A New Vision for Israel: Palestinianism, Arab Zionism and the “Right of Return" with Dr. Einat Wilf

Watch and Listen

More than a million people are falsely registered as Palestine refugees, but they're not.

We bought the place.

We're staying here.

There's ownership, there's permanence.

There's no other vision of peace other than Arab embrace of Zionism.

It sounds to me like something that's out of Israel's control.

After October 7th, I had to let a more dark thought into my mind.

This episode is brought to you by SAPIR Journal.

Subscribe today at sapirjournal.org/beingjewish.

Welcome to a very Israeli episode of being Jewish.

Before we dive in, I just wanna make sure my fellow Angelinos know you can catch me yapping about Jewish education on Sunday, March 1st, right here in LA for the Builders of Jewish Education annual event.

For info and tickets, head to bje a.org/benefit Now.

My guest today is a Jewish educator of the highest order, a public thinker, strategist, author, politician, and frequent podcast guest, which has certainly challenged me to come up with questions she hasn't already answered 10 times.

She's an expert on all things Israel Palestine, a noted scholar from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Cambridge, England, a former member of Israeli parliament, and because it sounds like so much fun, she's launching a new political party in advance of the 2026 Israeli elections.

She's got the hot takes from the Holy Land.

Ladies and gentlemen, live from Eretz Israel.

Give it up for Dr. Einat Wilf.

Hot takes from the holy land can be my new thing.

Einat.

Thank you so much for being with me here today.

As I mentioned, you've started your own political party, the OS party.

Um.

You know, in, in Israel, my, maybe not all of my audience is familiar, but new parties pop up all the time.

Some not so successfully, and some successfully, like, uh, YAT or Kadima have had great success.

Can, can you just briefly, for my listeners who may not fully understand, explain a little bit about Israel's political system in the process of starting a party, which in the US sounds, you know, crazy.

Any new parties here do horribly and are completely marginalized and nobody cares about 'em.

Israel is a parliamentary democracy.

It's a proportional representation system, which means that people vote for parties.

You do not vote for individuals in Israel, and parties get a proportion, a share of what you would call America the popular vote, and that's the share of the seats they get in our 120 member.

Knesset Parliament.

So one of the nice things about Israeli democracy and one of the things that kind of keeps it on its toes, uh, is that it is possible, you know, it's a bit of work and bureaucracy, but it is possible to establish new parties.

And this is one of the ways that, uh, new people and new ideas are introduced to the system.

What was the catalyst for you?

You know, waking up and saying, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and undertake this, this large endeavor and start a new party.

Like many things, uh, it's after October 7th.

It's not something that I would've imagined, uh, doing before.

It is a combination of a few things.

The understanding, of course, that.

Something has to fundamentally change in Israeli leadership and Israeli ideas, and the way we relate both to our environment, to our, uh, enemies, to our allies, and the way we have our social contract within the country.

And also the sense that I have something unique to offer at this moment.

That the ideas that I've been working on for at least 20, 25 years now, uh, are ideas that provide a vision for Israel that provide policy prescriptions.

And that do not fall into any of kind of the stale categories of right and left ideas, and a vision that could actually cross the divisions within Israel and create a new kind of base for support.

So let's get into some of those ideas.

You talk about three pillars of your platform.

Uh, let's get into the first one, which is something you call Arab Zionism.

So tell me a little bit about what that is, what that means.

It basically emerges from the work that I've been doing for the last 20 years, looking at the source of the conflict and what really has prevented us from attaining peace, something that I've been dedicated to and I continue to be throughout my life.

And tragically realizing that the obstacles to peace have not been this or that.

Israeli government settlements, occupation, all the things that we're used to talking and hearing about, but that the obstacle has been and never has been anything else.

The complete Arab, and especially the complete Palestinian Arab rejection of the Jewish right to self-determination in any part of the land.

I've come to call this ideology Palestinian, and my argument is that we need to wage a battle.

Mostly in foreign policy, uh, to ensure that Palestinian as an ideology, the ideology, not the people that Palestinian as an ideology dies and is replaced with a constructive vision for the Arabs of Gaza, the Arabs of the West Bank, uh, a constructive vision that seeks to live next to the Jewish state rather than in its ruins.

And even though provocatively, but quite simply, I call it Arab Zionism.

So we're gonna get into this notion of Palestinian is more after we get through the, you know, pillars of the OS party.

But what, what I'm curious about is, as you're describing that, it sounds to me like something that's somewhat out of Israel's control, right?

So how is that an actionable platform?

What can you legislate or, or govern to, to bring about that outcome?

Uh, first and foremost is even to present that vision, I don't think we do so at all.

I don't think people understand even that this is what the conflict is about.

We, we don't even highlight this.

