Understanding Zionism and anti-Zionism w/ Lia Tarachansky - Ep 158

This is Fortress On A Hill, with Henri, Danny, Kaygan,

Jo vonni, Shiloh, and Monisha

Welcome everyone to Fortress On A hill, a podcast about U.

S.

foreign policy, anti imperialism, skepticism, and American way of war.

I'm Jovanni.

Thank you for joining us today.

It's been 296 days since the beginning of the slaughter online stream in Palestine.

Millions of people around the globe have mobilized calling for an end to

the bloodshed, in Western countries in particular, for the government to stop

supporting the Israeli death machine.

This 77 plus years of Palestinian Israeli conflict is perhaps the

most well known conflict to a majority of people around the world.

Thanks to a massive grassroot education campaign that took decades

to develop, activists have taken many forms of action to educate the public

on the plight of the Palestinians.

From writing articles, to writing books, holding community panel

discussions, to marching in the streets.

From art making, film screening, to film making.

One of those people is my guest today, filmmaker and journalist, Leah Tarchansky.

Leah is an Israeli Canadian journalist and filmmaker born in Soviet Ukraine.

Her video journalism covered American politics, the Middle East,

and Canadian Indigenous relations.

she has made several short, experimental, and feature length films that range in

style from investigative to experimental for the BBC World, The Guardian, Tel

Assur, and narrative productions.

Her film won awards and toured globally.

Leah is a PhD candidate in media studies.

She teaches at various film schools in Toronto.

Honored to have you here, Leah.

for coming.

How are you doing today?

Good.

It's so good to be back here.

Leah, tell us a bit about yourself, about where you were

born, how you got to Israel, how you got to Canada, and what got

you into journalism and filmmaking?

I was born in Soviet Union.

As you might know, it was a place that had intense systematic

and systemic anti Semitism.

And, as soon as we could, we did it.

Left.

We actually left as stateless refugees.

We left, having to give up our citizenship.

It was a very traumatic experience for my mom.

And, we found refuge in Israel, like the vast majority of Israelis.

We came out of necessity.

my mom was also very much a believer in the project of the Jewish

state until we got there and got to see what it actually looks like.

what we discovered is that the state of the Jews was actually quite discriminatory

to a lot of people, including to new immigrants, even if they are Jews.

That I think was a very big shocker for my mom.

She never lost her Russian accent, so she never fully was able to integrate

in any way, and after, a decade, she decided it's time to, give up.

on this project and, she found a job in Canada and brought us here.

As soon as I could, I went back.

I missed it very much and I spent, half my adult life in Israel Palestine, working

as a journalist and as a filmmaker.

But what got me into it in the first place was actually Canada.

I became very politicized in my undergrad, in my university, and I

started doing a lot of solidarity work with Indigenous people here.

At the time that I was in my final year of university, there was a

big known, land blockade by the Six Nations, on the Six Nations Reserve.

Which is part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

we just, like everyone I knew was sending support and medical, supplies

and showing up helping with the blockade and, documenting police abuses.

And, unfortunately the blockade didn't succeed to prevent, the.

Provincial government was trying to do, including building a giant garbage

dump on the land of the reserve.

And that was shocking, I, at that point, I think, I was already, I had

grown up in the Second Intifada, so I was very keenly aware of political

violence, but, to see Indigenous people in Canada after everything they've

been through and, there's no dispute.

It's not like Israel Palestine, where we say this and they say that.

Everyone knows Indigenous people in Canada have been, at the, receiving

end of centuries of unbearable violence, and still the government

was treating them with contempt and, exploiting them and their lands.

And, the more Indigenous solidarity things I went to, whether it was,

Mohawks at Tainanega or, Algonquins at Barrier Lake, the more I noticed

that there was no media there.

The media was just not interested.

This is 2006, 7, 8, 9.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission wouldn't start for another decade.

And the media just didn't think that people cared and didn't send

journalists and didn't support those Indigenous people, didn't do

investigations about logging companies that were stealing land, quarry

companies that were, mining the soil.

