The following is a transcript of Episode 13 of the Perfect Jewish Parents Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Masua: Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of Perfect Jewish Parents — Israel at War. I am Masua Sagiv, scholar in residence for the Shalom Hartman Institute and visiting assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley.

Joshua: And I’m Joshua Ladon, Director of Education for the Shalom Hartman Institute. In the many conversations we’ve had with students, young people, their parents, and their educators since October 7th, we’ve heard confusion, frustration, helplessness, all in dealing with the framing of the war and the accusations that have been levelled at Israel and the Jews in public schools, on University campuses, and online. The public discourse around Israel and Gaza is peppered with ideological terms: colonialism, colonized, oppressors, oppressed, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, justice, and injustice, all in TikTok sound bites that are quite confusing. 

This episode gets a bit heavy. We’re gonna explore the language and ideas that are young people are encountering on college campuses, in schools, and social media, as we parents and educators struggle with helping them navigate both the experience and the ideas that they face.

The goal of this episode is not to convince our children or students of any one position but to unpack the ideas behind this discourse, giving us the language to engage in conversations with our young people and help them make sense of what they’re experiencing. 

For this purpose, we’re joined by Tomer Persico, a research fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and Rubenstein fellow at Reichman University. Tomer was also a Bay Area scholar in residence for the Shalom Hartman Institute a few years ago and a visiting professor at UC Berkeley. 

Masua: We’ll be right back with this conversation.

Welcome back, Tomer. Thank you for joining us today. 

Tomer: Thank you, Masua.

Masua: Tomer, by way of introduction, how has your last year looked like, both before October 7th and how does it look like since?

Tomer: Yeah, it was quite a year. My last year was weekly and at times twice weekly demonstrations against the Israeli government, against the judicial overhaul that in my opinion would have neutered the Supreme Court and consolidated too much power with the executive branch of the government here in Israel. Me, my wife, my friends, we have been protesting alll this year. I was writing articles about it. 

And that’s it. It all changed, obviously, at the 7th of October, the movement that protested the government, which was an amazing civic awakening here in Israel, stopped at once and we are all recruited, literally or metaphorically, more or less, to the, may I say war effort? I mean, we are at war and rockets are flying overhead and we’re all concerned, we’re heartbroken and trying to get a sense of understanding what in fact happened to us and what’s the path ahead.

Josh: Tomer, it’s great to be with you again. If people didn’t pick up, Tomer had Masua’s role here in the Bay Area before her. And what people in America might not know is you’re really a public intellectual in addition to a professor in Israel and you help sort of clarify for people what the big ideas that are behind sort of the day-to-day news that’s happening in Israel.

Tomer: I try. 

Josh: Well, you try. Okay, great, fine, I think you do it well. You’re also someone who, I think as you described, you’re of the left, both sort of on the streets, but you also you wrote a book about B’tselem Elohim, about the image of God and its relationship to sort of human rights and human dignity in the Jewish tradition and in Western tradition. 

I’m wondering, it’s sort of been a confusing time for many of us who, in America and maybe around the world, who see ourselves on the left and see, all of a sudden, lots of people on the left standing up for Hamas, treating them like freedom fighters and not terrorists, and especially after seeing some such sort of gruesome things, and then when we’re trying to talk to friends, colleagues, young people, teenagers, college students, it feels very confusing. 

I wonder, as you think about what you’re noticing, whether it’s the language of decolonization, or the notions of justice, what are you seeing? Can you help us make sense of this?

Tomer: Yeah, well, maybe first of all we need to realize that when we are talking about the left, we’re not talking about one thing. There are different strands of left-wing thought and left-wing action. And we may differentiate really in simplistic, but I think helpful terms, the liberal left from the radical left. 

There has always been a strand of left-wing ideology that was not liberal and quite open about it. Marxist thought is not liberal. They didn’t think liberalism was good. They thought it was a bourgeois, decadent, individual-centered idea. They thought differently. They thought about how to forward human flourishing differently. And this is also happening today. We have less of Marxism, but a lot of post-colonialism, a lot of identity politics, a lot of post-nationalism. 

And I would suggest also some antisemitism on the left. Also nothing new. Marx and certainly Stalin had antisemitic strains in their thought, in their actions. So the left is a lot of things. I personally define myself as a liberal Zionist. I’m certainly left-wing, but I’m not radical. And I think there is, we can understand now how deficient some of the left-wing thought is when it comes to the very basic humanistic ideas of the sacredness of human life.

Masua: What I find interesting is that in a lot of the scenes that I’m seeing today and my students are seeing today, there is no possibility for two people to be oppressed or two people to have claims on the same land or two people to say both of us have been colonialized.

And one of us, one people has managed to free itself. The other people, I don’t know, arguably, has not managed, didn’t manage. 

