State of Israel's Justification: Series on Zionism With Raphi Ganshtar (Episode 3)

We present our series on Zionism with American born Israeli citizen Raphi Ganshtar. On Episode 3 we go deeper addressing issues taking place at that time, "The Coalition" program idea came to a halt due to logistics (including time difference) but we continue to support and love one another no matter the disagreements as a members of opposites sides of the political spectrum. We discuss Jewish independence, the Dreyfus Affair and Christian and Muslim Supremacism.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to another episode of the Coalition of the Willing. In today's show, we're gonna be going through um multiple subjects in relation to Zionism and the way that it is described. I think that the state of Israel and its supporters are very um maybe unthoughtful or uh uncareful in the way that they describe things and and it has given uh maybe the wrong impression, or maybe uh some of the accusations have a little bit of truth and then it gets blown out of proportion. So uh we're not gonna be beating up on the Israeli guy, uh my friend Rafi, who's uh also hosting the show, but we are gonna um flush out some of the concepts that uh have become talking points for both the pro-Sionists and the anti-Sionists, and especially now with the rise of anti-Semitism. It's very easy to throw insults and accusations, but nobody's willing to talk about the actual nitty-gritty aspects of this uh debate. Um, Rafi, um, last time that we talked, we talked about the latest um things that was happening in Israel in relation to uh the assault on Hezbollah and some of the implications of what was going on with the uh war in Iran. Uh, do you want to give us um a little bit of what's going on just for a few minutes, so then we can move on to the next subject?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Hello, David. Hello viewers, situation in Israel is not not dissimilar to the one in the United States. Right now we are waiting. Um I think everybody across the world knows what's going on at this point. It used to be that our our conflicts were rather localized. You know, when we would fight against Hamas or Hezbollah, uh most people would only hear about this in the context of condemning Israel or in the context of blowing out of proportion um one side over the other. And what we're seeing now is really everybody's seeing a conflict in which we're involved in a very different light. Uh it's a conflict that everybody's concerned about. Will it start up again? Will it not start up again? How will that affect my prices at the pump? How will it affect how will that affect our country's international relationships? How will it affect um the the well-being of our soldiers who are positioned in key, uh, I'm referring to the United States, of course, who are positioned in key um places throughout Europe and the Middle East. So everybody's on edge. We're on edge. We're waiting for for things to go down again, and we'll see, we'll see what happens, we'll see where this leads.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Okay, so I I did uh a paper and um a presentation that I only posted on YouTube, which was very controversial, and it was called Is Zionism, Antidemocratic, Evil, or uh I can't remember the third one, but it was pretty much um all the things that are being uh thrown at the even the concept of Zionism, and it's often that Jews get very sensitive because they say it's just the Jewish idea of uh independence, sovereignty, and freedom to live in the Holy Land. But um, as some of us who have been uh involved in researching the subject, we found that there's so much more to it. So the first uh accusation is that it goes against the principles of the alignment or the French Revolution. And I know that part of the coalition of the willing, which we're trying to establish, is that we have to have a common set of ideas. So I know you have mentioned just like many conservative um you know pundits and advocates, they've said uh, you know, freedom, um, free speech, um, liberty, or I guess it's the same thing as freedom, um, you know, uh equal rights before the law, like these are the things that we value, and then we have the enemies at the gate, um, you know, the super liberals who are actually anti-democratic because they're socialists or communists, where they want to put a strong government that tells people what to do, or uh the extremist Muslims who want to caliphate. Uh, so when we talk about Judaism uh working with modern day ideas, as as well as Christianity working with modern day ideas, which I hope we can build a coalition with uh our Christian brothers and sisters, um, what comes to mind to me is these three elements that were discussed during the French Revolution, which is uh liberty, equality, and fraternity. And the way that they're described is that liberty means freedom to act, speak, write, and practice religion without fear or oppression, as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. Uh, equality is the concept that all citizens are treated equally under the law, ending privileges based on birth or social status, and allowing for equal opportunity to access public life or public office, and fraternity, a spirit of brotherhood and unity among citizens to work together for the common good and defend one another's rights. So, in your experience, having um lived in Israel for a while, do you believe that the founding principles of um the state of Israel since 1948 were based on those uh three things? Or as you mentioned in the previous um episode, that some things are different or can be modified based on the situation that the Jews in the Middle East had to face as they were being attacked all around. Um did you do you remember people speaking about that while uh studying about Zionism, while learning uh to be a citizen of the state of Israel? Or was there other things that they were discussing that don't align or are a modification of these principles?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