They just didn't care.

And I found that shocking.

So I started.

photographing, filming, writing myself, at first from the activist

perspective, from the solidarity perspective, and eventually, I learned

enough about journalism to, get a job in journalism and the rest is history.

Yeah, I think I learned about you through your journalism, that's why I

first, learned about you through, the Real News Network, used to do a lot of coverage

and correspondence from the Middle East back then, Then you are promoting

your film, on the side of the road.

I remember seeing that.

And you were interviewed, I wanna say by Paul J if I, I'm

not mistaken about that film.

So I went to the film, solid film, talked to several people here in Texas,

of the Palestinian Solidarity Group.

And we decided to host you, so that's why I got in contact with

you, and you were really quick.

I remember sending you an email saying, oh, it was an email, or I

forgot how I got in contact with you.

I think it was, Leah, I am so and so from Texas.

I just watched your film, and we want to screen it here.

How can we get you here?

And.

You say, how fast can you bring me here?

And then, we made it happen.

We made it happen.

And then we did, we communicated with other, Palestinian Solidarity,

groups in Dallas and Austin, and we made a Texas tour out of it.

So we brought you in, You were here with us for about a week or so,

it's been that nature, right?

And, I hope we treat you well here, and I'll bring you back.

Absolutely.

Texas part of that film's tour was, unforgettable, for sure.

Yeah, how was your nap?

Was your first time interacting with Americans on this topic, right?

I covered Obama's first election.

I was in DC in our studio in 2008 when Obama was first, rising to power.

my grandparents lived in New York, so I had a bunch of interactions with Americans

in general, but not about Palestine.

Not about Palestine.

No.

You think Americans are conservative on Palestine, you should try Canadians.

Oh really?

Oh my goodness, it's so hard to, Canadians have this,

I think they're a nice neighbor.

Yeah, Canadians have this what you might in America call Midwestern attitude,

that things don't have to be political, let's not stir the pot, don't talk about

controversial things, and as a result of that kind of attitude, you can excuse

genocide, you can excuse, indigenous land theft, it's just impossible to talk to

Canadians about Israel and Palestine, because they just immediately shut down.

when it comes to government, people whose job it is to create foreign

policy, sell weapons, allow arms deals.

Canada is deeply involved in the Israeli Canadian arms trade, of course,

which is in the billions and billions.

They don't want to hear it.

In their perspective, Israel is under attack, and Israel is an ally,

and Israel needs Canadian support.

Of course, they don't sell weapons to the Palestinians.

Palestinians are perceived as like these Barely capable of governing themselves,

children that need this patronizing support in the form of charity and

training, but God forbid, actual support.

They've taken a hard line and shielding any

criticism to Israel right now.

I'm not aware if they made any laws.

I know Germany has made laws.

Condemning, activism against activists and, their anti Semitic laws that

they put in, they got jail time and fines and everything like that.

But I'm not aware of Canada has taken this route.

Oh, yeah, the Canadian government has been low key prosecuting and

persecuting Palestine solidarity activists intensely this year and has for decades.

They've decided to really aggressively prosecute a group of 11 activists that

called out the CEO of Indigo, which is a very big book chain here in Canada.

She's a very famous supporter of the Israeli army and she has, she's a very

big donor to an organization called Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces,

which is an organization that sends Canadians to fight in the Israeli army,

and they called her out on it and this symbolic, creative, nonviolent action,

and the government continues to this day after nine months to prosecute

them and has made their life miserable.

If you're a Palestinian, and you, support Palestine, you'll get fired, you'll get

accused of anti Semitism, the Toronto municipality just banned, wearing the

keffiyeh, which is the national symbol, it's a scarf, of Palestine in the, City

Hall, it's the first time that a cultural organization garment has been banned.

And there's all these kinds of reverberations, even though our mayor

for the first time is actually a very radical left, has been a woman

who's been fighting for, human rights and environmental justice for

decades, and is very known for that.

