Understanding & Resisting "Anti-Zionist" Movement Capture with the Good Shepherd Collective

Jared: welcome everybody to another edition of millennials are killing capitalism live it's good to be with you i don't remember exactly the last time we had an episode probably maybe last wednesday or thursday so it's been about a week uh we have a busy schedule this week we have this one today um tomorrow is scheduled to be a conversation with a couple of members of palestinian youth movement uh i have to talk with them a little bit because we may move it to audio or not live so that may or may not air tomorrow but check to make sure um and i'll confirm that later today um and we will have the conversation either way it just we didn't discuss format and that was my fault for doing that um then on friday lara shihai will be back that has i have to get that uh posted but we're gonna have a conversation on friday and on saturday we're gonna have the discussion with kali akuno that we weren't able to have a couple weeks ago so i'm very much looking forward to that a lot of good stuff Next Monday, I believe, if I'm correct, is the conversation with Eric Stanley and Gemma Christo about we're going to talk about dangerous San Francisco liberalism and what that actually means. And we've got some. Oh, Abdul Jawad Omar is going to be back next Thursday. So there's a lot of really good stuff coming up. Good to be with you. Good to see folks in the chat. Good morning. Good morning. Peace. Make sure to do the basic things and like the video. Subscribe to the channel if you have not already, please. and share it, you know, get on social media, let people know we're having this conversation. I really look forward to it today. This is our third conversation with the Good Shepherd Collective, which I'm really excited to be in conversation with these folks again. I talk with them a good bit in between our discussions and they certainly help ground me and very appreciative of the work that they do. If you don't know, Good Shepherd Collective is an anti-Zionist, anti-colonial organization. They work alongside their partners on the ground to openly discuss and address violent and unjust structures operating in Palestine and provide educational resources and action items to bring Palestinians closer to justice. um there's a broad there's a longer uh explanation or um description in the show description also check out the prior conversations we've had with them decolonization is not a discourse it is a material process and palestine and the problem of narrative both of those will inform what we're going to talk about today which is we're going to talk about the um The capture, movement capture a little bit, you know, another way to think about in counterinsurgency, some people prefer this term. This term actually comes a little bit more out of social movements than it does out of like the state kind of apparatus. Movement capture, it's something I've heard, you know, Daruba Ben-Wahad and others talk about over the years. And we're going to talk about that within various formations of anti-Zionist organizations. And also, particularly, obviously, you know, we're still kind of some of us reeling from the DNC, although fortunately it's not, I don't think, structuring our day to day and how we feel in the way that it did. the week that it was going on. But we wanted to kind of respond to that as well. So let me welcome our guests to the stage. Banna and Lara, welcome. Good to be with you again. Hey.

Banna: Hey, Jared. Good to be with you again. Good afternoon, actually, from Dublin in Ireland. It's afternoon for me. Um, it's probably a little bit later in the afternoon for Lara, but for those, if it's good morning for you, good morning. Absolutely.

Jared: Um, but yeah.

Banna: Hello.

Lara: Good to be here.

Jared: Good to be with you.

Lara: Yeah. Thanks so much for having us again, Jared. We're so excited to be back.

Jared: Yeah, well, I'm really thrilled always to talk to you and looking forward to this. So let's just start kind of, you know, our previous conversations as we were talking about this, just from like a U.S. electoral politics point of view, Biden was kind of the presumptive nominee and obviously he was the incumbent president. There wasn't really any kind of opposition to him from the Democratic Party, at least. So I'm just curious a little bit in kind of starting out, like how, from your perspective, has Biden dropping out and Kamala Harris, like being the nominee, changed the scope of what you're seeing in terms of discourse and maybe also organizing to some degree around Palestine with regards to this election or even, you know, more broadly, if, you know, it is. I know that neither of you are in the United States. And so, like, you know, I'm also asking a sort of U.S.-centric question, but we did want to talk about this a little bit.

Lara: yeah i think that's fine also i'm just in case folks listening don't know i'm palestinian america so that kind of helps a little bit but um also in preparing for this um interview you know we talked with our colleagues as well and one of our colleagues reminded us like okay you know also don't make it too us centric like you know also be critical of the things here but i think it's really important um i think this conversation is really important and i think it's obvious that what happens in the us like deeply affects what happens here right so it's really important um you're gonna have to forgive me a little bit if i'm kind of scattered because as we talked about before getting on you know it's been a long day a long year so But I think it's a great question about Biden dropping out and Kamala sort of taking the position. I should say first that like as Good Shepherd Collective, we uh don't buy into electoral politics we you know are anti-imperialist like you said so the official position of um the good shepherd collective is like i'll say screw the democratic party um we're not invested with them at all and i know we'll talk a little bit that's also the official position of millennials are killing capitalism I didn't doubt it for a second. I just thought I better, you know, clarify before I go on. um yeah but i think um i think it had a big effect i think kamala harris kind of taking the lead in this position had a lot of different effects and um one of the ones that kind of came up for me while i was thinking about my answer to this question and i don't know if there's a better like phrasing for it is this idea of plausible deniability so you know there had been this kind of like response to biden that um was really i think like people felt clearly that he was the genocide there in charge in the united states that like there was no pointing the finger away from him it couldn't be somebody else right And when Harris kind of took this position all of a sudden, and still today, even to some extent, it seems like folks have this idea that even though she is literally the second person in the government, that she could somehow disagree with Biden's foreign policy, specifically around Palestine, that she could not be accountable in some way for this genocide, that she might have a totally different strategy. um and i think this worked you know this like now this is totally cognitive dissonance if somebody's still holding on to this right there's no kind of forgiving this position anymore now that she has literally come out and said um our position on israel isn't going to change absolutely no arms embargo anytime under her presidency um But yeah, that there kind of like came out this strategy before she took office with the uncommitted movement that folks thought that they could withhold their vote until Biden called for a ceasefire or that the presidential nominee had to change, that this was kind of like an invitation to bring folks into this, kind of effort that under kamala really shifted so i think part of it is this kind of like plausible deniability that she brought about and to some extent seems to still be like existing then there's also this idea of like a symbolic win in itself that folks got rid of biden even whether like even though the person who is now the nominee is, again, the second person in the government, but still that there's this idea that it's a symbolic win that we've gotten rid of the head genocide heir in America, in the US. But I think the biggest part of this shift has to do with a topic that you introduced us to that we've talked about, I think, in both of our conversations of neoliberal identity politics. where instead of and like please correct me at any point if i'm wrong or misrepresenting but my understanding is like this more historic term of identity politics revolves around um you know oppressed marginalized groups having agency and power over their lives and the decisions in their lives and you know the political arrangements of their lives whereas neoliberal identity politics is not about substance is not really even about agency of the pupil or power but about using these elements of identity that we see like being black, being Palestinian, being queer, being a woman, and, you know, really using them to sustain the status quo, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism. And, yeah, and really mobilizes identity to do this. So I think Kamala is actually like, such an excellent choice for this because she embodies so many things that Americans are really like, you know, Americans who I think like, sorry, I should say like US Americans who have really like to a certain extent, it seems like adopted this idea of neoliberal identity politics as something important, as something meaningful. um not your listeners i'm sure but you know uh maybe the majority of americans in the liberal left spectrum um yeah that she really threw a wrench in this that there is this idea of change that she's like some kind of symbol of something other than there are these assumptions that because she's black and south asian and a woman and would be the first woman president and all of these other historic wins that it doesn't matter that she would be the leader of still a genocide and still a settler state and still imperialism and all of these other things. And anyway, so I'll just end it by saying, I think all of these elements of her replacing Biden in this way really threw a wrench in some of the organizing that was happening against Biden, specifically with the uncommitted movement and with other folks who could be brought in under these. Like elements of identity and and other things, and I'll I'll hand it over to Banna.

Banna: Yeah, I mean, To be honest, I would like to just remind people that Rifat Al Arir, he mentioned and tweeted that tweet and saying that the Democratic Party has the blood of Palestinians in Gaza on their hands. So, you know, it was very clear for Palestinians this, you know, the problem is that it's easy, obviously, like external to Palestine and due to capitalism, imperialism, the nature of the world's global structure is to blame individuals for things right to say well um biden is to blame the democratic party have nothing to do with it you know the vice president maybe they don't have power it's all biden right the same rhetoric obviously is is seen in in like oh it's netanyahu's uh politics it's it's his policies it's etc etc so all of this really has to do with this sort of you know, categorisation of crimes as, you know, and also in law as well, within individual responsibility. So it's easy for people to say, well, there are people in the Democratic Party that aren't complicit. And then that obviously is a question of acclaim. And Rupert Henry was very clear when he said that the Democratic Party as a whole, if you belong to that party, you are in yourself complicit, right? So what really has changed for me, I would say, is that we've so far heard chants of genocide, you know, on the streets, but now we hear chants calling Harris girl boss and all of these other words that they call her Joy or a lot of these things, just to make it so that, you know, she appears as sort of like from a different, you know, she's, she's not related to that as if like, well, Biden's politics and history and the democratic party history and Harris is a new thing, right? A new configuration and you start a new hope, right? So we see how neoliberal identity politics as Lara plays into a relation of what, what she is. She's a woman and she's a person of color and, you know, and here woman in politics, the first, you know, you know, a potential president. This is great. This is, you know, very good for the movement and all of these things that we've heard people say. Right. But I think one of the ones that shocked me the most, the like the things that like the that like the really like as a Palestinian made me feel a bit disgusted was, you know, the politics of the spectacle, as Gay Debord says it. The idea that like, you know, all the posters, everything is just all made up of Harris being like this, you know, powerful woman, really colorful posters, you know, all of these videos of her walking and talking. And currently, of course, talking, but it doesn't matter really. She's a girl boss, right? So... We can see this, how like politics now is just becoming a spectacle, right? You, whatever, you know, the, you know, the looks, the aesthetics are there. That's all that matters. The politics, the principles, the morality, the ethics, none of that really matters. Now the problem is, and I see, and I see this as the main problem. I would call this really that the denialism of, of the movement so far dealing with this, right? What we had in the past almost, well, it's been a year of organizing for Palestine is that we've seen this ceasefire movement. And I like to call it the ceasefire movement because a lot of its elements have been about calling just for a ceasefire, no more than that. And even the radical elements have been suppressed. Is that we've arrived at a stage where there's nihilism in the movement. People feel like, OK, we're not going to go anywhere, right? And this has all been led because of these different actors, including the uncommitted movement that has caused all of this mess and obviously split the movement. Well, fairly, because the left knows the red lines, while the so-called progressives in the Democratic Party always cross the red lines, right? And also, can we really call them uncommitted movement, really, because they do not really uncommit to anything? Um, so there are certain things, obviously a play here that caused this, you know, this split between, you know, those who call themselves the progressives who, you know, really what the, what happened really, they exposed themselves as registered clowns, really. And in Arabic, actually, we have a word for that. We don't really call clowns. We call people sahid, which is a word that means a person who really blindly and uncritically supports you know, people in power and, you know, somebody who would just clap, like literally somebody who claps for power, right? So this is the sort of, you know, what the uncommitted progressive movement has showed us so far. And then we see the split between that and those that know the red lines, those that know that, yes, the two-party system is always gonna be in service of imperialism, electoral politics are not going to liberate the global South, et cetera, et cetera, right? But you know what really is interesting is that Steven Sulejta really mentions this, is that the progressives, really what they did, and with the uncommitted movement, what they did is that they showed the way. They showed the way for people joining the Democratic Party and becoming leaders of the Democratic Party, right? So if you want to become a leader, you have to audition for the role. Stephen Solaeta really puts it well. You have to audition for the role, right? You get accepted to that role to become basically a clown or a saheej. And then you start acting in that circus, right? In the two-party system circus, right? In the electoral politics circus. So you have to do all of these things. And then once you're in that, you're obviously, you know, the veneers of anti-Zionism, the veneers of, you know, progressiveness, all of that obviously is still there, but they're veneers, right? They're not real things. So, but putting Palestine aside, right? If we're just saying, as the Good Shepherd Collective, we've always said it, supporting any democratic party, any candidate really at all, is always going to be in service of the US empire. So we're not, and it's willful participation. So it's not, there's no questions about it. It doesn't matter who it is. It doesn't matter whether it's Rashida Tlaib. It doesn't matter who the person is. If you belong to that party now in time, more than ever, in fact, it's very clear. you know, that you're willfully participating in that, right? So you can't really wash away that truth. But one thing that like a member of the Good Shepherd Collective really always says to us, he calls it kindergarten ethics, right? They lack kindergarten ethics, these people, right? It's very simple, right? anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism. In fact, actually, they're not very complicated. They're very simple. But what they do, what they do is that they keep conflating and they keep trying to make a sort of forced coexistence between U.S. imperialism, right, U.S. electoral politics, and then anti-imperialism at the same time, which is absolutely contradictory. And there's no lesser evil. I know there's people that are talking about Harris being a lesser evil. She's not a lesser evil, right? So the problem really lies here, and this is where I think we articulate the problem at the Gushakar Cleft, is that there's no ideological coherence. In large sections of the PAL solidarity movement, absolutely no ideological coherence. You can say you're anti-Zionist, of course, you can say that, you can release a statement, but you can say anything you want, really. At the end of the day, it's about how you act and who you interact with and how you uphold anti-Zionism, right? This is not even to mention, like, you know, the the NGO complex and their complicity. We're just talking about movement politics. And there's so much even to talk about, like movementists and movement politics and all of that. We can talk for ages about that. And in fact, one of the things that revealed to me was, you know, in fact, it was a reading that we that I did was by Nasser Abu Rahman in in a piece called In Tune With Their Time. Right. And he talks about how Zionism exposes how into liberalism is with fascism. Right. So we can see how the Democratic Party, so-called progressives or uncommitted movement or whoever you want to mention, all these folks have just exposed themselves really to be so in tune with U.S. imperialism. It's obviously the people in the movement who would have known this way earlier on, but it's so exposed now to the surface, how in tune they are with US imperialism, how they're willing to throw Palestinians out of even the equation if needed to protect electoral politics, to create symbolic wins, right? So it's very dangerous. This development that has happened in the movement is very dangerous. It's very demoralizing and it's shameful for Palestinians. It's very shameful. How do you discuss this? How do you tell people in Gaza right now who are under genocide, well, We have to support Harris because she is the lesser evil. Otherwise, you know, Trump will come. He will absolutely be worse. But we've seen what the Democratic Party is capable of. But also, we don't have to see what they're capable of. We just have to read history. Like, we just have to understand kindergarten ethics. We just have to understand the basics of history of US imperialism. We don't have to go further than that. So a lot happened, really, and it's very shameful what happened with the uncommitted movement.

