

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And you see that often on a daily basis, we measure the student of mind measured.

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Daniel The measure, the amount or the extent of discourse in different newspaper,

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of course of it's by far leads the campaign of the of power which means we are.

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Becoming a society in which religion overrules the public space.

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And I go online there.

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I have my version of the Holy Land Travel. I see, you know, the secular forums and meet to campaign.

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I also experience the type of real digitisation.

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So you go online and you punch in the case in which you experienced at the.

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Me too. So students, pupils in schools.

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Right. The teacher asks, who believes in God?

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Who doesn't believe in God? I raise my hand. Ever since he doesn't.

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She doesn't turn to me and doesn't let me participate in discussion in class.

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So it was she was kind of complaining that she was harassed by the teacher because she doesn't believe in God or they took us on a trip to Jerusalem.

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They show us the Wailing Wall and never mention the parachutes that occupy the Wailing Wall.

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I mean, it's just kind of contradictions that shows us something is embedded in that whole discourse which need to be deciphered.

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If I may. Because history, you know, begins at home.

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I think that whole notion of Haditha, I got into that accidentally.

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It was serendipity because I was not interested in religion and secularism.

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In retrospect, I remember my childhood.

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I'm a I'm of Iraqi descent. Like my friend and colleague here.

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Obviously, we identify ourself in solidarity now as Iraqis.

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You know, I grew up in a synagogue. I grew up in a synagogue.

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We were used to go to synagogue. I used to put fill in every day.

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I used to live in a in a small town in the vicinity of Tel Aviv.

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And there were ultra orthodox Ashkenazi Jews who seemed to be much more religious than I am.

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They had this pass and observe the Shabbat, etc., etc., etc. And we did not we have haven't been so observant and so orthodox as they are.

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So I'm not really as religious as they are.

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On the other hand, there were those secular. Jews who were secular.

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They read secular literature. They didn't have all the superstitious thing that we did.

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So my grandmother would I would not call it I never.

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And the hazards of it for women, even I even I, my mother, my grandmother would call me and to this ceremony forever I.

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Every month due to kick the. So I'm not completely secular.

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So what am I? I'm not. Truly religious.

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I'm not really secular. I'm something somewhere in between.

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Only when I became a sociologist and I joined the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University, I have a dear colleague who passed away in Paris.

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We used to measure degree of religiosity.

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Do you often do so? Huh? People do that.

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People do that. So there is a I don't know if, you know, statistics.

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I talked with Avner about that. There's what we call in sociology a dummy variable, which ranges from 0 to 1 with lots of ranges in either zero one.

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So it had zero for seculars and one for religious.

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And he doesn't know what to do with them. So we were half on this continuum.

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So I was wasn't really this and was not really this.

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So what am I? Later on, when Yaakov watched his book on Masorti among traditional, he tackles this by taking that out of this continuum.

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That is, I'm not on this continuum of being either religious or secular because this is a binary.

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I mean, regarding again, it was this binary, we are all against the binary ism.

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So but that was trapped in this binaries, you know, as a personal experience.

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And. And that's how I get into that subject.

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Yes. So maybe you can when you consider this is fascinating because again,

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we have a point in history where the word came into Hebrew and this was in your book.

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What did you mean by it? Well, I was writing this my Arab Jews book.

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Yes. And I went to the archives and found one big folder of emissaries, Jewish, Zionist,

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Zionist emissaries who went to Baghdad to try and recruit Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel or to Palestine.

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Back then, that was after the Fort Hood in 1941.

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There was a war in Baghdad during the war, and the Zionist movement thought that that would be a great,

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if not a great good opportunity to mobilise, to mobilise the Arab Jews, to join the Zionist movement and to immigrate to Israel.

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And the Jewish population in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad, was very affluent.

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Nobody wanted to. I mean, you were.

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I mean, your family were all merchants and, you know.

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The Iraqis, you know, know how to get themselves in the right class, in the right relationship with the colonial government.

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They did well, the Iraqis always and nobody wanted to to to emigrate to Israel or to Palestine, Victor.

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And in this folder, I find reports I mean, they were writing extensively reports on the ground and sending them back to their Zionist institutions.

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And many of the reports had to do with the religiosity or lack of of the Baghdadi Jews.

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So they would go to synagogues. People who would be adamant.

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Secularists adamant. Allegedly secularists like Inter Sydney, who died later on in Auschwitz.

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But, you know, people from the kibbutzim, the socialists who claim to be secularist,

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visit synagogues and argue that this is a fake religion that the Baghdadi Jews lost.

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Tradition they don't do the heck of walked in in in in in silk had to wear properly disguised not made by the right thing.

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And they play backgammon and play of blaming them on Shabbat smoke on Shabbat.

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And therefore they are, you know. You know, the issue at stake is what being Arabs.

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So what what distinguishes them from being Arab is being Jews.

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And, you know, it's it's funny, after the the occupation of Iraq in 2003, one Israeli journalist goes one one show goes into Baghdad.

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There are nine people left, nine Jews cut.

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The first man he shot is 95 years old.

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Can you do smite sad as if this is a an indication I mean it's like what is it like?

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Do you have to express your affinity to religion?

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I mean, I don't know myself. Why would this guy in Baghdad with no smiles, I mean, my heart.

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So there's something here to be decipher, something very energetic.

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What is it that secular. I mean will be see momentarily that I don't find it don't define them as secular.

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But what is it that people that think that they are secular are obsessed with lack of what is sufficient religiosity of other people?

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So I have a chapter in the book on how did the Arab to become religious and Zionist.

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So this is the context. So and you will read this, I can say from, you know, having a conversation of people who were critical of this work.

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This was read back then as arguing.

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He did not argue. But the argument that was read is that they should have says that these Arab Jews

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were secular and they were made religious by people like shahs or whatever.

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So they were it was represent as an attempt at reclaiming some authentic secularism of the book that the experience

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that some of my colleagues sat on so making as they adamantly argue that Baghdadi Jews were symptomatic.

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Yes. Yes. No. Yeah. Had that to I use the term in Hebrew because it's easier for me because that doesn't make sense.

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The English translation had that to.

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What I mean by Haditha is not that what is the Israeli Academy of Hebrew language defined as Haditha?

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They refer to my book, but they define Haditha is turning into villages.

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Religious people like this is the reverse of the secularisation thesis.

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That's not what I meant. And what I meant is and here I have to go into some theory, if this is the point.

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I don't know if that's given to you because I speak a lot.

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So you know what? Let me interject you. In a matter of less than a decade.

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The term is then shift. The object of the process is now viewed as not those underprivileged, almost by definition,

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uh, quote unquote, primitive or not what are called primitive Arab Jews.

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But now the object of this scene is the process of making someone or something religions religious or making it a religion.

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Was the Israeli elite, the secular liberal, mostly Ashkenazi elite people whose, uh, innocent children are sent to secular schools,

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the state sponsored main stream of education in Israel, and they come back with clear signs of indoctrination into religiosity.

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Now this becomes a campaign, and then they are fighting against it, marking themselves as a persecuted minority,

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basically, um, and again, receiving this really loud chamber of echo from the Israeli leading liberal newspaper, Haaretz.

