Anti-Zionism, Anti‑Semitism, And The Lines Between

One sentence can change the temperature of a room: “Anti‑Zionism is anti‑Semitism.” We revisit a gripping 2019 Intelligence Squared debate featuring Melanie Phillips and Einat Wilf for the motion, and Ilan Pappé and Mehdi Hasan against it, to examine how history, identity, and power collide over those seven words. The case for the motion traces a familiar pattern from medieval scapegoating to modern rhetoric, arguing that efforts to delegitimize Israel recycle classic antisemitic tropes under a respectable gloss. The case against insists that anti‑Zionism is a political and moral critique—of occupation, dispossession, and unequal rights—not a blanket hatred of Jews, and points to Jewish and Israeli anti‑Zionist traditions, Christian Zionist antisemitism, and the right to scrutinize any state.

Across sharp exchanges and audience questions, we unpack definitions, the Nakba’s legacy, equal‑citizenship vs nation‑state models, IHRA controversies, UN attention, and where criticism slides into bigotry. The debate doesn’t offer easy answers; it forces honest accounting. Is Israel a state for all its citizens or a nation privileging one group? Are accusations of apartheid and ethnic cleansing rigorous analysis or slander? Do double standards exist, and if so, where—and why?

After Oct 7, these questions feel painfully urgent. We reflect on grief, solidarity, and responsibility: how to hold rising far‑right antisemitism in view while reckoning with Palestinian dispossession; how to critique policy without dehumanizing people; how personal histories shape our stance. Long‑form debate slows us down, restores nuance, and asks better questions.

If you value conversations that resist easy labels and reward careful listening, hit follow, share with a friend, and leave a review telling us where you landed—and what changed your mind.

Chapters

• 0:00 Host Sets Up Debate Segment
• 4:06 Motion Introduced And Framing
• 6:00 Melanie Phillips Argues For The Motion
• 16:32 Ilan Pappé Argues Against The Motion
• 25:14 Einat Wilf’s Case For The Motion
• 33:54 Mehdi Hasan’s Rebuttal Against The Motion
• 46:00 Audience Poll And Panel Cross‑Examination
• 57:04 Audience Q&A: History, IHRA, Nakba
• 1:13:28 Solutions, Single State Or Two States
• 1:19:58 Closing Statements And Final Vote
• 1:29:08 Host Reflection Post–Oct 7 And Personal Note
• 1:33:28 Closing Thoughts And Sign‑Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 1:32

Welcome to the realm of the show independent meeting that we're going to be for one claim. So we're going to freeze it together. Remember we were gonna start doing a second on the show. Debate a card. I do get a lot of people on a camera. Social media. I wanna debate and get people when I get messages. I want to write people. Uh I give people the opportunity actually debate in long form. Uh 45 minutes or so. People are not interested. So in a segment of mixing a blast with each life will pass, and so you think you can debate. I'm going to start to post and sometimes comment while this happens. Um debates that were fairly good. So we're gonna go back to something that happened a while back. We're gonna travel back to June of 2019, and we have Medi Hassan I am debate whether anti-Zionism is anti-Sia uh anti-Semitism with Times columnist Melena Phillips, an Israeli former member of the Knesset in that wealth. And and this is in 2019 June, and this is the Black and Intellectual Pass, Intelligent Square Debate. Intelligent Square Debate is what I used to watch all the time. And this is actually the episode of Intelligence. I hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_11: 3:27

Anti-Zionism is anti-Atisemitism. Anti-Zionism is anti-Atisemitism. There is so much meaning packed into those words. Meaning which stretches down the centuries and meaning which reaches into the lives of millions of people today. Anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, these terms are very fraught. Anti-Zionism, often defined as opposition to the existence of a state, of a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic land of Israel or Palestine. I'll repeat that, often defined as opposition to the existence of a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic historic land of Israel or Palestine. Antisemitism, most often defined as hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. Now, surveys suggest that Israel is one of the most disliked nations in the world, along with Iran and North Korea. But how much of this is driven by policies of the Israeli state, and how much is a cover for age-old hatred of the Jews? These are the questions we will examine this evening. So let's go to our first speaker for the motion, Melanie Phillips, who is a journalist, broadcaster, and author. She has a weekly column in the Times newspaper. She writes for the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Chronicle. Melanie, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_02: 5:14

Ladies and gentlemen, I never visited Israel at all until the year 2000, and I never wanted to go there. It didn't sound the kind of place which had anything to offer me. So when in the year 2000 I objected as a matter of sheer rationality and justice, that while Israelis were being blown to bits in buses and cafes during what was called the Second Intifada, they were being called Nazis for dealing with the perpetrators. I was astounded to be immediately attacked as a Jew. I was accused immediately of dual loyalty, of being too Jewish, and of waving the shroud of the Holocaust to sanitize the crimes of Israel. Well, I think you can see the same pattern in today's Labour Party crisis over anti-Semitism, in which anti-Semitic motifs about Jewish global conspiracies are conflated with attacks on Israel. At one meeting, Jeremy Corbyn noted of two Zionist opponents in the audience that, despite, quote, having lived in this country for a very long time, they don't understand English irony, using the smear that as British Jews, they didn't actually belong in Britain. The Palestine Solidarity campaign is riddled with anti-Semitic comments such as that the Paris Bataclan massacre was a false flag operation to increase support for Israel, or that Kristalnacht was instigated by communist and Freemason Jews to promote war against Germany. Today, a German neo-Nazi group has linked to the BDS movement, noting with approval its efforts to isolate the Zionist aggressor state in defense of the rights of Palestinian people. The language of BDS and the far right is interchangeable. Those who say anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism would have us believe that all this is simply a coincidence. I say it is not, and that anti-Zionism is weaponizing anti-Semitism, and this is why. Let's define first of all what we're talking about. What is Zionism? Nothing more or less than the self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland of Israel. What is antisemitism? A delusional hatred and fear of Jews, Judaism, or the Jewish people. But anti-Semitism is not like other prejudices. It has unique characteristics applied to no other group, people or cause, such as an obsessional and unhinged narrative based entirely on lies, accusing Jews of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims, holding them to standards expected of no one else, depicting them as global conspiracy of unique malice and power. Amazing, anti-Zionism has exactly the same characteristics. Don't get me wrong, criticism of Israel's policies, robust criticism, is entirely legitimate. But anti-Zionism is different. Anti-Zionism demonizes, dehumanizes, and delegitimizes Israel in order to bring about its destruction. You may hear some of this slander this evening. The lie, for example, that Israel's an apartheid state, when Israeli Arabs have equal civil and religious rights. The lie of ethnic cleansing, when the Arab population in the disputed territories has more than quadrupled since Israel's rebirth in 1948. The lie that the Israelis are willful child killers, when they in fact go to unique lengths to avoid killing civilians in their always defensive wars. And when the ratio of civilians to fighters that the Israelis kill is at least three or four times better than any other country, including Britain. The lie of Israel's human rights violations, when it's the only country in the Middle East where Arab Muslims and Christians, women and gays can live in freedom and safety. Fundamentally, anti-Zionism is based on the big lie that the Jews seized and occupies another people's land. But history and law show that's completely untrue. The Jews are the only extant indigenous people of the land. Israel was their kingdom more than 3,000 years ago. Driven out when it was occupied, they maintained a continuous presence in the land under the waves of colonialism. Assyrian, Roman, Abbasid, Mamluk, Ottoman, the British. They fought off Arab colonialists to re-establish their state in 1948 and are still fighting off Arab colonialism. The Palestine Mandate of 1922, which parceled out the former Ottoman Empire, enshrined their right to settle throughout that land, a right that endures unaltered in international law. The law also entitles Israel to hold on to land seized from its attackers while that land remains the launch pad for attacks, demonstrably true. The Jews are therefore fully entitled to live in both Israel and the disputed territories, even though they have always agreed to share it with those Arabs who lay a claim to it. But the Palestinians have refused to share it and have responded to repeated offers of a state of their own with terrorism and war. Israel is the only place where Jewish peoplehood makes sense, but anti-Zionism singles out the Jewish people alone as having no right to their homeland. Of course, many groups aspire to our homeland, but Israel is not an aspiration. Israel is a country. No other actual country is singled out for destruction and the mass murder that would inescapably follow. No one tells the Kurds, for example, their aspiration to a homeland is illegitimate and racist. People say Zionism is racism because of the big lie the Jews stole the land. Anti-Zionism thus writes the Jews uniquely out of their own history. It is an anti-Jewish calumny. Now people say anti-Zionism can't be anti-Semitism because some Jews are anti-Zionist, very true. But in fact, there have always been Jewish anti-Semites, Karl Marx to name but one, who wrote, quote, The emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. Yes, a small fringe of ultra-orthodox Jews campaigns against the State of Israel, but they nevertheless pray every day that the Jews should return to live in Zion free of foreign rule. Their beef is they think the return in Israel is premature and should happen under different conditions. So their problem is a matter of timing. What they do not believe is the core doctrine of anti-Semitism, that the Jews have no right to the land of Israel. Now there's a vital distinction to be made between anti-Semites and anti-Semitism. Many, many decent people believe these lies about Israel out of ignorance or ideology. That does not make them necessarily anti-Semites, but the discourse they endorse is still anti-Semitism's current mutation. Moreover, by supporting Palestinianism, they are supporting not just anti-Zionism, but anti-Semitism too. The Palestinians' real agenda, not two states, but exterminating Israel and replacing it by Palestine, as they repeatedly have told us over the years, is based on an anti-Jewish animus. The evidence of this is all around Mahmoud Abbas's doctorate in Holocaust denial, his hero worship of the 1930s Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, Hajarmin al-Husseini, who made a pact with Hitler to exterminate every Jew in the Middle East. The grotesque Nazi-style imagery of Palestinian propaganda, such as sermons claiming the Jews are the fabricators of history, who dance and live on the body parts of others, there is no global corruption, their rabbis did not allow. Palestinian claims that the Jews are behind 9-11 and that they control the world's media finance and US foreign policy. This unhinged murderous anti-Semitism drives the Palestinian cause. Does anyone therefore seriously suggest that people in this country who support this cause and who say that the Jews were behind 9-11 and controlled the world's media finance and US foreign policy, that this really is just a coincidence? And if our opponents this evening really do believe anti-Zionism is free from anti-Semitism, will they denounce this Palestinian agenda of genocidal Nazi-style Jew hatred? This is not an academic debate. When I grew up in London, anti-Semitism was confined to a few nutters on the fringes who were treated as pariahs, and now it's been legitimized. Not surprisingly, anti-Semitic attacks are running at record levels. And what's so distressing is to hear our right as Jews to our own peoplehood being singled out as illegitimate, and to hear the unhinged and obsessional lies and distortions about Israel become the default position of fashionable conversation. And then, in on top of that, then to be told that the claim that people like myself make that these are anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy got up by the Israel Embassy. And it's supposed to be we Jews who have no sense of English irony. Antisemitism, in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, always attacks Jews as a collective. First it attacked us as a religion. Then it attacked us as a race of people. Now it attacks us as a people, as the collective Jew in Israel, with exactly the same characteristics as Jew hatred through the centuries. The aim to be free of Jews now takes the form of the aim to be free of the Jewish state. Anti-Zionists treat Israel as a Jew among nations to be uniquely vilified, slandered, and exterminated. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.