And again, uh, to the credit of, uh, the Palestinian Arabs, they've never lied that this is their goal.

That their goal is no Jewish state, and yet we make it so convenient for them.

Not to have to expose that.

The second is that we have been, uh.

Terrible in essentially allowing this ideology to be fueled.

As you know, a lot of my work has been focused on ra, the organization that is the central fueling station of Palestinian and Israel has for decades, uh, allowed it to operate even often, protecting it under the very mistaken and tragic notion that it somehow buys a stability rather than the next war.

And the thing is that we can also work with allies in the Arab world that are finally having a positive vision for an Arab identity that is not centered around anti-Zionism and a singular obsession with the non-existence of a Jewish state.

Bring them in, not just as partners for Israel, but as partners in shaping a new forward looking positive Arab identity for the Arabs of Gaza and the Arabs of the West Bank.

What gives you confidence that you know, still at the end of the day, you can sort of roll out the red carpet, you can bring in partners.

You can push as hard as you want from one side, but it's gonna have to come.

From the Palestinian side and, and be something they actually want.

So at, at the end of the day, you know how, how much.

Can you actually do to move yourselves towards that goal?

The only vision of peace is where the Jewish state is surrounded by Arab neighbors who embrace it.

Any other vision is a vision of continuous war, which we might need to fight, but it's not a vision.

So the only vision, and it's a vision that comes from no choice, is one in which.

The Arab world and especially the Palestinian Arabs begin to look at the Jewish state not as something that what they consider it now, some kind of humiliating foreign implant that they need to devote their generational lives to remove into something that from their Arab and Islamic text and traditions, they can actually embrace.

A state that represents an indigenous people who Arabs and Muslims from their own history and texts can recognize as belonging in the land of Israel.

So my view is we, we basically have no choice.

There's no other vision of peace other than Arab embracive Zionism.

Can you give me an example of one such law or policy, like a specific, that you think would help move the needle for the Palestinian?

Way of thinking and leadership to, to meet you in the middle on this, in Gaza today, uh, more than a million people are falsely registered as Palestine refugees by Andra, but they're not.

Whatever your politics.

Gaza is Palestine.

No one born in Gaza is a Palestine refugee.

We need to make it clear that nothing of permanence gets built in Gaza until we know that the people of Gaza are clear that Gaza is their home and final destination.

That means that these million residents of Gaza get erased from Unre records as Palestine refugees.

There's a lot of pressure now, for example, to open the Egyptian Rafa crossing for Gaza's.

The few who managed, uh, that the Egyptians allowed to escape to Egypt to go back to ga.

If Gaza's not their home, why do they wanna go back to Gaza?

So how about we make sure that it is understood and clear all around that if they're returning to Gaza, Gaza's their final destination, it means that in entering Gaza, they need to be erased from honors records as a Palestine refugee.

Otherwise, they cannot enter.

They need to hand over as they cross their deeply treasured Unre refugee card.

It needs to be replaced with a Gaza resident card that has a map of Gaza on it, not Palestine, from the river to the sea.

They need to sign a declaration that an entering Gaza.

They understand that there's no such thing as a right of return.

There's no such thing in general, but they need to understand it.

There's no right of return.

Into the sovereign state of Israel and where they're gonna build their future is Gaza.

So those are very specific steps that Israel has to insist on, especially as the Trump administration seems so eager to move to build something in Gaza.

Fantastic.

Let's move on to the next pillar, and again, we'll come back to some of this stuff, but let's keep going ahead.

One of them is that essentially if you wanna receive state services for free, you need to agree to be of service to the state.

I believe it's addressed mostly to Arab citizens and Curium, the Ultra Orthodox, which are the two largest groups that do not participate in military service.

So how, how critical of an issue is this for the country?

Domestically, the biggest issue, and it's not just about the Ian, the Arabs.

It's more, it's much more about what does it mean to be an Israeli?

What really makes you belong?

Uh, and I think we need to be very clear that belonging in Israel, part of what constitutes the sense of mutual responsibility is mobilizing to defend the country.

Until we have peace based on a vision of Arab Zionism, Israel will have to be a country that is mobilized to its defense all around the world.

Welfare states.

Reflect a sense of common values and solidarity.

It's not a coincidence that whatever little Welfare America has was established after World War ii because when you send people to fight for the country to sacrifice, you send a message that you are doing something on behalf of the collective, which means that the collective, the country does something for you.

So my argument is that Israel needs to draft.

All Israeli citizens of the appropriate age.

Uh, so women and men, Jews of all kinds, and Arabs, it's only those who refuse to serve.

They're like the wicked son of the Hagada.

They're basically saying, this is yours.

Not mine, and they will make the conscious choice to remove themselves from the Israeli collective, but Israel will not be the one that removes them.