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Now, the fascinating thing is to to question what's going on here.

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I mean, how do you see yourself as having become a victim of a process of indigenisation?

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So first, you have to see yourself as a secular. You have to assume that the schools to which you send your kids at the beginning was secular.

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It was teaching you when you were there, before it became religious.

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An agent of religion is the car. It doesn't work yet before it became an agent of making something or your kids religious.

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It was supposedly a proper secular school.

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And when you read what these people are complaining against, for example, in this website that you that was mentioning where they are,

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uh, uh, crowdsourcing reports on uh, uh, cases of, uh, of religion these days.

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You know, I've had the, to the text, I was just, uh, I don't know, they're just fascinating because they make no sense.

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People would complain on and this is the point they will complain on what in proper

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mainstream Zionist ideology or horizon of understanding are nationalist secular symbols.

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And they are educated for this in school.

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I mean, they could hit on this in school if you would ask them, what's the logic of the educator without any shred of a sense of religiosity?

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They are educated to do all of this in order for them to grow up, to be good nationals,

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to be good subjects of the sovereign who happened to identify itself as the sovereign nation state of Jews.

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Now, here, obviously, we come to this problem of what would it mean for Israel to identify as a nation state of Jews, which is secular?

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And it goes back to this complicated notion of, well, obviously lack of a definition, which I don't want to go into right now.

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So the last point I want to make in this regard, and this is again to go back to your, uh, through narrative, the, the picture that is drawn in this,

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in this panic, in this clear moral panic on data is,

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is binary throughout in which many different positions, polities are all collapsed into two camps.

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So if you are enlightened and tolerant and rational, obviously secular, you also have to be Zionist and leftist.

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So any other position is simply impossibility.

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So being Judith Butler, to go back to the previous session is an impossibility because you cannot present

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a Jewish critique of Zionism or of of Judaism because the two are the same.

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If you believe in some sense, or if you adhere to some sense of loyalty to tradition,

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then you are by definition undemocratic and intolerant and so on and so forth.

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And then the debate that ensues on the pages of arts and in other venues is fascinating in this that you get to,

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um, two main positions within the Israeli liberal Zionist camp.

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One says we have to, uh, hard press the Zionism button to save ourselves from that.

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So the solution to religion ization is Zionism because it is right to be secular by definition.

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The other option that is presented is we have to give up on Zionism all together so far in order for us to be and so on, Judaism all together.

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You see, I trip to my detriment.

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We have to give up on Judaism altogether because the other, the other term that goes with the same stream of uh of binaries is of, is non-Jew.

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If you're Jewish, then your right wing, the nationalist, intolerant chauvinist and so on and so forth.

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So the only option for us is to either give up altogether on our particular identities.

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But this is a very small minority that would call for this and they usually are not heard or we have to redefine an anti-Jewish,

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not non-Jewish, an anti-Jewish Israeli ness, which would not make any sense in the context of the conflict.

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And if I think connected to what you said, the lack of an end to that, because I think when you said that the tides encapsulate and that's,

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I think what you wanted to start doing with the theoretical it's encapsulate other dimensions of ethnicity, race, nationality.

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It's not only the binary. Of course, we could be secular, right.

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And it's not it's not surprising that now when the current use of the term is only used for Jews because Muslims have become religious,

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there will be some reason they wouldn't be at the top in that case.

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So it's very unique in this cup select of race, ethnicity and nationality.

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So and you start with it in Baghdad in the fourth going back.

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So, I mean, what is Judaism? Well, I mean, for the sake of a simple form.

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And think about the triangle in which you find Judaism as nationality, as a religion, as an ethnicity.

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And this is the great success of Zionism, is to be able to divert.

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One category into the other. And you you never know what it is that you refer to at this particular point in time.

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I remember when in 1992, when the four foundational laws were legislated.

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92? Yes. And there was. Huh.

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The basic laws. The basic law that what's got is thought that it was a coalition between ultra religious party and an ultra liberal.

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She knew it party. It says, let's have a law for a Jewish Democratic state.

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So what do you mean by Jewish? So one thing is Jewish is a Jewish state in terms of religion.

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The other is a Jewish state in terms of nationalism.

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So this cap coalition yields a very ambiguous definition of what Judaism is all about.

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Now, if you go back home to my beloved grandmother, she I mean, she was Orthodox Jew in terms of not Orthodox in terms of the current definition.

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But she was very observant. Every holiday she would replace, not only on this Passover, she would replace, you know, the plates for food.

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For food, for for for the for the holiday and the food and everything.

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But we were smoking on some Friday night with different car, but the equivalent is that we went ride the car to the synagogues, etc.

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There's no such a binary ism as the war over religion in Europe generated two camps, rivalry camps that are really in a fierce struggle between them.

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And when my grandmother came to to to to to Israel and to ask her, are you religious or secular?

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And she looked at her sons and girls and she didn't know what to do, what to say about it, because there wasn't such a category.

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This is one of the reason I never defined myself as secular, although I eat seafood and whatever.

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It's a statement. It's a political statement because the definition of the binary is in between religion and secularism,

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and Israel is entangled with colonial and oriental discourse.

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So when one of the liberal artists says, oh, they kiss the mezuzah and therefore that primitives the God was affair.

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Yes, I kiss the mezuzah. I am a primitive.

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So it's a it's a it's a it's a response to that discourse.

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And and a few weeks ago, a Palestinian student came to my office.

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She was completely secular by whatever she were parents and whatever.

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And then. And I said, tell me if are you secular or religious?

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She said, I'm not secular. I asked her, how come?

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He said, respect to my. Family.

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Because secularism is a liberal category.

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In which it's in which.

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Which is correlated with Orientalism. Now go going back to the definition.

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And here I've learned because I want to lead that. If I can lead the discussion, I want to bring the discussion into that other side of the picture.

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What is secondary because and here, honestly, I've learned from Peter Bergen.

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I've learned of Peter Berger. One that's one footnote in his The Sacred Canopy, which is well known book.

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There's a footnote on page 128, which refers to methodological atheism.

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How do you create? Artist. How do you create after ism and sociological thinking?

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I'm a sociology. And as Talal Asset said, you know, I've seen all syllabuses in America sociology of religion, anthropology of religion.

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There's nothing of sociology, of secularism as if secularism is the natural state.

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There's something you said converted into atheism.

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You said that. I mean, this is brilliant. This is it.

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I mean, we never been converted into activism. Yeah.

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And where was my mother once?

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Oh. So he mentions methodological at practice.

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And how do you create methodological anti-racism phenomenology?

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Theology is never on the ground. Right. It's in your mind.

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Now, when you say phenomenology, it depends which kind of phenomenology.

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I would, in a simplistic way talk about two kinds of phenomenology Kantian.

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Husserl, which is phenomenology is the size of consciousness.

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Or Hegelian, which is a different story altogether.

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And and bit embarrasses you know when you come you know slide down topologies who come to bill who

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comes to some tribe and try to understand and they have all dancing to to have rain for the you know,

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for prosperous season, whatever. And it succeeds in this way.

