The US-Israel war with Iran, where we go from here, and how we respond to increased antisemitism

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Transcript:

Jon Allen
Good morning. How are you doing? I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m back in Mexico. I am not a drug dealer or a leader. I just happened to be back this time with my children and my grandchildren, but I am out of out of the cold and in the sun, but looking forward, as always, to having a chat with you.

Maytal Kowalski
Yeah, your your frequent trips to Mexico are raising a lot of questions, I think. So. I also am just getting back though I was in equally cold places. We were in Toronto together a couple of weeks ago, which was nice, and then I went on to DC and was speaking at the J Street convention. And then I was in New York, just kind of hanging out for a few days. And I got back of a week ago, two weeks ago, and kind of catching up here. So we’re both, it’s, it’s nice to be back in this conversation. It was very nice to be in person a few weeks ago. And hopefully we’ll do that again soon, amongst all our travels, of course, despite us, despite us, hoping that there could be some respite when we travel, and that the world can just slow down for a bit so we don’t have to be paying attention. The world has not heeded our advice on that, and is continuing to become more and more heat issues of the world more and more heated and and dangerous, really. So I think we have a lot to talk about on that front, and I know we also want to talk a little bit about not only what’s happening from a policy perspective, but also how discourse has been evolving on some of these issues, because it is obviously having an effect on diaspora Jews, Jewish communities, of course, Israelis as well, and Palestinians, Lebanese Iranians, too many innocent civilians, as Per usual, getting caught in the crossfires in many different ways. So let’s start. Let’s just jump right in then, and let’s just start. Really big picture on Iran. You know what’s happening? Where are we at? What are we seeing? What are we hearing from leaders? Wherever you want to start.