So on the one hand, it's very much an invitation to belong through the one thing that really matters, the mobilization to defend your country, but also says, if you don't wanna belong.

Then you're out from all the mechanisms that constitute the services and the welfare and the mechanisms of mutual responsibility.

Why is this the big issue within Israel today on the most basic level, because it's unsustainable.

The redi way of life, uh, is a new way of life, is a modern way of life.

No less than reformed Judaism or Zionism.

They all emerge around the same time and they all emerge in response to the challenges of modernity.

Some people still had illusions.

I didn't that the eddis.

Have a sense of solidarity with the state of Israel, and that after October 7th, they will rush to the front and if not to fight, they will visit soldiers.

They will go to the hospital, they will mobilize.

And what we saw is not only that, they did not mobilize, they spent.

The time, the more than two years since October 7th, securing the privileges of not defending the state of Israel while making sure that they continue to enjoy the benefits of the very generous Israeli welfare state.

This is a social contract that.

Unsustainable both financially, both in terms of legitimacy and values, and also in terms of Israel's Arabs, contrary to what Soir built and hoped on in his invasion, in massacre, that Israel's Arab citizens will riot and joined the butcher.

They didn't, and we know that data showed that there was a massive increase in the number of Israeli Arabs who identify more as Israelis rather than as Palestinian.

This is a moment for Israel not to drop the ball and to say, okay, we're inviting you in.

This is your country.

You are at citizens and you are expected to defend it like every other citizen.

So we will not be the ones to tell you that you're not part of the mutual responsibility.

If you decide not to mobilize, it's your choice to exit, but it's not Israel that told you ahead of time that you don't, you're not gonna be part of what I call the thick citizenship, the citizenship of mutual responsibility and defense.

What's the greater imperative here financially that the, the system cannot support doling out all this welfare for people who are not contributing?

Or is it more of the, you know, the intellectual, emotional, social element of large swaths of the country resenting each other, not participating in, in communal life together?

In the past, Israelis were like, okay, we don't like it, but whatever.

After October 7th.

You know, these are things that once you see them, you don't unsee them.

You can't forget that at our greatest moment of need, a large share of the population of Israel, that they didn't just stand and do nothing.

They worked.

To secure the privileges of not defending the country.

And we can't just also say it's just their leadership because they came out to the streets In large numbers, under the headline of Namu Es, we will die and we will not be drafted to the military.

So this is something that Israelis are saying enough.

What is the sticking point za before the last four decades served them mil in the military?

So one of the things that I emphasize is everything I'm saying is not against being a Rei Jew.

You can be a REI Jew work, be highly educated outside Jewish texts, uh, pay taxes and serve in the military.

It's this, this specific Haredi Israeli way of life that created this perverse infrastructure.

Where your entire way of life is funded by the state that the secular Zionists have built, and the entire way of life is about creating this separation from Israel, from Zionism, from military service, but it's funded.

By Israel and it's a unique way of life.

And basically what you're seeing now are withdrawal symptoms of an insane and perverse incentive structure funded by the state of Israel.

Okay.

Moving on to your last pillar, which is sort of the one we're gonna get even the most in depth into because you have sort of so many different layers to it.

Uh, is, is what you call moving from diaspora consciousness to sovereign conduct, which please correct me if I'm wrong, I sort of understand, as you know, changing the mindset from like, we're renting this place and everything is sort of makeshift and temporary to, we bought the place, we're staying here.

There's ownership, there's permanence.

I like that.

It, it's a really good way of, uh, thinking about it.

Uh, yes.

And if you think about the, the first two pillars that I presented, they're already part of that change of consciousness.

So the argument here is that the exilic mindset still continues to haunt us.

Even though we're in Israel, even though we're in the sovereign state of Israel, there's still that kind of sense of.

Unease like, like you described, renting, makeshift, and it's all about really an attitude.

Like you said, that you described it really nicely.

We're here, it's our home.

It's a sense of ownership, and therefore we can have long-term thinking and everything we're doing, we're doing not makeshift.

We're thinking, okay, is this something that can be sustainable for the long term?

And if it's not, then you don't do it.

People who follow Israeli politics will certainly know what I'm talking about when I refer to this is, is sort of the battle between the judiciary and the executive branch, and your response to that is the strengthening of the Knesset.

And so, uh, please tell me a little bit more about that and how that.

Falls under this umbrella of, you know, diaspora versus sovereign conduct before October 7th.

But even after what really kind of tore Israeli society apart is this battle about, uh, judicial reform.

I'll say in parentheses, I think it was a proxy battle for deeper issues, but ostensibly it was about the structure of the government.