I think that inherenting your question um is is really a call to uh perhaps you didn't intend this, but to me, uh I see this as as very important right now, is is to sort of clap back against those who claim that you know anti-Zionism is okay, it's not anti-Semitism. Um and I just want to say this there is an ongoing, uh there is ongoing discourse in Israeli theology sorry, not I apologize, not theology, in Israeli um uh what sort, in Israeli academia, in Israeli philosophy uh about Zionism. What does that mean? What is Zionism? Well, I'm gonna read to you the Oxford English Dictionary of Zionism, okay? Because I know Medi Hassan will define it one way and Chant Joger will defend it another way, and Meghan Kelly. But this is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines Zionism: a political movement that was originally begun in order to establish an independent state for Jewish people and now supports the development and protection of the state of Israel. That's what Zionism is. Now, there are many connotations to a word beyond a definition. Right? I know my parents, for example, um having grown up hearing a lot about the Holocaust, they get offended when somebody uses the term Holocaust to refer to anything other than what happened in Europe in the 1940s. Because of the connotation of the word, because the connotation goes beyond the definition. And so too with Zionism, there are connotations to the concept of Zionism that go beyond the definition, and those are hotly debated in the state of Israel. There are a lot of Jews who do not call themselves Zionists simply because to them Zionism has a connotation of secularism. And they say we are not secular, we don't believe in secularism, we believe in in religion. And so they will tell they will they will come out and say we are not Zionists. Do they mean the same thing that that Mehdi Hassan means when he says that? No, of course not. They mean something completely different. Why why am I saying all this in order to answer your question? Because there's this there's this tremendous shifting of the goalposts that has happened lately in regards to how we relate to Zionism, regards to how we relate to this project that is happening here in Israel, which is that people like Megan Kelly, I I heard her say this on her podcast last week, that you don't have to be a Zionist. It is okay to criticize the state of Israel. Why can't you be both? Why can't you be a Zionist who criticizes the state of Israel? Why can't you support the Jewish homeland and criticize the state of Israel? It's that simple. You know, Sam Harris, who is, you know, you spoke about conservative pundits, and they sound like the conservative pundits. I'll bring you somebody who's who's far from conservative. Stan Harris said that he never saw any reason he's a he's a secular Jew. He is very opposed to religion, but he and he he he is opposed to identifying as Jewish. He doesn't believe people should identify as Jewish or as as any other um ethnicity that is exclusive of other ethnicities. But he said, he said, he said, listen, October 7th changed me. He said, I used to not be Zionist because why? Why should the Jews have their own state? And I saw October 7th and then I realized that there's nobody that the Jews can count on to protect to protect themselves other than the Jews. This is what the state of Israel is based on, it's what it's founded on. And this c if I'm gonna connect this back to your question, those words of Sam Harris, those powerful words of one of the greatest philosophers of our time are why we need to have a Jewish state. Some people will come and say, Well, why why does the state have to be Jewish? Why can't it be a multi-ethnic state? Well, first of all, Arabs have equal rights here. An Arab judge sentenced a Jewish prime minister to a prison sentence. That should tell you all it needs to. The doctors I take my children to are Arabs. The pharmacists who sell me the drugs, legal medicine, right, are Arabs. Arabs are involved in every facet of life in Israel. The one thing that people find take issue with is that we we insist on maintaining a Jewish majority. To which I say, yes, we insist on maintaining a Jewish majority because as history indicates that is the only way to prevent rivers of Jewish blood.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