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And the observer says it's not because of the dancing, it's just nature.

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So you have that's why I meant earlier, the look, the logic of the observer and the logic of the observed.

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That that this is all in their minds.

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I don't identify with their language with a logic.

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I have an external objective language to describe it.

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It's not there. Same thing here in sociology we have a field called sociology of whereas team to where you can see is behind us here.

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Sociology of Sociology of religion. Sociology of religion is a current in not to talk about theology.

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Because everything there is about.

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Phenomenology in the pantheon since. So it's like, you know, the analogous would be if I teach introductory sociology and I put gender.

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It's a separate topic. I can currently engender.

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So gender is not in other topics, right?

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Have like sociology of delinquency, sociology of economics, a sort of society of gender, as if gender is a separate ghetto.

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We would say rightly so. Gender should be in every topic, right?

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So sociology of religion is a current attempt to put to put to put theology and issues of theology in a current.

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And we are free from there. We are free to talk about everything but reality, objectivity, empiricism, all this kind of thing.

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We can deal with theology and exist from God and all this kind of thing.

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What's his name? The guy. MILBANK John milbank, for example, I don't know if you know his work.

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I mean, it's very hard to read, really hard to read. But I identify with this project because I like provoking, for example,

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other great student tell, you know, invisible hand of the market with the economists avenue.

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Well, who? Who's who? Whose work? Whose hand is this?

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Of course, the hand of God. It was never a secular argument in Adam Smith.

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And or sovereignty. I mean, the reborn rebel army and rebel.

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Not so sovereign. The sovereign God. It's a theological argument.

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It can't. Smith says all the concepts of major concepts in social science are secularised theological concepts.

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So in this, in essence, what we do is by using the term and going back to how the duck is,

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that's how you define yourself as secular, because there are two binaries in this topography.

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There are many positions. And we don't have a stable position for secularist and religious people.

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And that goes back to what the anchor says. Can you say that the Zionist is a secular person?

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I mean, Zionism is a religious movement, is a reformist movement.

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Zionist are reformist Jews. Now it's a Protestant movement.

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Why? Zionism is a Protestant movement.

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A because it's emerged within what is Stanthorpe and because I go back to Peter Berger half a year before he died,

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he had an interview where he says the entire Christianity is walking.

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That was Protestantism. He would you even and say the entire world is going towards Protestantism, which is another word to say modernisation.

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But in the context of Judaism, which is a public religion and Islam is a public religion.

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I would say differently in.

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Who mentioned the Jewish problem earlier. Somebody mentioned the Jewish problem.

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Right. Well, it's a good record.

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Was what what was the Jewish problem? One of the aspects of the Jewish problem in Europe, which was a real problem.

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Although I do not define myself as a Zionist. The Jews were really persecuted at the time.

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Nobody denies that, and nobody even denies the fact that the Jews deserved a national movement at the time.

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But what was the problem? The problem starts after this failure.

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With the protests Protestant ization of the state.

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And what is the Protestant position of the state? If you think about Luther.

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What is Sola Scriptura? Is the individualisation of religion.

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Jews could not individual religion, individualised religion.

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What does the Jewish ghetto. That's the problem.

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The Jewish ghetto, a way of life.

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Judaism was not only a religion, this was a way of life that's referring back to my grandmother.

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So the Jewish ghetto is a pain in the ass in the in the new modern Protestant state.

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And if it this is the last religion and basically secularism is equated with Protestantism.

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Because when Moshe Mendelsohn says in Germany in early 19th century, be a Jew at home and individual outside it's a how can you be a Jew at home?

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You cannot. You need the public. And what is the outside?

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The outside is a Christian space. It's not a neutral space.

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So this was an attempt. Two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two.

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To generate a Protestant version of Judas, which never worked.

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By the way, I wouldn't only put it into a colleague, both of you and mine to it.

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I'm going to ask a question that was supposed to be here. You have a great title for one of his articles that do not exist, but he promises the land.

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Right. And in many ways, this is within this oxymoron of the secular.

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By the way, that's kind of. Schmidt about about the bourgeoisie.

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Okay. They said God doesn't add up. Of course, it's a take on Carl Schmidt's argument about the bourgeoisie.

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And I wanted to bring it in because I think what you that you started to do is start talking about

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categorisation from the knowledge from like a deeper level of how we construct categorisation,

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how we explain the situation. I think that your work on traditional society is doing that work as well.

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And how, if we can talk a little bit about how this category traditional is working on the other more common and of secular and religious.

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So I think this is a wonderful case where I but first of all, first and foremost,

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academic concepts that then permeate into common language and of creating something in the real world.

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But it starts with in the power of knowledge relationship.

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It starts with knowledge or the creation of light, and it shifts into power.

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So the term emerges. My thought is, is it is in Hebrew translation of traditional as the opposition of modern.

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So a nicer word for for primitive and Israeli sociologist who've studied labour and built this

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toolkit of concepts to study the newly formed population and other problematic talk by the term.

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But now does the Israeli population all or largely immigrant societies that now needs to be measured by a field manual and others.

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But primarily then we're not Eizenstat who approach the subject, the objects of study,

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and they ask them, so what are you are you secular or are you religious?

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Are you modern or are you traditional? The modern tradition, they judge for themselves, but they divide the people along these lines.

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And religiosity is taken to be a marker of, uh, of primitiveness or traditionalism.

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So Jews who come from or just arrived at Israel from, uh,

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Muslim countries are taken to be almost by definition premodern or non modern and then traditional.

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And then it is observed that their lifestyle when it comes to matter of religiosity is,

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if anything, inconsistent, confusing, whatever you want to call it.

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It doesn't fall into the categories. So traditional becomes then a marker of religious identity.

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It is the marker of the neither nor identity, neither religious nor secular or uh, both religious and secular.

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It's those people who yeah. They have along the binary and from both sides it was looking down to Oh yeah, yeah.

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And, and the narrative that this is still in the narrative that they say is that they have to be this socialisation and raise a civilisation.

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We break down the communal structure that they brought with them from the pre-modern countries.

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We educate them into nationalism.

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So we in a sense teach them that now they have the proper option of either either being a proper Jew by being a national Zionist subject,

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or if they do want this is a democratic country or culture.

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They still have the option to adhere to religion, but then they have to be properly religious.

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As we know, those black hat, uh, people from our uh, European past.

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So they have to be and their own religion.

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And this is how actually I think part of your work was read to be suggesting that this was happening, that we were forced into this.

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But then contrary to predictions, uh, and second and third generations of people who hail from, uh, these Arab,

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uh, Jewish heritage do not become secularised or not, as would be expected by, uh, by the sociologists.

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And they end up in this sense, appropriated the term to identify this position of outside of the binary,

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sort of like what you describe your student saying.

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But then the context, the context against which is this is happening is that there is already agreed upon culture,

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camp culture, war, a binary that describes that sets the scene of what Israeli society is all about and.

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And they have to, in a sense, play along with it and you'll get.