SPEAKER_11: 15:09

Thank you, Melanie. So now our first speaker against the motion, Ilan Pape, is an Israeli historian, an anti-Zionist activist, a professor at the University of Exeter. He has challenged traditional versions of Israeli history. Ilan Pape, you have the floor for ten minutes.

SPEAKER_05: 15:46

If only because it makes every Palestinian in the world, almost everyone who lives in the Arab and Muslim world, anyone who regards themselves as liberal or on the left, it turns all these people into anti-Semites. Whereas quite a few people who regard themselves as Zionists, like the Christian Zionists, are actually anti-Semites themselves. But it is important to challenge it because it was used with some effect to stifle the debate on Palestine in the West. This allegation is used in order to prevent the promotion for positions of power of politicians known for the long-term support for Palestine. By defaming these politicians as anti-Semitic, official Israel and its supporters worldwide hope to bring them down, as in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, or delegitimize them, as in the case of Ilhan Omar in the American Congress. So this is a good opportunity and an appropriate venue to say loud and clear that if you are against Zionism, or if you define yourself as I do and anti-Zionist, you are not anti-Semite, or in my case, a self-hating Jew, which my doctors told me is an incurable disease, and I would have to live with for the rest of my life. I will make five points, one long one and four or five short ones. Antisemitism is an old ugly attitude that demonizes Jews because of who they are and led in the past to horrendous policies of discrimination and genocide. It still prevails today, and despite the passing of years, it's basically not changed much. Its origins are deeply rooted in the Christian faith and were adopted in more recent years by right-wing supremacists and some extreme Islamic groups. Anti-Zionism, on the other hand, is a new phenomenon as a Zionism and dates back to the 1820s, when, as you know, Zionism began as a Christian project before it was a Jewish project. And then it was part of an internal debate within evangelical Christianity. Anti-Zionism then was a moral position against Romantic nationalism and Christian fundamentalism that today we call Christian Zionism. Christian Zionism is an evangelical belief that the return of the Jews to Palestine would precipitate the second coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity or their barbecuing in hell. Now, these barbecuing Christians, who are very important, are anti-Semites who want to get rid of all the Jews they don't like and get in return the only Jew they want, Jesus Christ. It's a double bill. They are today the most important base of President Trump and his ilk, and they are the most important Zionists in the US, providing immunity for Israeli policies on the ground. When Jewish activists and intellectuals adopted Zionism in response to anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, their antagonists were mainly other Jews. They were either Orthodox Jews who saw a premature return to Palestine as tempering with the will of God and regarded as a heresy the substitution of rich monotheistic religion with the ideologically poor modern idea from antique nationalism. So they were definitely not anti-Semites. Other Jews believed that supporting universal ideologies such as liberalism or socialism would be the answer, and if they had to move geographically from anti-Semitic environments, they preferred to go somewhere else, mainly to the US, but not only to the US. They were also not anti-Semites. When Zionism became a settler colonial movement on the ground with the building of Jewish colonies in late Ottoman Palestine and during the British Mandate, the Palestinian national movement perceived Zionism as an existential threat to the indigenous people of Palestine. A fear that turned to be valid as transpired with the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine during the Nakba. Opposing the Jewish settlers and the plans for the Palestinians' homeland was not anti-Semitic but anti-colonialist, very much as the Algerians objected to the colonization of Algeria. A small group of the Jewish settlers became anti-Zionist themselves when they consented to live within Arab Palestine as guests, but not as colonizer, as was advocated to them by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s. And because of that position, there is not the he was never honored with a street named after him in Israel, not even a small pathway or a staircase. After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, anti-Zionism as an anti-colonialist ideology continued to inform the Palestinian national movement's vision and strategy, as is manifested in the PLO National Charter that called for the establishment of a democratic secular state in Palestine that would respect all three religions. In Israel itself, the Communist Party, supported almost exclusively by the Palestinian minority inside Israel, not because of the communist ideology, but because it was the only anti-Zionist party Israel allowed to exist, they regarded Zionism as an ideology of discrimination and apartheid. Most scholars today, looking at Israel then and today, agree that this is a valid point, which again has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Two, in our century, our uh anti-Zionism is a moral position against Israeli structural violence directed at the Palestinians, which is attributed by anti Zionists such as myself to an ideology that is not only endangering the very existence of the Palestinians, but is also very bad for the Jews who live outside or inside Israel. This ideology generates anti Semitism. Opposing it might bring it down. In our century anti-Zionism is a scholar scholarly position, a moral stance and a vision for the future. As a scholarly position, it frames Zionism as settler colonialism, similar to European settlers movement who went to the Americas, South Africa and Australia, encountering indigenous people and removing them in order to create new homelands for themselves. It's a moral stance that rejects an ideology that imposes an apartheid system inside Israel, a military occupation in the West Bank, and siege on the Gaza Ghetto. It's a vision for the future of a democratic state for all, by restoring justice to the land, by respecting United Nations Resolution 194 calling for the unconditional return of the Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948 and since then Akbar. This may be a utopian view, but it's not an anti-Zionist one, anti-Semitic one. Three, for those who claim that anti-Zionism is a refusal to recognize the right of Israel to exist, we should say that states do not exist by right. They are founded by historical processes and they become a feta complete. The debate is about the nature of the state and the regime. We are all entitled to wish for and work for a better, more just and egalitarian state for everyone who lives in Israel and Palestine and for those who were expelled from there. Four, in 1975, a vast majority of the United Nation member states defined Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. It was passed with the same majority that passed the 1947 resolution recognizing Israel. The difference was that in 1947 the colonized world was not represented in the United Nations. In 1975 it was but it was still trying to find its way in the postcolonial world the Third World's discourse equated Zionism with continued colonialism. Alas neoliberalism corruption and post-colonial political and postcolonial political system corruption in the postcolonial political system and aggressive American imperialism have casted to the sideways of history this impulse and energy but at its height and within it anti-Zionism was part of the wish of the colonized people to build a better and more just world again nothing to do with anti-Semitism. When the 1975 resolution was revoked in 1991 the debate on Zionism entered a new phase its present phase after the horrific events in 911 and the so-called war and terror the Israeli Hasbara invented the threat of a new anti-Semitism. This was the only way to repel the moral outrage people around the world felt towards the policies of incremented genocide in the Gaza Strip and the brutal oppression of the West Bank. If you voiced criticism against this policies you were depicted as a new anti-Semite and the Israeli academia was recruited to provide scholarly scaffolding for such an accusation. The Western elites both were intimidated into buying this false allegation but the civil society and in particular the younger generation reject with disgust this attempt to silence them. They know enough to call the bluff and understand the full meaning of solidarity with the Palestinians. They demonstrate in the streets, in the campuses and join the Palestinians on the ground at the personal cost to show how outrageous it is to call the pure struggle for justice anti-Semitic. If you are an anti-Zionist today you are not only standing firmly on a sound moral base in condemning this ideology that generates all these crimes, you are also expressing your disgust at the hypocrisy of your government, mainstream media and academia. We will not be silenced by false accusations of anti-Semitism and neither should the British Labour Party be intimidated by cynical media without a moral backbone or sinister legislation efforts utilizing a justified struggle against terror in order to provide immunity to Palestine's colonizers and oppressors. Finally the Labour Party is responsible in many ways for the debate we have today we all know that the so-called revelation of institutional racism errational anti-Semitism in the Labour Party began not on the day that Corbyn was elected as a leader but after two attempts to depose him and failed. Then suddenly the campaign emerged I know the force of this campaign of intimidation I face it myself it is ugly, unfair and destabilizing but the proud party with the historical role of defeating fascism in this country in the 1930s should not so easily succumb to false allegations of anti-Semitism. Finally we should retake let us I five five sentences let us retake the conversation and prioritize it. Let us discuss how to stop the destruction of Palestine and the Palestinian which the Trump deal of the century wants to do let us fight violent fanaticism wherever we encounter it. Uproot racism of all kinds without building a hierarchy of victims and remove silly and outrageous equations like the one titling the event tonight.