I appreciate that because uh the context is what is always lost. Um, you know, we can talk about uh some of the injustices that took place as the this the state of Israel was being founded on all sides. We can talk about uh some of the issues with uh the British mandate and the way that migration uh happened on all um different groups that um that developed throughout there. But um it's important to know that on the in the Jewish mind, and if we're gonna be uh fair, um what um in modern um even psychological terms they call it um generational trauma. Um, you know, a lot of the Zionism and things that that took place in the 1700, 1800s had to do with the Dreyfus affair. So where a Jew could be uh accused of anything at any time, and there would be no protection in a way to defend themselves against the mobs of Europe, and the same happened in the Middle East throughout history. So what people are worried about is that we as Jews could do the same for minorities within our ranks. So when we talk about liberty, equality, and fraternity, do you believe that the state of Israel, even though on paper it uh it accepts uh Arab and other groups, because that's why people don't know that there's Greeks, there's Brits, there's um Americans from uh other European countries that live in Israel as citizens, um that in the mind of the Jew is liberty for all Jews, equality for all Jews, and fraternity for all Jews, no matter their background, and there is some type of popular uh disdain or uh racism against other groups that is in the surface or that it is deep in the in the Jewish heart due to persecution, because that's what we're being accused of. We're being accused not only of discriminating within the state of Israel, but being hateful all around the world and wanting to, in a sense, uh be the payback time for whatever Jews endured in the past. Uh, how would you respond to uh a neo-Nazi or a Christian supremacist accusation like that?

SPEAKER_00 14:35

I would respond in in two ways. Hold on one sec. Um I I want to I want to respond first of all to to a a sort of uh something that you mentioned there, uh by the way, but uh but I I think it's worth touching upon where you said that Jews were persecuted um in the Middle East and there was the Dreyfus affair. And I I want to expand that a little bit and say there are very few places in the world where Jews were not persecuted. We were expelled from England, we were expelled from Spain, we were persecuted throughout Europe and much of Asia. I've never heard of Jewish persecution in in Australia, okay? There are countries where we have not been persecuted, but there are few. And I think what happened in the Dreyfus Affair was that there was a certain group of Jews who had believed that following the Enlightenment, we could finally count on our fellow human beings to be humane towards us. And what was discovered in the Dreyfuss Affair was that this hatred towards Jews, and we can philosophize all day about what the source of that is, but this hatred toward Jews is not going away. Whether we are an enlightened people, whether we are a free people, no matter what we are, I mean we, I'm meaning the world, the West, no matter what we are together, we will always stick out. Germany was the height of enlightenment prior to the Second World War. And this was where the greatest persecution of Jews in history erupted. And so uh yes, this is not just about the Middle East, but this is about the entire world. Now, to to more directly answer your question, there there will always be a degree of racism within cultures, because every culture has bad apples. And the question is not the question that should be asked is not are groups experiencing racism, but is that racism being tempered by the larger part of society, by the healthy part of society, and that will tell you whether or not society is indeed healthy. There is racism, unfortunately, between Jews. Jews who come from certain countries will sometimes be a little bit racist towards Jews who come from other countries. That doesn't mean that the country is anti-Jewish. It means that there are some bad apples. There will sometimes be racism from some Jews towards some Arabs. That doesn't mean that the country is anti-Arab. It means that there are a few bad apples. There will sometimes be racism from Arabs towards Jews. It doesn't mean that all Arabs are anti-Semitic. It means that there are some bad apples. And what I would call upon for us to determine the health of a society is like I said before, to look at how we react as a society. When there's racism, do we attempt to uproot it, to destroy it at its core, and to make and to prevent it from persisting for future generations? Or do we leave it, do we let it go stronger? Unfortunately, in these countries where we existed as Jews, the anti-Semitism was never stood up to. And I'm sure that most anti-Semitism throughout the ages was a few bad apples. But it was allowed to grow to a place where it expelled and killed Jews at insane in insane proportions. When there is racism in the state of Israel, it's not perfect. But again, um Arabs sit are judges on the Supreme Court, they serve in the Knesset, they're involved in every facet of Israeli life. There's there are policies that make it easier for it's sort of like sort of like for the black community in America, although I know this is hotly contested at the moment, but we have policies that make it easier for Arabs to be accepted into universities than it is for Jews. So I would argue that yes, while there is racism, it is certainly not systematic, it is certainly not government policy, and it's certainly not something that we tolerate on a societal level at large.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