And the thing is this, it was conducted like this arm wrestling between the judiciary and the government and the kind of this zero sum, uh, battle, uh, between their authority and the way to solve it is literally with staring us in the face, which is.

Both the judiciary and the executive have actually taken over the last few decades, powers from the one body that represents the sovereign people, which is the Israeli Este in a parliamentary democracy, unlike a presidential one.

Only the parliament gets elected by the people, the government, and the judiciary are then, uh, elected or nominated by the parliament.

So in parliamentary democracies, parliaments are supreme.

I sometimes have joke that one of our problems is that a lot of Israelis were educated, uh, in American law schools.

Uh, so they come back.

With the sense of like the American legal and constitutional system, which is entirely irrelevant in a parliamentary democracy.

The notion of co-equal branches of government does not exist.

You have separation of powers, but they're not co-equal.

The Parliament is supreme because it is the one body elected by the sovereign, by the people.

Okay, so now I'm getting what this is.

I'm gonna stay with my house metaphor.

This is sort of like the punch list of like, okay, we bought the house, we're here.

Like what's the stuff that we need to sort of set up that we haven't set up yet?

'cause we're gonna be here for a really long time and we need to just like fix it now.

I like your metaphor.

Okay, good.

Okay, so another one is talking about annexation of territories under full sovereignty with government approval.

Not the sort of current ad hoc, temporary kind of process.

So take me into that one.

Precisely.

So one of the most fundamental elements of being in your house is that you know where it starts and where it ends.

So one of my arguments is that regardless of Palestinian, yes, we have enemies committed to our non-existence.

It's one of the reasons they refuse to set borders.

They refuse to make agreements.

They refuse to end the occupation.

It's clear we have enemies that have been very busy at ensuring that we don't have borders because they want us to feel temporary and unsettled.

That's part of their project, but we don't have to play into that.

So my argument is in parallel to chipping away at Palestinian, we need to decide what our borders are.

I say in terms of what they are, I'm fairly agnostic.

I only have some rules.

Uh, we can annex territory to settle, to settle our borders.

Whoever in that territory becomes a full citizen of the state of Israel.

And, uh, this passes through a esta to vote again, going to the idea of sovereignty rather than all the games that we keep playing of, like this cat and mouse games with international legitimacy.

And I'm like, no, we pass a sovereign decision in the Knesset.

It doesn't matter if every country in the world will say we don't recognize that.

We will recognize it.

We will have a sense of where we begin and where we end, and there will be a clear separation between sovereign state of Israel where everyone's an equal citizen and areas that can and should be under continued military control.

As long as our enemies continue their century plus long war against the existence of the Jewish state.

I always like to remind people that military occupations are entirely legitimate until the war is over.

Those are places where I say settlements.

After sovereignty.

Right.

Okay.

Next, um, what I'll call separation of shul and state.

You know, you, you talk about how the government needs to run, be, run by politicians and not by rabbis.

Um, so talk, talk to me about that one.

If, uh, cities, communities, they want to have rabbis, religious services, absolutely fine.

This should not be a state service.

It should certainly not be a state monopoly.

Uh, this should be something that people can choose, that people have their services.

And again, in Hebrew it sounds good.

The, the structures that fit a people in exile.

The authority structures of rabbis no longer fit a people with the sovereign structure of the authority of a state.

How do you respond to folks who say, well, how do we ensure that Israel remains a Jewish state if we have no religious Jewish voice in the way that the state is being run and decisions are being made?

So this is one of my favorite things because it goes to the core of what does it mean to be a Jewish state that rabbis do not make something more or less Jewish.

We are a Jewish state, first of all, by being in the land of Israel.

That's kind of a big one, right?

Again.

The people of Israel can only be sovereign in the land of Israel.

Jews can live wherever they want, but sovereignty only makes sense in the land of Israel.

So first of all, by being in the land of Israel, by being a state where the.

Vast majority are Jews and identify as Jews.

However, they define it by the language that we speak Hebrew, by the holidays.

We keep by the fact that the calendar, the official calendar of the state of Israel.

Is the Hebrew calendar, the calendar, the Jews all around the world kept when they were not sovereign by the fact that our schools teach the history of the people of Israel.

And there was no rabbi in anything that I described, but as far as I'm concerned, this is incredibly Jewish.

Just to push a little further, you know what?

What about, you know.

The concerns of who's to say that all of a sudden some secular government's not gonna all of a sudden keep everything open on Shabbat, and I'm not gonna have access to the Jewish life I want anymore because there's no more religious presence in in the governing of the state.

So, uh, about separating shul from state.

One of the funny things, there's only one Jewish state, and again, it only makes sense in the land of Israel.

So for example, in America, you don't like your rabbi, you don't like your shul.

You go shop around for a new one, right?