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Well, some friends of ours who are involved in the politics of it, who try to suggest another form of Zionist politics that would go along this.

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So the problem then would be, is there a way at all to, uh, critique and suggest alternatives to an Israeli,

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uh, uh, reality that would be self perceptively, Jewish and not necessarily Zionist?

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So is there a room in Israel for that, for a Jewish critique of Zionism or for the Jewish critique of,

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uh, um, of the nationalisation of Jewish identity by, um, by the state.

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And obviously there is one clear example, a living example of that practice, the ultra-Orthodox objection to Zionism,

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which in a sense defines itself as anti-Zionist and reconstruct itself and its identity along its opposition to the state.

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Uh, I think one of the interesting projects to be, uh,

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to be carried collectively is exactly to think about these matters that would fall under the categories of religious I'm sorry, of Jewish politics,

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of uh, of Jewishness, of uh, of Jewish identity against the nationalisation or against the state is the sovereign construction of these terms,

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as was suggested in Muslim context and underway.

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That would be and this is the most important I think would be intimately familiar with the traditions it claims, uh,

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to adhere without falling into the binary trap of either becoming an al reflexive support

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of the UN reflexive and not loyalty conservatism of a certain notion of tradition or uh,

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giving up when it goes together, which is.

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But I wanted to bring another thing into that I think that is connected is you said you that it's a Judeo-Christian question.

394
00:49:56,280 --> 00:50:02,219
And I want to say that the Arab Jews and the traces of their tradition bring an

395
00:50:02,220 --> 00:50:07,170
echo into their Muslim tradition into that that is all forgotten in this point,

396
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:13,950
because now we all we are part of the Judeo-Christian civilisation when it comes to the Islamic world and and what is there.

397
00:50:13,950 --> 00:50:16,859
And then in some of it, one of the scholars said, you know,

398
00:50:16,860 --> 00:50:22,709
when when they are advised the Jews in Israel, they forgot to close the door of the synagogue,

399
00:50:22,710 --> 00:50:30,780
because inside the synagogue you have some practices, even the culture, even the right wing of Jewish synagogues will have still Arabic music.

400
00:50:31,410 --> 00:50:35,610
And you have the Egyptian music and Kalthoum will be inside Friday night and you have some

401
00:50:35,610 --> 00:50:40,110
of that and the oral tradition that stays and some of the traces of the Judeo Muslim.

402
00:50:40,740 --> 00:50:43,950
So it's interesting for me because, you know, part of your work,

403
00:50:43,950 --> 00:50:48,779
you there now is a language to an Arabic in Hebrew that this kind of and but but you

404
00:50:48,780 --> 00:50:54,440
know part of it is of course and the and I think part of the problem of the people that

405
00:50:54,450 --> 00:50:59,790
took in our traditional resources that forgetting the Palestinian issue is another division

406
00:50:59,790 --> 00:51:04,619
between internal Jewish problem between Islamic Ashkenazi or secular and religious.

407
00:51:04,620 --> 00:51:08,970
But it's not connected to the Palestinian. Palestinian is a different issue, is a national conflict.

408
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:14,700
But I think that we need to and you do it in your Jews, in your book, you need to cross between ethnicity,

409
00:51:14,700 --> 00:51:24,000
nationality and of course, I think that you don't think if it's a thought, you don't have to.

410
00:51:24,030 --> 00:51:28,139
I think it's I think we can connect it to maybe to the nation state, a new law.

411
00:51:28,140 --> 00:51:31,980
And I like to quote my mother now, not my grandmother.

412
00:51:33,690 --> 00:51:40,980
So when I wrote this Arab just book, my mother wanted to know why I'm against my own people.

413
00:51:42,720 --> 00:51:46,710
I'm not an academician. So why?

414
00:51:46,830 --> 00:51:49,860
What do you mean by we are not Arabs?

415
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:53,890
We've never been Arabs. Okay.

416
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,799
And then I use this quite often.

417
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:04,320
So she calls me up 11 at night.

418
00:52:05,350 --> 00:52:08,470
Pick up the phone. My mother is on the line.

419
00:52:09,370 --> 00:52:13,510
Upset. Really upset. Without greeting me or anything.

420
00:52:14,500 --> 00:52:20,870
She tells me in Arabic Wala buss, Uncle Tom Catlett.

421
00:52:20,870 --> 00:52:27,220
A smile, which means only Uncle Tom.

422
00:52:27,490 --> 00:52:35,800
So Uncle Tom is to blame that Usman that died a smart was a singer in 1944.

423
00:52:36,730 --> 00:52:39,850
She drove off a bridge in an Egypt.

424
00:52:42,070 --> 00:52:55,210
And she realised in 19, you know, in 2019 that it was Uncle Tom who killed Usman.

425
00:52:56,110 --> 00:53:03,940
And she tells me that she's not Arab. This paradoxes, this contradictions.

426
00:53:06,350 --> 00:53:10,730
Are endemic, endemic to Israeli nationalism.

427
00:53:12,290 --> 00:53:17,420
And I think that what you describe I mean, it's really paradoxical.

428
00:53:18,860 --> 00:53:28,760
We just conducted a survey among Israeli Jews to find out the extent to which.

429
00:53:30,240 --> 00:53:33,270
Israeli Jews speak Arabic or understand Arabic.

430
00:53:36,610 --> 00:53:40,900
And the results are astonishing and astonishing.

431
00:53:45,110 --> 00:53:50,960
Less than half percent of the Jews in Israel can read a text in Arabic.

432
00:53:52,010 --> 00:54:02,750
Less than half percent. This is where you have a territory surrounded by 200 million Arab speaking people.

433
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:11,870
In a society where half of the Jewish population come from Arab countries, let alone the Palestinians.

434
00:54:12,050 --> 00:54:17,900
20% Palestinians are left after that state after were allowed to stay after 48.

435
00:54:19,610 --> 00:54:23,800
This is insane. This doesn't make sense. But.

436
00:54:25,270 --> 00:54:29,290
Don't say something. No, finish your sentence. It doesn't make sense.

437
00:54:30,730 --> 00:54:33,129
Cause if you're.

438
00:54:33,130 --> 00:54:44,380
If you're a dog and you love Palestinians and want peace and all this kind of thing, you must be able to converse or interact in Arabic.

439
00:54:45,100 --> 00:54:51,100
Or if you're a hawk and you want to kill the Arabs or understand the enemy.

440
00:54:53,230 --> 00:54:56,920
So that means to have a percent of the pressure there in a non-Arab.

441
00:54:58,780 --> 00:55:03,189
So how come only the last didn't you laugh?

442
00:55:03,190 --> 00:55:13,030
Because your book, I mean, the parable about the use of Arabic language in Israel, it doesn't make sense.

443
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:20,490
Even more so if you look at the differences between ethnic groups.

444
00:55:21,820 --> 00:55:29,830
The picture become even more complicated and interesting among Mizrahi Jews, those who come from our countries.

445
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:43,330
Approximately 14% would argue that they are able to speak and understand Arabic as opposed to reading a text.