So that she gets inside of that system, she gets devoured by it.

So it's been Obscene watching what's going on university campuses, watching what the

legislative branches have been doing, and just seeing, the level of self censorship

that people are forced into because they are afraid to lose their job, and not

being able to support their families.

For basically saying all people have the right to live, all people

have, lives are equally important.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's unfortunate.

It's sad.

And right now, the West, the whole collective West is,

showing itself right now.

it's showing its hypocrisy throughout all these years when they point

fingers of others human rights and democracy and everything

And, right now, they're doing everything bending over backwards.

to go against everything they have pontificated in the past,

and it's I don't even know if you know this, but it's landing on

deaf ears the Israeli public is.

Completely embroiled in this narrative that everyone in the West is against

them, us, all the countries are supporting the terrorists, that there's

antisemitic persecution everywhere, the Jews are just afraid to go on the

street outside of Israel that it's so terrible, and it's not entirely untrue.

I don't know about in America, but here there's been a lot of attacks

on Jewish people on the streets, a lot of bombs called into Jewish

high schools and Hebrew schools.

There's been a lot of anti Semitism for sure, but to propagate this idea that

Jews are not safe in Canada is nonsense.

Yeah, Canada at some point actually announced an embargo on non lethal weapon

trade with Israel, and I remember the way it was covered in Israel was like, Canada?

Who cares?

Fuck them.

And it's, Israelis have no conception of the level of Canadian support

that they actually rely on.

Whether it's batteries for UAVs or, components for, the massive arsenal of

aerial, and land based weaponry that we use against Gaza, the Canadian components

that Israel relies on, so it's No matter what the West does, the Israeli narrative

kind of remains the same narrative.

And you hear that in the news, you hear that on the radio, you

hear that in the social media.

This idea that America is against us now, Canada is against us, we

have no allies in the world, we're alone, we're surrounded by enemies.

Yemen is launching rockets at us, Lebanon's launching rockets at us, the

Gazans are holding hostage our people and launching rockets at us, and if Jordan

attacked tomorrow, nobody would care, and we are completely surrounded by enemies,

That's the self image that Israel has had for the last ten months,

Even after seeing standing ovations in the U.

S.

Congress for Benjamin Netanyahu?

But he's always had standing that has more to do with American internal

politics than it does with Israel.

Millions of Americans are evangelical Christians who believe in the Zionist

project for entirely anti Semitic reasons.

And for them, support for Israel is crucial in their, bizarre

prophecy about the end of the world.

Netanyahu's support in America has a lot more to do with American

internal politics than it does with supporting actual Israel.

Absolutely.

Let's go back to your film on the side of the road.

There you gave a glimpse of Israeli society and polity.

You show the legislative body, at the time, I believe that was

in 2014, they were passing this anti Nakba, law in the Knesset.

I recall there was this one lone legislator that was arguing against it.

There was Israeli activists going out to the streets in support of

the Nakba education in the middle of Israeli Independence Day, which is

coincided with the same day of Nakba.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure, yeah.

So the Nakba law was first introduced in the slate of anti democratic laws.

When Netanyahu was first elected in this century, you might know he was prime

minister in 1996 for three years, but, he's like more or less consecutive,

more than a decade of rule started more or less on 2009 and his government,

which progressively has gotten further and further to the right, has over the

years proposed and passed dozens of anti democratic laws that are either repressive

for political reasons or, regressive for religious reasons, anti liberal laws that

intend to introduce more, biblical, ideas.

More of a halakhic rule into Israeli life and more, regressive rules that take away

people's freedom of speech and their right to self assembly and basic human rights.

One of those very well known laws was a law that was proposed in 2009, and

originally what the law said was that if you talk about the Nakba, which is

the Palestinian word for, or the Arabic word for catastrophe, and refers to

the, mass displacement of Palestinians that, started, even before the state

was created, but really in 1948 when Israel, declared itself and two thirds

of the Palestinians became refugees.