Jared: Thank you. You both said a lot. Appreciate it. I think a couple of things just to highlight, like the, yeah, the symbolic win stuff. I mean, for one, I mean, the point, I think, I think you made this point, Lara, about symbolic win and, you know, obviously the kind of identity reductionism point, but the The thing about symbolic wins is that this is a primary tool of counterinsurgency always, right? Is to give people something symbolic that makes them feel a certain way, right? I mean, another way to say it is psychological warfare, right? Like, you know, you make people feel a certain way, but you don't actually provide them something that is material, that has any kind of real content that you can hold on to. I think the point about spectacle and, you know, I remember being in Ireland in, I think, 2003. And at that time, obviously, Bush was our president. Everybody would grill me about whether I supported Bush, right? Because it was seen as such a horrible thing. Like the Irish people were like, why would you, you know, no, I didn't. But The other point that they found really interesting was that as I was there, Arnold Schwarzenegger was becoming the governor of California. And they just thought that was the most insane thing that they could imagine. Like why would you want an action hero movie actor to be the governor of like the fifth largest economy in the world, you know? And yeah, I mean, I think about this, right? Because this is also what Trump comes out of the reality TV sphere. Like, I don't think that just the fact that he was a billionaire would have brought him into power if people didn't relate to him because of his reality TV show. You have Zelensky in Ukraine, too, also an actor and I think a comedian. And, you know, and then Harris with the like the very performative aspects of her campaign, the I'm speaking sort of moment, right, which I think everybody recognized that was Obviously, at some level of solidarity with Palestinians, how horrific that moment was. But it became a kind of meme and liberals loved it. You know, they were like, this is this is this is, you know, she's a powerful black woman. you know telling these people to be quiet while she's speaking don't talk over her you know which in another context could be an important thing right because there there is obviously this history right of women's positions being marginalized and you know so it draws upon a kind of again like a psychological sort of resonance for people but it's like no this person is running to be the most you know the the nuclear button pusher you know like these are not you know We're not talking about somebody who is like, you know, your downtrodden co-worker, you know? And so anyways, you all touched on a lot. I think also the comment, we're going to talk a little bit more about uncommitted and It's a misnomer at this point. They're fully committed to Harris. They made that clear even without the concessions that they were requesting, which they even admitted were symbolic concessions. They just wanted to have a Palestinian be able to speak on the stage. The speech that was released didn't really call for much of anything. It certainly didn't call for an arms embargo, which is The demand, I think, that probably makes a lot of sense within the confines of the Democratic Party, right? You could say, okay, like, international law, we shouldn't be providing arms to these people, arms embargo, right? But it didn't include that, you know? And so, I mean, it's interesting in that respect because they're, like, even in them being denied access to speak, And what gets released as the speech that they weren't allowed to deliver is actually really bad, you know, and so it's, you know, all of that. So anyways, I wanted to kind of. shift this a little bit to some of your all critiques around what passes as anti-Zionist organizing and how broad that camp is, I guess you could say, or for lack of a better term, how broad that term can be used. I particularly wanted to talk to you two about it because it's something that you all think about a lot, you talk about a lot. You're very critical within those spaces. And I appreciate the criticism because I think we can, especially now with the benefit of hindsight of where we are in this moment, we can look back and sort of say, how did we get here? What were the things that were already present in terms of the contradictions within something like the ceasefire movement? That's another point that you made that I think is really important to underscore. I mean, ceasefire as a demand was always very kind of open to a lot of interpretation and different meanings of what people meant by that. It doesn't mean Palestinian liberation. It doesn't mean reparations. It doesn't mean anything necessarily by itself other than people putting down weapons, basically. so anyways uh i think that's mostly it i mean what kind of is your let's talk a little bit more about uncommitted and kind of anti-zionist organizing and some of the the critical points you would want to make in in that space

Lara: Yeah, thanks so much, Jared. I feel like I should just say, because I wanted to say this to your audience, you know, you were talking about our critiques of anti-Zionism and a lot of people, I think, find them really not a lot of people. I mean, I think principled people who are aware of Palestinian history understand where those critiques come from. But I think a lot of people in the US who, if we're being honest, also make up you know quite a portion of our audience can sometimes see it as too critical and i told you a couple of weeks ago just you know not only how important it is to like remind each other and reassure each other of our principles but i'll say you know in the hardest like this last couple of months have been really difficult for me and and one of the most important things of like not just political organizing but even going on to see the next day and kind of be okay or try to be okay or try to find hope is listening to each other and being reassured by each other that we're not expecting a ridiculous thing of you know justice and dignity and so um i told you but i want to tell your audience how important i think your podcast is and some of the speakers that you've had on i mean so many of the speakers but i can't always listen so you know i think that's really important and i think it's really important that we reassure each other and remind each other and keep each other together so anyway i was thinking about that as well because what a packed week you have for the next week of just some of the best speakers like so exciting i'll definitely be listening But also, I think you asked such an important question about, how did we get here? And that our expectations are so low, and this thing of the ceasefire campaign you know for not so recently but a few months ago i saw folks being like well you know the call for ceasefire yeah we're saying ceasefire but it means also end the occupation and the siege and it's like okay well what do you mean when you say end the occupation Because I know what I mean when I say end occupation, and that means decolonization from the river to the sea and reparations and dismantling the Israeli state and all of the things that go along with it and all of the institutions that have supported it and Zionism for more than a century. And I think most people when they're, you know, sitting in the halls of Congress or whatever and saying ceasefire now, I don't think that that's necessarily everything that they're thinking about, especially if they're not studying and aligned with the Palestinian historical practice and knowledge of what is, you know, dismantling Zionism, disrupting it, resisting it. And I think those are really important conversations to have. I know we'll talk more about that in a little bit, so I'll get to the uncommitted bit. But I think that is a big part of what's brought us to this moment, is not having those difficult conversations, not being sure that we're aligned on principles and accountability and mechanisms that maintain these principles and all of the things that we do, and also allow us to have open and honest conversations with each other in good faith. I mean, I think that's a really important element of this. And that also relates to the uncommitted movement, right? Because with the uncommitted movement, you had, I don't know, hundreds of thousands, at least tens of thousands of people who were voting because they had something that they wanted to say. And they wanted to exercise their power in a way that refused to participate in. Re-electing Biden in supporting this campaign of genocide and probably other elements of his genocidal colonial capital, imperial reign as well. um and i think that's really important i was talking with one of my friends today who is here but is you know was a voter early on in the uncommitted movement sort of like in the in michigan and talking about how yeah this was like an active agency right and so the things that the folks representing the uncommitted movement did at the dnc wasn't just like a huge waste of power and a huge waste of potential and an intentional one. It wasn't a mistake that they did that. It was also a betrayal and not just the betrayal of the people being mass murdered here and being colonized and being kicked out of their homes and imprisoned, but also the people in the US who said, okay, maybe I wouldn't have voted at all and I'm going to participate because I see value in leveraging my power in this way. i think that's a huge thing but i want to talk a lot about or a little bit more about the wasted potential of this power because they had something like 30 delegates right and the name is uncommitted this is the moment to make a stand right and do something and for weeks before as well we had folks saying there's going to be thousands of people demonstrating outside we know that there were people there right getting beaten up by the cops getting arrested um and and and what the uncommitted movement at the very least was asking for right was the ceasefire a ceasefire in exchange for maybe the possibility of voting and that's not a wild ask like you know could we know what could happen tomorrow if biden said it or if kamala said it or whatever at this point biden um and instead what they did was like you said they they gave up all of this power all of this opportunity to make a very public stand in this moment in order to capitulate to power and really like betray and sacrifice people and i think it's like it's worth taking a moment to think well what would have happened if they used this pressure like what would really have happened if those 30 delegates went and they said no we're not going to vote for harris And I was thinking about it, and personally, I don't actually know, like, the specific system of how delegates work. And if you're uncommitted, like, should they have even voted for Harris? To me, that seems undemocratic in principle, if they're uncommitted. But to endorse Harris, right, that, like, what would have happened if they didn't? I mean, I think, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Jared: I'll just say quickly to that, I don't mean to cut you off, because I know you're going somewhere else with that, but materially, probably not anything, because they had enough delegates. They didn't actually need them at that point. But also, I think if you're already looking for symbolic or even something that has some kind of movement energy to it, it would seem that remaining uncommitted right would be uh at least at least make some kind of scene it would at least be something people had to talk about you know um and uh Yeah, anyways, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off, but yeah.