446
00:55:46,850 --> 00:55:56,420
Now we you when you pin it down, it's not really a command of Arabic, but they those are the people who have hurt their grandmothers.

447
00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:02,870
Now, the for example, when I started to learn Arabic, before I knew Arabic.

448
00:56:03,620 --> 00:56:09,590
I could tell you if a word is pronounced correctly, because I've heard it.

449
00:56:12,340 --> 00:56:17,710
So when you. Cut down this population.

450
00:56:18,820 --> 00:56:24,730
Turn out that most of them are residuals that are claiming that are able to to speak or understand.

451
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:35,180
Among those who the bulk of the less than half percent point 4% amongst Ashkenazi Jews.

452
00:56:38,380 --> 00:56:47,980
Who can read text. So there is a fragmentation, an interesting fermentation that the Israeli Jews carried the orange tradition.

453
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:54,420
And Ashkenazi Jews carry the textual tradition.

454
00:56:54,450 --> 00:57:02,009
What is the textual tradition? Internal intelligence services, army?

455
00:57:02,010 --> 00:57:14,410
Those kind of thing. And as my friend and colleague Johnny Mathis says, Arabic in Israel became latinised.

456
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:19,690
You either hear it or read it. You don't speak the language.

457
00:57:23,630 --> 00:57:26,660
Most 99% of Avid.

458
00:57:26,780 --> 00:57:36,800
Correct me if I'm wrong of people who study Middle Eastern histories, Arabic, whatever can read texts.

459
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:46,090
None of them can speak. None of them can dialogue with Arabs as Palestinians.

460
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,830
How did it happen? I mean, there are sociological processes.

461
00:57:52,830 --> 00:57:56,340
This is very interesting thing, if I can elaborate.

462
00:57:56,340 --> 00:58:07,590
That was fascinating. 1971, there's a big meeting between the Israeli military and the Ministry of Education.

463
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:15,720
A big problem crisis. Why? Because the generation of my parents.

464
00:58:17,940 --> 00:58:18,179
Though,

465
00:58:18,180 --> 00:58:28,290
people who came from Arab countries I'm not referring to nor Northern Africa because they had different dialect and languages than the Middle Eastern,

466
00:58:29,310 --> 00:58:31,740
which are needed for today is probably different.

467
00:58:33,510 --> 00:58:47,850
And they got a, uh, a golden gift, a whole population, 150,000 people, 30,000 people who speak perfect Middle Eastern Arabic.

468
00:58:49,290 --> 00:58:52,560
And they were recruited into the services.

469
00:58:53,250 --> 00:58:54,350
My father was one of them.

470
00:58:57,370 --> 00:59:07,250
The second generation, my generation, they want to cooperate with us either because many a reason, but we do want to cooperate.

471
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:11,450
So what do we do, by the way, because of that Arabic?

472
00:59:12,170 --> 00:59:23,450
The Iraqi Jews made up the upper echelon more than other Mizrahi Jews because they have jobs all the time connected with Arabic,

473
00:59:23,930 --> 00:59:26,090
particularly after 67.

474
00:59:29,070 --> 00:59:35,220
And I don't know if you want to tell this person story about you even knows exactly what I referred to because his father was one of them.

475
00:59:38,010 --> 00:59:48,630
All Iraqi Jews got jobs because of the 67 occupation, not only in intelligence, agriculture, whatever.

476
00:59:52,750 --> 00:59:56,500
Where I'm going to lead this. I don't know. Nowadays they want to.

477
00:59:56,530 --> 00:59:59,890
Second generation. Second generation. They want to cooperate with this stuff.

478
00:59:59,910 --> 01:00:11,950
What did they do? They decided to open Arabic tracts in well-off neighbourhoods.

479
01:00:13,660 --> 01:00:17,680
So what is well-off neighbourhoods? Matter, Sean?

480
01:00:17,800 --> 01:00:20,980
Matter. Vive Aliya de la, all of them.

481
01:00:20,980 --> 01:00:27,370
Ashkenazi neighbourhoods. So Arabic turned into an Ashkenazi occupation.

482
01:00:29,550 --> 01:00:43,590
People who never heard Arabic at home are now experts of Arabic who can remind you listen, because you listen to radio or read texts cannot speak.

483
01:00:44,370 --> 01:00:50,520
And then Mizrahi, who can ostensibly or allegedly speak or hear but cannot read or write.

484
01:00:51,690 --> 01:00:57,190
And this fragmentation is mind boggling. Anyway.

485
01:00:57,190 --> 01:01:00,970
I don't know if I want to. So I just want to make one small.

486
01:01:01,320 --> 01:01:09,910
I want to open this. So one of the interesting conflicts, one where the issue of language comes up is the the nation state,

487
01:01:10,300 --> 01:01:17,020
the new, where famously Arabic is demoted from being an official language to being a special status language.

488
01:01:17,020 --> 01:01:26,919
And one of the fascinating elements of it is the state's, uh, negation of the Jewish history that was written in Arabic.

489
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:36,700
And my friends here are signees of a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to, uh, to change the law exactly on this, on this ground.

490
01:01:37,810 --> 01:01:42,580
And I want to mention the law in this context, because this is a fascinating case.

491
01:01:42,580 --> 01:01:53,139
The the whole debate on the law and the ultimate result that was last summer was a wonderful expression of the

492
01:01:53,140 --> 01:01:59,140
inability of a discourse on Jewish identity to take place within the context of the nationalisation of Jewishness.

493
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:09,160
The law was driven by, uh, something that has nothing to do with Judaism or with Jewishness or with Jewish tradition.

494
01:02:09,160 --> 01:02:17,440
So with history, it had to do with one group's attempt at securing its privileged position in the context of conflict.

495
01:02:18,160 --> 01:02:27,250
It was aimed to reassert Israel's identity if you want, to Israel's constitution as a state of Jews and if no one else.

496
01:02:28,030 --> 01:02:34,460
This was, I think, uh, brilliantly expressed by, uh, the current Prime Minister Netanyahu in this uh,

497
01:02:34,990 --> 01:02:41,110
uh, public debate he had with uh, a TV actress of all people with a TV actress.

498
01:02:41,110 --> 01:02:41,739
What's her name?

499
01:02:41,740 --> 01:02:52,450
I don't I'm sorry that someone who commented, why would the public discourse what would the public people in Israel would not allow for a possibility?

500
01:02:52,780 --> 01:03:00,150
Were parties represented representing the Palestinian minority within Israel to be part of the governing coalition is indeed the state of them too.

501
01:03:00,160 --> 01:03:06,040
And his answer was basically no. They are equal citizens, but it's only the state of the of the Jews.

502
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:09,340
This is what the law has been aimed to do.

503
01:03:09,850 --> 01:03:13,419
However, two countries that they can. Yes.

504
01:03:13,420 --> 01:03:16,690
And they have other countries to go. Yeah, that was my that was his call. Yeah.