If you talk about that history on the Israeli Independence Day,

you go to jail for three years.

And that was the original, kind of law.

And then the version of it that passed in 2011, was that if you're, an institution

that gets any kind of funding from the state, so let's say a school or a

university, if you mentioned the NAGPA on Independence Day, you get defunded.

And of course, as you can imagine, that sent a chill effect through, Most

institutions And also, most people didn't look at the details of the law.

They just heard about the Nakba law in the news and realized that any mention

of the Nakba comes with consequences.

And of course, the people it had the most impact on are

Palestinian citizens of Israel.

So about 20 percent of Israelis are Palestinians who were not expelled

in 1948, and their descendants.

And for them, the establishment of the state may be a great thing, but most

of the time has been catastrophic.

Because of course, since Israel was created, there have been hundreds of

new, communities created, villages and towns and cities for Israeli Jews.

And there have been zero.

New cities or towns or villages created for Palestinians.

So wherever they lived until 1948, that's the territory they're allowed

to live on today, even though now there's four generations later.

So there's immense density in Palestinian towns and villages.

There's immense underfunding in all sectors of society.

And of course, political costs and political repression.

For many years, if you wanted to be a high school teacher, or even an

elementary school teacher, if you were a Palestinian, you had to go

through many years of interrogation by the Israeli version of the FBI.

So every kind of second class citizenship experience you can think of, we

have dozens of laws that explicitly Discriminate against non Jews in

Israel, because unlike other Western countries, Israel is not a democracy

in the sense of one person, one vote.

In Israel, Israel is an ethnocracy.

In Israel, there's one class of citizenship for Jewish people, and a

different class of citizenship for non Jewish people, and then a completely

different class of citizenship for people who live there who are not citizens,

like the residents of East Jerusalem.

So in that reality, a law like the Nakba law, part of a whole slate of

laws that have since passed in one version or another, that claws back

any progress that has been made by democratic movements towards freedom of

speech, it's had a devastating effect.

And that in the film.

The film starts with And it starts and ends on Independence Day, one year apart.

And during that year, the law passes.

And the level of vitriol that you can see in the Israeli public, in just that one

year, the rise of that kind of aggressive street level nationalism, that, It was not

really necessary until recently, because the state was doing all the, all of the

expulsion and all of the xenophobia.

And now we're seeing so much polarization, intense nationalism.

And of course, also the rise of left movements and Palestinian civil society,

continuing to demand its rights.

And in the last, year and a half, we've seen the biggest protest

movements in the country's history.

And all of those things are a reaction.

The Nakba law was this one point in this entire context, this whole arc

of, the rise of fascistic movements and the rise of fascistic thinking under

the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yeah, absolutely.

It sounds an awful lot like Jim Crow laws here in the United States and the South.

I recall listening to a person you were interviewing in the movie, in the film,

that was talking about the different legislations that prohibits interactions

between Jews and Palestinians and whatnot, penalties that are involved with it.

So yeah, it sounds, very, reminiscent to the South here in the United States.

The anti miscegenation laws didn't pass, so a Palestinian and a Jew, or

a Muslim and a Jew, or a Palestinian and Israeli can't have relationships.

But, There's not many, obviously, the ones that are there under constant attack,

because in Israel you cannot legally marry someone outside of your religion.

So you have to go elsewhere, get married and come back.

And then, that kind of two class, three class citizenship, life.

Manifest itself in everything.

Let's say one of you dies, your ability to inherit your partner's,

pension, their land, whatever, it becomes incredibly complicated.

everything is working against you, if you do decide to do that.

And also, there was a very politicized and varied.

Overcovered case of a man who picked up a woman in a bar, took her home.

They had consensual decors, and only after she found out that he

was Palestinian she went to the police and accused him of rape.

And her claim was that if she had known that he wasn't Jewish, she

would have never agreed to sex.

and he was charged and it was very messy.

And of course, if it was the other way around, the police

would never even shown up.