Jon Allen
Yeah, well, I think, you know, real big picture. We had a situation where, last June, there was attacks by Israel and then subsequently by the United States dropping some pretty heavy buster bombs on Iraq at the time, Donald Trump indicated that the nuclear capability of Iran had been obliterated. Israel, more or less agreed with that there was very serious damage done to ballistic missile launchers to ballistic missiles, defense systems, the Air Force, etc. Then I guess the next big event, in some ways, which seemed to provoke the next phase, was the brutal murder of nobody has the exact figure, but somewhere, let’s say, between seven and 30,000 Iranians who came out to protest, largely the economic situation in Iran inflation, a lack of water, a Focus, obviously, on the Iranian regime on the military rather than on trying to deal with the concerns of its people, including, of course, their human rights, etc. And that seemed, you know, to prompt Donald Trump, at least, it seemed to want to get involved by basically calling on the Iranian people to come out and protest and leaving the impression that he was going to come to their rescue somehow. And in the course of the next weeks, he amassed the largest armada of ships and planes and aircraft carriers in recent history, just outside Iran and and no one quite knew what was going to happen. Everybody was placing bets on whether he was going to attack, whether it was going to be a strategic limited attack or or more. In the meantime, of course, there were negotiations going on. The two great nuclear experts in the world, Jared Kushner and Stephen Witkoff, both real estate developers, were leading. These negotiations with the foreign minister of Oman, moderating and and the Iranians on the other side, As had happened last June in the middle of the negotiations when the Americans claimed that there was no way that the Iranians were going to agree to American demands. And the Omani, on the same day, said there had been great strides moving forward in the negotiations. The attack began now. So I mean, one wants to step back again for a minute. Going to war has to be one of the most important decisions a leader of a country takes. Not only are you putting your own military in harm’s way, of course, you are potentially putting your own citizens in harm’s way, if there is going to be a response, whether in this case, it would be a terrorist response in the US or to US interests around the world. And of course, you’ve got to take into account what the implications of going to war are, not only for the country being attacked in your country, but for surrounding countries. And this applies to Israel as well. These are two different countries with two different sets of interests, but each, you know, has to decide. So one is justification, you know, why are you doing this? Is it consistent with international law? Is it consistent with your own domestic law? And even if it’s not? I mean, is it? Is it in your country’s interest to be doing this? Let’s say, as the Secretary of War says he doesn’t care about international law or rules of engagement. I mean, is it in your country’s interest? Then the second issue is, what are your objectives? What are you trying to achieve here? And I would say again, maybe the objectives varied, but as I hinted at initially, this was supposed to be a human rights mission to save the people of Iran, I think that’s quickly moved, been moved aside. And in the American view, it’s, you know, it’s become destroying their nuclear capability, which you will recall, had already been obliterated, and not much changed, destroying their ballistic missile capability and destroying their proxies. These were amongst the issues raised and by by the United States. And of course, the other big issue was regime change. Were were we? Was the United States Israel, going to affect regime change, and thereby, you know, change the entire nature of the Middle East, in many ways, by eliminating this threat, not only to Israel and potentially in the United States, but also to the Gulf. And then there’s the whole question of objectives. Then there’s the whole question of consequences. What are the consequences? So very briefly, talking about the US, there was no legal justification for what the US did. There was no UN Security Council resolution authorizing it. This was not an act of self defense. Iran and nor its proxies, had attacked the United States, and there was no imminent threat of them doing so. Imminent threat is a part of customary international law. It’s not in the charter, but it’s part of custom if, if you think somebody is about to attack you, and you have good reason, then you’re entitled to to cut them off. None of those applied. In addition, President Trump did not seek Congress authority, congressional authority, and therefore, domestically, there is an argument that he did not have authority to do what he did, but that’s really another game for the United States and its citizens to talk about. So on that front visa the United States, there was no legal justification. Was there a kind of moral justification? Well, you know, in Jimmy Carter’s time, hostages were taken. Iran was involved in blowing up embassies and killing soldiers. But these are things that happened years and years ago, and frankly, don’t justify an action right now, if you then move to the objectives, as I said. And they varied. They have been moving targets. I think the whole idea of regime change, both in terms of what the Americans and the Israelis think, has been modified. It’s no longer immediate regime change. It’s weakening the regime. I think we can all agree that there has been a change of regime. The Supreme Leader has been killed, the now the national security advisor has been killed. The head of the masjid has been killed, and now the the intelligent Minister has been killed. So, you know, and then the defense minister was killed before. So there’s a lot of people that have been killed. But that doesn’t mean that the regime itself has changed. And I think there was testimony before Congress yesterday, and Israeli intelligence suggests that regime change in the immediate or maybe even in the in the medium term, is not necessarily in the cards, but there’s no question that in terms of ballistic missiles And in terms of leadership and in terms of the Iranian Navy, there has been serious damage done. Then you could move to the idea of consequences. What are the consequences? It’s hard to believe that nobody in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department or the national intelligence office in the United States did not suggest to somebody that mining the Strait of Hormuz might be a problem if you attacked Iran, or that regime change, especially when No boots are on the ground has not worked terribly well in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen, etc.