505
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:24,430
Now the thing that the interesting thing that happened is what that when people were sitting to ideologies,

506
01:03:24,430 --> 01:03:29,830
this notion through a law, they found themselves compelled to uh,

507
01:03:30,020 --> 01:03:35,889
uh, articulate what it means for Israel to be Jewish, which is, it's a, it's a,

508
01:03:35,890 --> 01:03:43,090
it's in a sense, it's, if you consider what, uh, Jewish traditions understand and tell us,

509
01:03:43,360 --> 01:03:50,889
it's something different than just being, uh, biologically or I don't know what racially or ethnically,

510
01:03:50,890 --> 01:03:55,750
whatever we call it, born into a Jewish descent, Jewish is a normative,

511
01:03:56,460 --> 01:04:05,080
uh, even judgemental concept where, uh, some did, some believes, some ways of life,

512
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:11,110
some being in the words are understood to be more or less authentic or corresponding.

513
01:04:11,380 --> 01:04:14,860
And this was projected to the state.

514
01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:21,770
But every time they tried to bring this into legal language to league,

515
01:04:21,790 --> 01:04:29,590
legislate something that would make proper sense in terms of Jewish politics, it was immediately read as being religious.

516
01:04:29,740 --> 01:04:33,190
So they, uh, they backtracked. They backtracked.

517
01:04:33,190 --> 01:04:36,219
And many of the interesting references to Jewish religion,

518
01:04:36,220 --> 01:04:44,140
tradition and heritage that are found in the first drafts of the law were cut out, and they're not in the last drafts.

519
01:04:44,350 --> 01:04:48,910
The only thing that remained from beginning to end is the preference of one group over the other.

520
01:04:49,300 --> 01:04:54,010
The declaration that Israel is the Jewish is the state of the Jewish people and if no one else is.

521
01:04:54,010 --> 01:04:56,880
So, um, yeah, I think that, that, before we updated,

522
01:04:56,890 --> 01:05:04,990
I think that the petition against the law that you and I was part of a group of five Jewish executives against the law.

523
01:05:05,350 --> 01:05:11,150
One of our argument is that Arabic is a Jewish language, but Aramaic is an Arabic settlement.

524
01:05:11,430 --> 01:05:16,630
So so, so again, the Judeo Muslim traces that that was before is coming up.

525
01:05:16,870 --> 01:05:19,749
And you can tell about the story maybe after that.

526
01:05:19,750 --> 01:05:28,819
Let's go now a story of a Palestinian scholar translating back into Israel that was written by a very famous subject.

527
01:05:28,820 --> 01:05:32,590
A book was written in Arabic, in Hebrew characters, through the Arabic into Arabic,

528
01:05:32,590 --> 01:05:37,959
in Arabic character being stopped in their in their border because they were suspicious

529
01:05:37,960 --> 01:05:42,560
when it did this big project and was published in Germany and to bring it to Palestine,

530
01:05:42,580 --> 01:05:47,090
Israel few years ago it was stopped in the border because it may be is is suspicious.

531
01:05:47,090 --> 01:05:53,799
This is a literature from an enemy country. The book was printed and this is the reason that this book in Arabic.

532
01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:57,140
So. Hysterical. Whatever.

533
01:05:57,740 --> 01:06:07,380
Go ahead. You know me. Yiddish is a wonderful language.

534
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:14,870
I wasn't even mentioning this. No, I'm saying. And it is regrettable.

535
01:06:15,470 --> 01:06:20,330
It was a waste. In other languages, like Arabic.

536
01:06:21,020 --> 01:06:26,320
However, there's one difference. Arabic is not the language of the diaspora.

537
01:06:26,740 --> 01:06:30,400
Arabic is the language of the place. That's a big difference.

538
01:06:31,390 --> 01:06:36,490
I'm not saying more than that, but it's a difference.

539
01:06:36,670 --> 01:06:40,990
I agree. I'm just saying that is. I know. I know of ethnic.

540
01:06:41,560 --> 01:06:48,180
No, no, no, no. I'm saying it was a project of erasing all diasporic languages.

541
01:06:48,190 --> 01:06:56,620
This true erasure of Arabic was part of it, but the erasure of Arabic was also part of another project.

542
01:06:57,430 --> 01:07:08,050
That's what I'm saying. Avner and I had a discussion earlier about how do you distinguish between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi and all this?

543
01:07:09,130 --> 01:07:19,870
It's also true. You're right. When we established in the nineties the political movement of Jews from our second generation of Americans,

544
01:07:19,870 --> 01:07:23,770
that means that because of them, the Rainbow Coalition.

545
01:07:24,580 --> 01:07:35,320
The Rainbow Coalition. 20% were Ashkenazi Jews who defined themselves as Mizrahi as men would define themselves as feminists.

546
01:07:37,210 --> 01:07:41,860
That's how I see it. We are not Hitler. It's not biology that determines.

547
01:07:42,880 --> 01:07:48,850
It's the. The the political ideology or orientation.

548
01:07:49,630 --> 01:07:57,640
20% were Ashkenazi Jews. Now you may argue that I cannot be a true feminist.

549
01:07:57,650 --> 01:08:08,930
That's a different story because I'm not a woman. I don't know. But there are arguments like this, and I might accept, because as a man, I do learn.

550
01:08:10,100 --> 01:08:17,660
I have to learn this sort of dramatic magic. I know how what feminism is about and how, you know, you learn.

551
01:08:17,750 --> 01:08:22,460
You have to learn. You have to educate yourself. Huh? So the woman women.

552
01:08:23,150 --> 01:08:28,700
But. But, but, but but but let me tell you something very shocking.

553
01:08:29,660 --> 01:08:41,660
Today in Israel, the disparities between Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Jews are larger than 40 years ago, not the other way around.

554
01:08:44,950 --> 01:08:51,520
Now how is a can be how it can be, for example, in education?

555
01:08:51,640 --> 01:08:54,820
I mean, I don't want to take the whole discussion.

556
01:08:55,060 --> 01:08:59,410
I can send you stuff about it, statistically speaking.

557
01:09:02,000 --> 01:09:05,000
In education. Income ownership.

558
01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:11,030
Off of houses. Intergenerational transfer of wealth.

559
01:09:12,440 --> 01:09:21,320
Disparities are larger, partly because the Gini coefficient or the disparities between classes is larger.

560
01:09:21,800 --> 01:09:42,200
This is part of the reason. But but the problem is that, for example, the Israeli census does not allow to ask in the census about grandfathers.

561
01:09:44,300 --> 01:09:48,920
Listen. They start from my mother and father.

562
01:09:50,990 --> 01:09:57,920
And this is ideological because it says follow the money to do it.

563
01:09:58,430 --> 01:10:02,569
Melting pot. The melting pot put, grandfather said.

564
01:10:02,570 --> 01:10:07,340
Because today when you study, all parents are Israeli.

565
01:10:08,300 --> 01:10:13,430
I mean I mean, except for the big immigration from the Soviet Union itself.

566
01:10:14,720 --> 01:10:23,400
So how do we know? Now it's it doesn't seem possible because we know intermarriages and all this further,

567
01:10:24,050 --> 01:10:29,090
because we are close within the same bubble of class based common class.

568
01:10:32,270 --> 01:10:40,950
But deficits are widening. Or at least they are larger than I don't know if widening now, but they were larger.