It penetrates into every level of official and unofficial life.

during Jim Crow and after, racism in America, it enters every aspect

of American life, at least that's how it looks from the outside.

Even now, in the post Jim Crow era.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, the red lining and, housing and all that.

Did you watch the film Islamization?

We're talking about that.

No,

it was a, film that came out recently.

It's called Zion Ionization.

You mean Israelism?

Israelism, yes.

of course.

No, we're talking about it.

What do you think about

the film?

Yeah, it's

Israelism.

title.

Israelism is a film, it's a documentary about, the, how Jewish kids grow

up in America and how Israel is an integral part of their life.

Jewish identity, it's drilled, Israel is drilled into them in the form of

an idea, starting with kindergarten.

And they are encouraged to go to Israel, they're encouraged

to join the Israeli army.

And in the film, you meet a couple of Jewish Americans

and they talk about Israel.

What it was, learning to color with the colors of the Israeli flag, learning

to count with Hebrew, and just the way that Israel is drilled and drilled into

every aspect of Jewish life in America.

Obviously, I did not grow up in America.

I grew up in Israel.

As an Israeli watching this film, it was very creepy.

We are very aware in Israel that, North American Jews use Israel as a kind of

stand in for whatever their fears are.

That Israel is a fantasy, for a lot of people.

Israel is an idea for a lot of people.

And it's not unique to Jewish North Americans, Palestinian North Americans,

but also, average people don't imagine a country when they think about Israel.

They don't think about people paying taxes and what the health care system

is like and what the topography is like.

They think about political ideas.

The Jewish North Americans.

they grow up, they cook their children in the soup of intense obsession and,

it's really creepy when you watch it, when you're in Israeli because it's like

you feel used, you feel like you're a woman stepping into one of those alpha

male clubs where you're just like an idea of a person, you're not a real person.

And, Israel is.

Many things, but it's a country first and foremost.

It's a difficult country to live in, even if you are Jewish, even if

you are of European descent, which is not even the majority in Israel.

Most Israelis did not come in those first Zionist waves of

pioneers who had colonial ideas.

The vast majority of Israelis came from, the Middle East, North

Africa, Eastern Europe in the 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed.

People who came out of economic or political necessity, and for us to

look at Israelism, to look at the way and what Israelism documents and

to look at the way that American and Canadian Jews have transformed us

into a ideological tool in an arsenal.

It's very creepy and I think that if North American Jews understood that they

were being propagandized to aggressively.

By this, machine that is now, generations of people who cook in these ideas, and

propagate these ideas to their kids, and they, those kids grow up with those

ideas, and they propagate them to their children, and it goes unquestioned

now, this idea of support for Israel as a kind of, blanket statement.

And it was, yeah, it was very creepy and very weird.

It was like watching a cult.

The insides of a cult.

Every person, like, when I came to Toronto, I was invited to introduce the

film and interview the director on stage.

And I remember that every person that asked a question at that event started

by saying, I'm a Canadian Jew, and I grew up like this too, most, almost all of

the Jews I know who were born or raised here in North America grew up like that.

But there's very few Jewish spaces that are critical of Israel, raise, raise

children with, appreciation for Jewishness beyond Israel and the Holocaust.

And they provide their children with the, knowledge that they should inherit.

Jewishness is a 4, 000 year civilization.

It's such a rich and tremendous civilization has made so many

contributions to the world.

And unfortunately, the way that most Jewish schools teach it is,

Bible, Holocaust, Israel, ends.

All of the richness of the hundreds of Jewish communities

from all over the world is lost.

Jewish experiences from around the world are lost, and centuries, millennia of

Jewish history are replaced with this kind of mythology that is really sad.

Obviously, the Holocaust is an enormous part of the Jewish

experience, but I want children to learn about all of the inheritance.

That we have received from our ancestors and from our elders, so

that we can, understand the profundity of what it means to be Jewish.

And instead, kids are drilled and drilled from kindergarten on Israel.

And again, Israel is an idea, not Israel.

The reality.