Tomer: Not yet. 

Masua: Are we the ones who are stopping it from decolonize itself? But these terms, it’s a zero-sum game that doesn’t allow for any nuanced discussion.

Tomer: Yeah, I think there is a lot of binary and dogmatic thought today, and really a difficulty to hold two thoughts in the head at one time. Even the thought that the 7th of October attacks were a brutal carnage and a crime against humanity. And the thought that Israel is occupying the West Bank and, you know, treating Gaza, let’s say, unfairly. Just these two thoughts are difficult for people to hold at the same time, and that’s obviously unfortunate. 

I will say one more thing. Colonialism is not just a word or a concept or something that you must resist. It has become, I believe, a primary fault, an eternal sin that countries may or may not engage in. I think post-colonial thought at this time is regarding colonialism as the end all and be all of political atrocities. 

And here, because Israel is at this time engaging, at least I think arguably, in colonial action in the West Bank, this sets Israel up as an easy target to resist with post-colonial thought, right, to attack on that ground.

Masua: I have a colleague from a Canadian university that asked her Facebook followers, the following question. If you’re a Jew, when you hear the words “From river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” what are you hearing? And if you are going to pro-Palestinian rallies, when you chant “River to the sea, what are you referring to?” It was fascinating to see hundreds and hundreds of responses. 

All the Jews, I didn’t see any exception and I’ve read a lot of comments said, I hear the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the annihilation of the state of Israel. And then the majority of the people who are chanting this said, oh, we just want one state where everyone will be free and everyone’s rights will be kept and everyone will be safe. How do you explain this incredible gap between the using and the understanding of the term?

Tomer: Right. I think there are two things here. First of all, I think we need to acknowledge that there are people who are chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, and thinking explicitly of Jews not being there. I’ve seen videos on Twitter with people saying, well, they should just go back to where they came from, whether it’s Poland or Tunisia or Libya. So that’s…

Masua: Without acknowledging the fact that it’s impossible and also immoral, yeah.

Tomer: Impossible. Obviously, for them it’s moral because the Jews are colonizers, etc. 

But I think here we are touching upon another divergence in thought between Israelis and Americans. I say this in general, not only Jewish Americans. For many Americans, the only model of nationalism or the nation-state that they know is the US.

And the US is a nation-state made up of immigrants. It’s a constitutional republic. It’s a place where people come together and vow into an agreement, a social contract as it were, which the constitution stands for it and the American values, et cetera. 

Israel is not like that. And indeed, almost every country in the world is not like that. Most nation-states are ethnic nation-states. They are the expression and sovereignty of a certain ethnic group. Jews, Greeks, Japanese, Spaniards, et cetera. These are groups, these are peoples who didn’t come together only to consummate some social contract. They have always been there together, right, or ethnically connected in some way. And with the spring of nations in the 19th century or whatnot, they have formed their own nation-states. 

And I think Americans don’t get that at all. They don’t get that ethnic groups can, should, rightfully have their own self-determination, be stewards of their own future and faith. It just doesn’t compute for Americans who understand nation-states as many people coming together from different places and simply living together by a certain set of rules.

 So when many Americans say “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free,” and imagine such a conception of one person, one vote, everybody is a citizen, everything works well. That’s how we do it here. They don’t get that we have two ethnic groups in Israel, both of them not liking each other, right, let’s put it mildly. Different cultures, different languages. And in a situation where we’ve already had a hundred years of struggle, and with a history that looking at other places, we know from experience would be very hard for these peoples to live together as citizens of the same state. 

If you look at Yugoslavia, if you look at Czechoslovakia, 

Josh: Lebanon. 

Tomer: Lebanon, exactly, we have our neighbor here in Lebanon. It’s very difficult to make it work. Belgium makes it work, you know, but probably will be more like Lebanon than Belgium.

Masua: But you also said something else. It’s not just that it won’t work. You’re saying it’s also disrespecting of people’s legitimate need for self-determination as ethnic peoples. And we’re talking both about Jews and Palestinians or Israelis and Palestinians in our situation.

Tomer: Exactly. This is where the post-nationalism comes in. People don’t understand that different ethnic groups need and have a right to self-determination. They have a right to be in control of their own faith. I am a Zionist because I want to have Jews be in control not only of their education and of their culture, but also of their sewer system. This is part of the deal. I don’t want to have rights, right, equal rights. I want to be the steward of our own fate, to build something together here, which we can do in no other place, even though other places give us equal rights. It’s something else which, again, is very common around the globe. Many such ethnic groups do that. Again, the Japanese do that and the Hungarians do that and the British do that, etc.

Masua: This also leads me to a different kind of moral question. How do we navigate being criticizers of Israel when we needed, when we always educate our young people to be critical of ourselves, and now our young people are very confused because we said that we were very problematic. Is there a time where we need maybe to stop criticizing?