It's a consumer capitalist system.

You go, you find something that kind of fits where you are in your life.

In Israel, we have only one, which means that the public space.

Is one, which means that we fight over the public space.

Would you describe, uh, you know, having public services, public transportation on Shabbat?

There's nothing to say that one or the other is Jewish or not.

What I always experienced in the Knesset when I was a member, and it was hilarious, is that you would find people.

Arguing for directly opposed policies in the name of the Jewish state, and they would both be right because they would bring the texts and they would bring the arguments to make their case.

So you could very much make the case that having public transportation on Shabbat in a Jewish state.

Is the Jewish thing to do because it makes no sense to have a sovereign Jewish state where you deprive, especially people who are most in need of the ability to visit their families.

I can make great Jewish argument for why we need public transportation on Shabbat.

So my argument is that the notion that one thing or the other is necessarily Jewish is precisely what the Jewish thing is all about.

This endless argumentation.

If there's anything Jewish, it's that.

And the last piece you talk about is the worthiness of those who serve in the government, suggesting that's not the current pipeline feeding into the government, and specifically you who advocate for more experienced women with experience in the public sector and in politics.

So how, how does this fall under the umbrella of what you're talking about and how do you legislate.

Worthiness.

Uh, I'll say you don't legislate.

This is one of those things that you just either embody or inspire.

But I think one of the things that October 7th showed, I mean, uh, I think Mika Goodman called it a near death experience.

There was no state.

There were people, there were heroes, there were people who rushed to the front.

There was immobilized society.

There was no state.

The state was missing an action, and that was the case for days and weeks, if not even months.

And I think what Israelis understood viscerally that the notion that we can outsource our politics to people, I'll be generous less than the best that we have to offer and it will be okay.

That collapsed.

Now, it might be okay in other countries, countries that are not threatened, countries that do not need to defend themselves, countries that are not surrounded by people who wake up every morning thinking, how do we bring Jewish sovereignty to an end?

But the state of Israel cannot afford to be governed.

By anything less than the best I would say that Israel and even the Jewish people have to offer.

And why do I especially emphasize, um, women with experience in public service is under the best scenario.

I imagine that US party is part of a coal, a centrist Zionist coalition government that has a year.

To turn Israel and put Israel on new foundations.

Now, this is not, uh, an unheard of scenario.

It's very typical of societies and countries after war after trauma to have governments that in a very short period of time, establish institutions rules that pretty much uphold the country for several decades.

And this is what I imagine in the most positive scenario will happen.

That means that the people that I want to have with me are people who can hit the ground running, who understand how budgets work, who understand how the public sector work.

Who for example.

If we need to take apart the entire web of, uh, favoritism, benefits, services to those who have not served in Israel's military, I need people to know where all these elements hide in the budget.

And what I've noticed is that this profile, this disproportionately sits on women.

Many of you have likely heard about Sapere, the quarterly journal of Ideas for a thriving Jewish future edited by New York Times columnist Brett Stevens.

But have you heard that print subscriptions to Superior are free?

That's right.

You can receive four beautiful issues a year right in your mailbox at home, each on a theme of importance to the Jewish community, such as activism, diversity, faith, or Zionism at no charge, and requiring no credit card info.

Like every episode of this show, every issue of Spire explores important questions at the intersection of Jewish and American culture and politics, and features, contributions from amazing writers, many of whom have appeared on this show, including Sarah Hurwitz, Noah tpi, Dar Horn, rabbi David Wal, chef Michael Solomonov, and many others.

Subscribe today@superiorjournal.org slash being Jewish, completely free of charge.

That's spi, S-A-P-I-R journal.org/bing Jewish, or click the link in the episode notes of wherever you're getting this pod.

Okay, so now we've, we've dug into all of these ideas.

Why can't these ideas live within an existing party?

Because they all sound pretty common sense to me, as I'm sure you know, common sense is not so common.

If you look at the numbers, the undecideds would become today, Israel's largest party at about 25 to 30% of the public.

And it's a very high number for an election year, and I don't think it's a coincidence.

I think it comes exactly from the sense of many Israelis that after what we've seen on October 7th, we can't just have the same people and the same ideas and the same stale categories and the same dividing lines in the same conversation.

So we want to let Israelis know that they're actually members of the largest party in Israel.

That Oz specifically responds to their need to find something that is different and cuts across political lines and is common sense, as you said.

All right.

Well certainly wish you the best of luck from over here.

I just want people to know that we've established something called O Zionists to allow people to mobilize their Israeli friends and colleagues, and all they have to go is through the op, the website of us party co il, and the link will be on the show.

So thank you.

You got it.

Okay.