569
01:10:42,060 --> 01:10:45,120
They are larger than 30 and 40 years ago.

570
01:10:47,970 --> 01:10:57,970
A. And the reform is something very interesting about the reformists.

571
01:10:59,490 --> 01:11:02,520
When we were children, when I was a child, they were called.

572
01:11:03,700 --> 01:11:10,930
Christians. I you know, I'm you know, we were thought to believe that these are Christians.

573
01:11:12,990 --> 01:11:23,970
But his head has been changed completely because the reform movement today in Israel and that links to what Army says earlier,

574
01:11:24,120 --> 01:11:27,629
is a platform in which many,

575
01:11:27,630 --> 01:11:31,770
many people enter, including Mizrahi,

576
01:11:32,760 --> 01:11:42,390
because people want to have like a bar mitzvah and a wedding and whatever in a in a traditional way, but they're not.

577
01:11:43,440 --> 01:11:48,900
So the entire demography of the reform movement in Israel is current.

578
01:11:49,350 --> 01:11:53,340
There's a new book that came out that describes it in detail.

579
01:11:57,470 --> 01:12:00,620
Bette, how is it related to what Naomi says?

580
01:12:00,620 --> 01:12:12,260
Because you're white. And that relates to the collapse of the binaries and the so many, many movement and parties and sects.

581
01:12:12,890 --> 01:12:22,340
I have a student who is finish a dissertation on secular women, leftists who believe in God,

582
01:12:24,050 --> 01:12:30,620
not believe in God, in the sense that, you know, when the plan falls down, I stop praying.

583
01:12:32,570 --> 01:12:35,870
They believe in God as a as an ideology.

584
01:12:35,870 --> 01:12:38,360
And they meet together and they talk about God.

585
01:12:38,370 --> 01:12:47,660
I mean, all the kind of crazy things of hybrids that there's another reason to collapse those categories.

586
01:12:49,950 --> 01:12:55,260
And obviously, my friend Israel is an apartheid state.

587
01:12:56,730 --> 01:13:06,420
I agree with you. And that's one of the reasons I think I wrote this book about it against a two state solution,

588
01:13:07,800 --> 01:13:11,730
because I think a two state solution would increase the apartheid.

589
01:13:14,050 --> 01:13:20,410
For example, I think that, God forbid, if there would be a two state solution.

590
01:13:21,930 --> 01:13:32,600
Israeli Palestinians. Oh, because in many ways, you correct me, are up to many European, Palestinian to many Arab and Arab in the dark.

591
01:13:32,610 --> 01:13:41,010
And there are many, many kinds of identity that will be pushed out in a transfer to the Palestinian state.

592
01:13:41,220 --> 01:13:49,980
So do you want to be a nationalist? Go there. Otherwise, if you want to be the Jewish state, be the Jewish settlers individual, not a collective.

593
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:56,149
And in any way we are not. It's not possible.

594
01:13:56,150 --> 01:14:03,440
It's not reversible. It's not plausible to have a two state solution because they talk about territory.

595
01:14:03,440 --> 01:14:07,430
Exchange is not territory to exchange. It's all [INAUDIBLE].

596
01:14:10,940 --> 01:14:15,250
Now. I'm not I'm a Jew. I'm not in a position to tell a Palestinian.

597
01:14:15,260 --> 01:14:20,630
You live leapfrog over the fantasy of having a state.

598
01:14:21,320 --> 01:14:28,070
Let's live together in one state. But realistically, Merlin been banished.

599
01:14:28,310 --> 01:14:32,390
You mentioned him was first to see that in the eighties.

600
01:14:35,450 --> 01:14:41,240
And my book is following his argument. Partly it's irreversible.

601
01:14:42,200 --> 01:14:48,080
Irreversible. No government can evacuate the settlements.

602
01:14:48,320 --> 01:14:59,480
It's a fact. And I think that the whole idea I mean, I'm talking about something else now, the whole idea of evacuating the settlements.

603
01:14:59,930 --> 01:15:06,950
Dee Dee. Dee Dee. You know, 450 villages were destroyed in 48.

604
01:15:07,070 --> 01:15:17,460
This is the Labour Party did it. And as my friend Hassan Jabari says, there was no settlement.

605
01:15:18,060 --> 01:15:21,360
The suffocates. The Palestinians s call me in.

606
01:15:21,360 --> 01:15:24,360
And Nazareth. The ladies within the green line.

607
01:15:27,480 --> 01:15:36,620
So it's all crooked. It's all upside down. Israel is an apartheid state.

608
01:15:36,620 --> 01:15:41,329
And I was finished with a story that I told last night because it's an anecdote.

609
01:15:41,330 --> 01:15:48,040
And I. Anyway, we had a delegation to South Africa,

610
01:15:48,730 --> 01:15:57,250
Palestinian delegation that had the honour to be a Palestinian delegation, went to South Africa to learn about 1994.

611
01:15:58,490 --> 01:16:03,580
Gwen would be the 1994 of the middle east. How did it happen?

612
01:16:04,570 --> 01:16:17,440
I went there. I came back. I never understood what happened there in 1994, the moment that a regime collapses, a particular kind of regime.

613
01:16:18,960 --> 01:16:23,930
And what have denied. They tell me. They tell us this.

614
01:16:23,940 --> 01:16:32,760
In this I forget the name. The Minister of Defence of the Apartheid State in South Africa wants to meet with you.

615
01:16:33,750 --> 01:16:36,960
So I. You know, I object. No, I'm.

616
01:16:37,020 --> 01:16:43,020
I want to meet with him as a criminal. Whatever, blah, blah, blah. They said no, he's a reformed liberal now.

617
01:16:45,180 --> 01:16:50,339
He went through this. Truth and reconciliation, whatever.

618
01:16:50,340 --> 01:16:58,290
Whenever we met with him. It was one of the most fascinating conversation I've had ever.

619
01:17:00,070 --> 01:17:04,780
It was like after midnight. Told you this story after midnight.

620
01:17:04,780 --> 01:17:09,130
And I told him I forget his name. I tell him, let's say let's say his name is John.

621
01:17:09,820 --> 01:17:14,730
John, tell me something about the party that inspired. So I'll tell you a story.

622
01:17:15,540 --> 01:17:20,100
I remember the eighties and the divestment said yes.

623
01:17:20,400 --> 01:17:27,090
They said, Well, the third world divested South Africa and at that sense, divested.

624
01:17:29,040 --> 01:17:32,130
And we had only just from Durban.

625
01:17:34,130 --> 01:17:43,550
You want to send it to Europe. So what do we do? Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, the leftist, told us, sent us to us.

626
01:17:44,600 --> 01:17:51,920
They sent boxes of oranges from Durban to Jaffa Stamp at Jaffa and sent back to Europe.

627
01:17:55,600 --> 01:18:02,070
So that's how apartheid worked. This is an anecdote.

628
01:18:02,490 --> 01:18:06,600
You don't have to generalise from that. But say something.

629
01:18:07,310 --> 01:18:10,950
Thank you. I just want to touch a few points from this.