SPEAKER_11: 26:45

Thank you so on to our second speaker for the motion Anat Welf and Anat has been a member of the Israeli Knesset for first Labour and then the Independence Party between 2010 and 2013 and she has written extensively on Zionism. Einat the floor is yours for 10 minutes. Thank you.

SPEAKER_09: 27:28

So we seem to all agree that anti-Semitism is bad. Of course educated knowledgeable people are unlikely to be seduced by it because we know where it leads Nazism Auschwitz and the gas chambers but anti-Zionism does not appear to be in the same category it appears to be good. We heard here that it is about supporting Palestinians about fighting for human rights. Educated knowledgeable well meaning people might support it but the anti-Semitism we all acknowledge as bad when it started looked nothing like where it led in fact when you compare the beginnings of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism the similarities are striking anti-Semitism began by creating a new collective designation for the same people which rendered them different in secular nineteenth century Europe it was no longer Jews but Semites and it never was intended to meet anything but Jews. In the Soviet Union who claimed to not notice different religions and peoples Jews were designated as Zionists and today in the West in the UK Zionists Zion. The designation is then described as having essential immutable loathsome qualities in Christian Europe we were Christ killers to the Nazis we were an impure race to the Soviets we were capitalists and imperialists and today the state of Israel is the ultimate violator of human rights it is described as born in sin. It is guilty by its very nature of the crimes of racism apartheid ethnic cleaning Nazism genocide the designation of the group and ascribing of essential evil qualities is always given the aura of rationality and respectability by relying on the greatest source of authority of a given era religion in pre-modern times science in the modern era human rights in our own the aura of the greatest authority is necessary because the collective transformation of the Jews into a loathsome other requires that one be willing to twist reality if not outright ignore it. It is only by appealing to the authority of religious doctrine that all Jews living in the 12th century could be collectively designated as the killers of Christ over a thousand years earlier. It is only by appealing to the authority of a perverted science that the very Jews who contributed to European society could suddenly be considered as endangering its racial purity. And it is only by appealing to perverted version of human rights that Zionism and Israel could be designated as its greatest violators. It is only by perverting the idea of human rights that those who were actually ethnically cleansed from every part of the Arab world could be accused of ethnic cleansing. It is only through this sort of perversion that the people who repeatedly said yes to partitioning the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state could be described as those who stand in the way of a two-state solution. And it is only through this perversion that in an age when the idea of the nation is still tied for almost all states to the idea of a common history, language, ethnicity and remnants of religion Israel is singled out as uniquely deviant. But why go to all that effort to single out a group and distort reality because we humans have a primal need for scapegoats. And for whatever reason my people have been the designated scapegoats for so many and for so long for medieval Christianity we stood between a brutish and nasty world and salvation for Germany for Europe we stood between them and glory for Stalin we stood in the way of communist utopia and today why bother fighting colonialism and its aftermath easier to designate Zionists as colonialists and blame them why do the hard work of fighting racism and its many manifestations across all societies easier to designate Zionism as racism and apartheid and blame it? Why acknowledge the tremendous difficulties of living up to the ideals of human rights? Designate Zionism and Israel as its greatest violators and blame them but the problem with human scapegoats is that unlike ancient animal ones humans might resist their sacrifice a bit more and we can't have that happen can we so action must be taken to reduce their resistance how to strip them of their defenses push them to the margins step by step take away that which protects them but it must be done gradually anti-Semitism did not start by stripping Jews of their citizenship confiscating their assets and pushing them into ghettos it started by slowly pushing Jews out of the positions they were able to attain after several decades of European emancipation. It operated by making it more and more difficult for Jews to feel comfortable in European society. Antisemitism also lured Jews into dropping their defenses preventing them from organizing against the coming danger telling them that if they were the good kind of Jew, for example in Germany those who fought for Germany in World War I would be spared they were not how anti-Zionism operates now. Its main targets are the two places where Jews have organized most effectively for their defense the State of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the US the legitimacy of both is relentlessly and uniquely questioned. Jews now designated as Zionists are increasingly pushed out of certain spaces Jewish students in the U.S. are slowly pulling out of universities known for their virulent anti-Zionism. Liberal activist Jews are finding they are increasingly unwelcome in progressive circles Jews here in Britain are finding they can no longer be in the Labour Party, their traditional political home wondering if they might one day have to leave the country altogether anti-Zionism also lures Jews to give up their defenses. We heard it here why don't we all live together in a single state yes we know that nowhere in the Arab world have Jews ever been treated as equals and were violently ethnically cleansed when they're dared to raise their heads yes we know that by national states certainly in this region but not only descend into bloody mayhem but we assure you this one will work. Just forgo your insistence on having your own state where you control your defense. Anti-Zionists also insist on their respectability. They will try to convince you that the fact that the targets of this new form of virulent hatred bear a striking resemblance to those who were targets in previous times is sheer coincidence. They will insist that the fact that the charges against this group appear like variations on the ancient themes of antisemitism is sheer coincidence. They might even convince you they are fighting anti-Semitism but the old, easy to identify kind, which we already know is bad. And this is where it all comes together in the past waves of Jew hatred and anti-Semitism did not arise from something that those who were hated actually did. It arose from a crisis in the society of those doing the hating and in an age of crisis especially a crisis of identity when we no longer sure who we are what we stand for we desperately need certainties and there are few greater certainties in this world than that the Jews did it. And so the Zionists are designated as a collective group which happens to coincide with the group previously known as Semites and Jews. They are then ascribed the most loathsome qualities of our time by appealing to the great authority of our era and then they are slowly subject to a process designed to strip them of the means of resisting their ultimate role a scapegoat for the crisis of the era and when that process would be complete the scapegoat could finally be sacrificed in the vain hope that in doing so a better world would emerge it never does. And this is why the topic of this debate is not just another topic it raises the very spectre that we might be a society on the precipice which is why we are here today in the hope that some of you will see the deep insidious undercurrents so that this time we will not have to wait to see where anti-Zionism leads and only then look back in hindsight and say ah yes that rising wave of anti-Zionism was indeed the new form of anti-Semitism and to our final speaker who is our second speaker against the motion Mehdi Hassan Maydi is a journalist a prominent critic of Israel he's a host on Al Jazeera English and he's a columnist on the US online magazine The Intercept mehdi the floor is yours for 10 ladies and gentlemen we have been witnessing tonight a deeply cynical proposition deliver a fargo of straw men distortions deflections false accusations and of course straight up pro-Israel propaganda.