So Palestinian is, uh, again, this notion that the issue, I mean, the only real issue is the Jews want a state where they have sovereignty and the Arabs, specifically Palestinians want, do not want a state where Jews have sovereignty.

What are the common arguments you hear the most that disagree with that framing, and how do you rebut those arguments?

There's two, uh, arguments generally.

One is.

It can't be everyone.

You're painting this with broad brushstrokes.

You're exaggerating.

If you think I'm wrong, find me Palestinian Arabs who publicly and in their own voice express a vision of peace of living next to a Jewish state and make sure that they make it clear that this means that they are not.

Refugees and that there's no right of return.

There's no right to settle inside Israel in the name of that right of return.

And I tell them, you think I'm wrong?

Go find me.

Over 20 years.

I can tell you.

They either don't come back or they come back with the same four, five courageous individuals that I know and retweet and try to platform as much as PO possible.

The other argument is that, of course Israel has a responsibility.

You know, the settlements, the occupation.

We did this, we did that.

The thing is this.

By now, uh, we have about a century, even more of empirical data, where we have right-wing governments, left-wing governments, Israeli conquering territory, Israeli retreating territory, Israel building settlements, Israel removing settlements, and we can actually follow that.

The impact of all of that on the ideology of Palestinian is zero.

This is why in all my talks on this in the books I quote ERT Bevin, the British Foreign Minister after World War ii.

I'm sure you've heard it in my talks, where he says that the conflict is irreconcilable because the top priority for the Jews is to establish a sovereign Jewish state, and the top priority for the Arabs is to resisted the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the state.

Now, one of the reasons I bring the quote.

Is that in February 47th, there are no settlements and there's no bb and there's no occupation and there's no Palestine refugees.

So it helps me show that the conflict precedes all these excuses, the occupation, the refugees, the all.

These are the outcome.

Of the ideology, they're not the cause.

What really impacts Palestinian is fuel.

When the Soviet Union fell, you saw that they were squeezed, and in retrospect, we wasted that decade on fruitless negotiations rather than squeezing Palestinian right now.

If the ayatollah regime will finally fall as all previous.

Supporters of Palestinian did we need to not miss the opportunity, uh, to ensure that, that, again, the oxygen is sucked out of support for Palestinian, so that if space emerges for Arab Zionism for a positive Arab vision, a response that I will hear and have heard from.

Palestinian Americans is, well, we should just have one equal state for two peoples.

And I think on the surface that sounds reasonable.

You know, that sounds innocuous enough.

How do you respond to that?

So first it's important to notice that this is still a no Jewish state scenario, so that when Palestinian Arabs presented it is well in line with their vision of resisted the last Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land.

On the common sense level, what you said, it sounds, uh, innocuous, it requires you to believe in things that don't exist.

It requires you to believe.

That here between the river and the sea will emerge.

The first ever Arab democracy.

And sometimes people say, oh, that's a racist thing to say.

I'm like.

It's not, it's empirical as of now.

There is no Arab democracy.

Are you telling me that Here will emerge the first one?

It will be the first one to treat.

Its Jewish minority.

As equals never happened in the Arab world, in many ways, uh, I explain the violent response by the Arabs to the idea of Jewish sovereignty and self-determination is that they could not countenance the idea of Jews as equals both collectively and individually after 12, 1300 years of being used to thinking of them.

Inferiors, you expect Jews to forego.

Their heart fought one Jewish state.

For the never existed in history, unicorn of an Arab democracy that will treat its Jews as equals.

And uh, my only question is always when this fails, who do we go to with the receipts?

Because, you know, all these people are like.

Oh, you should really try it.

You know, have faith.

I'm like, when this fails as it will and all Jews are slaughtered, um, who do we go to for having put our faith in your lovely idea.

That was based on basically no facts at all.

Yeah.

And is is the, is the thinking that ostensibly if you opened.

Israel up to that situation?

Is it that there, there would just be such a surge in an Arab population that they would quickly have in the majority, or is that there would be, you know, immediate violence and they just couldn't live peacefully?

Regardless?

It's both.

First of all, one of the things they will make sure very clearly is to end Jewish immigration.

Again, I, I'm not inventing things.

This is what they did in the thirties, right?

What the Arab.

Uh, violence in the thirties now.

And I will say if anyone wants to inoculate themselves against the movie, uh, they should read the book by, or Kessler, Palestine, 1936.

The Arab Violence was.

Ultimately led, first of all, to the preventing of the establishment of a Jewish state, which was supposed to be established in the thirties.

The genius of Herzl was not that he imagined a Jewish state, so that never again he imagined a Jewish state.

So that never at all.

And the Zionists built the foundations of a Jewish state in the twenties and thirties.

It was supposed to emerge in the thirties, and it is Arab butchery and violence.