630
01:18:11,190 --> 01:18:17,640
First, let me regarding your question, your question regarding religious Zionist,

631
01:18:18,270 --> 01:18:24,690
the category of religious Zionist in which seems to be now but it is growing in influence is is fascinating

632
01:18:24,690 --> 01:18:29,850
because it is read mostly as a religious phenomena but it is primarily a nationalist phenomenon.

633
01:18:30,600 --> 01:18:38,999
What's going on with religious with the Religious-zionist camp, I think is a further heightened nationalisation of Judaism,

634
01:18:39,000 --> 01:18:43,340
more Jewishness of Jewish tradition than happened in the secular.

635
01:18:43,710 --> 01:18:51,510
So if the secular Zionist or the Zionist a bit confused about what what's their claim to Jewish identity is

636
01:18:52,050 --> 01:19:00,900
for the religious gap is very obvious because for them theological politics or politics is a proper noun.

637
01:19:00,900 --> 01:19:07,050
It is what should be done. So the state is deified, not as if and not is correct, but.

638
01:19:07,650 --> 01:19:11,880
But it's all about the state. It's not about what it's all about.

639
01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:22,680
To the degree to which the highest form of worship is service in the army, hence the increase in the you know, it's a concept,

640
01:19:25,530 --> 01:19:36,030
but in a sense all they're doing is to play a more one dimensional, as in convinced and less conflictual a nationalist game.

641
01:19:36,960 --> 01:19:42,450
So and this is a this is a big tent that can include the, you know, different.

642
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:53,799
Yes. While in essence, when it comes to the way, uh, this uh, uh, new kind of Judaism,

643
01:19:53,800 --> 01:20:00,420
what kind of Jewishness understand itself is primarily through Hasidic European history.

644
01:20:01,320 --> 01:20:11,700
So I mean, its roots, the roots to which and its, you know, founding fathers are specifically of, you know, of of a specific Ashkenazi heritage.

645
01:20:12,030 --> 01:20:15,030
But it is, yeah. Since it defines itself through the state.

646
01:20:15,030 --> 01:20:22,379
And the state is supposedly ethnically or, you know, ethnically it is into ethnically Jewish neutral, then it can be more, in a sense, inclusive.

647
01:20:22,380 --> 01:20:32,610
And many Mizrahi Jews would feel more comfortable there than with, uh, with other forms of, uh, and Jewish identity in Israel.

648
01:20:33,360 --> 01:20:37,680
I know that. Support your argument. Half of the settlers now are mizrahim.

649
01:20:37,980 --> 01:20:41,180
Yeah, it wasn't like that. Yeah.

650
01:20:41,700 --> 01:20:49,950
So, I don't know. Getting to the question of the Zionist movement relation to um, um,

651
01:20:50,790 --> 01:20:58,000
reform or liberal Judaism or to the Liberal government and then the Israeli or Israel, the,

652
01:20:58,030 --> 01:21:03,180
the state of Israel as relation to uh, reform is obviously, you know,

653
01:21:03,240 --> 01:21:07,590
has a long history of support and I think maybe this would be a nice place to go back to.

654
01:21:07,590 --> 01:21:17,819
The first, the first step of this whole discussion, Reform Judaism emerges following from Moses Mendelssohn.

655
01:21:17,820 --> 01:21:22,290
But some delay exactly is the argument that Judaism is only a religion.

656
01:21:22,290 --> 01:21:30,870
Exactly. And religion and nothing else but religion. So it is not a nationality, it's not a polity, it's not an ethnicity.

657
01:21:31,110 --> 01:21:35,969
It's something that someone does. And it is the privacy of Islam or where it goes to the place of worship,

658
01:21:35,970 --> 01:21:39,780
which happens to be called the synagogue, but is really functioning like it functions now,

659
01:21:40,020 --> 01:21:50,620
having been reformed like a German Protestant church or whatever it like is, you know, it it needs to be reformed so the organ and well right.

660
01:21:50,730 --> 01:21:56,570
But it's about religion. No, it's about. And it's not about law and it's not about sorry.

661
01:21:56,580 --> 01:21:59,780
Yeah, no. And Zionism.

662
01:22:00,750 --> 01:22:08,190
Zionism at this point is Reform Judaism is the most important rival in the

663
01:22:08,190 --> 01:22:11,760
European context for the redefinition or the modernisation of Jewish identity.

664
01:22:12,180 --> 01:22:20,670
The alternative would be assimilation and giving up completely on identity or redefinition, and the Zionist argument is exactly against that.

665
01:22:21,000 --> 01:22:27,780
Judaism is not a religion and it's so fascinating to see this argument being, uh, pointed once and time and again.

666
01:22:28,140 --> 01:22:30,220
But this already, uh,

667
01:22:30,660 --> 01:22:38,940
being trapped in the discourse that is built on religious and or the religious Zionist or the religious secular or the secular religious,

668
01:22:38,940 --> 01:22:43,769
the uh, narrative where the only options are these two.

669
01:22:43,770 --> 01:22:53,100
So what we are by this understanding, what we are claiming for is a, is a Jewish nationalist movement, is a secular form of Jewishness.

670
01:22:53,640 --> 01:23:00,090
Um, so it obviously changes the interesting factor to mention a sociological fact to mention in this.

671
01:23:00,130 --> 01:23:04,320
Regard is to this day when people run surveys and birth like you.

672
01:23:04,900 --> 01:23:09,400
I don't appreciate a service and I really most of my work is to say see how wrong they are.

673
01:23:09,400 --> 01:23:15,490
But an interesting observation about how people react to this question is that those

674
01:23:15,490 --> 01:23:21,459
who identify as reform do not check the box religious because in Israeli Hebrew,

675
01:23:21,460 --> 01:23:23,910
as you said, just to reiterate it, the three,

676
01:23:23,920 --> 01:23:32,290
which would be the contemporary translation of religious is understood as orthodox orthodox and order though they bit.

677
01:23:32,350 --> 01:23:42,670
Yeah I think it's yeah and it is I mean so many people see the blame immediately in the Orthodox establishment and the gains it has from this.

678
01:23:43,360 --> 01:23:46,599
Again, what Beth referred to earlier, this division of power,

679
01:23:46,600 --> 01:23:52,300
where they gain this monopoly over the definition of what is religiosity, and they are happy with it.

680
01:23:52,720 --> 01:24:00,940
But I mean, I go to pains to stress that the secular in this context, the state has an equal interest in doing that,

681
01:24:00,940 --> 01:24:11,890
in pushing away Reform Judaism, because it at least in the past, it had the possibility of being a critical perspective on Israel.

682
01:24:12,070 --> 01:24:16,450
And I think this goes back to butter, because butter was she's not a secular Jew.

683
01:24:16,450 --> 01:24:18,280
She doesn't identify as a sacred a Jew.

684
01:24:18,640 --> 01:24:26,680
She goes she she nourishes on what would be a reform, um, tradition, I think in reading the meaning of, of Jewish, you know, yeah.

685
01:24:26,680 --> 01:24:29,110
We need to thank you very much for that.