Jon Allen
So undoubtedly, somebody was telling somebody in the American government this, and one doesn’t know how far it went up the chain, and who decided to ignore this? But clearly the President decided to ignore it all, and now we have a situation where, in terms of consequences, we’ve seen the rise in the price of oil, natural gas, helium, fertilizer. Okay, those are those are problems. They can be dealt with. The stability of the Gulf states, which they have been working on for the last 10 years, let’s say, of trying to demonstrate to the world that they are stable, that they are good place to invest that they should indeed have the biggest airport hub in the world now in Dubai, etc, etc. Nobody seemed to think that Iran might, in defense of its own country and regime, might attack bases us, bases in those countries, or decide to attack those countries in the hope that they would get together and say, President Trump, enough is enough. We’re getting screwed here. We had a whole idea of where we’re going in the future. And please stop this war. Who knows what was in the minds of Iranians? But somebody should have been thinking about that. Clearly they did. So. Where are we at? In terms of US and Israel? There have been predictions that Donald Trump said it was going to end in a few days. Then that was contradicted by his Secretary of War said a few weeks, we’re now into 15 or 16 days. Nobody knows where the President’s at. His poll numbers are tanking in terms of the war. These 36% of Americans supported the war in the war against Iraq, it was in the 90 percentiles. So this is not helping him. It’s not going to be helping him as we move towards the November elections, where Republicans are going to be fighting a battle both in Congress and in the Senate. So I think overall, not a great story. I think the other factor that’s worth just bringing up here is the BB factor. You’ll recall that at one point, Marco Rubio claimed that the reason the United States entered the war was because Israel was a. Out to and if Israel had entered the war, then US bases would be attacked, and therefore United States had to join and go in at the same time. This was discounted the next day by Trump and by others, but that idea is has been out there in America being fostered by the Tucker Carlson’s and the Magas of the world anyway, and when the Secretary of State says it flat out that does raise issues. And of course, we have to recall that Bibi Netanyahu met with Donald Trump seven times between the time that Trump was inaugurated and the time that this war took place. Tony Blinken confirmed what everybody has always known, that Bibi Netanyahu has been trying to convince every American president to go to war against Iran. He succeeded once last June, and I would suspect that what Bibi was telling Donald Trump was that we’ve got the leadership figured out. We know where they’re going to be. We’re going to take them out, just like you did with Maduro and Venezuela. They are a weakened regime. They’ve lost their legitimacy because of the 1000s of deaths they committed. We’ve already, you know, taken out a lot of their defenses. So let’s go in and finish the job off. You will become the American hero. You will have avenged Jimmy Carter. You will avenge the JCPOA with Barack Obama, and we’re going to make this happen. So that’s the that’s the Israeli tail wagging the American dog. And of course, that has implications for Israel, for Jews in the United States, for those who have you know, alleged for a long time that Israel and the in the Israeli lobby has an oversized influence over US foreign policy. And what are the implications of that? Very briefly, Israel a whole, in one way, a different set of interests here. Yes, they would love regime change, but what they wanted to do was seriously weaken that regime and continue to weaken it. They have done that. They’ve been successful. There was no imminent attack against Israel in international law, there was no justification for attacking Iran. There was a justification for attacking Hezbollah, and we can talk about that when we talk about Lebanon, but none. There was no sense that Iran was about to launch missiles at Israel, or that its nuclear capability had been restarted, or that its proxies, frankly, were going to be launching a major attack. Hamas was weakened. Hezbollah was weakened. Assad was no longer, etc, etc. But Israel has different interests. It wanted to weaken Iran as much as it could. It wanted, it wants now to weaken Hezbollah as much as it could. One can understand that, and it frankly, doesn’t have a lot of concerns about the price of oil, the price of fertilizer, and whether or not it’s Gulf partners, it’s Abraham accord partners, are going to suffer as a result. It’s protecting its own interests, and it thinks that what it’s doing in Lebanon, in Syria right now and in Iran is protecting those interests. So that’s, that’s more or less where we’re at. It’s it’s not a particularly pretty picture for the people of Iran, and it’s not a pretty picture for the people of Israel, who are spending two weeks in and out of their shelters. The people in the North are now being hit by rockets from Hezbollah again, and so the situation is unstable. It’s unclear whether it will spread farther, and everybody’s waiting, frankly, for Donald Trump to decide when he’s getting out, because once he’s out, Israel will stay maybe for a few days longer, and then they will get out. And you know, they both sides, will declare victory once again, and hopefully the world will will settle down.