So the two things that have become hot topics uh lately is the law that was passed that if um if a Palestinian tries to murder a Jew, they would be um given uh death penalty. And lately that there's a road that is being uh made between the colonies or settlements in the West Bank towards Jerusalem. Um one of the founding documents um that before the alignment that people uh point to as a Western invention is the Magna Carta. And I know we've talked about uh Netanyahu being held uh accountable by the courts, but uh one of the purposes of the Magna Carta was that no one was above the law. Um in a lot of the people that accuse uh Israel of being an apartheid state, um, it has a lot to do with the the disputed territories and how there is two different types of laws, a military law for the Palestinian populace in those areas, and then Jewish civil law for the people in the settlements. How would you uh respond to that as uh as a problem of inconsistency within um the state of Israel's approach to this equality that we're talking about?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

You brought up two cases, and I'll address them both. And I I'm glad you're bringing up this death penalty because this has been this has been completely misrepresented on major networks such as Piers Morgan. Um and this is something that needs to be addressed. There is no law that uh discriminates between Jews and Arabs in regards to the death penalty. What we do have in Israel, we've had for a very long time a law that allows a death penalty for terrorists. It has I don't think I may be wrong on this, an Israeli historian might correct me, but to the best of my knowledge, it has not been used since we put to death uh. um members of of of the Nazi regime that that killed Jews in the Second World War. The thing about that law is that it had a bit of a looser definition of terrorism. Terrorism was was a hate crime from one group against another. It was a little bit loose. What this current law came to do was to tighten the definition of terrorism in the context of the death penalty. So what the new law did was it said that those who those who are eligible for the death penalty from now on will be those who commit a hate crime in the context of trying to of trying to undermine the state, in the context of trying to bring down the state. Now I will readily stipulate that in 99.99% of the cases of terrorists who want to destroy the Israeli state it's Arabs, it's not Jews. However, this does not change the fact that it makes complete sense for there to be for there to be a separate criminal code and a separate penal code for those who wage war against the state of Israel, against the state in which we live, then there should be for those who commit hate crimes. And although both are terrible they should not be viewed the same under the law. Now the other the other I'll address the other point you made which is which is um what's called in in foreign media the West Bank we refer to it as Judean Samaria. There is a very interesting legal status there at the moment where we the the the j the Israeli military currently controls those areas. Why? Because it was deemed necessary after the war in 1967 where we were attacked on several fronts sort of similar to October 7th except with a lot more ground troops from these other countries. We were attacked from several fronts all at once and we realized that to have this tiny strip of land between one border and another is not going to work. It undermines our security to the extent that we are we are exposed to elimination I'm not I'm not exaggerating here. Elimination is a very strong word genocide in fact right but but this is really what we were exposed to we were exposed to the downfall of the state of Israel because our borders were not allowing for us to properly defend ourselves. And what we decided was as long as our neighbors specifically the Palestinian although we had you know we we had conflicts with many neighbors back then but as long as the Palestinian is encouraging terror and is seeking to wage war against us from within its bounds we have to have for our own security a degree of control over that region. And so today what happens the unfortunate reality is that we can't release those lands to the Palestinian Authority until they can agree until they can agree to not fund terror and to not educate for terror we also cannot annex those lands and provide equal law under those on the on those lands for a couple of reasons. First of all because we're trying to hold on to that land in order to release it a future peace agreement. I believe the chances of a peace agreement at this stage are slim but that is the at least the Israeli government's goal to hold on to these lands for a future peace agreement. The second reason that it's not being annexed in order to apply equal law there is because the international community goes ballistic every time we even hint of annexation. And so when dealing with the international community we're faced with a sort of a contradiction on the one hand they want us to provide equal rights to everybody living within Judean Samaria. On the other hand they don't want annexation. They want us to be able to give the land back for peace. And I'd argue that it is impossible for us to do both. It's like telling a child he has to eat his breakfast brush his teeth and go to school all at the exact same time. It's not going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