Israel, the suburbs, Israel, the projects, Israel, the awful experience

of having to raise children to send them to the army to go kill somebody else's

children, Israel that is struggling with climate change, the disappearing

of the Dead Sea, none of the reality of life in Israel, just this stand in

idea with a flag and a Star of David.

And I found it to be, very sickening and absolutely enraging.

Yeah, I went to La Silla with my daughter.

They had a film screening here in San Antonio.

It was hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace, the chapter here in San Antonio.

I remember my daughter, she holds, Her, she's very firm

with her Puerto Rican identity.

And I remember her commenting when she was watching the movie.

I was like, that's really the way she perceived, the way shown and the

way the joy and all the jubilation and all the hype and everything.

She was like, yeah, that's very, it's very catching.

It's very, growing up in that way is very, seductive, very seductive, to

fall in line with the Zionist project, if you were to grow up that way,

but in what way do you compare that to Puerto Rican identity?

I'm her because

She grew up here in the States, she grew up in the States and she has a vision,

like most people in the diaspora, they have a vision of where they came from,

or, a metastrophic way to come from.

but we don't.

there's obviously a lot, there's more Puerto Ricans here in the United

States than there are in Puerto Rico.

And we hold firms, we have a parade, we hold firms and everything, but it's not

that drilling in that Puerto Rican ness.

It's not drilled in into our children like that, that intense, like the film showed,

when I was visiting you in Texas, and you were telling me about

Puerto Rico and American colonialism.

I remember asking you like, which indigenous nations are you descended from

and you and your partner were telling me that the indigenous people of Puerto

Rico were so decimated by colonialism, that they only live in your genes.

Exactly.

And that.

comment, they're only alive in our genes.

It stayed with me, it's now been 10 years.

I think about it all the time.

as a result of that violence, you didn't inherit the Millennia of, knowledge

and culture and language that you are, by all rights entitled to as a

person who comes from there that was robbed from you by colonial violence.

And I think that one of the tragedies of Zionism, besides what it's imposing on

Palestinians and on African refugees and, other communities is that it's robbing us.

As Jewish people of the, wealth of inheritance that is our right

to, because it is dominating what it means to be a Jew.

It is speaking on behalf of Jewish people.

It is forcing Jewish people into this, project, whether you believe in it or not.

If you are a member of a synagogue, chances are your synagogue is heavily

involved in supporting Israel.

if your kids go to Hebrew school, because you want your kids to learn their

history and you want them to learn their languages, chances are they're getting

indoctrinated in Zionist propaganda.

It's everywhere.

And I feel that it is a disservice to our children that they are not given

with confidence the right to make up their own minds and to learn their own

histories, all of them, before, like you said, it just disappears into our genes.

Yeah, I recall hearing the lady that was hosting the film after the film,

we had a discussion, and one of the GVP members that was hosting, she said when

she was growing up, she grew up in a non Zionist home, and her parents used

to send her to the, synagogue schools and everything, just so they can learn

things about, Judaism, so they can learn about the holidays, they can learn

culture and stuff, and then when she get home and all that Zionist stuff, just

leave that at the door, she was told.

And she was lucky.

But yeah,

but

do you sense a sea change here?

Because the reason I'm asking is because, I went to the October 18 march in DC.

There were, there were over 10, 000 people, marching on D.

C.

and about 300 plus people were arrested.

The majority of the people that were arrested, were young Jewish

Americans, that were arrested.

And that march, and they were the one who organized the, the actual march,

the JVP people with other allies, they organized the march, we, we're by the

Capitol, they went into the rotunda, they did a sitting in the rotunda, the D.

C.

police went and just, just stormed them and just, pulled them out.

Recently, going back to the, Netanyahu visit here.

March 3, there was also a big, huge, protest outside DC that blocked

streets, there were, people, chaining themselves, et cetera, right?

And again, the people who organized these protests were young Jewish, American

Jews, mostly members from the JVP.

Chapters and whatnot.

they did a call in and just people started flooding in, this area.

