WEBVTT - The Weaponizing of Anti-Semitism with Adam Broomberg 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:08.959 Hello everybody, and welcome to It could happen here. It's 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:13.119 Schreen and today I'm joined by James and Robert to 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:17.120 welcome our guest. In this episode, we are joined by 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.640 Adam Brumberg. He is an artist, an activist and an educator. 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:25.680 He was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. His 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.760 parents and his entire extended family are Holocaust survivors, and 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.080 he had a very Zionist upbringing. We talked to him 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.520 about how he grew up in apart Height, South Africa, 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:38.919 how he broke free from Zionism as a teenager, and 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.360 how he's come to be a very vocal Jewish anti Zionist. 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.919 He currently lives and works in Berlin, and he's exhibited 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:48.920 his art all over the world. He's also regularly on 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.199 the ground in Palestine and he uses his work to 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:54.560 raise awareness about the crimes committed daily by the IDF. 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.320 Members of the German government have accused him and labeled 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.560 him as being anti Semitic because of his criticism of Israel. 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.880 And we're going to get into all of it. I 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.360 wanted so just go back into your background a little bit. 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:11.640 Your family on both sides are Holocaust survivors and your 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:13.679 answertors like fled to South Africa and that's where you 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.200 grew up with your parents. And I read that you 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.160 went to as I in the school starting from age six. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.920 Can you tell us about your family background and your 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:25.000 experience going to as I in a school as a 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:25.800 Jewish person. 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.320 So you remember the podcast you did about Lithuania and 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:37.280 that particular character who was from the pale who had 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.480 to flee from the pogroms and all that stuff. So 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.160 basically this is part three. 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:47.840 What he's talking about here is the Spanish Civil War, 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:50.920 specifically about an episode we did more than a year ago. 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:53.840 As many of thirty percent of the fallen volunteers who 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.880 fought in some units in Spain were Jewish. Some of them, 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:58.680 like I'll shake In, who have written about a lot, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.080 had fled persecution in the pair of Settlement at a 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.400 very young age and arrived in the USA to relative safety. 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.680 But after a few years in the USA, they began 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.360 to he's a menace of anti Semitism spreading back towards 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.480 them through Nazi Germany and laid through fashed Italy, and 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.880 they decided to take up arms and stop it. When 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:17.800 it threatened to overwhelm Democratic Spain. 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:23.320 Imagine that kid gets on a boat, and that kid 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:28.639 is my grandfather. My grandfather's name is Joshua, right, and 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:33.040 he's like a towering six foot three, beautiful man. He's 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:42.000 studying medicine. He's fleeing his mother. His family is not wealthy, 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:49.760 the programs are going on. He's studying medicine. Very bright guy, 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:55.639 but every cell in his body says, you've got to 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.679 get out of here. Also, also he gets this opportunity, 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:04.200 meets a woman called Dora Clatch girl, my grandmother, who's 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:09.239 like four foot two, right, but comes from a very 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:15.279 wealthy family in Lithuania. And it's kind of an arranged 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:20.520 set up, and I think Joshua is paid. Anyway, they 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:26.960 get on a boat bound for South Africa. Some landed 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:32.200 up in Scotland or oddly because the boat bound for America. 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:38.000 They would they would disembark most of the all of 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.280 the people on board and tell them they were in 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.120 America and then take a whole lot of other people 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:46.440 and then carry on to America so they could double 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.960 the fee by the way. But anyway, my so Joshua 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:55.400 and Dora land up on the boat and they land 0:03:55.800 --> 0:04:00.320 in the port of Durban. It's around nineteen thirty three. 