SPEAKER_08: 41:13

Then again hearing Melanie Phillips come here and champion the rights of gays in Israel in order to defend Zionism was well worth the entry ticket in and of itself. So let's be clear about what this motion is tonight because it's the motion you all have to vote on in good conscience. The motion says quote anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism it doesn't say some anti-Zionists are anti-Semites which is true it doesn't say anti-Zionism can sometimes turn into anti-Semitism which is true it doesn't say that anti-Semites often use anti-Zionism as cover as an excuse for their bigotry and racism which is true I wouldn't oppose any of that but that's not what the motion says the motion says ridiculously sweepingly offensively ahistorically that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism that merely being opposed to Zionism a political ideology remember is inherently by definition ipso facto anti-Semitic which is absurd think about the implications of voting for that tonight you'd be saying every anti-Zionist every anti-Zionist is a bigot a racist and an anti-Semite by definition even the many Jewish and Israeli anti-Zionists so Elam Jewish historian born and raised in Israel served in the Israeli military he's an anti-Semite that's what they want you to believe that's what they want you to vote for tonight so is the former Speaker of Israel's own parliament the Knesset Avraham Berg Melody would say he's a self-hating Jew. So is my intercept colleague Naomi Klein the acclaimed author and climate change activist. So is Noam Chomsky he's an anti-Semite as well they want you to vote for them and say that the thousands of Haredi ultra Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews who oppose Zionism for religious theological reasons they're anti Semites too. That's what they want. That is what they are asking you to vote for tonight. It's absurd and it's ahistorical don't take my word for it. Listen to the 35 top Israeli Jewish scholars and academics historians of the Holocaust who Came together just a few months ago and published an open letter in which they wrote, and I quote, Many victims of the Holocaust opposed Zionism. On the other hand, many anti-Semites supported Zionism. It is nonsensical and inappropriate to identify anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. End quote. Are they anti-Semites too? Really? All thirty-five of them? By the way, in terms of the history they refer to in their letter, it is an undeniable, indisputable fact that many, many European anti-Semites, as Ilan alluded to, did support Zionism at the outset. They did embrace the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, because for their own selfish racist reasons, they shared his goal of treating Jews as a foreign, separate nation and getting them out of Europe. Take British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in favor of Zionism. Balfour dismissed Jews as, quote, an alien and hostile people. He sponsored legislation to keep Jewish refugees out of the UK. The only Jewish member of the cabinet at that time, Sir Edwin Samuel Montague, opposed the Balfour Declaration and called Zionism a mischievous political creed. Yet apparently, according to the proposition tonight, Montague's the anti-Semite and Balfour isn't. That's the madness that you're going to vote for tonight. This motion is not just a historical, not just absurd, not just offensive. It's a distraction. It's a dangerous distraction from the very real and murderous anti-Semitism that is on the rise and that comes not from the left, not from anti-Zionists, not from the BDS movement, as Melanie would have you believe, but from a resurgent far right. In Germany, according to official figures, in 2017, nine out of ten anti-Semitic hate crimes were carried out by far-right or neo-Nazi groups. I live in the US. Two synagogue attacks in the space of six months, twelve innocent Jewish worshippers murdered in cold blood by far-right white nationalists. And yet the proposition tonight, like the Netanyahu government, like the Trump administration, want you to ludicrously believe that the threat to Jews right now, the real rise in the new anti-Semitism, comes from the anti-Zionists, from the BDS movement, from the Palestinians, and not from the murderous far right. When the irony is that Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the World's only Jewish state, has been closing up to some of the worst anti-Semites on the right, who also happen to be proud Zionists. Let's be clear about that. Many of the most prominent, influential, right-wing anti-Semites today, Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Steve Banner, they're not anti-Zionists, they're hard-right, hardcore Zionists and powers of Netanyahu. Let's also just deal with some of the canards we've heard tonight from the proposition. Adap mentioned that it's anti-Semitic to suggest Israel is born in sin. Every black American I know says to me and says to everyone else that the United States was born in sin. Slavery was a sin at the start of the United States. No one accuses them of being anti-white racists or anti-American racists. It's just a statement of historical fact. They say the proposition that when you oppose Zionism, you're denying Jews and no one else a right to self-determination, which is just flat false. Not every nation or ethnic group wants a state, gets a state, has a state. Ask the Kurds, ask the Catalans, ask the Scots. There are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world today, but only 193 member states of the United Nations. Take the Druze, an Arab ethnic minority group. 100,000 or so live in Israel. Do they have a right to self-determination? If they create a Druze state inside of Israel, is Einat okay with that? If Einat says no, you can't have a Druze state, is she racist towards the Druze? National self-determination doesn't always correspond with statehood. Melanie says it's not racist for the Kurds to aspire to statehood. She's right, it's not. But the flip side of that is true as well. The British government, the American government, most of the EU governments do not support Kurdish statehood. Does that mean the British government, all of us, are racist towards the Kurds? People have legitimate debates about where state lines should be drawn, which states should be created, how those states exist. It's not racism or bigotry to have that legitimate day. It can be, but it's not by definition. The issue is not whether uh Jews deserve a homeland or have a historic connection to the land of Palestine. Of course they do. The issue is whether those historic and religious claims justify creating and expanding a Jewish majority state in which one ethnic group is privileged over another, while another group is permanently disenfranchised, dispossessed, and subjected to endless military occupation. That's what we're here to oppose tonight. Nothing more, nothing less. And has the proposition even stopped to ask what it means to say to that oppressed group, the Palestinian people, to say to them that you're either a Zionist, you either subscribe to the ideology of your oppressor, or you're a racist. What kind of choice is that? Melanie says tonight that denying Jewish nationhood is racist is anti-Semitic. And yet she has no issue erasing the Palestinian people from the face of the planet. She said in her speech that only the Jews have a unique right to nationhood and statehood in that part of the world, not the Palestinians. What is that? Is that not bigotry? Is that not racism? Is that not wiping of people off the face of the planet? But this is what you'll be voting for tonight if you vote for the proposition. This is what the Israeli, pro-Israeli argument has always been. To silence the Palestinians, to silence their opposition to occupation, to silence their resistance as Palestinian citizens living inside of Israel, to a nationalistic ideology which treats them like second-class citizens, which denies them many of the rights and privileges of the majority. And one thing I want to make clear to you tonight you don't have to be an anti-Zionist to vote with me and Elan tonight. You don't even have to be a critic of Israel. You can be the biggest supporter of Israel in the world and vote with the opposition. All you have to be is someone who recognizes that it is an egregious smear, a naked slur to claim, to label those of us, Jews and non-Jews alike, who oppose a political ideology in good faith because we think it's unjust, iniquitous, oppressive, to label us as anti-Semites for holding that political view. All you have to be is someone who recognizes that the claim that we hate or are opposed to Jews simply because we don't agree with the idea of a state that privileges one group over another, makes us racists. So let me repeat, to be clear, tonight's debate is not about Israel per se. It's not about whether you support or oppose Israel or the occupation. It's about whether you believe the proposition have made the case that those of us who oppose Israel in its current form, who oppose the political ideology underpinning it, that we're racist. That's the bar that has to be crossed tonight. It's that simple. And I'll tell you this for free. Those of us who value our free speech, who don't want to see anti-Semitism cynically weaponized by supporters of Israel, who oppose that ideology of Zionism in good faith with good reason, we will not go quietly into the night. We will not be silenced, we will not be bullied, we will not be cowed, we will not be smeared. So, ladies and gentlemen, stand with us against this unjust, inaccurate, irresponsible, dishonest, ludicrous, simplistic, sweeping motion which conflates Judaism, a great and ancient religion, with Zionism, a very modern political ideology, and in doing so risks an emptying anti-Semitism of all meaning. Ladies and gentlemen, stand with us tonight, oppose this awful motion.