Tomer: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I criticize Israel even today. And you know, I want to follow Manny Mautner and say yes, the actions that the Israeli state has done, has taken over the last two decades and even more, have convinced the world that we are out to occupy the entire land, you know, from the river to the sea, by the way, not give the Palestinian the state that they deserve. 

It’s not only the past 20 years, even at this time, members of the current government are making it very hard for Israel to make the case that it only wants to defend itself. People who are talking about resettling Gaza, which, you know, again, yeah, 

Josh: God forbid. 

Tomer: Again is, it can totally be interpreted as colonialism, justly, right people who are talking about dropping an atom bomb right on Gaza, as such, I mean.

Josh: Ugh, disgusting.

Tomer: This is the perhaps the worst government possible to wage this war. This is a government filled with religious extremists, fundamentalists, that really hold a mirror image view of the Palestinian fundamentalists. Right. And so I do criticize them and I write on my, you know, on different social networks and, because I think we should never give our government a blank pass even in times of war.

Masua: I don’t think they are completely the mirror image of the fundamentalists, even though I highly criticize them.

Tomer: Okay, you know, let’s okay. Okay, let’s not, you know, okay. We won’t get into it now, but I again say we can hold two thoughts in our head at the same time, both that we must. Yeah.

Masua: So I’m gonna, I’m gonna, okay. I’m gonna push you slightly on this. I want, and I think that we have been arguing for years, I mean, our whole career in a sense is, definitely mine is built on the fact that we can hold two things at once. 

But I’m also seeing a lot of the criticism that is being abused in order to delegitimize Israel altogether. I’ll say it differently because I don’t really disagree with you, but I want to voice my frustration here. We are living in a binary world. We are living in a world of binaries. And yet we are educating our young people to push against those binaries. 

But what do you do, how can you make the world around you hear the non-binary and complexifying and nuanced way that is so important for us?

Tomer: I think we really are in a problem here. I mean, social networks and the whole internet culture, TikTok, as a very obvious example, have narrowed down the way that we think and the way we present things, the way we relate and comment about things.

And I think it’s a tragedy in that way. Public discourse has dropped a few levels and it was never too high. Right. We are really in a problem. And I don’t have an easy solution for that except for education that has to emphasize and double down on complexity and on nuances. 

Masua: Tomer, to end our discussion today, you are both very much inside and within the Israeli society, but also you are very much a member of the academic Western world. Can you share with us one example of heartwarming from the past few weeks.

Tomer: I have an example I think that, Masua, you also know about. I think the University of Berkeley, where you are now and where I was, issued a letter, not a formal letter of the university, but 300 professors came together and issued a letter. The president of the university signed it also, that condemns the Hamas attack in very harsh terms, and poses the idea that we should, this war should end, but Israel certainly has a right to exist and to defend itself. So this from a university that I was and that is certainly a very left-wing university was a moment of comfort for me.

And I want to say another thing we need to remember that you know these radical proclamations and demonstrations are coming out at the end from a minority of universities and of students. Most people don’t think that way, are not indoctrinated that way. And though these universities and people are very influential, we shouldn’t lose heart because again, because I think the majority of people understand very well and it’s not too hard to understand that the Hamas are not freedom fighters and are not, you know, making the case for Palestinian freedom or independence, and really have to be at the end on the side of a democracy defending itself. So I really, you know, in that way there is there certainly is hope.

Masua: Almost a full circle from the way that we started this conversation, I feel in the past few couple of weeks, I have been feeling that what we are facing now in North American discourse, but also around the world, is almost a continuation of the work that we have been doing and that you have been doing before October 7th.

Because what we did before October 7th, is reclaiming nationalism, right, and reclaiming Zionism and say that nationalism doesn’t have to be in the hands of extremists and nationalism can also be a national liberalism. And we already have language. It’s not uncommon. We already have language about anti-Semitism from the extreme right, but we didn’t have language so far and we didn’t have a way to navigate the extreme left that we have been talking about today. 

I almost feel like our challenge now is to develop a moral and responsible and a reclaim of a moral and responsible left that allows for, for example, that self-determination claims of nations, et cetera.

Thank you so much, Tomer, for joining us in this conversation. And take care of yourself. We are thinking about you.

Tomer: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure, really.

Josh: Perfect Jewish Parents is a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, where we tackle pressing issues facing Jewish communities, so we can think better, and do better. You can check out our world-renowned faculty, free live classes, and events at shalomhartman.org. 

This episode was prodocued by Jan Lauren Greenfield and edited by Ben Azevedo. Our assistant producer is Tessa Zitter, M. Louis Gordon is our production manager, and Maital Friedman is our vice president of communications and creative. 

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