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:09.360 Oh wow, okay, and they speak mostly Yiddish. They've never 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:13.040 seen a black person in their life. They land up, 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:18.560 you know, on these foreign shows. My grandmother, I think, 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:24.119 headed towards Johannesburg, and this I got from my mother 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:30.320 on her deathbed. My mom passed away December seventeenth last year, 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.440 so it's like six seven months ago, and you know, 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.240 she'd like she did it magnificently and she managed to 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:41.960 like tell those last little bits of stories. And one 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:48.480 of those was that her mother, Dora, had had a 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:52.640 child who died at nine months old, and she was 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:58.599 Aknon in Johannesburg when the child died, and Joshua, her husband, 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:03.080 was still in the So you can imagine the kind 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.760 of the weirdness of that, right, I mean imagine your 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:11.160 imagine your the father of your child not not coming 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.520 to be with you when you lose your child. Coupled 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:21.599 with the fact that they had both lost I think Dora, 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:26.919 my grandmother, was one of eight or nine children. I 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:32.400 think only three survived the Holocaust and her parents were killed, 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:37.200 and the same with Joshua, so they lost all their 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:43.200 family and there they were at the bottom tip of Africa, 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:51.160 right without without any kind of orientation. 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:57.240 Really, yeah, can you talk a little bit about you 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:00.559 mentioned how you describe it as bottom feeders. I listened 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:04.640 to another podcast you were on UH and you said 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:09.400 that they your family suddenly really enjoyed and appreciated the 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:11.960 change and status they had in society. Can you talk 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:12.840 about that a little bit. 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:18.000 Well, yeah, so, you know, they got on the boat 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:23.680 as and their identity we were were they were Jews. 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.520 So they were expelled from Europe as Jews. The minute 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:34.599 they toes touched the land in Africa, their identity transformed 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:39.640 from being Jewish to being white, right right, just suddenly 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:44.200 they were they were identified as white people. Like the 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:48.120 word the word jew almost like just fell off, you know, 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:51.640 that that yellow star that they had to wear, it 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.080 just fell off. So suddenly they were like, oh my god, 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:01.680 they were like utterly privileged, powerful and and in control. 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:07.760 Right and with all of the with all of the 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:15.120 corruption that apartheid provided for the elite, for the white, 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:20.679 for the white supremacist, for the white the white people, 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.920 that the Jews who arrived were able to plug into 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.840 that privilege and there was about two hundred and fifty 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:34.400 three hundred thousand Jews who fled and arrived in South Africa. 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.480 So it was quite a big community and they did 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.880 ver fucking well. Let me tell you, and I can 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.880 tell you why. I can tell you because my father, 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:51.640 who just saw about three days ago what's left of him. 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:56.640 When he was active and like potent he was, he 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:01.680 was the top tax lawyer in South Africa, which means 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:06.680 that his clients, and those clients are people who walk 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:11.240 through my house. Came through my house in the seventies 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:18.880 and the eighties were probably the most hideous characters in history. 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:27.520 You know, we're talking soul Kurzner. Sol Curzner started something 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:33.520 called Sun's City and he exploited the buntus fand the 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:39.439 homeland system that apartheid built, and he built this casino 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.240 hotel resort called Sun's City. 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.640 At this point in our conversation with Adam, we wanted 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.040 to ask about his personal journey into anti Zionism and 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:49.960 where it all began. 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:54.240 So I think an interesting way to approach this end 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.840 would be like, obviously they found themselves and your parents 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.640 have found themselves in this country, which is systematically discriminating 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.920 against people, right, this is apartheid South Africa, and Jewish 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:10.200 people were at once active in the anti apartment movement, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.640 and as you're saying, also active in the apartheid government 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:18.840 and the apartheid regime. And you found yourself, I guess, 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:23.960 going to this school which was explicitly Zionist. And I'm wondering, 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.079 at what point, And I suppose this involves seeing what's 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.439 happening where you are as well as what's happening in Palestine, 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:37.079 at what point did you make that connection and be 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:40.959 like her this this like what what? Because you're you're 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:45.440 a very explicitly anti Zionist, right, Like it's what was it? 