Lara: No, no, you're totally right. I was going to say, would you even call it pragmatic? Since that's part of our discussion, right? I mean, to me, yeah, it seems like unstrategic entirely to say, here's all the power in our hands and here you can have it. You know, what a ridiculous thing to do. I mean, I think it's totally unstrategic. I hate the word pragmatic, but in this case it doesn't seem pragmatic either. So I think that's really you know, I think it's really important to think about that, because like you said, materially, probably nothing would have happened. But doesn't that give us more reason that they should have done something? Harris wasn't counting on their delegates. If in the end they still wanted to vote for her, you know, by all means, if that's what they need to do. But if that's the case, then it makes this sacrifice and this betrayal all the more meaningful because it shows even when it means nothing. Even when we gain nothing from it, except as individuals, and we'll get to that, we are still willing to sell you out. The people who are dying, the people who are fighting, the people who are on hunger strike, the people who are being tortured and murdered in jail, the people who are losing their scholarships, their access to education, their jobs, maybe their careers, we're willing to sacrifice all of you to the altar of not even electoralism because she didn't even get elected in a primary so the altar of whatever this is u.s politics and i think that's really important for folks to like wrap their minds around um i think um you know there's other things i wanted to bring up like what changed for them why you know why would they even think harris was going to give them what they want she made it very clear they couldn't even have a speech um and i think it kind of you know we can talk about what anna brought up about how electoral politics is theatrics and that especially this convention was really you know theatrical i mean to talk about joy in a time of genocide That alone can tell you, yeah, they probably were never going to allow Palestinians on the stage because how can you have a convention about joy when somebody is on the stage asking you to stop murdering their relatives? I think that would be really difficult to keep the theme up. But in addition to ways of power, I mean, I think this gets to the theme of counterinsurgency that we were talking about, that you have folks who have been for months now organizing around this genocide, folks who were willing to participate in this kind of movement in order to try to wrest some power back from the democratic machine. And yeah, and that these folks just took all of that power, sold them out, sold out folks in the US and folks here in Palestine and folks elsewhere. But it also kind of has revealed, I think, like even beyond the uncommitted movement, how progressives in the, sorry, in the Democratic Party, like who maybe supported the uncommitted movement or not, um really like can no longer even position themselves as outside of the democratic party or agitating within the democratic party because when it came down to it uh they fell in line just as the folks in the you know uncommitted movement did and again for what right for themselves like i think we can talk about You sent us a great article, and I don't know if we can share it with the folks here, that named Palestinian Americans who were part of at least leading the uncommitted movement in the space of the DNC. James Zoghbi is one of them. And what does it mean to like sell out all these folks who are voting, if not the folks in Gaza? I mean, I think very clearly it's like a cynical part of ingratiating yourself to the genocidal Democratic Party. And we see that in lots of different ways. We've seen that with AOC and we've seen that with other actors as well. And even in the speech that they finally released, they didn't call it a genocide. They didn't call for an arms embargo. I mean, like you said, what would have been the value of giving that speech? Do we need a Palestinian on the platform of the genocidal party that's literally funding and carrying out this genocide? I think that's it for me. I just wanted to say one last thing, which is maybe important for folks to remember, and one of our colleagues reminded me of this as well before we got on the call, that I think it was back in October or November that folks from Rifat, I'm sure, to us and many, many, many, many others We're online saying, hey, you know, it's October, it's November, it's December. It's an electoral year. Tell your representatives from Biden to your local representative that you're not going to vote for them unless they call for a ceasefire. Tell them now. And there were petitions. And I know because we helped facilitate that not only in the US, also in Canada, also elsewhere. um for folks to tell their politicians from as early as october november that they weren't going to vote for them unless they supported ending this genocide so even the idea itself right it when i was reminded of that it kind of put a new lens on it because it's also not that the uncommitted movement offered something new right it was sort of the reorganization of something that was already happening into a movement which was then co-opted and sold out So I think that kind of sheds like a different light and gives a different perspective on the way that counterinsurgency works that, you know, this call was happening for a long time before we got to the DNC a few weeks ago and and really was like stolen from from folks who were calling from it as early as the genocide began. Yeah.

Banna: Yeah, I'd just like to add one thing on the on this really is that the symbolic when bit actually was quite concerning. I had to dwell on this. What does the symbolic when mean in and during a genocide, right? Um, there's like a, there's a, there's a saying in Palestine really that says, um, those with their hands in cold water and those with their hands in fire, which basically means there are two different people that may basically have one. They can basically decide things without having any issue because their hands are in cold water and people whose. urgency to get out of that fire because their hands in the fire is, you know, is basically, you know, calling for people basically that, well, you can't really ask us to hold on anymore. You cannot really ask us to be resilient anymore or tolerate the fire anymore because your hand is in the cold water. My hands in the fire. It's too different to you. So this is what it is. It felt like their hands are in cold water. They know Palestinian hands are in the fire, really. But they can easily decide, well, we can have symbolic win. But how is the symbolic win really going to be helpful in this case? Of course, it's not helpful. But what it is actually, in fact, is harmful, really. Because what ends up happening is you demoralize people, right? You're not reaching any material change. You're not really getting any real material win. People have been on the street for almost a year. And nothing has really happened, right? So the question is, is that, well, if our ceiling of our demands keep lowering and lowering during a genocide and the continuation of a genocide, then how do we expect that a symbolic win, that Palestinians basically in Gaza should be celebrating a symbolic win or anybody should be celebrating a symbolic win? In fact, actually, we should be opposed to symbolic wins. Like, who are we kidding? We're almost a year into that genocide and symbolic wins, like we're not even a high, the high ceiling is enough at this stage. Like if you ask me and if you ask Palestinians, right? But you can see how like the strategy, of course, you know, to win the race and to win the electoral race has become the priority of the uncommitted movement again, right? We lost all of this sort of rhetoric of, yeah, we, we need to do this, this is a strategy to push them, or let's push them to what we want, let's build people power and all of these words that we kept hearing that obviously were hollow, right? So the thing about like speaking as well, just to add something to that, I think when Edward Said really mentioned the permission to narrate, He never said that, well, because we don't have the permission to narrate our history as Palestinians and our narrative and our stories as Palestinians is that we should seek inclusion in those spaces and hold and ask for platforms for the inclusion of our narratives. No, he meant to speak despite them. So the idea is that people should clap for the fact that, oh yeah, some Zionists said, that they were unhappy that Palestinians were not given a platform. They felt, well, if Zionists are given a platform, Palestinians should too. So should we clap for that? Should we be clapping for this? Should we be happy that Zionists are saying that we should be included? These are the limits and the banality of liberalism is that inclusion is all that it could go for. That's it. That's the limit. That's the reach that you can reach, inclusion. Anything else, you know, about liberation, about US imperialism out of Palestine, out of the global south, out of Sudan? No, none of that. It's just inclusion. To be able to speak and not even to speak your truth, but to be speaking even a toned down truth, right? a policed truth, right? So what bothers me the most is not just the begging to be part of a platform that is very shameful and humiliating as a Palestinian, but those people that just believe that we need to constantly be included, that inclusion is important. But the system that you want to see be included in It's the same system that was built on our exclusion. So it doesn't, it's just counter, it's just paradoxical, really. So it's an embarrassment for Palestinians. It's an humiliation for Palestinians to be sitting down and crying like clowns and saying, oh my God, we're not given space to speak. And look, I didn't really actually want to mention this, but I really like this sort of concept created, even though he's a bit, he's obviously the theorist on nihilism, but Nietzsche really writes very well on slave morality. And you know what he says about slave morality? He says, It's a type of mentality that you have that you start sort of in the press, really start glorifying their oppression and they fetishize their oppression because they believe they have the highest morality, the highest moral ground for being oppressed. Right. So instead of actually breaking the shackles of oppression, you start accepting and normalizing oppression. Right. So that's the state morality, right? The idea is that you don't want to come at the master and be like, you know, let's get rid of you. We no longer want to have that relationship of master and slave. No, let's just fetishize our oppression. Let's fetishize our situation and move no further than that. And look, Frantz Fanon even in Black Skin and White Masks talked about similar concepts of inclusion. in the press of policy, right? He wrote a whole book about it, you know, and in the rest of the earth also it's mentioned. So these concepts are not new. Like we know this, we know this idea of wanting to be included in violent systems to just to have the right to speak, but it's not even the right to speak with agency as Lara mentioned. It's about being there. Like it's hollow, it's shameful, it's humiliating. And this mindset is really not accidental, by the way, in the Democratic Party, in the progressives, this mindset, this sort of fetishization, this all of that stuff of, you know, between Rashida Tlaib and all of this. And I'm very, very, very vocal about these things. They don't see themselves as part of the problem. They see themselves external to the problem. And this is because they have that sort of idea. Right. And so Palestinians are not really voting for inclusion. Like imagine saying the same thing like, oh yeah, we are very upset that we were not able to have a platform along with Zionists at the DNC. So you go and tell the mother and the parent of a martyr, you should support us because it's a horrible day. We were not able to have a platform. Like it's just banal and it's shameful. Like inclusion in that system is betrayal. It is, in fact, counterinsurgency as well, as you said. So it's all of these things about just how the press really see themselves within systems that are violent. And seeking inclusion in those systems really just puts a question mark, puts an exclamation mark there even. So how are we meant to keep watching those theatrics, right? And Julia Qasim's article in Al Mayadeen also talking about the uncommitted movement actually put it very well as well. It's all theatrics, really. And you're supposed to engage in that. And once you walk out from that and you look externally, you realize that everybody is a clown, really. Everybody in that space is a clown. And this is a circus. And you are witnessing genocide. And what's your response to it is some form of fetishization. of symbolic wins and of your own oppressive status and no move to remove that oppressive status or really work to even do the minimum, which is ending the genocide, really stopping the genocide, even a ceasefire, which has become more or less an empty word, as some say.

Jared: I appreciate everything you all had to say. For sure. Just for folks who are wondering, I will pull it up for just a second and put it in the chat. But the article that you all referenced, you both referenced briefly, is this piece in Al Mayadeen, the uncommitted movement is uncommitted to resistance, committed to the establishment. It's a good piece, you know, goes into some of the individuals, some of the PACs and the kind of funding, you know, who these things are connected to, the DSA's role. um so on and so forth and so i definitely encourage people to to read that piece for themselves too um it does it does uh a good job of kind of laying out, you know, some of what this was, what we saw, explaining it. I'll say for myself, just in full transparency, like, I did vote uncommitted in the primaries, you know, and I did also sign the thing that you all had sent out and sent it to my electeds, you know, prior to that. And I thought that that was, I mean, I don't put very much weight at all in terms of these voting processes or what we do during them. And I don't really think that, as people know, they've listened to me over the years, I don't really think that that's much of how we do politics. But, and I think it's a big problem how much people think of it as the way to do politics is just to vote, right? And that that's sort of the only thing that they need to do. They've done their civic responsibility or whatever. But I also knew that if it came to a convention, especially the only opportunity I really saw that the uncommitted movement might play some kind of role is if they had an open convention. So if after Biden dropped out, if they hadn't rallied around Kamala, right, and had gone to a convention where the delegates actually got to vote and decide on who the candidate for the Democratic Party would be, then, you know, 30 delegates is still not a lot, but maybe they could have played a little bit of a role negotiating you know on policy or the platform um that maybe would have done something i don't have a lot of faith in that either but i agree with you both in terms of for the movement to have represented itself in some kind of principled fashion through this process it would have had to have had some kind of clear red line of look, you may not need our support, but we're also not giving it unless A, B, and C happen. And, you know, again, that would be, even if the DNC said no, thank you, which they probably would have, at least then you stood on principle of not you know putting your support behind uh you know kamala harris at this point but ultimately these people are all and this is the point you're making is that you know and it's the uncommitted it's discussed in the article about um you know these are people who are a delegate typically is a person who is a politician and who has a a role within the democratic party and so even if they were uncomfortable with genocide and sort of became representatives for the uncommitted movement, ultimately, it's kind of an inside thing and, you know, the likelihood would be that they would betray the people. The big betrayal is between the people who were voting uncommitted because the people who are voting uncommitted Obviously, we're doing so as an objection to the policy of the genocide, right? So anyways, I just wanted to say some of that. All right, so next up, so... And the other thing, too, you mentioned this, too, about the lack of democracy within the process. I mean, other people have spoken about this. We haven't talked about it too much here. But, you know, really, the Democratic Party and the ruling class performed a coup within the Democratic Party, you know. They knew that Biden had lost so much, you know, both because of his age, but also because of how unpopular, right, he was. And a lot of that having to do with the genocide and his being very directly the person responsible. That again, I think, Lara, this point that you made earlier about plausible deniability, even though It's not plausible, really, because if Harris had a different position, she's free to say it. And she's saying the exact same position that Biden has been saying for months and months now. But that still creates this kind of buffer and layer where people say, well, maybe she's a little different. Maybe we can encourage her differently or whatever. So I want to go to the kind of anti-Zionist part of the discussion, because there's this piece on your website you have that's co-created, as I understand, with M. Cohen. It's about anti-Zionist allyship. And I think my only real... I don't want to be critical, but I'll just say, I think we're at a point where Palestinians probably need more than allies, right? And they need people who are really comrades and really see the struggle, really, as you have all said, study and understand the struggle of Palestinian liberation and are there to not only be a kind of front for that struggle, but also to understand that struggle is connected to So many other things, right, including our own, you know, freedom and liberation ultimately in the final instance, I think. But there's some really good points that are made in the piece. And one of the things that is written there is, quote, part of developing real anti-Zionist politics is developing a keen eye for politics that seem anti-Zionist. but in fact represent the interests of Zionists. And I think this was part of the conversation that I definitely wanted to have. It reminds me of Steven Salaita saying that he can just sort of smell the Zionism on certain folks or in certain instances, whether it's an organization or an individual. He's like, Palestinians just have a sense. We can just sort of tell. But I appreciate that you all have spent some time and thinking, like trying to help identify these things a little bit and see where they come from, like materially. And so. You know, we've already discussed a little bit about how to actually orient ourselves towards the struggles and demands of those oppressed by Zionism in some of our prior conversations. But honestly, I wonder if we could revisit some of these politics that, you know, seem anti-Zionist, but in fact represent the interests of Zionism.