And the resultant British betrayal that closed the gates of the embryonic Jewish state to Jewish immigration at the most dire time for the Jews.

The scale of the Holocaust would have been different had there been a Jewish state.

And how do I know it?

Because the only difference between Europe in the 1930s and the Arab world in the 1950s is the existence of a Jewish state.

Earlier we touched on RAH and how, how critical their role is to the perpetuation of Palestinian.

Talk to me a little bit about Rah, because we talk about it like it's this sort of like ever present entity that like appeared out of the, the universe and that it's not this like UN program that should ostensibly have some sort of accountability to someone somewhere.

So, so tell me how it essentially, you know, broke off to become its own.

Thing and, and how that's functioning for refugees in other places, there was this notion of sometimes creating temporary mechanisms.

So there was one created for the Koreans.

I always like to tell it because it's an alternative history.

It was called ra, the Case for Korea.

Look it up.

3.1 million refugees.

More than four, five times the number of the Arab refugees were settled.

Three years, a quarter of honor's budget and look at South Korea today.

K-Pop, demon hunters.

This could have been the Arabs, but no, the Arab refugees themselves understood that if they would be settled.

It means that the Jewish state achieves permanence.

That goes back to what we discussed about our enemies trying to deprive us of a sense of permanence, so they hijacked the mechanism that was established to settle them.

Andra.

They essentially took it over through violence.

They ensured that not a single one of them got settled through, uh, blackmailing the West.

They ensured that it never closes, even though it's still after 75, 76 years, a temporary organization.

And it became the mechanism by which the Palestinian Arabs, first of all, became.

Palestinians as a distinct identity from the general Arab world and became an identity focused on negation on no Jewish state.

This is what the honor schools became.

This is what the, the entire world and honor as a result became the womb.

In which Palestinian as an ideology and identity became one to define a collective.

As a result, it gave rise to murderous what they call resistance organization, but basically violent terrorist organizations, and again, all focused not on the constructive goal.

Of building a state for themselves, but on the destructive goal of ensuring that the Jews have nothing.

So Ara today is the main fueling station of Palestinian funneling Western money UN legitimacy to the continued war of Palestinian Arabs.

Existence of a Jewish state.

Why is that faucet so difficult to shut off?

I mean, ostensibly, if you went to the, the source of where the water's coming from, and I'm not even just talking about money.

I'm talking about personnel and oversight and all this stuff.

Why is it so resistant to any sort of intervention?

The short answer is Jews.

Uh, I'll explain.

You know, when, when I wrote the War of Return with, uh, Dr.

Aish Schwartz, I thought, okay, we thought years ago when the book came out, then we will bring it to all the people in Europe and the West who fund RA and all the Israelis and the military establishment in our government who think that.

We should fund it.

You know, we should defend the funding of RA because it's a stabilizing force.

We thought that when we would show them all the facts, they would be so horrified that the faucet would be closed.

And A DNI are on record long before October 7th, telling European and Western diplomats you are funding an ideology where you'll not pay the price in Paris or London or Berlin.

We will pay the price in blood.

Because we listened to the Palestinian Arabs and we knew what the billions that were coming in, what they were being used for.

All you had to do was give them the respect of taking them at their word.

After October 7th, I had to let a more dark thought into my mind, and the dark thought is this, could it be that the Westerners who fund RA do so?

Not because they don't know what it does, but because they do.

Could it be that they're funding it?

Because somewhere in the recesses of the Western subconsciousness resides still a deep unease with the idea of sovereign Jews and RA as the organization devoted to undoing Jewish sovereignty.

Is there way of laundering and outsourcing their continued unease with the idea of Jewish sovereignty.

Alright, that sound you just heard means that we just finished recording our segment.

Five deep questions.

That is bonus content that you can only get if you join the Kela, our subscriber only community, which you can do by going to being jewish podcast.com/community.

We have all kinds of awesome offerings.

Bonus footage like this, you get to hear Dr.Wilf go deep on stuff.

We had Bernard AR Levy go deep on French antisemitism.

We had Cindy Crawford go deep on modeling and business.

All kinds of interesting stuff.

We try to bring you and a lot of other goodies, so please join.

We'd love to have you and we appreciate your support.

Alright, before we wrap things up here, Dr. Wilf, I, I have to ask you this one question because you, you are an avowed atheist.

You've spoken about that quite publicly and, and we're talking about the Jewish state.

In your definition, what does being Jewish mean to you?

And has it shifted at all?

Since October 7th.

So it's always been to me about the sense of duty and mutual responsibility.

Uh, one of the messages that I've been bringing to Jewish communities around the world after October 7th, which is a tough one, is that right now, uh, we need to take care of our own until the world wakes up from this insanity that it's being kind of mass manipulated into.