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.079 Something you read, something you saw, like what caused you 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:50.520 to make that leap? And how was that received in 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:51.280 South Africa? 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.079 So I think it's a mixture of things. I think 0:09:55.720 --> 0:10:00.640 I've got three older siblings, so I'm the last born 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:05.080 by seven years. I've got a brother Paul, seven years older, 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.600 sister Man he was nine years older who lives in Israel, 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:13.920 and an old My oldest brother, Jonathan is ten years 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:20.040 older than me. Jonathan and Paul. Paul specifically was very 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:27.400 politically active, so he started an organization unlike Israel, so 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:32.000 that in South Africa the universities were like the bastions 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:36.720 of the anti apartype movement. Right, and he was in 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.319 a new sas National Union of South African Students, and 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.040 he started to think called the End Conscription Campaign, which 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:50.800 was to fight against forced conscription of white men who 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:55.640 were compulsory called up into the army at the age 0:10:55.640 --> 0:11:00.440 of eighteen. And so given the fact that he was 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:05.199 seven years older when I hit about fourteen or fifteen, 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:08.959 at fifteen, I went on a thin called oh pun 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:14.079 which is kind of you've heard of birthright right or 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.280 pun is something. So I went to the Zionist Jewish 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:21.200 day school. So every day i'd go, I'd have to pray, 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:24.199 like go into the synagogue, pretend to pray for about 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.880 an hour, right, And I was looking at my school, 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.600 like my sister is like a gorgeous archivist, and she 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.719 made this little book called Adam's Life, and I was 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:36.880 looking at the school grades at the age of six, 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.160 and it was like Jewish studies and we know what 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:44.360 those Jewish studies were, right, So you walked into the 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:46.800 Jewish studies room and there was a little blue tint 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:49.520 which was the Jewish National Fund, and you would put 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.679 your spare change in there, and that money would go 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:58.680 towards making the desert bloom I say, in like work marks, right, 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.240 So that was that money would go to plants in 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:07.920 like two hundred and forty million pine trees in you know, 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:11.960 which I'm not indigenous in Israel. But just to swing back. 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.719 So at about fourteen or fifteen, what happened is, in 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:19.960 parallel I was being told on a daily basis two 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.520 things I was being told. Now, you've got to remember 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.120 this was the heights of also the Cold War. So 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:30.120 there were these proxy wars that were being fought all 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:36.280 around South Africa, in Angola, in Mozambique. So in Mozambique 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:41.440 you had fre Limo who were backed up by Cuba, Russia, right, 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.520 you had you had Rhanamo that were backed up by 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:50.000 America and South Africa, and they were running these kind 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:54.560 of gorilla bush wars, right. And many of my friends 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.199 who were called up in the military would be flown 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:04.600 into Angola or into Mozambik. We dropped there and you know, 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:09.360 they were told, look, if something happens, you weren't here, 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:11.440 Well you're not there, you know, We're not going to 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:12.160 come and find you. 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.000 What I'm referring to here are the proxy conflicts throughout 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:18.600 Africa that saw national liberation movements, often supported by Cuba 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:22.600 and the USSR, fighting against various last class colonial regimes 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.079 and African anti communist groups. These groups are often supported 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.040 by the US under the guise of anti communism. These 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.560 wars include the Civil War in Angola, the Namibian War 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.600 of Independence, some of those, Ambiquean War of Independence, and 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.920 the zimbabwe War of Independence. You might know the last 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.040 one as a Rhodesian bush war, but Rhodesia doesn't exist anymore. 