Banna: Yeah, I think like it's very important to mention that we originally like hope that or we had like sort of hope that this movement was carried by the principle of anti-Zionism and if unfortunately what we've seen is that it had the veneer of anti-Zionism but it actually didn't um one thing that we tell folks about um all the time is that anti-Zionism like is actually not very difficult to understand it's not as complicated it's very simple so it's not to say that like oh well what is like how how is this zionist and how is not zionist and it's very in fact very simple and we've explained that through our article um on a magazine um a little bit and we have an upcoming uh piece as well um that discusses anti-zionism more thoughtfully and critically but one of the things that people don't understand about Zionism and anti-Zionism is that we've seen NGOs and movements and different groups sort of use the language of anti-Zionism, even though their language more so fits into the non-Zionism category, which is we've seen actually people even define themselves as non-Zionist, right? Just imagine yourself really calling yourself, I'm a non-racist, right? Saying I'm not anti-racist, but I'm a non-racist. And I don't, I might not really engage in racism, I am also not going to actively fight racism. I'm not going to really participate in that movement. So even that is quite interesting. So we've seen people define themselves as that. Obviously, the Zionism is easy to pick up on. The problem is that we have a lot of people that tell us, oh, well, this organization called themselves anti-Zionist. So why are they anti-Zionist? it's very easy to look at their liberal Zionism. Like we have a lot of organizations that would engage in liberal Zionism and would engage in Zionism and obviously call themselves anti-Zionist. So an indicator, and I say a huge indicator and usually forgotten is the normalization indicator, right? Both side is an indicator, right? We've seen since the beginning of the genocide, we've seen people in statements, we've seen people how they speak about Palestine, how they speak about, you know, quote-unquote violence and all of that, about, you know, condemning all violence, about how they, you know, call it war instead of genocide and all of that. And they might at once, of course, say things like, oh, yeah, we are anti-Zionist, as in, like, they define it as being anti-Israeli government currently. So the system and the government right now, they're opposed to it, but they don't prescribe themselves as, you know, we are, you know, anti-Zionist in the sense of Zionism as a settler, colonial ideology of ethnic cleansing and you know, apartheid and, you know, capitalism and all of that. They don't understand that history. Um, they, they just see it as some sort of something that happened in the past and then unfortunately happened. They, they would, they would still mention it. Like they would still mention the Nakba, they would still mention, but then now Israel is there, but it's there, right? It's, it's there. It's a fact. And. they will have some policies that are bad and we're opposed to those policies, but we're not opposed to the end of that state. We're not opposed to the dismantlement of that state. We're not, sorry, we're not supporting the dismantlement of that state. We're opposed to, in fact, having, you know, a liberated Palestine from the river to the sea. We see, you know, things like solutions. We see things like the words of two state solution, one state solution. We don't see beyond that. We don't see the language of liberation. We don't see the language of decolonization. That is what those people that call themselves anti-Zionist, but actually, in fact, hold and uphold liberal Zionism. And so one of the things that I keep asking folks, like, how do you determine that this organization is anti-Zionist, if they actually have really radical politics, but they still engage with their liberal Zionists. And this is the question. This is the basic, very small equation. If you are an organization and you engage and uphold space for liberal Zionist talking points, you are facilitating Zionism, right? But if you are allowing people to to demonize Palestinian armed resistance, the Axis resistance in front of your face, while you are supportive of them because of the sort of liberal tolerance of views, you are upholding and advancing Zionism. And lastly, anybody speaking about life after Gaza, and we've seen this, by the way, in a piece that was published, life after Gaza, what happens after Gaza? And those people that speak about the genocide as if some sort of past or what happens post the genocide are upholding Zionism. Because what they're doing is instead of actively acting to stop the genocide, they're seeing it as some sort of de facto thing that happened. It's a fact. We can't do anything about it. uh engaging in in defeatist nihilistic politics right and why i keep saying nihilistic politics is because they've conditioned themselves these sort of liberal zionists in that like okay we are we are only going to accept as far as what we you know what like we can have which is a pragmatist approach and what we can have is a you know well previously was the two-state solution but now with some form of coexistence and peace and and there's the language has have become you know more or so vague these days because people are realizing that the executioner and the victim cannot coexist together but the language is still there like one of the things that we point out the j at at uh the gocheva collective is that it's easy for us to look at statements and see, look, if in your statement you're condemning October 7th, that's a big saying about what you hold, what kind of principle you hold, whether it's non-Zionism or liberal Zionism. So it's easy to point these things out. The problem is that we see the movement of, of Palestine solidarity movement abroad, not just in the US, by the way, we're talking every everywhere, right? There's the ones that are defining themselves with anti Zionism are not really aware of what it actually means. And then there are a large portion that are not even defining themselves with that language. Why? Because they still see things as like, well, this is a policy issue, or this is you know, a war, this is a matter of the current situation. So they would obviously call for a ceasefire, but they wouldn't have them say, well, the troops need to be out of Gaza or like, you know, Palestine needs to be liberated fully. And they wouldn't be citing like things like, well, you know, because the international law says this and that. No, I mean, Palestinians at the end of the day, we cite obviously international law because it's been a tool after Oslo. I don't even want to go towards the point of it being counterinsurgency as well or counterinsurgent in a way, but we use that language, but it has been limiting as well. So if somebody asks you and says, well, under international law, The occupied territories include Gaza. So that's why we believe Gaza needs to be removed from the occupiers. That's Zionism. So anything that tolerates the existence of Israel on the land of Palestine is Zionism. So it's not about policy. It's also about like material and territory is very important. I mean, Frantz Fanon talks about it, land, territory. It's what the oppressed really, you know, they've died for, really. The colonized die for their land. And so they can't exclude that from the equation, right? But at the end of the day, you know, you can go on and read, you know, articles about what anti-Zionism is, and you can read statements, you know, even the DSA, what they had some sort of statement saying that they are anti-Zionist, but you can see how Some elements of the DSA, I mean, we're not talking about the people, we're talking about DSA as an institution. uh they they see themselves as capable easily of holding you know non-zionists we're not maybe not let's not call it liberal zionism because you know the dsa supporters will be like no we're not zionist but um they do hold non-zionist views they're not they're not anti-zionists i wouldn't call them so so it's it's just we have to be clear that statements don't matter because At the end of the day, what happened with the DSA is that they sidelined the conversation and they joined hands and hands with the uncommitted movement and sabotaged the potential. At least there was some potential, regardless of our position on the Democratic Party. There was some potential to push something in terms of like if they actually reached for Harris as well and being like, well, it doesn't matter who changed and what changed. you are still complicit and we're not going to stop until you give us a ceasefire. There could have been a potential there. So you have to look at actions of these groups. You have to look at their politics and how they act and their statements. Some of the statements are also just relatively clear. They just say it upfront. They would say things like, well, we think that Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully together. And I say in behalf of Palestinians at the end of the day, um, it's, it's, it's as if telling, you know, the, the, uh, and I'm sorry to mention this, if it's a trigger warning, but saying like a rapist and a victim can, can live together. It's similar to that. It's, it's very, very, it's asking Palestinians to do that. And, and you can see the limits of, of liberalism in that, in that, you know, they would probably hear that conversation, they would hear that example, and they would still think, well, this is the only way, like this is the only way that you can have peace, quote unquote. And also anybody that speaks of peace during the time, during genocide is Zionist, by the way, this is an important element. So normalization, peace talks during that, with people who talk about the life after Gaza, and the people who engage in both sides, those are people that are not and absolutely not anti-Zionists. They will not, even if they claim to support Palestine, even if they uplift Palestinian voices, even if they do everything for Palestine, if they do that, if they say those things, they're not going to be for the emancipation of the oppressed Palestinians.

Lara: Vanna, I was sitting here clapping and snapping to myself while I'm on mute. That was so good. Maybe I'll just add a little bit, like a couple of examples that we discussed that relate to some of the things Vanna brought up already. I think also you mentioned it, Jared, that there's been a lot of obfuscation and confusion around these terms, around Zionism, anti-Zionism, with ceasefire, so that the term literally has lost its meaning at this point, where you have the U.S. saying, Hamas won't accept a ceasefire and the ceasefire in question is like a four-week pause and the military stays in Gaza and after four weeks the genocide continues. yeah there's been like a complete erosion of meaning in words by a variety of actors and part of why we i think your critique also of the um or like critical perspective let's say of the um guide that we made with m cohen and i really have to say like i'm a big fan of m cohen we're big m cohen fans she did a lot in that um i am too by the way yeah Oh, yeah, sorry, not trying to imply that you're not.

Jared: No, no, no, no. I just want to say, like, yeah, I'm not taking shots at Em or you all.