And I know that it's a tough message because for a lot of Jews, the notion that we, we have a duty and a sense of responsibility to our people is one that many have forgotten or not even raised on.

But this has always been very, very strong in my sense of what being Jewish is.

I will, uh, resort to Dara horn's.

Uh, wonderful definition when she says, when people ask.

What are the Jews, you know, it's uh, a religion, an ethnicity, a race.

And she's like, we have one word for it.

Our own.

We predate the boxes.

It's one syllable, two letters.

Um, we are the people of Israel and for me, um.

Being Jewish, there's so many good things.

There's so many benefits, like I said, to really have a sense of belonging of community, of meaning, of purpose, of history.

My way to express gratitude to that.

Is to show my mutual responsibility, my sense of duty, uh, to give back, uh, to the Jewish people.

Matters of individual faith.

Uh, I think certainly in the 21st century, uh, can be, uh, set aside.

Uh, it's important for me to say that I don't.

Deny the importance of God to the kind of the creation, the belief of the Jewish people.

I'm just saying that in the 21st century, the notion of belonging to a people is so powerful that matters of faith can become individual.

Is there any element for you that one would categorize as religious or spiritual or traditional or it's all about that personhood?

So again, the thing about the Jewish system is because it's a really a historical, indigenous, tribal system, then.

You cannot separate living in the land of Israel, in the state of Israel speaking Hebrew, living according to the seasons of the land of Israel, living according to the Hebrew calendar, celebrating the Hebrew holidays.

That's the thing about Israel.

You don't think of it as religious.

You think of it as, um, you think of it as your membership in the people and nation.

When I celebrate Passover, I think of it as.

Celebrating, uh, kind of the passage of our people.

I think of it almost as a national holiday.

Someone might think of it as carrying at a religious duty and, but it would look the same.

Okay, so now we've reached the very end of the show where we're gonna do a little lightning round, but this one's gonna be a special edition that I'm calling זה או זה. (Zeh o Zeh)

This or that.

Coffee or tea?

Tea, absolutely.

I've seen you drinking it throughout this episode.

Sparkling or still sparkling?

Me too.

Pancakes or waffles?

Pancakes.

Okay.

Okay.

Morning person or night?

Owl.

Night.

But ever since I have children, I have to be a morning person.

But naturally, totally night.

I'm the exact same way.

Cambridge England or Cambridge, Boston for Beauty, Cambridge, England.

I actually got to visit there once just because I wanted to.

I thought it was a such an amazing place.

Gorgeous.

Crayon or crayon.

What was the first crayon?

How do you pronounce the word Crayon?

Or crayon?

What?

The thing you draw with.

Yes.

Crayon.

I didn't even know you could do it the other way.

Yeah.

A lot of people say crayon dog or cat, I don't know.

I guess I'll go with dog.

I knew you were gonna get the right one there.

LA or New York?

New York, eh?

All right.

You can't get 'em.

All right.

That was too fast.

Hanukkah or Passover?

Hanukkah for sure.

Lav or et Gue.

Nice.

Smells amazing.

Ol or lavo Ol.

The river or the C?

The C.

BB Netanyahu or BB New Earth?

The one from Cheers?

Yeah.

Oh, for her for sure.

Naftali Bennett or Tony Bennett, the singer.

Yeah.

IG I'll go with Tony.

Yeah, we'll go with actors and singers.

Why not?

Nice.

All right, so then we maybe know the answer to this one.

Who?

Barak or Dwayne?

The Rock Johnson.

Oh, Dwayne the Rock Johnson for sure.

Former Prime Minister Shimo Perez or Formula One driver, Sergio Perez.

For this, I'll go with Shimo Perez Hoo Ulmer or Ilhan Omar.

Out all merch.

And the last question I ask all my guests, Challah, rip or slice?

Oh, rip for sure.

By far the most popular response.

All right.

That was זה או זה. (Zeh o Zeh)

Dr. Einat Wilf, thank you so much.

It's been such a pleasure.

I know we're all, uh, a lot smarter having spent this hour with you, so thank you so much for the time and thank you.

Thank you for your metaphors and for the time.

They were great.

A big toba to Dr. Einat Wilf for beaming in from Israel,

using the magic of technology to be here with us for that really awesome and interesting episode.

If you enjoyed it as much as I did, please tell your friends, we rely on you to help us grow.

If you're on YouTube, please make sure to like, share and subscribe, and if you're on audio, please give us a five star review, and if you're watching on JBS, what's up?

Alright, I'll see you.

All right, back here for the next ridiculous episode of being Jewish with me, Jonah Plat.

Thank you to our sponsor, SAPIR Journal.

Subscribe for free at sapirjournal.org/beingjewish.