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.480 Living in the United States, it's easy to use the 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.600 phrase cold war as a conflict free standoff mediated by 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.240 nuclear powers chess something without acknowledging that in many parts 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.320 of the world, proxy wars in these post colonial states 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.800 and the conflicts of decolonialization throughout the late twentieth century 0:13:58.080 --> 0:13:59.840 made that period anything but cold. 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:04.680 The point is is that, so at the age of fourteen, 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.280 I'm going to these schools and I'm being told every 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:13.880 day that if apartheid ended, that would mean the end 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:18.559 of the white people in South Africa, right because we 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:22.080 were by far the minority. White people were by far 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:25.120 the minority, I don't know what it was, ten twelve percent, 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.560 And there was this kind of you could see the 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:33.680 fear because the walls started getting higher, the security gates 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:38.600 were built, the razor wire, the electric fences, you know, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.960 it was it became more increasingly visible in the eighties, 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:49.440 the fear keeping apart tight, keeping people apart. So I 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:53.760 was told all the time, like if apartheid ended, that 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.800 would mean the end of white people. At the same time, 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:01.760 I was told, given that my community was like second 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:07.160 generation Holocaust surviving, you know, the notion of Israel as 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:12.600 a place of salvation, a place of when the ship 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:17.240 hits the fag, that's where we can go, right, and 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.720 that what we're always told that. And we were also 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:25.800 told daily this is a land without people, for a 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:29.920 pupil without land. That became a kind of mantra. Honestly, 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.080 it was like it was said to me over and 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:39.440 over again. Right. So, but when and what started happening 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:45.160 is I think that I became an activist at the 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:50.840 age of sixteen. There's an amazing she's now a dear 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:54.840 friend of mine. We've reconnected. She's a theater director called 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:59.840 yah el Faber, and we started an organization called Lin 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.960 the Age of sixteen, which was to educate white kids 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:09.280 about apartheid. And what we started to do was to 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:14.880 literally kind of break the apartheid wall. We'd start doing 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:20.640 visits into Souweta, we'd start doing visits into Alexandria township, 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:29.120 and we started forming friendships. And you know, most kids 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.720 just didn't go out of the suburbs. And suddenly we'd 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:36.920 go away on these weekends, like led by kind of 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.920 older activists, and we'd all hang in the same you know, 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.760 we'd all sleep in the same dormitories, and we'd start chatting, 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:48.280 chatting and smoking cigarettes together, and so like genuine just 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:53.080 basic childhood friendships started for me. And when that stuff 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:59.280 that profound very successful. Other ring that the propaganda of 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:06.040 apartheid succeeded in creating, you know, the black person as 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:10.560 the other, as the enemy, which it does in Israel, 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.840 right on the other side of the apartheid wall is 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:18.760 the worst enemy your imagination could possibly conjure, up right, 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.120 And it's exactly the same process. And suddenly, when I 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:28.040 kind of pierced that wall and that started falling apart, 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:36.160 then the kind of ideology around Israel and the notion 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:42.359 that Palestinians didn't exist. Suddenly they started to exist for 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.560 me somehow. And so it was about around the age 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:47.880 of sixteen, I'd say. 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.160 And it was It's interesting that it was like through 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.439 your experience of living in an apartheid state that you 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.760 were able to, I think appreciate that, like that what 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.920 was happening to the Palestinian people was like another form 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:01.120 of settle colonialism. 