Kamala Harris, the vice president presidential hopeful, tweeted the next

day talking about that the protest is uncalled for, there's no place

in America for anti Semitism, right?

Referring to the protesters and stuff, right?

This

is what I'm

saying Zionism doesn't just colonize Jewish history and Jewishness,

and it's also colonizing anti Semitism

to

the point where, like, when real anti Semitism happens, we don't know

what's actually going on because any criticism of the state of Israel and

its government is shoved under this umbrella of anti Semitism, and It's

incredibly dangerous because of course most people now, don't actually care and

don't believe when anti Semitism happens.

I remember when, there was, a very large high school in

Toronto that got bombed threats.

The weeks after October 7th.

you can imagine how traumatizing it is to have a high school of

children running for their lives thinking that they're about to die.

You're an American, so you know all about that.

But in Canada, we don't have these masks.

So it was a very traumatic experience for people.

And I remember talking to people about it and their eyes glazed over.

They're like, oh, who cares?

Palestinians go through much worse than this.

And that kind of thinking, that kind of oppression Olympics, I

think is what got us into this mess.

the idea that because you suffer, therefore, it's okay to, do whatever to

whoever, that because Palestinian people have suffered for generations, that it's

okay to do an October 7th and kill more than a thousand civilians in that way.

I think that is an incredibly destructive mentality.

But I think that sea change that you're talking about with, masses

of young Jews who are critical of Israel, taking to the streets.

We've seen that since the 2014 war, and it's been a steady, increase,

these movements have only grown exponentially as a result of Israel's

actions, including in Israel.

Standing Together is an organization that started right after the 2014 war,

which was the worst war we've ever had.

Until this one.

this war caused them to balloon, and now there are thousands and tens of

thousands of people who are, constantly protesting against the war, constantly

demanding for a ceasefire, doing all kinds of creative nonviolent actions in

Israel, and they have, dozens and dozens of support chapters all over the world.

And we would never have seen a movement like that inside of Israel if, the

government of Israel didn't act so belligerently and didn't, didn't

operate out of a mentality of genocide.

In Toronto, there's a number of anti Zionist, non Zionist organizations,

Jewish organizations that have formed what's known as the Jew

Say No to Genocide Coalition.

And they work with Palestine Youth Movement and other Palestinian

organizations that, and networks, to support each other and to, mobilize.

In a way that we've never seen before.

And yeah, it's very encouraging, to see people stand up for their ideals.

I hope that, just like Zionism started as a liberation movement against

European antisemitism, my hope is that this liberation movement will learn

the lessons of the past and mobilize in a way that is actually inclusive

and actually liberatory for everyone.

Absolutely.

one of the people on the panel, also said that there's this tendency amongst,

people that are learning about the conflict, Irish people learning about

the conflict, there's this tendency among them to pay more attention

to what's happening in Palestine if it's coming from a Jewish person than

if it's coming from a Palestinian.

Person what she said is that, we need to listen to the, Palestinian voices,

Sure.

I agree.

The way I see it is that it's a story that we've heard our entire lives.

Everyone, grew up with Israel Palestine as a conflict.

And their parents grew up with this conflict.

And I think that the reason people pay attention to Jewish,

activists is because it's new.

It's a different thing.

It's something that you don't expect.

It's a person who's involved in the oppressor class that is

standing up for the oppressed.

When Jewish people were involved in the civil rights movement,

nobody was listening to them.

So I don't think that it's something unique to the fact that they're Jews.

I think that it's just the fact that, they are saying not

in my name, which is a thing.

It's not a rare thing for Palestinians to say, stop killing us.

But when someone who is implicated in the political violence that kills

Palestinians says, stop killing people in my name, it's interesting.

I think that's where that comes from.

I do think it's the responsibility of critical Jews to use whatever

platforms they have to Make sure Palestinians have a voice, because

they don't usually have a platform.

They're usually silenced.

So if we do have platforms, use them in order to empower Palestinian voices.

That's a no brainer.