SPEAKER_11: 51:37

Now it is time to announce the result of the vote taken as you were coming in, and before you'd heard a word of those speeches. This is the picture of how you felt when you walked into the room uh tonight. For the motion, 15%. Against the motion, 59%. Undecided, 26%. So I'll repeat that. The motion, obviously, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. For that motion, 15%, against 59%, undecided, 26%. Now we're going to move on and have um some discussion with the panellists. I'm going to sit back a fraction so that they can actually see each other and engage a bit. And I want to come back to um to Melanie because we haven't heard from her for a while. We'll just do a couple of questions up here and then we're going to throw it open to all of you on the floor. So, Melanie, why don't you deal with this um charge from the other side that you're attempting to silence a moral position?

SPEAKER_02: 52:46

Well, um uh Mehdi uh says that uh we have produced straw men. I'm I I I find it a surreal experience having listened to him because he misrepresented uh everything that I had said. He went on and on about how um you have to vote with him because we, i.e., have said that anyone on that side is an anti-Semite and racist. I'm sure you, ladies and gentlemen, heard me say very explicitly that I was certainly not saying that. I draw an extremely important distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Semites. I said explicitly that by no means everybody who supports anti-Zionism is an anti-Semite. By no means everybody who supports anti-Semitism is an anti-Semite. People support stuff that they believe to be true because they are ignorant, they're ill-informed, they're ideological for a variety of reasons. I can't see into people's souls. I am sure that Mehti Hassan and Ilan Pape are both deeply honorable men. I would not presume to say what is in their minds or what their motivation is. I do not presume to say that people who support anti-Zionism and who would wish to deprive the Jewish people of their right to live in their own homeland are anti-Semites. I am saying something different. I am saying that the discourse is fundamentally anti-Jew. Why? Not because Israel, the Jews alone are entitled to a state in the land of Israel. Again, Mehdi says I said that. I certainly did not say that. You, ladies and gentlemen, will have heard me say explicitly and in terms that the Israelis have always, always agreed to share the land with the Palestinians. So they have been offered, they have been offered a state of their own in 1936, in 1947, and on repeated occasions in the 2000s. And their response has been to the offer of a state of their own, living in peace and harmony alongside the Jews of Israel. Their response has been terrorism and war. I would dearly love to see that happen. A state of the Palestinian Arabs living side by side. I don't think it's going to happen, but that's another story. But it is simply a wicked lie to sit here and grotesquely reverse what I have said.

SPEAKER_11: 55:27

Melanie, uh okay, we we we we've heard that. Now, Ilan, coming to you. You talked about ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. We heard Einat say um Jews have not been equal in the Arab world anywhere. So who's doing the ethnic cleansing? And do you accept that point?

SPEAKER_05: 55:47

Oh, I I accept the point that after the creation of the State of Israel, the Jews of Iraq were expelled from Iraq under an agreement between the Israeli government and the Nuri Said government because Zionism didn't want the Jews of Iraq to stay in Iraq, and neither did the nationalist Iraqi government want them there. But this has nothing to do with what we are talking about. We are talking about the fact that half of Palestine's population within nine months was ethnically cleansed by the Jewish and Israeli forces. 500 out of 1,000 villages were demolished, wiped out upon the earth. Eleven Palestinian towns were depopulated by force. This was not immigration. This was not a call, as in the case of Jews in North Africa, by a new Jewish state to Jews and come and be with us. It's better for you to be a Jew, a Moroccan Jew in Israel than a Moroccan Jew in Morocco. This is a different story. Here we are talking about a crime against humanity that was uh committed within nine months in 1948, that there is no other definition for this. Otherwise, why would half of Palestine's population become refugees if they were not expelled by force by a settler colonial movement? You've made these points already. Deal with the point about the inequality of Jews in the Arab world. I can I can deal with first of all, the Jews were treated in the Arab world much better than they were in the Christian world. Far better. Far better. And and especially, especially in countries such as Ira.

SPEAKER_11: 57:32

Can we just hear the speaker, please?

SPEAKER_05: 57:34

Especially in countries such as Iraq, in Egypt, and Morocco, until the rise of Zionism, Jews were holding positions of power. Jews led secular, rich and religious life. And all this fabric that was holding on for centuries was broken down first by the Zionist ideology that told Jews in the Arab world that they do not belong to the Arab world, and by a reaction by fanatic Arab nationalism saying, okay, so you have to decide whether you are Zionists or you are Jews. Okay, thanks. This is historical.

SPEAKER_11: 58:12

Right, we're moving on. Um can you deal with Medi's point, please, that um that you and Melanie is suggesting that every anti-Zionist is a bigot and a racist, that this is a naked slum.

SPEAKER_09: 58:25

That is such a simple rhetorical trick. Make things sound so extreme, so outrageous, and then people say, Oh, that's not what we meant. That's not where we are. The motion is very clear, and again, this is not an academic debate. The topic here tonight is not just anything, any policy. This is about people's lives over here. And today, in effect, in the UK, in the West, anti-Zionism has become the respectable, shiny way of being anti-Semitic. Because we already have. And the reason that people want to separate the two is because they need the cover of respectability to continue to gain adherence. If you knew it was anti-Zionism, you would reject it because anti-Semitism, you would reject it because you would know where it leads. But as long as it's presented to you as something rational, and remember, anti-Semitism in the beginning also appeared rational. It was also supported by elites, it's thrived on universities. Nobody thought it would lead where it led, because that's how it gained adherence, like people thinking that it was different, that it was new. And this is what we're seeing. We're seeing a concerted effort to maintain the respectability of that position so that the process of dropping our defenses can continue.

SPEAKER_11: 1:00:03

Thanks for that. Um and and maybe one for you. Can you just deal with Melanie's point, the distinction between anti-Semite and anti-Semitism? The suggestion that there's a discourse that is fundamentally anti-Jew.