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.040 I mean, I think, yeah, like none of this, none 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:09.000 of this is intellectual. So I think like everything that 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.600 came to me or has driven to me is lucky 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.560 is through lived experience. It really is. So I think 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:21.080 it's like through these friendships that I realized and you know, 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.560 like touching, touching skin. And this is one of this 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:28.520 is the difference between a Partheit South African Apartheit Israel 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:33.960 Palestine is that we were segregated by law, you know, 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:40.399 I mean, mixed marriages were prohibited by law, sex was 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:46.399 prohibited between races. But the thing is that we were 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:50.840 mixed together because the labor force was needed, right, So, 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.760 like you know, the nineteen sixteen Tax Act forced a 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.680 lot of black migrant male workers into the cities to 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.399 work on the gold mines, which meant that there was 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.959 the presence of the other amongst us. And because there 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.480 was the presence of the other, the other, there was 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.960 also the desire and it is a sexual desire or 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:19.200 essential desire, and the smells, and we would touch each other, 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:21.240 and we would walk through the city and kind of 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:25.600 rub up against each other. Now, my nieces and nephews 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.760 having grown up the under under the inter father and 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:34.920 because of the Apartheid War, they've been deprived of that 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.640 sensual experience. 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:39.760 Of the other in Palestine Israel. 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.960 You mean in Palestine Israel. Yeah, so that you know 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.520 they've built they've built this twelve foot there's twelve foot, 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:53.199 seven hundred kilometer long concrete tsunami of a war that 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:57.960 divides people, which means that you know, until recently, nobody 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:03.199 uttered the word Palestinian because they didn't exist, right, And 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:08.639 so for my nieces and nephews, what was on the 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.240 other side of that wall was, like I said, their 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.960 worst the worst enemy that their imagination could conjure up. 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:23.120 And children's imaginations are amazing, right, And I did say 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:28.760 this a while back where where you know how for 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:33.520 cos spoke about he spoke about the structures that were 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:41.280 built around the plague, and after the plague ended, he 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:46.040 was still left with these structures. Right now, let's think 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:49.360 about the apartheid wall. You've got the seven hundred kilometers 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.960 a long, massive like concrete thing. It goes like five 0:20:53.040 --> 0:21:01.160 meters underground. Yeah. Now, unlike for cose hypothesis that war 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:07.920 has created the plague, that war has created the enemy, 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:12.160 because what's on the other side of that wall, that's 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:19.120 only that's only accessible through these little checkpoints that are 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:26.879 manned by these you know, poor teenage like little foot 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:31.240 soldiers of the state. That's the that's the only way 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.399 to penetrate that war. So on the other side of 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:38.399 that wall is whatever you tell the people is there, 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:42.760 and and that's the that's the horror of that situation. 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:45.280 I actually, I'm kind of glad you brought up the 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:47.840 plague idea because you mentioned that on a different podcast, 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:52.919 and I thought it was really like poetic to illustrate 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:56.520 that a plague can be constructed by the structure versus 0:21:56.720 --> 0:21:58.440 actually the plague. 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:00.919 And it's it's also kind of worth noting, you know, 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.040 as you were talking about the restrictions on interracial marriage, 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.280 in South Africa. Versions of that very much still exist 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:11.240 to this day in Israel, including heavy restrictions on inner 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:18.160 marriage between Israeli and Palestinian people. You know that that's 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:19.960 a bigger topic than I want to just kind of 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:22.480 casually get into it. Like there's a number of restrictions 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:26.560 that exist into the present day because like civil marriage 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.679 is not really a thing there as it is in 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:30.760 a lot of other countries. 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:36.399 Yeah, so I wonder, like you said that Palestinian people 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:39.560 existed in your childhood only as this sort of construct, right, 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:43.600 this other construct and your experience of black people in 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:46.320 South Africa has shown you that those other constructs were 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.600 false and misleading and served perhaps an agenda when you 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:55.760 decided that, like your stance was anti Zionism, and then 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.080 you said to your I'm guessing, to your friends, your family, 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:02.040 to your fellow children at the school, like, hey, this 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:04.080 is fucked up here and this is fucked up there too. 