You have to do it in stages so if uh Jewish uh terrorists like the the Rabakana followers were deemed even by Israel back in the in the 90s uh tries to blow something up that would cause friction between the Arab population and the Jewish population of whatever area would they be given the death penalty just like someone else trying to uh destroy the current um policies of the state the death penalty under the new law is reserved for those who seek to undermine the security of the state of Israel Rabbi Kahana and his followers um it was before my time to be honest and I don't know enough about about what was happening back then but but uh from what I do know about them they were not seeking to undermine the the security of the state of Israel what they were seeking to do which was deemed as as unconstitutional by the court um was to take away was to take away rights from from Arab citizens so they were deemed unconstitutional but that is very di and and there was there was one case of of Jewish terror at that point in time a man named Baruk Goldstein went and went and shot up um unfortunately this is a terrible thing that occurred but he went and shot up um a place where there was some there were some Arabs and and there were there were several Arab I I don't know the number I'm sorry I I may not be doing it justice it may be for all I know it could be a few it could be a hundred I I don't I don't know the numbers but but it was it was a terrible it was a terrible stain on our nation's history when this happened but that being said because he did not seek to undermine the security of the state of Israel his crime was different and his punishment would be different if he were to do that today. And I hate to bring up this very uncomfortable and and difficult situation but um one of our previous guests who I thought he was a cool guy I thought he was very reasonable he mentioned um in I'm talking about my my own personal show on Radio Free Nashville uh he said that he was worried about uh equal rights for the Palestinians he was worried about the rule of law in um what he considers Palestine uh the West Bank in Gaza and then October 7th happens and he goes on all these shows and he's saying that uh Israeli soldiers are going to be hunt down like Nazi uh veterans or Nazi uh sympathizers and uh war criminals so I just watched the Nuremberg movie which I thought was good it could have been a little bit deeper but it was a good overall picture of of what happened and uh the Nuremberg laws mentioned that um soldiers uh had individual responsibility for the the crimes committed uh even though they were giving uh orders by the state uh the heads of states were not immune to prosecution and that um like I said action actions on orders from superiors uh does not relieve a person of responsibility so he's claiming Zach Foster for those that want to look him up he's claiming that if uh one of the the extremist uh politicians uh said you know wipe them out and then a soldier goes and and kills uh family of civilians that uh both of them should be hung like the Nazis and that people should actually go and hunt them down kind of like what Dan Belsarian is saying. How would you respond to that? I know you have family and friends who serve in the IDF you've mentioned that you um believe that people who uh do anything that it is immoral should uh be held accountable but when someone goes as far as making uh that comparison and even um encouraging people to harass uh prosecute or even uh alive um people who they assume committed crimes or that they have evidence or something like this is it was disgusting to us for almost like vigilantism uh towards um soldiers of the IDF uh how would you respond if there was an actual case where there that could prove that people purposely uh killed civilians uh even if in a small scale and that's the problem of using uh term genocide because genocide and like you said your parents said holocaust is for massive extermination based on ethnicity or religion um I know Israelis say that a lot of the war has to do with Hamas and it has to do with being encroached and attacked but how would you respond to someone who has gone as far as saying that IDF soldiers should be held to the same standards as Nazi um criminals well we had this over the controversy of of of Bob Villain right chanting death to the IDF and and we have this also now with with Dan um I I I don't remember how to pronounce his last name um even Nick Fuentes came out and said that that yeah I don't know if you saw this that Dan Belrisian what's his name was trying to was trying to figure out how best to kill you know to kill Israeli government officials.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