Lara: Oh, yeah, no, I didn't feel like you were. I just wanted to say because Em really put a lot of work into that and we really appreciated that, you know, that was a big deal. I think, like, it was really an attempt to, like, have a first stab at what, such a violent term, but have a first attempt at what, you know, could be like a guide because it doesn't seem like any of these guides exist already meaningfully and there's not like a set of institutional principles that any organization that I know of that uses that term to describe themselves so this was like sort of the first attempt but I think it's a really important comment that you mentioned that Palestinians really deserve more and that's been and not just Palestinians right like so many groups of people really deserve more. And I think this cross like cross context kind of solidarity that's rooted in history, that's rooted in knowledge and like real resistance. I think it's been a project that people have been trying to build up. I mean, for a long time, like there are lots of historical examples, but even in my own life over the last ten years, I've seen it. But you also see how like a lot of times that gets co-opted into neoliberal identity politics and electoralism and so that's been a real challenge and I think that's why when we have this idea and in the subsequent things that we wrote we really try to like give people action items because oftentimes we do get lost in these like terms and people don't understand or don't read or you know and it can be overwhelming as well to read and find out who you should be reading so Anyway, but I think that's a really good point. I also wanted to say like, I thought I love this idea of the smell test. I laughed and I love it when Stephen said like he can just smell it on some people. And I think that for a lot of Palestinians, especially Palestinians who have kind of grown up like with this history, with their family telling them, you know, living it, that's true. And at the same time, it seems that there are a lot of people who don't know the difference, right? Because part of why we wrote it as well is that We talked a lot in the first interview that we did with you about neoliberal identity politics and the ways that Palestinian identity is a lot of times co-opted into advancing Zionism. And a lot of times that's in the normalization projects that Banna mentioned. But sometimes it's in like more like still normalization, but maybe more discrete acts of normalization where you have organizations that maybe even refer to themselves as anti-Zionist or don't make an official stance and kind of make critiques of Netanyahu and hope you will assume they're anti-Zionist. And they'll put Palestinians in the forefront and say, here's our Palestinian here. They agree with us. So how come you don't? and that's really problematic so for palestinians who you know who maybe know some of these things but don't have them written down or maybe don't know them at all um it's also important right so yeah so this so just like i just wanted to kind of say that because it came up for me as you were talking about it and i think um i think also there is this assumption like sometimes that we all can see things and like that Palestinians even those situated in history say the same things and it doesn't seem to me like the more time that I look and I listen it seems that that's not always the case so like this is part of the good faith discussion right but yeah so anyway I think there are these like declarations a lot lately right as anti-zionism like comes more into the mainstream and people see the material effects of zionism and see very clearly what zionism has done for more than a century now um there are these like declarations of anti-zionism and this was something that one of our colleagues brought up that i wanted to add in here because i thought so funny so interesting and really i'm sure will land for anyone who's in the us maybe also you know in europe like we all know someone who has said to us i'm not a racist right we all know someone who's done that and when somebody says that to you what's your first thought you're a racist right so what does it mean like right if if if if if our largest contribution to like like thought of anti-zionism or zionism is that we're not that and we never go further than those kind of claims like materially or even rhetorically it should raise flags and there are people doing this and you know we're gonna talk about them more but but i'll just say for now like jvp is one of these groups that has been doing this continually at least over the last year i think before because they made a declaration a few years ago And you can look at their definition of anti-Zionism and you can look at our article unit to compare and contrast. We actually reference theirs and talk about it a little bit. But, you know, this is important because just saying that you're not something doesn't make you not something. And anyone who has suspicions. probably rightfully has them, right? Especially if you never go further in your discussion. And so it's really like what Banna said, how you act, how you react, how you uplift some analysis, how you incorporate that analysis into your behavior, how you suppress others. And we'll talk more about suppression in the counterinsurgency like bit in a bit. But that's really important. And I think people really focus a lot like like we talked about neoliberal identity politics and kind of like the theatrics and the visuals that rhetoric can also play a big part in that. And that's really important. There's another thing about kindergarten ethics. I think that already brought it up a little bit, but I think it's important that, you know, there's this idea that. people talk about like more now with this kind of vagueness of language that will have coexistence equality for all you know and nobody says what that's gonna look like how we're gonna get there what it means um but like we wrote about this in the piece but i think it's always worth bringing up again that okay in kindergarten if you steal another kid's toy justice isn't that you keep the toy and then or even that you share it, necessarily, if it's their toy. Justice is going to be the teacher gives the toy back, and maybe there's a discussion about why we don't steal others' things, and we can ask to share them. And so I think this is a basic thing. When people make these kinds of vague declarations, it's not just that they're obfuscating the conversation and meaning and words and history and visions of the future, but it's also that they're trying to ensure that the settlers remain. and that they keep their privileges and that they have a seat at the table. Right. Because if you say equal rights for all and you don't address that, the settlers rights literally come at the expense of the colonized in the sense that the land is stolen, the water is stolen, the roads are stolen, the resources are stolen, self-determination is stolen. All of those are taken from someone else. If you don't address that, it means you're forgetting it or you're you know requesting that it be forgotten and so that's really important you know that's like not something we would even teach our children so why would we take seriously someone who says i'm not a racist and then pretends that it's not worth discussing that your right to self-determination has been stolen for a hundred years um and then there are other ways that this happens that this kind of like anti-zionist like Zionism as anti-Zionism happens on a more personal level that can have like larger effects. And this is a conversation that's kind of been going on for months, but that we brought up yesterday online. There's a book that came out yesterday by, what's her name, Alyssa Wise, who's a rabbi, and Rebecca Vilkomerson. I don't know if that's how you pronounce her name, but that's how I say it in my head. And it came out, I believe, originally it was supposed to come out the day before Nakba Day, which is quite grim. and there was some uh there was some pushback because they're publishing during a time of genocide about solidarity and for some background i don't know alyssa wise as well she's connected to rabbis for ceasefire which has sort of done some Some actions, some of which seem to be quite symbolic, and I don't know that much else, but Rebecca Vilkomerson used to be the head of JVP, I think before they ever made even nominal rhetorical commitment to anti-Zionism. um and part of her like outstaying from what i understand from jvp related to the fact that her husband um is israeli and works for um a company something like checkpoint security or checkpoint surveillance or something it's a company that engages in surveillance or supports surveillance by infrastructure uh that's used against palestinians in the west bank if not in palestine in general and so to the best of my knowledge jvp has never contended with this or discussed how one of its founders one of its former leaders you know, has been married to someone who is part of this and made money. Right. And made a name and became a quote unquote expert on Palestine while being married to a person engaged in this and profiting monetarily and not disclosing it either. But but these are the two people who published the book. And what we were what we've tried to what we trying to what we have been trying to point out to people is that uh you know publishing a book like this isn't just about the money now the the yesterday when the book came out they said well all the profits are going to we're not numbers and that's great we're not numbers you know deserves the money and also so do many many many other palestinian organizations and individuals in gaza none of which by the way have been uplifted by either authors during the genocide as far as i know until yesterday um but nobody writes a book and you can ask academics i'm sure you know nobody writes a book for the profit right nobody writes a book for the profit they're going to make off a book people write books to be seen as experts on that subject to be invited to speak and to be influential i mean sure to share their knowledge but in this case it's to be situated as experts and so what does it mean for two people who haven't materially you know forget haven't materially contributed to Palestinian solidarity like who don't even seem to have read Palestinian history like what does it mean to Palestinians to resist Zionism to be situating themselves as experts during a time of genocide people who aren't even calling for others to donate to the GoFundMes of families trying to get their children medical care or get their families out of the space of genocide. You know, I mean, I think this is really something we have to contend with. And I hope I'm not giving the book too much free press because I don't think it would have been incredibly popular anyway. But I think that folks really need to think about this because there are actors right now who could be saying it is not not only is it not an appropriate time you're not an appropriate author to be writing about this subject i mean to call what you have been doing an act of revolutionary love while people are engaged in real revolutionary behavior in palestine right now right that we can see and elsewhere in the world that we can see very clearly that you're not participating in or supporting and have condemned what do we what do we do with that sorry my cats are fighting in the background here but so they're getting mad they're getting heated about this topic as well anyway i think these are really important things and and it's not just for individuals or organizations and like you know at the end of the day like there's another part of this that do palestinians need to be the ones calling this out every time it happens right like what about the anti-zionist allies in the us what about like jewish voice for peace like i said never contended with phil cummerson's husband you know her connection to these things as far as i know i could be wrong i would be happy to be corrected but where are they right saying hey wait this is weird this is wild why are you writing this book why are you publishing this book now anyway like i've spent a long time on this book so i just want to give another example but uh and it'll be about another book but i'll make it quicker which is there's uh there's another author another jewish american who i think maybe at one point would have or you know called himself non-zionist post-zionist now i think he probably just goes by zionist joshua leifer who published a book about uh jewish american like the jewish american community today and history there was a an event that he was supposed to give i think in brooklyn or somewhere and i don't know if the event was cancelled or if the library sorry the bookstore refused to host the person who would have been his like interlocutor who was a rabbi who is a zionist i mean you can look him up i won't give his name because i honestly don't remember it but you can look it up it was a big deal um so either way whether the bookstore you know just disinvited this person they disinvited him because they said we won't host a zionist that's what they said and now of all times this is like a great statement a very brave and bold you know thing a great uh stance to take anyway um they took the stance the event was cancelled and since then the manager who took that stance has been fined as a result of the pressure that was created by Joshua Leifer and the other people in his orbit, Peter Beinhart, I'm sure all of the other folks who were probably looking forward to going to that event and talking about these things. And the point isn't just about the material consequences, the attacks on people who are actually taking a stance against Zionism. But this is part of a recent history, right? Joshua Leifer, in the days after October 7th, published a critique of the left, talking about how the left isn't humanistic enough for celebrating Palestinians breaking out of the concentration camp of Gaza. And that, you know, he couldn't celebrate or be part of a left that would harm the people that he cares about here, you know, the settlers that he cares about here. And while I think we can all understand like this kind of emotional thing of we don't like to see people get hurt, right? That's like a human thing. but this isn't really about that right like trying to critique people for not being human enough for celebrating that you know people living in a concentration camp continue to resist or refusing to condemn them for resisting that's not about humanism right and this is another way like we advance Zionism while completely obfuscating what the problem is that we should all feel good about ourselves that we should that Palestinians should be happy victims that we should die quietly you know rather than resist and also that that these people will only support us as long as we resist within the confines of what they accept Right. And it's not just Joshua Leifer, who I believe now just openly identifies as a Zionist. It's also people who call themselves anti-Zionist and insist on that every day as well. And this is something that we need to think about and contend with in our in our actions, because, again, with this person, it's not just about the person. It's about all of the institutions that platform this person, that platform those around them, that give them a space to be seen seen as like an expert as a thinker as someone who has a real understanding of history that's respectable and you know deserves consideration yeah and so i think that let me see i'm just looking at my notes to see if there's anything else that i want to talk about I mean, I think it's just important that we think about these things, about what is anti-Zionism and what's not, because as we talked about at the beginning of this question when I started a while ago, that, you know, this is all obfuscation, right? This is all obfuscation. This is all in service of maintaining something that's violent. And the people who can't participate in this discussion right now, the people who can't tell us what Zionism is, are the people who are under the rubble. or the people who are dying resisting it, or the people who are just dying trying to get bread for their families in line, you know, or trying to organize to get out of Gaza right now. So I think that's really important because these conversations and these, you know, ambiguities aren't just things out in the ether that we can discuss, you know, into oblivion. They're things that right now are changing or ending people's lives.

Banna: Can I just add one thing, Jared, if that's okay?

Lara: I have something, it might be a little bit controversial.

Banna: Yeah, it might be a little bit controversial because like the book about that, and I've seen this, like a bit of a discussion about that before, like we even mentioned it at all on our Twitter. We, like the thing that makes me a little tiny bit uncomfortable is that we understand historically that there has been a Jewish-Palestinian solidarity and there's nothing that could obfuscate that. But if it's sort of forced in a way to say, we're not really enemies, we love each other, we are showing you again that we are, it sounds a little bit like, well, we like white people writing a book about how they are not racist and they love black people and they they express solidarity with black people but imagine that during a time there is lynching of black people right i honestly have to say this it is a very uncomfortable conversation and even um you know em as well has published on this And, you know, we've plenty of people have opened a conversation on this, but I can't express it enough is that it's very uncomfortable to sort of have the assumption that there is even a problem between like the Jewish activists and Palestinian activists. It is a false conflation between Zionism and Judaism. And they're engaging somewhat in that because they're assuming that there is some sort of lack of clarity on that. But there isn't lack of clarity on that. We know there's no issue. So there's this idea that, well, if you're not really engaging in acting material, to stop the genocide but all you're engaging with is to say well actually we're not part of that we do not support what's happening we love you guys and we support you and we stand in solidarity with you like at the time of enduring genocide this is very uncomfortable for the palestinian like what am i supposed to do with that solidarity that is expressed in that moment that doesn't extend to action and doesn't extend to material action, nothing more than a symbolic. If you're publishing a book on that as well. So we can use words like revolutionary love, we can use all sorts of things like that, but it's an uncomfortable conversation we're gonna have to have. Like these things in fact are contributing to that conflation between Zionism and Judaism. And that is, in fact, also another element of Zionism is to conflate. So people can start feeling like the moment they criticize Zionism, that it's anti-Semitic and all of that, which is a layer and layer of the history of the fight. The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism was meant to do that strictly. the universities, I think NYU was it, that was saying something like, oh, you can't really criticize Zionism or Zionists because it's a protected category. Like all of this, I feel like in a softer manner, such books also help normalize that stuff because it makes an assumption that there is an enmity or there is like some sort of issue that actually doesn't exist, not for Palestinians, at least, you know. So like it's It's very uncomfortable, let's say. I won't use any other word, but it's very uncomfortable to see such books get platformed.

Lara: Gerrit, I'll just add one last thing, but I'm gonna make it quick, I promise. I feel like our, we all, you know, Banna and I started and we were like, yeah, we're gonna have time for lots of discussion. We get riled up, you know, we get excited to talk. I just wanted to add, I think that one of the things about this that's like important for folks to know is part of the like frustration that comes with these kinds of things and why we talk about them on podcasts and on social media and elsewhere is because like good faith actors engage with criticism right or let's not say that that's that's quite judgmental people who are open to criticism engage with criticism right like on a personal level like if you if somebody reached out to you and in fact i know this has happened because you've mentioned it in other interviews even that you've done with us that folks have reached out to you and said uh you know maybe consider reading this or looking at this and folks do that to us as well and especially when you know i mean a lot of times it comes from folks who end up being our friends and we try to take the time to think about that and do it and nobody's perfect right But I think that part of the reason that it's important to have these conversations in public is because attempts to have them in private are met with silence. And in fact, attempts to have them in public are met with silence as well. I don't want to only talk about JVP, but there was, I think on the same day that Jamal Bowman, before he lost his election, um condemned within our lifetime for protesting the museum that was like from what i understand a reconstruction of the nova party outside of gaza um calling it like you know of course they were protesting i mean it's like genocide propaganda Jamal Bowman condemned them and within like condemned them calling them anti-semitic right he wasn't just condemning them for the action within like hours if not less there were like more uh statements from JVP in support of Jamal Bowman okay they had already given their like support for him no comment on the fact that he's calling some of the most prominent Palestinian activists in New York anti-semitic when they're fighting genocide propaganda so when folks responded to that there was no response when folks said hey this is wrong this person is literally calling palestinians fighting genocide palestinians concerned about the lives of their family members or the deaths of their family members anti-semitic there was no response and similarly with these other authors i mean we shared a post from one of the authors that i mentioned in our critique and there was no response so i think it's also important to highlight that because folks who are open to conversation, who are open to growing, who are open to doing better and learning, and we all should be. And like I said, we can't all always be perfect. We can't all always be gracious or get it right, even the third time. But when you consistently ignore critique, it says something about your politics as well as your analysis. Right. And so I think that's really important. I just wanted to add it because that's it's not a. It's not like a unique. It's like a characteristic of what we see in these things that we're criticizing. It's not sort of like a unique thing that happens now and then that you don't get a reply. It's a systemic issue. that we're trying to address.