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.480 How was the response. 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:14.200 Well, it's like, you know, one doesn't come to these 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:17.880 decisions of a na and like announce it right, right. 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:23.800 So there's vague memories I have, Like, like I said, 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:26.119 I was on that all pun trip, which is like 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:28.880 this three week or three month trip. I mean they said, 0:23:28.960 --> 0:23:32.800 like one hundred and fifteen year old kids, you live 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:35.919 in a in a building in Jerusalem, and it's basically 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:40.920 like this three month propaganda tour. Right, You're given a 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:45.639 Bible and you're told that that's your guidebook. Literally you 0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:50.359 like you traverse, you traverse this place following the stories 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:53.040 of the Bible, and that's meant to be like your 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:58.160 holy land. But I did have one of the it's 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:00.639 called a Madrich, I think, a teacher. He was he 0:24:00.680 --> 0:24:03.439 must have been eighteen or nineteen. He happened to be 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:08.400 kind of like a vaguely liberal Zionist. And I remember 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:14.919 clearly him taking me to an anti Kahani protest, so 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:18.679 there was still like Maya Kahane was alive, and we 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:22.800 know that Mayogahni. You know, the Corness movement, as you know, 0:24:23.080 --> 0:24:27.480 was a kind of you know, they spawned the ben 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:32.639 Geviers and these fascists who are in power now, but 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:38.320 at the time they were deemed a terrorist organization by America. 0:24:38.520 --> 0:24:42.800 And and I remember going to an anti Kahani protest, 0:24:42.840 --> 0:24:46.840 So somehow that planted a little seed in me, and 0:24:48.200 --> 0:24:53.639 I guess, you know, I think the anti Zionism came 0:24:54.160 --> 0:24:58.960 afterwards because I was so focused on the anti apartheid 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:02.240 struggle because that's where I was and that's what I 0:25:02.280 --> 0:25:08.880 was doing. And my university was either spent like running 0:25:08.920 --> 0:25:12.760 battles with riot police or smoking weed. And I literally 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:16.840 went to about three classes. Honestly, I was definitely the 0:25:16.880 --> 0:25:20.680 odd one out in my school. I mean, you know it, 0:25:20.840 --> 0:25:25.320 being a Zionist Jewish die school. I'm still you know, 0:25:25.560 --> 0:25:29.960 I'm still probably perceived as lack an absolute fucking avarration. 0:25:30.240 --> 0:25:30.479 You know. 0:25:31.000 --> 0:25:33.880 Yeah, you did describe your mother in one podcast as 0:25:33.880 --> 0:25:37.080 as diehard Zionist, and so I can only imagine. And 0:25:37.119 --> 0:25:40.160 you you mentioned your nephew and her husband both were 0:25:39.920 --> 0:25:42.960 in the IDF, so I can only imagine. I think 0:25:42.960 --> 0:25:45.440 it's good to bring up that despite all of that, 0:25:45.480 --> 0:25:48.280 you were able to like think deeply about it and 0:25:48.400 --> 0:25:52.320 work your way out of that brainwashing. Essentially, before I 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:54.840 get too carried away, let's take our first break. We'll 0:25:54.840 --> 0:26:08.880 be right back, b RB, and we're back. I want 0:26:08.920 --> 0:26:12.640 to talk now about your experience in Germany and how 0:26:12.680 --> 0:26:17.000 you experienced like state level accusations of being an anti 0:26:17.040 --> 0:26:21.200 Semitic person even though you're just a vocal Jewish antixionist. 0:26:21.720 --> 0:26:25.480 Can you talk about what led this person? I didn't 0:26:25.480 --> 0:26:28.520 even though this person existed. Stefan Hensel, who is the 0:26:28.600 --> 0:26:31.840 anti Semitism Commissioner of the City of Hamburg. That's a 0:26:31.880 --> 0:26:36.600 position someone has, But what led him to call you? 0:26:36.680 --> 0:26:40.600 These really atrocious things in so many newspapers and like 0:26:40.720 --> 0:26:43.600 basically like justlist and libelist stuff. 0:26:44.640 --> 0:26:48.919 Okay, so check it out. So my mom dies seventeenth 0:26:49.000 --> 0:26:53.600 of December. Yeah, I go away to a yoga retreat 0:26:53.880 --> 0:26:58.439 where there's there's Lola coverage. I'm like, I'm offline. I 0:26:58.520 --> 0:27:02.399 get back to and there's emails from like people are 0:27:02.480 --> 0:27:07.760 ready trust you know, and and serious people in my 0:27:07.800 --> 0:27:11.520 life saying, you know, dude, you've got to respond to 0:27:11.640 --> 0:27:15.960 these allegations that are in like de zeight Billin and 0:27:16.119 --> 0:27:21.200 zeol Tad's you know, basically every major newspaper in Germany 0:27:22.240 --> 0:27:26.160 and social media all over the place, there's this character 0:27:26.320 --> 0:27:30.760 like you said Stefan Hensel, who is the commission of 0:27:30.800 --> 0:27:34.720 Antisemitism for the state of Bullin. Now eight of the 0:27:34.800 --> 0:27:41.639 states of Germany have commissioners of antisemitism, right, none of 0:27:41.680 --> 0:27:45.800 whom are Jewish, none of whom were elected. They kind 0:27:45.800 --> 0:27:51.080 of semi it's it's super weird they are, it's semi legal. 0:27:51.600 --> 0:27:55.480 I mean, like nobody knows that exists, nobody knows that, 0:27:55.680 --> 0:28:00.800 nobody elects them. This character Stephan Hens, and I don't 0:28:00.800 --> 0:28:03.120 want to pay too much attention to him because he's 0:28:03.200 --> 0:28:10.160 just like a nebulous, Islamophobic pro Zionist, you know, bureaucrat. 0:28:12.000 --> 0:28:16.320 But anyway, he does a series of interviews, and to 0:28:16.440 --> 0:28:21.280 summarize the numerous interviews and his social media posts, I 0:28:21.359 --> 0:28:28.240 am called, quote literally a hateful anti Seamite who advocates 0:28:28.400 --> 0:28:33.600 for terrorism against Jews. Now this is two weeks after 0:28:33.760 --> 0:28:40.760 bearing my Jewish mother, who was a second generation Holocaust survivor. 0:28:41.680 --> 0:28:50.440 Now that is that definition of gaslighting right now, as 0:28:50.480 --> 0:28:55.160