I really, think it's important to assign to, incompetence or curiosity, what

we could cynically assign to malice.

Yeah, we're, absolutely.

I agree.

Leo, we're coming up in time.

I want to be respectful of your time.

Please tell us about your book coming up.

I know you and I were talking about your dissertation on it, and now you're

converting to a book, you said, right?

Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I'm not writing a book, but thank you for that encouragement.

I actually wrote a film, but, yeah, I'm finishing up a dissertation.

I wanted to look at how other kinds of media, because I've been working

on documentaries my whole life.

I wanted to look at how other kinds of media, whether they can be used for

decolonization in Israel and Palestine.

And specifically, I wanted to look at locative media.

Media that you have to be somewhere specific to experience.

So I picked augmented reality, which is a technology that uses the real, like any

digital interaction with the real world, like Snapchat filters, for example, are

augmented reality or the Pokemon game.

So what we did with a group of Israeli activists, they said, Is

we created a decolonial tour of, the Tel Aviv Beach prominent, which

used to be a village called Mania.

It's a Palestinian village that was raised to the ground.

this giant beautiful park was built in its place.

And what we did was through the use of augmented reality.

When you take a photo of that place, the village comes up.

I wanted to see whether actually seeing Palestinian spaces and

places in the location where you're standing, whether that would do

anything to your consciousness and to your awareness of just the level

of colonial violence that exists,

The inability to see oneself as part of a colonial project and the

inability to see Palestinians as part of the history of this place.

And that's what I wanted to question.

That's what I wanted to undermine.

So I'm just finishing up an academic dissertation about that.

I've been trying different things as a media creator for the last 20 years to get

Israelis to see, to hear, to understand.

And once this is over, I'll try maybe something else.

Absolutely.

Leah, how do you see this conflict ending and what's your hope for the future?

How do you see American racism ending?

Touche, right?

I think that's a good place to wrap up today.

Leah, thank you so much for coming to the show today and sharing your time,

your thoughts and experience with us.

It was lovely having you here today.

Please come again sometime, any last comments before we depart?

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for having me.

I think that you are totally right that Israel and Palestine is the

civil rights issue of our time.

Obviously, there's a lot of places where things are much worse than Gaza.

There's a lot of places where Violence has gone on for a lot longer, and where,

the systems of ideological violence have been a lot more destructive.

But this is being done, literally in our names with our support, with our

taxes, and it is being manipulated for our benefit, supposedly for our benefit.

And I think that as a result of that We are all implicated in it, whether

we're Jewish or not, Palestinian or not.

Are, whether you like it or not, a part of this conflict.

And I think that getting to justice in Israel and Palestine

could have reverberations.

Getting to peace in Israel and Palestine could have an inspiring

reverberation all over the world.

And that's my hope.

And thank you for caring.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

thank you guys for joining us.

Please like us on social media.

Share us with your friends.

Help us grow.

Leah, thank you again for coming.

It was lovely having you.

And we'll keep talking.

Take care.

Thank you so much.

Money is tight these days for everyone, penny pinching to

make it through the month often doesn't give people the funds to

contribute to a creator they support.

So we consider it the highest honor that folks help us fund the podcast

in any dollar amount they're able.

Patreon is the main place to do that.

In addition, any support we receive makes sure we can continue to provide

our main episodes free for everyone.

And for supporters who can donate $10 a month or more, they will be listed

right here as an honorary producer.

Like these fine folks.

Fahim's Everyone Dream, Eric Phillips, Paul Appel, Julie Dupree, Thomas Benson,

Janet Hanson, Ren jacob, and Helge Berg.

However, if Patreon isn't your style, you can contribute directly through PayPal

at PayPal dot me forward slash Fortress on hill, or please check out our store on

Spreadshirt for some great Fortress merch.

We're on Twitter and @facebook.com at Fortress On A Hill.

You can find our full collection of episodes at www dot

Fortress On A Hill dot com.

Skepticism is one's best armor.

Never forget it.

We'll see you next time.