Jared: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think you all model that very well yourselves. I think just to speak for myself, I'm not always the best at handling criticism. And I do know that a little bit about myself. it tends to depend, right? So for people, and it's relevant to some extent, because I have to believe that the people who are loving the criticism, that we actually have something shared in terms of like what we're politically engaged in that, you know, and so like, I can see the problem, right? Because if they are shared, right? If they are approaching this saying, hey, we're in solidarity with Palestinians and you know this is then they should be open to hearing from palestinians when palestinians are saying this is actually not what we're asking you to do right um and so for me like i'm responding to a criticism right now actually not at this moment but earlier this morning and yesterday that i but it was shared to with me privately you know it was shared with me and so i'm engaging with the person who shared it sharing my point of view on it i will of course incorporate and think about their point of view and you know usually for me because of the nature of my work what i try to do is to to reorient my practice because honestly i'm probably not going to go back and like delete a conversation that i had that they think is problematic for some reason or another because i just think it's better to keep a sort of open record of what we've done and also To have some respect for the people that I sat down and had a conversation with. But I do get this, you know, and I do have and I've had people on Josh has had people on where people have said, hey, that was kind of Zionist or the, you know, low key or whatever. Right. And. I'll we'll talk about it right and we'll talk about why and what does this mean and like okay let's try not to not to replicate this going forward right and so you know it's different in different spaces for organizations and for people that are not doing a platform and where you can uh you can reorient your practice honestly at any sort of time um i think they should be very open to that sort of stuff sometimes people just jump into the youtube comments and talk and i tend to like block them so there's like there's layers of this right uh but i appreciate you you bringing it up and um you know i do think that yeah that there's a I also think the point, and I think you made it, Banna, was really good about the timing and about like, you know, thinking about these things in terms of like even the example you used, if there was a widespread, you know, incidents. I mean, it would be sort of like, you know, amid the defund protests, police writing books about like, you know uh how to be kinder and gentler you know towards uh black people and that we're not really enemies or whatever you know the same point you made about white folks and and you know writing a book like that during lynching or whatever it's You know, I think the timing is really bad. Like, I don't know. I mean, there's books that are coming out right now around fighting anti-Semitism and things like that. And obviously, we need to always have that. There always should be space for that conversation of fighting anti-Semitism. But, you know, it's just sort of a weird thing of like, why? Why is that? Like, what is what's the thing that we're pointing at right now in this specific moment? that that is the issue, it's usually in this moment a cover or a conflation of genocide, basically. And I'm not suggesting that all these people are doing that, but it's sort of like, why is this the conversation that we need to have at this time? And I don't know, I haven't read the books that, you know, you're referencing, so I can't like speak too deeply to it. But yeah, and I would love to, you DM me about Em Cohen's piece. I'd love to take a look at that and maybe talk to Em about it. I do think it's a strange thing, you know, unless we're writing a piece right now to really talk about how anti-Zionism is explicitly not anti-Semitism and here's why. Like that seems like maybe a conversation that would be more useful from a Jewish anti-Zionist right now, right? But anyway. enough of that. I agree with I agree with your critiques and understand your disappointments and frustrations around it. So The next thing I had to talk about is really kind of wild. And I just wanted to bring this up because I thought it would be a good thing to talk to both of you about. And it sort of illustrates everything that you all are talking about, maybe on a on a more egregious scale, because what this is is a piece from the Atlantic. And I just want to go on record again anytime I would talk about the Atlantic, that the Atlantic is a openly, intentionally kind of liberal counterinsurgency apparatus. Like, it understands itself in that way. It is, you know, I think the editor in chief is Jeffrey Goldberg, who was a former IOF prison guard and, you know, has these criticisms of Zionism sometimes, but again, very much in the ways that that you all are talking about it whether it's a criticism of netanyahu or a certain policy or the settlements maybe things like this but the atlantic also was one of the key media organizations in vetting and speaking about in glowing terms of the united states official counterinsurgency manual And that manual, of course, brought together human rights organizations, media organizations, NGOs, and military, US military, also just sort of global counterinsurgency experts, including people like David Kilcullen, who's an Australian counterinsurgency expert. and the um the thing that i would say is you know they they at the time that that uh vetting happened they referred to it as like the best and most open exchange of ideas that they had ever encountered in working with the us military um and so I just wanted to show a piece to show kind of what counterinsurgency writing can look like, for an example, for folks. And we could talk about it a little bit. First, I will share these quick screenshots, which people who watch the show will probably be familiar with. But hang on. That's not the one I want to show first. Oh, wait. Yeah, it is. Okay. So this is, again, from the Ungovernable Society by Gregor Chamayou. It is about kind of development of corporate counterinsurgency in the 1970s. And he's using here basically a sketch of counterinsurgency that was provided by, you know, the experts at this time. And so it was splitting people into, splitting basically movements or protests into four groups. The radicals, they want to change the system. They have underlying social, economical, political motives, are hostile to enterprise as such. He's thinking about in a business context. That's why he references enterprise and maybe extremist or violent with them. There is nothing to be done. Then there's the opportunists. They offer visibility, power, followers, and perhaps even employment. The key to dealing with opportunists is to provide them with at least the perception of a partial victory. The idealists, these people are usually naive and altruistic. Again, this is like how the counterinsurgents are describing them, right? They apply an ethical and moral standard. The problem with them is that they are sincere and as a result, very credible, except they are also credulous. It can be shown that their opposition to an industry or its products causes harm to others and cannot be ethically justified. They are forced to change their position. That last point, is important to some extent, right? Because it's like if in the context of what we'll get to, right, if if an idealist is shown that their opposition to, say, the Democratic Party, you know, causes harm to others and cannot be ethically justified, they are forced to change their position. Right. And so that's the strategy that, for instance, Democrats use constantly towards more idealistic thinkers to say, well, what about Trump? If you don't vote for us, you're going to get something worse, and you can't ethically justify the harm that's going to be committed by this other person. and then there's the realists as they write these are a godsend sends they can live with trade-offs they are willing to work within a system and want to work within a system and they are not interested in radical change but are pragmatic all right So I'm going to pull up this piece and just talk quickly about a couple different parts of it. And I will, I know people are going to yell at me for even pulling up this piece as soon as they see who wrote it. Those who know. So anyways, Arash Azizi is an Iranian-American, I think he would define himself as. He is certainly anti-Iran. He is basically a regime change actor. You know, if if Cena was here, I'm sure that he would have many much more funny names to refer to as easy as. So anyways, this piece just came out right right after the the DNC. And basically, you know, it's him talking about how the promise and everything of the uncommitted movement. Right. So he talked about the convention as birthing this new movement, right? The most impressive pro-Palestinian effort at the DNC was organized by the uncommitted national movement. Goes into some of the background, right? Translated into 30 delegates, behind the scenes, uncommitted, had been negotiating with Democratic Party leaders for decades. For days, it was able to secure a first-ever panel at a democratic convention about Palestinian human rights instead of merely protesting beyond the security perimeter. The uncommitted delegates worked the halls, their buttons and keffiyahs, making them a visible presence and signed up hundreds of ceasefire delegates supporting the movement's demand for a permanent ceasefire. Then you get into part of what he likes about this movement. Some progressive Zionists also backed this request. It included liberal pro-advocacy groups J Street and Americans for Peace Now. I'm sure you all will have some comments there. Hadar Susskind, the latter's president and CEO and former sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces, called the absence of a palestinian american speaker a mistake not just a political one but a moral one um then they talk about somebody who has a hostage right this is always the democrats have to talk about that all the time um uncommitted showed remarkable message discipline and highlighted a set of demands that unlike many of those in the pro-palestinian demonstrations over the past few months could have been shared by many Zionists and Israelis, right? And they note this is the unexpected solidarity, right, that ran both ways. All right, I'm going to move down a little bit. They complain a little bit about hecklers. They bring up the representative from Georgia who was supposed to give the speech. Note that the speech voided the contentious term genocide. And then they talk about, it's like you need only compare this rhetoric to what was on display at the People's Conference for Palestine held in May in Detroit and addressed by Rashida Tlaib to appreciate the difference. That meeting included an open call that mocked all backers of Zionism, Israel, and US imperialism. It featured speakers lauding the October 7th attacks by Hamas and had sponsors supportive of dictatorships in Russia and China. Such groups often dominate the pro-Palestinian messaging in U.S. politics and have helped secure its marginality. So I put here like isolate the radicals, right? Like this is the counterinsurgency approach in action and writing. There's more, but let's see who's Yacoub. So Salim Yacoub, Palestinian American soldier. Sorry, historian, not soldier, told me he supported uncommitted demand for a speaker and was impressed with its wide spectrum of support among Democrats. He was not impressed that the demand went or he was not surprised that the demand went unheeded because, quote, the Harris campaign believed it was staging a virtually flawless convention and didn't want to do anything that could possibly interrupt the momentum or sound a discordant note, end quote. yakub also told me that he was cautiously optimistic that this sort of organizing we've seen over the last several months can make a small but positive difference in u.s policy on the issue provided harris wins the election right of course it only happens if harris wins the election so that's again uh he is crystal clear that a victory for donald trump would entail certainly disastrous policies on palestine I just asked as opposed to this administration. And then Joanne Mort, board member of American Peace Now and a longtime activist, is excited about the possibility of a coalition between pro-Palestinian and progressive Zionist movements. A founding member of DSA in the 80s, Mort left the organization long ago and has been dismayed by the left's entrenched anti-Israeli attitudes. DSA2 anti-Zionist for her. um there should have been a voice given on the main stage for palestinian american anguish she told me but i also think that the pro-palestinian movement must include voices like mine progressive zionists who urgently want self-determination for two peoples israeli and palestinian this can be the mainstream of the movement um let's see if there's any more there's i think one other thing i Yeah, so if the pro-Palestinian movement in the U.S. sets aside its campaign to delegitimize Israel and question its right to exist, it can find reliable allies in the mainstream of American politics to support a future of peace and coexistence for both the national communities between the river and the sea. It could take a cue from Senator Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, two democratic socialists who have moved from protest to politics. This phrase, by the way, has been coming up over and over again bayard rustin you know initially said it i've seen it said repeatedly about aoc lately uh by the the dn through the dncs through the democrats embrace of her um as to quote jill stein you know now aoc pelosi um Anyway, that was kind of the stuff I wanted to pull up and talk about within it. You can see within it, I'll just pull up one more thing quickly. Hang on. Because we can go back then to think about this alongside... after that point in Shamu book where he talks about those four different categories right he said he writes face with the protest the way forward is always the same to negotiate with the realists knowing that in most issues it is the solution agreed upon by apart by the realists which is accepted especially when business participates in the decision-making process you could put the dnc in exchange or the democrats in exchange for business in this you know comment um also the idealists need to be re-educated i always love their use of re-education into realists an educational process according to Duchenne, which requires great sensitivity and understanding from the educator if you can manage to work with the realists and re-educate the idealists, they switch over to your position. Once these critics of conscience have been turned, the radicals will lose the broad credibility that the support of these moral authorities have conferred on them. Without support from the realists and idealists, the position of radicals and opportunists are seen to be shallow and self-serving. At this point, you will always be able to count on the opportunists to accept the final compromise the premise is that radicals derive their strength only by drawing closer to more moderate blocks without the link they are negligible radicals isolated in their niche radicalism are harmless and pose no threat a bit of minority folklore without any impact such then is the general strategy to cooperate with the realists to converse with the idealists so as to convert them into realists and to isolate the radicals and gobble up the opportunists so again like this is just them describing in their own terms what they try to do uh it doesn't necessarily we don't have to agree with um