It's insane it's insanity this is this thing about vigilante activity there's a reason we have a court of law we have a court of law because your opinion is not going to be the same as the next guy's opinion my opinion varies differently from someone else's opinion and if we go around taking the law into our own hands if we use our own opinion to determine what is right for society that is chaos that is anarchy because we will not be able to live together and that'll not be good for me and it'll not be good for you and that'll not be good for Danville Rasin either that'll be good for nobody we have law we have legislators executives and and judges for the purpose of ensuring that we can all live together despite our different opinions and that's very important but I'm not gonna hide behind a cloak of law I can address the moral questions head on and and and and that is in Europe in the 1940s well in the 1930s the Jewish population of Europe was roughly nine and a half million in the 1940s the Jewish population of Europe was less than four million that is what systematic extermination looks like that is what genocide looks like when somebody marches groups of men women and children into a gas chamber that is a crime that is evil when what's happening now is a very different situation. The IDF is fighting on seven different fronts okay those fronts are Iran Iraq Lebanon Yemen the Palestinian Authority Gaza and Syria seven different fronts you know in how many of those there has been a population decrease exactly one and that's Gaza the IDF and and the population decrease there was about was about 10% roughly according to recent statistics it's even those numbers are are you know we can debate whether or not they're believable but that's the those are the recent statistics that are coming out of Gaza the IDF seeks in every way possible to focus on its mission of defending the Israeli state not expansionism last time we've expanded was I think in 1967 not genocide again in most countries the the population is growing and in the countries where and in the one place where it's not Gaza there's not systematic execution of its of its of its uh citizens right everybody knows that today with the firepower that we have today and with the power imbalance between Israel and Gaza if Israel wanted to exterminate the Gazans it would have happened on October 8th of 2023. It didn't happen there is no systematic execution of Gazans or of anybody else and his comparison to the Holocaust is a comparison to bring back a moral evil that happened to one group and to use it in every way possible against that group to wield it against its very victims. What has happened Gaza is very unfortunate it's due to it's due to a few f different factors it's due to the fact that there's a ruthless dictator running the country who cares nothing for the lives of his citizens. It has to do for the fact that the entire world is pouring money into a country that is using the money to build tunnels and rockets and other means of war. And that is the cause for the terrible things that are happening in Gaza.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

And I really really hope that Trump's board of peace will succeed in restoring some semblance of good of hope of normalcy to the people of Gaza to leave it at that there's so many other questions and details that uh are a lot to um unravel but um I I always appreciate us having a honest conversation and not uh cowering for from these um very difficult topics um we see a lot of TikTok Instagram and YouTube um hateful rhetoric um dismissive attitude um this then balsarian guy who now is in trouble talking about jewish supremacy uh which in other shows I've mentioned is an accusation that shows a lot about his own uh Christian supremacy and his own desire to um bully uh anybody that doesn't agree with him but um it's um it there's a lot of these groups are now imploding and infighting like the um united um america first united and stuff like that because they think that the Jews are the common enemy uh and that's the only thing they have in common they all come from all different walks of life and all different kinds of crazy ideas and at the end it's paranoia and it is uh old school anti-Semitism so uh we will keep on uh delving into those topics in future shows but um again we want to thank everybody for uh the ability to um look at these uh subjects straight from the horse's mouth um you know people can talk about Jews all day long but they've never asked us what we think or they find the the token Jew who hates everything Jewish and then he gets to make uh huge um explanations of things that they know very little about uh so I appreciate us uh taking the the approach of education and uh leading people towards um good information David thank you i i I think that what you said here at the end goes very much back to the heart of why we're doing this why we have this podcast because there's a lot of misinformation out there that is seeking to not to unite us not to unite those in the West those who who who seek democracy and equality and enlightenment it seeks to it seeks to do the opposite it seeks to sow division and ruin and chaos among the forces that would be good the best way for us to combat that is for us to find for us to understand each other for us to see where we disagree and to see how we can bridge that gap and I think that very soon if you know if we can keep having these conversations and hopefully we'll bring in people who who um who who can disagree with us and we can have these conversations where it's where it's important. I hope through that we can come together and fight against these streams on let's be honest both the right and on the left that seek to divide us that seek to destroy us and we can we can build a new dare I say a coalition right of the willing we can build a new a new alliance that can hopefully surge beyond the political divisions that we have currently and bring our world back into a place of light see you guys on during the next uh episode of the coalition of the willing with Rafi and David