SPEAKER_08: 1:00:16

I can't deal with it. You'd have to ask Melanie deal with it because it makes no sense to me. The idea that you can say the idea, I'm sorry, we talk about academics and real life. Let's get away from university with respect, Elan. Um the idea that you say, let's all vote tonight that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and then I say I'm an anti-Zionist, and you say, but you're not an anti-Semite. That makes no sense. Capitalism is something you say you're capitalist. I mean, this is this is pedantry to try and pretend that you can go after the ideology, but not the people who identify with that ideology. Uh, it's absurd to say that. By the way, uh mentioned that it's a rhetorical trick uh to do that, which is a nice line, but then she literally, in the next sentence, went on and said, unless my ears are deceiving me, anti-Zionism has become a respectable, shiny way of being an anti-Semite. So I'm an anti-Semite who's using anti-Zionism in a respectable, shiny way. Why not just come out and say it? I don't know why you're hiding it. All be an anti-Semite.

SPEAKER_11: 1:01:08

Are you an anti-Semitism?

SPEAKER_08: 1:01:10

Am I an anti-Semite? Because I say I'm an anti-Zionist.

SPEAKER_11: 1:01:12

I know you're not Manley.

SPEAKER_08: 1:01:13

Are all the Palestinians anti-Semites because they're all anti-Zionists?

SPEAKER_11: 1:01:18

Just say it. Be brave, be brave, say it. Right. We're gonna open this to the floor now. No one. Unless you want to answer it.

SPEAKER_09: 1:01:27

Absolutely. People who think that the Jews alone have no right to be masters of their fate, who want us yet again to be powerless, to go back to how we used to be. There is only one name for that. I'm not making it personal, but yes, I am here today precisely to fight the veneer of respectability that anti-Zionism has because I don't want to wait to see where it leads. People waited too long thinking that anti-Semitism in Europe was scientific, was respectable. We know where that led. I don't plan to wait it. We've heard that book.

SPEAKER_11: 1:02:12

Right. It is time to hear from um all of you now. Um so there are ushers with mics, I should say. Do please raise your hands. Go for it, and then and then in a moment we'll take the second vote. So uh let's have number one and number two, and let's just go in that order one first. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06: 1:02:33

Thank you. Um my question is for Melanie. Um Mehdi, I think you're great as well, so thank you for everything.

SPEAKER_11: 1:02:39

Um well, we know where your loyalties lie as you ask your question.

SPEAKER_06: 1:02:44

Um, long story short, I'm 19, um, I go to King's and I study religion, philosophy, and ethics. And I studied Judaism. I'm a Muslim, but I chose to study Judaism, and I read Arthur Kusler's The Thirteenth Tribe of Israel. And he says that um Ashkenazi Jews, they were um European race that converted to Judaism. Can we have the questions fast, please? So, my question is Um do you think that there are some Jews living in Israel who are originally of European descent, not like you say, they were historically the most historical people that's ever lived in the land in Israel, or do you think that's just another lie as well? Hold that thought.

SPEAKER_10: 1:03:23

We'll have question number two, please. Um Question for Medi and Melanie. The newly elected MP for Peterborough, Lisa Forbes, has been branded in some quarters an anti-Semite because she partly because she signed a letter objecting to certain examples in the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. What do you think about this?

SPEAKER_11: 1:03:52

Thanks for that. Okay, let's deal with those questions first then. So, Melanie, deal if you can deal briefly with the first question, the history.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:01

So I didn't actually understand the question. I'm so sorry. I didn't quite understand what you were talking about. Were you saying that some Jews are not Jews? Is that your point?

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:10

No, that they're not converted Europeans.

SPEAKER_06: 1:04:13

It's you were saying that Jews, they're the most like they are the longest people who have lived there for the longest time historically. But some Jews have converted from European Christians to Jews. So actually they weren't the longest people that have lived there because they used to live in Europe. So maybe Palestinians were the longest people that have lived there. Because they were living in Europe?

SPEAKER_11: 1:04:33

Okay, do we just have a we need to get through quite low answer? Short, quick answer.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:38

Um the the simple answer to your question is that the Jewish people are the only people for whom the land of Israel was ever their national kingdom. Several hundred years before Islam was invented and the Arabs invaded. And that is the point I was making. They are the only people for whom Israel is their national kingdom. The fact that some Jews, for the fact that many Jews haven't lived there, is self-evidently true. But that is not the point. The Jews are entitled to the land of Israel because that is their ancient historic homeland from which they were dispossessed by waves of colonial uh invaders, and which they have got back from colonialism, and which some people think is actually that they should not be able to do that. That's the point I was making. Okay, thanks.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:31

So look, um, like I said, sometimes I'm gonna insert in here So this is a ridiculous claim that was just being made. I live in the United States of America, I'm an American. If I tomorrow were to go to let me just break it down like this. My last name is Hampton, and my last name is McLean. There is both a Hampton, Virginia, and there's a McLean, Virginia. There is also Hampton and McLean, other things all around in the United States of America. If I were to step in any of those lands and say, because of my last name, I historically have a right to this land because the land was stolen from San Hamptons or McLean's, and I am the predecessor, the ancestor of these people, would anybody take that claim to be serious? No, they would not, and no, they probably should not. And here's my other point of contention here. If the Native Americans who we took the land from in the United States of America, if they all showed back up and said, We own everything, every part of the land that we had, would anybody in America take it seriously? No, we would not. I can go past the Native Americans or let's say we've been afford to them. If the British showed up and said, You guys are thirteen colonies, the thirteen colonies belong to us, you invaded, you took over our land, you belong to us. Would anybody take the British seriously? No, they would not. So if you will not take a claim seriously, that is only 250 something years old. If you won't take the claim seriously, that is about 170 years old, why would you take the claim seriously of something that is 5,000 years old? If somebody showed up to your home right now and said, My ancestors live here, I own the land, would you take that seriously? If the answer is no, you cannot take the last thing you heard seriously. Let's get back to the debate.

SPEAKER_11: 1:07:25

Thanks for that. Um, we're not going to um spend more time on the deep history right now. Coming to the Peterborough question, may you deal with that? We are we we were asked for um views on the um on the letter about definitions.

SPEAKER_08: 1:07:39

I don't know about the letter. I do know that she, I mean, I don't live here, so I don't follow Labour politics as much as I used to, but I do know that Lisa Forbes uh liked a Facebook post which referred to Theresa May's uh Zionist slave agenda or some such formula. Uh in my view, that's clearly anti-Semitic. She has her excuses. She says that she didn't read the text, she was trying to support a video that was in solidarity with New Zealand victims, you know, each to their own, whether they believe or not. I don't know that Lisa Forbes, I don't know anything about her. All I can say is that statement saying Theresa May has a Zionist uh slave agenda is clearly anti-Semitic. It's where quote unquote anti-Zionism does go into anti-Semitism. I think I opened my speech by conceding that I've never denied that there are anti-Zionists who become anti-Semitic.

SPEAKER_11: 1:08:18

You've answered that question. Um number four, please. Can we stand up? Sorry, yes, I'm standing now. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:24

Can we have some questions to our other two speakers, sir? Speakers uh for the motion. I'd like to ask you uh to comment on Nagba and how do you think Palestinians should be dealing with um the consequences of Nagba. Thank you. Um thank you.

SPEAKER_11: 1:08:40

And um down at number one. I'm gonna take a couple together to get through some more. We're running out of time.

SPEAKER_07: 1:08:49

Hi. Um well to paraphrase Brad Stevens and and Peter Beinert, anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, but it might as well be, practically speaking. But we're we're dealing with a lot of semantics here. And my question is uh I'm having a little identity crisis. I'm Jewish, I'm a Zionist, I'm deeply troubled by 1948. I wouldn't call it ethnic cleansing, Mr. Pape. Um, it was a strategic choice. We need to do, okay? It was a strategy, but it was a time of war. My question is why are we this is almost masturbatory, you should pardon the expression. What is the solution? We're all thinking, kind people. What is the solution?