Lara: with all of their characterizations um but yeah y'all go ahead and take it away oh my gosh i was losing it i was listening to it partly because of the texas self partly how you're reading it so it's like funny but it's not right it's like funny but it's devastating i was um just talking back like messaging with bana as well about like the you know terms message discipline you know I mean let me see what else did I write here oh yeah I mean okay Jared there's so much to say about it I'm gonna note the time and I'm gonna limit myself so I don't talk forever because there's so much to say about it so like one of the things like not even yet getting into the counterinsurgency bit but or maybe yeah I mean it relates I remember when we saw the first time I saw this thing of like ceasefire delegates referring to the. OK, that was a hilarious comment referring to the you know, the people who they got to sign the petition in support of a ceasefire or something. Right. And I think that that representative was online talking about that, calling these people ceasefire delegates. And I was asking people, what does this mean? Like, what does this actually mean? Does it mean they withheld their votes? Of course, by that time, the convention was over. They did not withhold their votes. I mean, that would have been great. That would have been great. But it's like, it's this kind, I think at the time, I don't remember if I said it to myself or if I wrote it down or what, but, you know, there's that Cabral quote that's like, tell no lies, claim no easy victories. I mean, what does it mean to say, oh, we got 300 ceasefire delegates? okay what you know these terms like some of these terms that and message discipline i wrote to myself while you were um while you were talking that one of the things that has come out of the last 11 months has been this incredible creativity for wordsmithing that i never knew people were capable of i mean just the passive voice the combos they are i mean even the concept of ceasefire like wild wild so yeah and then also um some other notes i made to myself was um the thing about the pro-palestine movement whatever that means must include voices like mine and that was someone from americans for peace now i think i mean even the fact that peace now as an organization was mentioned two distinct times is notable yeah it's wild i mean i know you're talking a little bit about like the atlantic sort of as the atlantic and then like i don't know to talk a little bit about like this kind of news media i mean like i said the the word creativity has been just off the charts the kinds of analysis that people are coming to the just divorce it's like we're in different universes i mean even this like we already talked about it at the beginning but even this idea that palestinians can gain something and like we don't know what it is, I don't think the article says, but that we can gain something by giving everything up, basically, like by giving our blind commitment and membership to a party that has enacted our genocide and then making sure that we include voices like the people in Americans for Peace Now or Peace Now who maybe like don't kind of support like a what's the word that I want to use, unrestrained genocide. But I think it would be remiss of me not to say here, because I don't think that I've said it in previous interviews, when we talk about genocide now in Gaza, It's really important that we understand it in the larger context, because like you said, like or like you read in that article, they say, oh, they didn't use this controversial term genocide. Right. And like people have been having this conversation. Is it is it controversial to refer to you know the mass murder the withholding of water and food electricity destroying hospitals destroying schools destroying shelter targeting like children and doctors and literally everyone else is that genocide and that's a conversation but the real conversation for people who are paying attention and care about history and care about words should be that it has been a genocide in Palestine. Of course, not to in any way diminish that this is a genocide, a fast genocide, and we're seeing, I think it's something 10% of the population of Gaza has either been murdered, injured, or basically is no longer in Gaza. but yeah the genocide in palestine has been ongoing for a long time right because you had the mass forced exodus in or exile in 1948 before that there were massacres and arrests by the british by the zionists since then there has only been ongoing murder arrest torture and it's very systematic right it's like in the way that genocide is supposed to be And so that's really important to say, you know, that like some of this conversation in the media, whether it's the Atlantic or even, you know, like Democracy Now!, which comparatively is a much better like platform or whatever. Anyway, it's not it's not the same, but news media. it's it's totally divorced from the history and the reality on the ground and it serves to normalize these perspectives that are also divorced from the history and the reality on the ground like peace now um i think the protest to politics thing is like very interesting as well um and i didn't notice it when i first read the piece and such um interesting kind of way to praise this move to like quote-unquote pragmatism. I'm just, let me just look at my actual notes that I wrote.

Jared: Yeah, while you're doing that, I do want to say one other thing because it's like, I mean, one, I think that the genocide point that you bring up is very important. It's something that I've often grappled with in terms of like even narrating, right, as you're like counting the days, right, of like

Lara: Yeah.

Jared: You know, it's like we can count the days since October 7th, of course. And, you know, there's meaning to that because of the level of assault that people have been under that needs to cease. Right. And we all want that to stop. You know, immediately months ago, et cetera. But but like it is a tricky part, like even in titling conversations, often I'm like, do I say the day? Because it's been going on for 76 years. It's like, you know, and I do think that it is, you know, it's important to understand the kind of continuity of genocide within, you know, what we would call Israeli policy, right? And that's part of why it doesn't just show up out of the blue. It's been there. um and a lot of their their doctrines and whatnot that are even you know whether it's dahiya doctrine or or what else right these are these are based upon you know very genocidal ways of of thinking i mean there was that ridiculous podcast the other day that where those guys i guess were trying to go viral by talking about um being israeli and how every they believed everybody within israel's society if they could i don't know if you both saw this would push the button that would destroy all palestinians if they could right like you know um so anyways i i i agree with that point the other thing i did want to say too about this piece right because it's obviously a terrible piece and we don't agree with any of it but the thing i found most interesting in some ways was how they're open about the fact that they think Zionists need to be in the Palestinian movement, right? Like this is not even so in some ways it's like a more stark or honest version of the critique that you all start from from their point of view of the critique that you all have right of saying some of these anti-zionist organizations actually you know contain zionists and contain zionists viewpoints right within how they define anti-zionism or how they think about these things and that there's fundamental contradictions here they're even taking it a step further and saying like no we need israelis we need zionists uh to be a part of a movement for Palestine, right? Which is just, you know, again, it kind of, I think, gives away the sort of agenda there of control and co-optation and trying to ultimately define, right, what a ceasefire or any Palestinian demand would look like within the confines of what's acceptable for Israel in the United States, basically.

Lara: yeah i totally agree i think that is like very very much the danger that we're trying to sort of i mean i don't know like i want to say warn against but frankly like in u.s organizing for a long time in in like legal campaigns let's say there has not been a significant difference in the most non-Zionist organizations' legal approaches with Peace Now, right? Because they both use this framework of, and Banna like discussed this, but I was kind of planning on bringing it up here as well, that anyone who uses this framework of um either well we have to operate within you know the the human rights law or humanitarian law right that it's 1967 is the period of military occupation that we're talking about we're normalizing the state of israel from 1948 this is like the international law approach that every major organization uses in the united states and why do they use it because they've resigned themselves, as Banna also discussed, to the fact that Democrats, because we're not even talking about Republicans, not ever, if there's a Republican, we won't even launch the campaign. This is like the conversation that I hear, or heard, I should say, that this is the best we can expect from Democrats, that maybe they will honor international law sometimes if it suits them, and if it can be gotten away with, because of course we can't make it political. This is like the converse, you know. and so yeah i mean i think like on the one hand i want to say like this is wild and like of course no pro-palestinian movement no real one can have um like someone like peace now or zionists but at the same time like if we look materially at the requests that many many organizations that are palestine aligned or would call themselves pro-palestine like functionally they are using the same basis right so i think this is what i mean i think this is what i think these are the what the attempt at counterinsurgency through articles like this are trying to respond to is that in this moment there's sort of been a renewed attempt by palestinian organizers by anti-zionists by people who have a more like grounded approach and understand that in order to get what we need and what we deserve that we need to move away from these restricted ideas of what we can achieve i think that those you know those people who are growing in power and growing in influence and you know able to mobilize more people and able to speak more freely well depending on the context are willing to speak more freely let's say i think they really scare a lot of these organizations i mean why else would someone from peace now need to say that they need to be included i think just a few years ago they probably would have thought of themselves as included and that it went without saying so i think that's like part of the reason for articles like this right that we need that that there is a danger that's being addressed like a danger for zionism and for american imperialism that they're trying to address and co-opt like even before the thing like even if the goal is yes palestinians will give up their goals for nothing and join the democrats but maybe that's the ideal but before that there has to be this thing that yeah like like you pointed out that we can marginalize the quote-unquote like radical but i thought it was so interesting because i listened to your um interview with lara shiha where you talked about this uh these um like categories and i thought it was so interesting because i feel like being in palestine and even before i lived here you can see the i mean it's it's um it is like a meaningful categorization of people and the way they're manipulated right you can see that there are people who are committed to their principles that there are people who come here you know that they're like more like idealists who come here and see things and think oh my god palestinians deserve freedom palestinians deserve their homes like things that we might all think if we saw some of the horrors here and then opportunists and you know realists i even hate the word realists but like pragmatism but i think not only can we like personally i've seen it where i see people come here and go through this process of becoming realists and then they get brought into these ngos because those are the organizing spaces that at least have existed let's say in the us and the uk and canada um that they're brought into these and then they're either i don't remember exactly what the text was but it was something like delicately shaped into realists or something like that and that's really what like you do see that happen a lot right where folks are like folks are told well we have to limit our request to this because this is what we could maybe win Or we have to use international law because that's what the funded organizations or our funded organization allows us to do. Why? Because those are the limitations that the funder sets on us, right? Often that's not said out loud, but that's the reason. either they're turned into pragmatists into realists in that way and their energy is sort of drawn away and i'm not saying that every organization by the way like i actually wanted to say you know i'm making these critiques of jvp if not now is included in there j fred is included in there but also palestinian organizations are also guilty of this right not just in the us but also in palestine in the way their funding happens and the way they Some of them organize their advocacy campaigns according to these restrictions because that's how they get their funding. This is also a problem. It doesn't mean that everyone working in the organizations in Palestine or the people who are part of these organizations in the US are aligned with that or believe in that. There are lots of people who are part of JVP who I not only respect but like, or who are part of other organizations that I like. There is a difference between their politics and the organization that gets the money and hires the people and allocates the funds. And that's really important. And I'll come back to that in just a second. But so I just wanted to say that because I don't want you know, I don't like these like blanket like condemnations and I don't think that they help people. But Yeah, I think that intentionally or not in the NGO spaces, this happens so much of the time and also like organizing becomes a career, right? But I also wanted to say that there's another thing that happens sometimes, two other things. One is if you refuse to, like if you're misidentified as an idealist and you're actually a radical and you can't be changed into a pragmatist, what happens? you're sidelined right which the article talks about a little bit but often like also sidelined by these organizations which refuse critique and a good example of that is dsa and the palestine solidarity working group which just completely sidelined like a number of very good very capable very committed organizers and Also, this was part of an organized media campaign, NGOs took part in this, and we can talk about that. But that's one thing that happens. The other thing that happens is, I was thinking about this as I was thinking about your questions, that I think there's also this other kind of counterinsurgency, or maybe I just don't know enough about it, you know, talking about this idea of humanism and this critique of the left that we're not human enough. I think there's like this other thing that happens where idealists, maybe it's just what you described, that idealists are convinced into like becoming unable to do anything because doing anything means you're hurting someone. And like, what does that mean? I mean, I don't know. It's just something I was thinking about. um but i i wanted to like just end my point here because although like i said like there are people in jvp who i very much respect and other organizations but in this case talking about jvp you know like students who were part of these encampments for months and months and months and risked their access to education, in some case, their funding, their jobs, maybe their future careers, definitely the ability to travel here, a lot of them. and i think that this organization does really turn people from idealists into pragmatists generally doing things like lobbying work or operating within the scope of what democrats will accept and so on and also as we talked about in what constitutes zionism and anti-zionism co-organizes with zionist organizations like if not now founded by the way in part by joshua leifer i should note um But they also kind of create a monopoly over the space. And so one of the things that we've been talking about and that I would invite your listeners to really think about is that as students are heading back to the university, that they should resist this like co-optation and kind of franchising of Zionism in their spaces because they're giving up so much. And we see what this pragmatist approach does, that it wins nothing for nothing. and that folks should you know like people kind of um disengage from electoral politics they should also disengage from the franchisement of zionism and they should rename their chapters they should rename their organizations because these organizations the ones that are handling the funding and allocating it and doing all of this they're not taking on the same kinds of risks that the people are, and they're also not taking the same kinds of principle stance, but they take credit for the principle stance. And so I know I talk much longer than I meant to, but I think that's something really important. And that's one way that folks can can sort of take their power back and i will just make a joke to end it for anyone who's seen the office there's a joke uh you know michael scott makes his own paper company and they want to buy his paper company from him if anyone's seen it and he says he's you know they're trying to sell it they say it's going to go out of business and he says well i can start another one i have no shortage of names And that's how we should, you know, that's how we need to behave a little bit, right? That, that, that we can't be co-opted, that our efforts shouldn't be turned into something less than there are, that we have agency and we have power and we can use it and we can build our own principled organizations that have trust and have, you know, have something else behind them. And we can be like Michael Scott.

Jared: Awesome. They go ahead, man.