SPEAKER_11: 1:09:39

Who's your question to?

SPEAKER_07: 1:09:40

All of them.

SPEAKER_11: 1:09:41

Okay, I'm gonna ask that one so that one could be for Ila. Um what's the solution? And we had, I was uh I think up someone up here, yeah, we were going for. Yeah, number three, please.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:57

Hi, I just wanna this is a question for uh the opposition. Why is uh Israel singled out as a human rights violator as in the United Nations, by the Labour Party, by many other entities, uh as compared to so many egregious violators of human rights, including in the Middle East? Why is it consistently singled out? Is that not a form of anti-Semitism?

SPEAKER_11: 1:10:24

Thank you for thank you for asking the question. That's great. So, um, Aina, I want to hear from you first on the question of Nagba, which is um who would like to just define Nagba the best for us? Ilan, you're the historian. The Makbah. Yeah. Can you define the Nakbah?

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:41

Oh, the Nakba. Okay.

SPEAKER_11: 1:10:44

Very, very quickly. I do explain that the question. Yeah, yeah, okay. Let's give us the historical definition in a sentence.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:49

Yeah, the Nakba is an operation of ethnic cleansing, which was a systematic expulsion of the Palestinians in order to de-Arabize Palestine and create on its ruins a Jewish state. In 1948, but no, no, that's important to say the Nagbah continues because only 50% of the people were expelled and only 80% of the land was taken. The Nagba continues every day in Gaza, in Nablus, in the Galilee, in the Nakab, and we should have a discussion about the destruction of Palestine and not about the nonsense that we're hearing here tonight.

SPEAKER_11: 1:11:32

Obviously, this is the Palestinian term for what happened in 1948. It means catastrophe. Einat, I'm not sure if you accept that definition we just heard from Ilan, but anyway, deal with the definition.

SPEAKER_09: 1:11:43

Okay, you but uh the story is very simple. The Arabs of the land, the Palestinians, could have had again and again and again a state of their own. They could have had it in half of the land, in 80% of the land. But every time when they were told, you can be masters of your fate in part of the land. But in another part, the Jews will be masters of their fate, no longer inferior to you, no longer submitting to you. Their choice again and again and again to the present has been to fight for all. They have again said if we have to live next to sovereign Jews, better to fight until they are not there at all. And I will say this again: when you fight us, we three years after a genocide, and you wage a genocidal war, telling us that we have no right to defend yourself, then we will fight you back. We will defend ourselves and we are over the way. That's another thing. No, no, you've made your point.

SPEAKER_11: 1:13:01

Then you sometimes have nothing. Um, Mehdi, why is Israel singled out?

SPEAKER_08: 1:13:07

Yeah, I don't accept the premise of the question, obviously. It's interesting you should say that Israel's singled out. There's a little ah going out. Well, if you're watching this on YouTube, go back on YouTube and see that the first Intelligence Square debate I did was not about Israel. I came here a few months ago to talk about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its human rights abuses. So before I even come up to Israel, I came to condemn Saudi Arabia. And I'm and this, I get it, I get it. There are lots of UN resolutions uh condemning Israel. I get that. But if you look at actual practical sanctions, there are no sanctions on Israel from Western countries for human rights abuses. There are against Syria, there are against Russia, there are against Iran, there are against North Korea. So no, I don't think Israel's being single. I'd actually like to see sanctions put on Israel, so it's treated like other human rights abuses. Consistency. Things of standard.

SPEAKER_11: 1:13:51

Right, right. I we we have I I want to give everyone on the panel an opportunity to to answer the question that we had from down here, which was, what is the solution? So a moment for optimism, but but literally only a moment each. Melanie, can you go first? Two sentences, please.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:10

Uh, what is the solution? It depends what the problem is. If you define the problem in the Middle East as a contest between two people with the rights to the land over the boundaries of that land, then you end up precisely where we are. But in my view, that's not the situation at all. The real situation is different. If you want a solution to the real problem, you have to stop the hundred-year attempt to exterminate Israel as a nation state of the Jewish people and to exterminate the right of the Jews to live in Israel as their own sovereign country. That is what the situation is in the Middle East. However, you like to reframe it, that is what the problem is. If you want a solution, you have to stop people trying to commit a genocidal assault upon the right of the Jews to live in their own country.

SPEAKER_11: 1:14:56

Once you stop that, you've got the solution. Thank you. Elan, what is the solution? If you could just give me two sentences, I'd be grateful.

SPEAKER_05: 1:15:04

The only viable solution is to change a reality where with between the River Jordan and in the Mediterranean, you have now 12 million people, 6 million Palestinians without any human rights and civil rights, and 6 million Jews with all the privileges in the world. Only one state that ensures equal rights for everyone, regardless of their nationality, religion, race, or gender. Is the only solution and the return of the refugees that have been expelled.

SPEAKER_09: 1:15:39

Yes, because the region is known for having so many of those states. To accept us as an indigenous people who are in their land, to accept us as equal claimants to the land, not exclusive, not superior, but people have an equal right to finally be masters of our fate in a land of our own, in part of the land, next to Arabs who will be masters of their fate in part of the land. That's the only way to live together.

SPEAKER_08: 1:16:25

I'm always amused. Einat made a crack in her speech, and now again that we know what binational states are like in the Middle East. I'm always amused when Israelis say this because last time I checked, 20% of the Israeli population is Palestinian. So it's already a binational state. We just want to give the Palestinian part of that state equal rights. Every year, Arab MPs, Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Knesset, almost every year, put a bill forward to turn Israel into, quote, a state for all its citizens. And every year, the president of the Knesset, last year he did it, will not allow it to even reach the floor for deliberation. So tonight I ask Ainat Melanie, do you support an Israel for all its citizens? Because I do. We can call it Israel, call it whatever you want, but just give it a state for all its citizens. No, it's not. In fact, they're the state of all its bills. They literally block a bill. The Supreme Court blocks the bill. The Supreme Court blocked the bill to make it a state of all its citizens. You know that. You're a former member of the cabinet.

SPEAKER_11: 1:17:17

Okay, you've both had your you've both had your say on that. Um right now we're going to go for our um final statements from our speakers on the panel, summing up speeches to be made seated and to last no longer than two minutes. In fact, do you know what, all four of you, if you could just kind of keep them really tight, if you can get them down to less than two minutes, I would be grateful. We're gonna go in reverse order, so maybe you first.

SPEAKER_08: 1:17:41

Ladies and gentlemen, if you still haven't voted, I want you to think of two groups of people when you are voting, uh, for whom opposing this crude, cynical motion is so important, so crucial, so personal. The first group, of course, are the Palestinians. Because if you vote for the motion tonight, uh you're saying, despite Melanie Anat's best attempts to try and play this, uh, you know, oh, it's ideology versus adherence, you're saying we all have to be Zionists. Otherwise, we're racists, we're bigots, we're anti-Semites. Which, look, wouldn't be the end of the world for me. Fine, I'll be a Zionist if you want me to be a Zionist. I mean, I once almost voted Lib Dem. I'm okay with labels. But to ask the Palestinians to just not just accept their dispossession, their ethnic cleansing, their ongoing occupation, but to also call themselves Zionists or else is outrageous. You can't ask Palestinians to be Zionists, you just can't. And by the way, if they say it's racist to oppose Zionism, well, it's racist to ask Palestinians not to oppose their own occupiers. And look, if you don't care about the Palestinians, still vote against the motion tonight because there's another group of people you'll be throwing under the bus if you vote for this motion, anti-Zionist Jews, people like Elam, like my colleague Naomi, like Noam Chomsky, like the Haredi. And in a single sweeping move, you risk throwing all these people under the bus. Jews who oppose Zionism in good faith. We haven't talked about that today. Not once did the proposition acknowledge that we might have good reasons for our views, that we're not all trying to hide behind what was it, Ainet said, the shiny respectability of the new anti-Semitism. Uh, don't tar all those people who are fighting for human rights, who are fighting in good faith, as racists, as self-hating Jews, as anti-Semites. For the sake of a political ideology, don't do it. Don't do it. Whatever your views on Israel-Palestine, vote with the opposition tonight against this ludicrous, dishonest, offensive motion.