Banna: I love the last bit. I was just thinking that's such a good way to end that. I just wanted to add just one last thing about some of the limits of broad movements, like mass movements, is that they do contain all the four elements of organizers, like the opportunists, the radicals, the realists, and the idealist, you'll find anybody, you'll find even the Zionist, liberal Zionist, even, you know, the anti-Zionist, everybody, you know, they'll all be included in a broad movement. That's what broad movements are meant to be. They're meant to make you feel like there is space for inclusion and there's no space for alienation. And you, obviously in the process of building a movement, you're in a hope that people are going to be moving towards sort of at least radical politics if they didn't have that right but usually what happens they don't really move into that usually counterinsurgency gets involved and then all of this gets dispersed right you have the you know opportunists being opportunists but also the idealists losing hope and being demoralized because there's nothing really happening and then they become realists, start asking for like pragmatist things or what can be achievable, what can be doable, and instead of reaching for the stars, which they should be doing, and then, you know, the radicals get isolated, and then they get, you know, again, sidelined, right? So that happens, that happens. There are reasons, of course, why this happens. It happens really for three reasons. one is the coexistence of these different groups creates a like an an ideological incoherence really in the actual like movement right so if there's an incoherence there technically you you will have people co-optings easily right because if the let's say the powerful party is the opportunists, right? Or idealists, right? They have the resources, they're the organizers that have lots of, you know, money funding and whatnot. And if they are the ones that say that they have the more power, they are going to be easily co-opting the movement towards their own politics or ideologies that wouldn't be, let's say, radical, because usually the radicals aren't the ones that are, you know, supported with resources. Unfortunately, that's the case. It's just how it is. So that happens. But also another layer of it is, is the also like the structural incoherence as well, right? Because broad movements usually don't have like a certain structure, like there's no like one leader, right? So what happens is that there's no accountability, right? There's no accountability. How do we say like, how do we have political reflexivity? How do we build the, let's say, or create an ideological coherence, right? So that ends up happening. But the last thing that I would say that is causing the issue is mainly having, you know, all of these different forces, you know, fighting as well between them for that hegemony of the mass movement. It happens. Whether we want to admit it or not, there's always going to be internal fights. People want to be the ones representing the movement. And that happens in US organizing spaces. Like one, you know, NGO wants to have the say in everything or, you know, they want to make sure that one organization does not, you know, or making sure that they always have a say or making sure that they include certain ideas, certain organizers, certain people, because they don't want to exclude others. There are always going to be fights. So these three reasons, I would say, are the reason why we have somewhat, you know, we're always going to arrive at a situation where the mass movement is is going to fall apart the moment there is a counterinsurgency effort. So we either look into those things and obviously get demoralized and go into the camp of pragmatists, which is what's happening at the moment, unfortunately. Pragmatism is on the rise. People are just saying, whatever it is, it's symbolic win, whatever we can get, we can get. This is where we're at. I think what we need to do is we need to bring back that at least some you know, like revolutionary potential that was there at least. I mean, I, for example, thought, you know, the encampments were great. I mean, even like resistance themselves, like resistance, like, you know, we're praising the encampment saying that these are like, you know, resistance abroad. So like this, this is very important. I think we need to also be aware that, that we don't have, we can't, we shouldn't fall into hopelessness and defeatism because that's not, uh, you know, that's also, you know, a product of counterinsurgency, you know, and we don't have the privilege of that during genocide, right. Because we have to stop the genocide again, the person with the hand in water and the hand in fire. So we have to admit that hopelessness and helplessness is not going to be helpful. The last thing I would like to mention is At least for us at the GSC, we always receive media calls to talk about things and conduct interviews. And we're very clear about our policy, right? We're very, we're like, we do not engage in discussions where Zionists are also platformed, where, you know, uh, uh, you know, liberal Zionist platforms. And usually they would bring back, and this happened recently where we were brought back an article and they're like, look, we didn't include settlers or Zionists because the discussion was on settler violence. but what they brought in was like a bit Salem speaker or an peace now speaker and some other, you know, peace organization. And they don't understand that for us, that is also Zionism. So like, you have to like, understand that, like, It's everywhere, this thing of this lack of understanding of Zionism, but also an expectation that the desperation in Palestinians will let them participate in this circus, will let them participate in this neoliberal theatrics of yeah we'll we'll have you on the on the article but we're also quote three other people just to balance right to have a balanced view on things like balanced view during view during genocide sounds very very like just nihilistic nihilistic sorry and and just how do i say it's just it's it's it's It's like putting salt on the wound for Palestinians, right? Because not only are you experiencing genocide and you're not platformed anywhere, the moment you're platformed, there's always going to be having a person to balance you out, right? So that is also counterinsurgency because you're not really allowing the Palestinians to speak. You're only allowing the Palestinians to speak as long as they offer something that you agree with. know otherwise otherwise we're going to always be the adversarial right the adversarial that gets invited on a on a media platform to sound like they're so violent and childish and radical and just you know you know just you know disrespectful or what you call it like the opposite of respectability politics the opposite of that you know so like you know we're not prescribing to those things so we we We get platformed only because they have to provide the other side of the of the view. They must. In fact, we are the ones that they're forced to platform because the Zionists are always platformed. Right. There's no like exclusion of them. So it's just to say that, like, you know, counterinsurgency, unfortunately, is still a tactic and we must and not fall into defeatism. That is the most important thing. People need to come out of conversations. People need to come out of things saying, We are, this is what the case of the movement, this is what the uncommitted movement did, but we're going to put this aside. And as Lara said, we're going to reorganize ourselves, like reorganize ourselves, bring back the spirit and let's do it all over again. Let's bring back the radical spirit. Let's not let the idealists take over. I call them the anxious people. I feel like they're just anxious people, like all the time, you know? And then the pragmatists, realists, and then opportunists are going to have to be pushed out. That's the most important thing is realizing that those people are not helpful for the movement. And once that's the clarity sets, and I know that the urgency of genocide is clear, all of this will fall into place and we're going to have a movement that isn't hijackable, if I may say.

Jared: Yeah, a few things. I mean, great comments. I have some thoughts. one i appreciate the the notion of reorganizing um i think you know dylan rodriguez talks about this in an interesting way and he and i our politics are slightly you know slightly different but i really appreciate his work on you know counterinsurgency and thinking about these things and love to be in dialogue with him um but he has this thing about like for him he even questions organizations to some degree because of the ability to kind of infiltrate control etc that can can happen i'm not there because i think organizations are really important actually um but i do agree part of when he made that comment in one of our discussions what he was talking about was like if you're on a college campus right and your organization becomes outlawed say not outlawed but you know like it it the emergent the the university policy bans it basically right or they tell the organization it can't do this or it can't do that it's like you all don't have to actually engage as that particular organization right like you can just call your do something else bunch of you leave call yourself something else you know like so i i don't think that we should allow these zionist institutions such as universities these imperialist institutions to like dictate the terms either of of that and if you get in a position where you're like fighting over whether your organization can exist or whether it can be can do things officially and things like that. Like that is a it's a waste of time, but it also might be a good opportunity, as Laura is talking about, to do something different, which is to say that those of you who are like actually a lot of the reasons that we chose to be in this organization or define ourselves in this way was because we were trying to appeal to be allowed some sort of institutional place within this campus or whatever. And we don't actually have to organize or struggle on these terms. You know, we can define our own terms and be much more disciplined, actually, to use the term that Azizi used. in a in a very different way right um and and so yeah i mean i think the the point on the encampments is a good one um i think i will say this i i you know when i started to reach out to you all on this and i had a conversation had a couple conversations related to the dnc recently um i think that the moment of that moment you know where you're watching the uncommitted movement where you're seeing you know the protests outside be very isolated and smaller than we would hope probably right and um that it is easy in those moments to feel despair right or to feel like what are you know but i don't think that people should also like I think people should approach it as, look, the people who are engaging in electoralism and who are going to try to do that, they're going to try to do that. We don't need to help them with that. It frees us up to do something much more committed and disciplined in terms of how we're working together in our spaces, right? And yeah, I don't know. I mean, I am also hopeful that, you know, I feel two different ways about the encampments. On one level, I feel like I wish that there was more happening outside of and beyond university campuses. And I know there's a lot happening People are doing really good work to to like raise money and like try to support do mutual aid and get resources to Gaza. And I'm seeing that like here in Philly and other places. So there's good stuff going on there. But, you know, also, I do think that the campuses are a place where we have seen more like more radical and militant manifestations of solidarity with Palestinians. And so I'm happy in that regard that they're back in session and that those i know those are going to be difficult struggles but i i think that's a good place of struggle um at this point and uh yeah so anyways i just wanted to say some of that in in response you all are welcome to add uh other stuff i think we should probably start to wind down because we're gonna approach three hours here in a minute but if there's anything else either of you want to say in closing suggestions places for people to connect like whatever

Lara: yeah i can go first if that's okay vanna um yeah i think you're exactly right jared i i think like the organizing on the space of the campuses is important because it seems like it sets a tone right like what happens and the discourse and the actions on campus like around the world but also in the u.s like really can set a tone for the things that happen in the cities like near the campuses and also across the country or across the world so I hope the students kind of find ways to either reestablish the encampments or do something different. And I hope other folks I think one of the important things that we were trying to call for at the time, like maybe just a bit before the height of the encampments or at that period of time, was that people really need to find ways also to support the people who are making those kinds of risks and things and and also engage themselves. But anyway, yeah i think that's really important i just wanted to say um folks can find us at um on twitter at shepherds for good they can find us on instagram at good shepherd collective facebook if anyone still uses that um and we also have a website our website is good shepherd collective.org and we're coming out with a new website hopefully in the next couple of weeks part of our um work over the last like especially the last year has been trying to make data more accessible because folks might not know this but data in Palestine like there's constantly data being collected um it is like across these sort of arbitrary lines um like most of the data is coming from East Jerusalem the West Bank and Gaza but sometimes there's more But it's not really available for everyone, especially like daily data and things like that. So that's been part of our work over the last year. And when the new website comes out, that's going to be like a really important part of it.

Banna: You've already seen it, right, Jared? So yeah, thanks.

Jared: I have had a sneak peek. And yeah, it's great. I can't wait until it's out so people can see it. Yeah.

Lara: Yeah, yeah, thanks so much for help. And then I'll just say, I really hope that folks like, you know, find ways that they can plug in and think about these questions. And I know that it can seem overwhelming, you know, some of the critiques that we have might be like, different, or like, it's a lot to think about, right. But I think folks can really imagine like what kind of impact they can have on the ground and then organize ways to do that in their own local communities and i'll just say in the meantime while you're doing that you can go to gaza funds.com you can look at workshops for gaza to learn something and donate um and both of those have fundraisers if you're lost in the sea of you know fundraisers from gaza to choose from that's great

Jared: Benna, did you want to offer anything?

Banna: Not much really, but we have been talking between us about creating or having a webinar about defeatism and all of that in the movement. And I think it's quite very important to think about what does it mean to have anti-Zionist praxis beyond just the critique of like, okay, yes, we like, this is what anti-Zionism is. This is what Zionism is. I think it's important to be like, well, this is what anti-Zionist praxis looks like, but also how we can avoid falling into defeatist politics and, and, and helplessness and all of that. I think it's a conversation that we'd like people to, to, to join because we need to have, um, we need to have the movement rejuvenated. I think we, are going to see some of that because we're back in on campuses but I think it's important that people join that conversation because the more people join that the more people will come out of that feeling more of that power and agency and no longer feel demoralized and I think it's that's probably the most important task we can all make as organizers really um at this difficult time um because like the you know the genocide you know has been unfortunately normalized so i think we we don't want that and our comrades in gaza are calling for us you know and we want uh uh you know people to join that conversation if they can we haven't yet set the date but um stay tuned on our twitter and instagram and and hopefully we'll have that sometime soon and and you're also welcome jared as well

Jared: That sounds great, and I would love to attend and help promote it or support it in any way that I can. All right. Well, thank you so much. I know we had one other topic that we kind of wanted to talk about, and maybe we'll save that for another discussion. But it's been really great. We've covered a lot. I really appreciate both of you. I think you both said a lot of really important things today. And I'm just grateful to be in conversation with you and to learn from you both. So thank you.

Banna: Thank you so much, Jared. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Jared. And thanks for the listeners as well, who stayed with us for three hours. That's great work. I would not stay for three hours for a talk. I mean, I love everybody, but I think the most I've done is two hours. But I really respect those who've literally stayed with us and had conversations with us in the chat. And yeah, hopefully we'll see you all in a free Palestine, inshallah.

Jared: All right. Thank you.