SPEAKER_11: 1:19:29

Anat, now your closing statement for the motion.

SPEAKER_09: 1:19:33

I doubt there's a lot of good faith here, and I have to say, if Zionists such as myself can support Palestinian self-determination, I see no reason why the reverse should not be also asked. But I want to take us and use this opportunity to go back to the fundamentals and to the big picture. A reminder about what is actually going on and the mechanism. Remember, step one is the Zionists are designated as a collective group which happens to coincide with the group previously known as Semites and Jews. Step two, they are then ascribed the most loathsome qualities of our time. Step three, it is done by appealing to the greatest authority of the era. Step four, and this is where we are now, they are slowly subject to a process designed to strip them of their defenses. But we were told today in our asked to believe that this time the Jews, oh sorry, the Zionists are truly to blame. Germans and Europeans too sincerely believe the Jews, uh the Semites were truly to blame. But we now know that anti-Semitism arose from a deep crisis in the society doing the blaming. After all, these templates and ways of thinking about my people have been around for millennia. Yet they become particularly useful in times of crisis. And we are indeed again a species in crisis. Technology questions are very intelligence and humanity. Extreme weather undermines our confidence in our control. Inequality undermines our ideal progress. Our leaders or lack thereof leave us feeling bereft of a sense there's a steady hand at the helm. And at times of crisis, we desperately crave certainty. And there are few greater certainties in this world to grab on than that the Jews are to blame. As a society, we can emerge from our crisis, but only if we ask ourselves, how can we all do better rather than who is to blame? And I believe we can all indeed do better. Thank you.

SPEAKER_11: 1:21:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:55

We heard a lot about the Zionist ideology and the idea that the land of Palestine is the land of Israel. Always, when you hear it, think about someone coming to you the dead of night in London and tells you, I used to live in your house 2,000 years ago, and because of that, the house belongs to me. And the next day they come with the police. And the next day they come with the police who says they have a right, you have to give them half of their house. Zionism was a settler colonialist movement that was running away from persecution, but it wanted as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible. This was the aim of Zionism in the late 19th century. This is the aim of Zionism today. We are all entitled to go through the same process that happened in South Africa. We are entitled as Jews and as Palestinians to live in one democratic state where everyone is equal and stop and reject an ideology that claims that some people are equal and some people are not. I'm asking you, for the sake, even for Jewish communities around the world, because settler colonialism in Israel will become worse as the century will continue, for the sake of the people who live here and the sake The people who live there, we are entitled to have the same kind of democracy that everybody everyone else has without Boris Johnson. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:44

Well, I'm truly sorry that Messi can't understand my distinction. It's very simple. My point is simply this: that people of good faith sometimes swallow outright lies because they believe them to be true. And we've heard this evening some of those lies come from the other side. Falsehoods about Israel which are believed to be true. For example, Mehdi suggests that Israel is not a state of all its citizens, that the Arabs somehow don't have full equal rights. He calls them Palestinians. Perhaps Mehti doesn't also understand that 20% or so of Israel's population are Israeli Arabs. Israeli Arabs have full equal rights. You can see them in the Israeli parliament. You can see them in the Israeli parliaments. You can see them in the Israeli universities. What Mehdi says, what Mehti means when he says that he wants a state of all its citizens. He wants a state of Israel, which is not Israel anymore, which is not a Jewish state. So the Britons can have Britain, the French can have France, the Americans can have America, but the Jews cannot have Israel. I would say that is outright discrimination. Elan says it's their house. Whose house? There were dozen.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:03

So I'm gonna just let her finish her speech as I say this. American, America is not a religion. It is a country. Jews is a religion. Judaism is a religion. Britain is not a religion. Britain has multiple people of different religious ethnic ethnicities in it. And why this is a hard point is because either the person is being dishonest and it's Webb and grade gaslighting, or they don't understand the fact. As far as I know, every place that I know that is a theocracy is a place that I would not actually want to live in. Saudi Arabia, Rome, Israel. Back to the debate.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:57

The Britons can have Britain, the French can have France, the Americans can have America, but the Jews cannot have Israel. I would say that is outright discrimination. Ilan says it's their house. Whose house? There were dozens and dozens of different nationalities in Mandate Palestine. The Arabs came in in large numbers because the Jews are returning, and rightly they thought that they would bring prosperity. In conclusion, let me return you to the proposition under consideration is anti-Zionism, uh anti-Semitism. Uh Mehdi says not everyone can have a state. That is absolutely correct. But why this is a form of anti-Semitism is the unique nature of the animus against Zionism. Jews are the only people living in their own historic homeland who are deemed to have no right to that homeland and whose claim to self-determination in that homeland, which is theirs by right, is illegitimate and racist.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:25

Do they have a right to all the land? Remember the Alamo, etc. etc. Louisiana was bought from who? Do the people who originally own Louisiana have the natural right to there? This is ridiculous foolishness.

SPEAKER_11: 1:27:58

Thank you all for your summing up speeches, and um that concludes our debate. So it is time now to announce the final vote uh count. And a reminder that our motion this evening was anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. A reminder also that we began the evening with 15% for the motion, 59% against the motion, and 26% undecided. After 90 minutes of debate, we end as follows: 19% for the motion, 76% against the motion. 5% undecided. So the motion this evening has been defeated. This House does not believe that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

SPEAKER_04: 1:28:53

And there we have it. After October 7th, where there was a vicious and violent murder against uh innocent uh Jewish lives at a music concert, uh vicious stuff. And this has launched us into this debate again. Uh what is anti-Semitism, what is anti-Zionism, who are Palestinians, what is Palestinian statehood, how do we respond to our Jewish brothers and sisters? How do we respond to our Palestinian brothers and sisters? How should we respond as American citizens who um have no control over the Palestinians we don't fund them? How should our money respond to the Israeli government who we do support? So on and so forth. These are difficult questions. And sometimes when we face these difficult questions, um I find it very helpful to go to the past. And this wasn't the long past, this was a debate that happened again in 2019. I think I've told people on the show before I do have a uh sort of a bias. The favorite teacher who saved my life was a Jewish woman by the name of Rosenha, who saw I was a kid who was frustrated, who just needed a chance and a voice. And that Jewish woman bought me a bunch of books, loved me, and sheltered me, and so I always had a bit of a bias towards uh Jew secular Jewish people. And when I saw them being attacked, I responded to their defense. But I did use a word there, and I want people to be conscious of the word I use uh secular Jewish people. This uh woman was not an Orthodox Jew. She was not a um uh conservative. She in fact was a very liberal Jewish American woman. Me and her had our first point of contention when she was voting for John Kerry. She got me registered to vote, and I was going to vote for George W. Bush. While she respected my right to be able to vote, she thought I vigorously was going to vote against the wrong vote for the wrong person. I have come to believe that she was correct and I was wrong. And I think I've expressed that on several different shows now. Me and her have never talked about this issue. Ever. So I try to respect the spirit of free inquiry and free dialogue like she did with me. When she thought that I was wrong to be about to cast my first vote for George W. Bush, and she has was the one that went and took me and registered me to vote, she did something that uh I wish people would do. She did a mock debate amongst all her students who had just turned 18 and who was going to have the right to vote. She put up a podium in her classroom, and uh, Republican students debated the Democratic students, libertarians included, and those undecided as well. We debated the issues, and that was our assignment for the day. Actually, that was our assignment for the week. Thank you to the education I received in high school for Edward H. White High School, and thank you to my secular Jewish teacher, Rosalind Hoffman, who saved this young student's life. Thank you for tuning in, and I will see you on the next episode.