Maytal Kowalski
Yeah. Yeah, hopefully, yeah, big “if” there. But first of all, excellent, comprehensive overview, that breakdown, I think, is really helpful in terms of, like, reasons and outcomes and consequences. You know, I think it’s really important for folks to understand, you know, to understand and to put significance behind in modern day times, why we go to war and and how we go to war, and the fact that if we are going to continue to purport to uphold democracy and international norms and international law, you know there are, there are some, some rules of the game. And definitely Trump and Trump and Bibi are really at the forefront of throwing those rules out the window, and really, you know, stating quite plainly that they don’t care. But, but so I can take this in two different directions, and I’m going to take it in both directions. Where I want to start with, though, is because, I guess this is a selfish question, because I’m struggling with us. You mentioned the Iranian people, and you mentioned Israelis and and, you know, we kind of set off the top like, once again, the people most hurt by all of this are the innocent civilians. And we know that, I think just, just overnight, there were, there were two Israelis killed by an Iranian missile. We’ve seen a lot of injuries, but, but you know, death toll so far has been low or zero, and so this is obviously any life lost, and across any border is very sad. But you know, this just does really kind of remind folks not just about sitting in a bomb shelter. It’s about, yes, there are threats to threats to life, and this is after, this is after a couple of years for all of these countries of really innocent civilians having very little protection. That being said, though, you know, where I really struggled is during the uprising and the protests and then the swift and harsh response from the Iranian regime to the protesters in Iran. You know when I would listen to Iranians in Iran being interviewed on the news. Let’s say around that time, what I kept hearing was like, stop talking about diplomacy and stop talking about making, you know, stop talking about negotiating with this regime. Get this regime out of here. This is an evil regime this, you know, this is a regime that does not care about our lives, as evidenced by what had been happening on the ground, and there were real calls for international, international pressure and international action to take out, as opposed to negotiate with this Iranian regime. Now I’ll caveat that by saying that it doesn’t seem like what Trump or Netanyahu are trying to do is actually install any sort of alternative regime. And to your point, we have not seen regime change be through American intervention be successful in many other cases in the past. But then my question is, when it comes to the innocent civilians, and we see it from Israelis to as much as they’re so tired of running to bomb shelters, we see mass support for for this action against Iran and kind of this feeling of like, Look, if this, for once and for all, eliminates the Iranian and their proxy threats, then like, let’s just do it and get it over with. And so I guess my question is, in a situation where we do have the people on the ground advocating for the thing that Netanyahu and Trump are both advocating for, they’re not doing a good job at making it happen, but they are advocating for the thing that the people on the ground are advocating for, how do we navigate that? Because we don’t want to go in and tell people and their lived experience that they’re wrong. We’re definitely skeptical about the results, but we understand and they have good reason to feel the way that they do. So what is the right answer in that case? Is there a right answer in that case?

Jon Allen
Well, first of all, let me say I don’t think the Israelis, to put it crudely, give a hoot. They are concerned about their own interests. They want Iran eliminated somehow, or its power eliminated. And if Iranian civilians suffer, okay, the Americans allege that they were going to help these people. If you’re going to allege that you’re going to help these people and that you know, can you imagine the goal? You are not prepared to put your own military on the ground in order to try and affect this regime change, and you’re telling innocent Iranians to come out on the streets and face the same people that killed 30,000 of them three months ago. So yes, of course, these people are saying to the world, help us. Free us. And of course, people in the diaspora are saying, we support Israel and the US. But if, the if the project is doomed to failure, if, if, in the process, the Americans didn’t bother to try and gather their allies and get a UN Security Council resolution, as George W Bush did try, even in Iraq, and get the Gulf countries together and prepare Americans in the region for what might be coming, and get their allies all focused on the same thing, so that if the Strait of Hormuz is going to be shut down, we will all be working together to try and open it. But instead, neither they wanted to do this on their own, without clear, as I said, Without clear objectives, without a sense of where this was going. So putting your, your your faith in, in a Donald Trump or a Bibi Netanyahu is, is, is, you know, it’s really unfortunate. It’s and it’s especially unfortunate, as I said, given the history of trying to do regime change by force, especially with a regime like this, which has known for years that the United States and Israel, especially are out for them, this idea that you are going to knock off the supreme leader who had cancer and was 87 years old, and that was going to change the regime. I mean, they had been preparing for this for years, and I don’t care whether it’s his son or anybody else, and I’m not suggesting the regime isn’t weak. I’m just saying that we would all love for the Iranian regime to be toppled and for liberal democracy to come. We would love it in Myanmar too. We would have loved it in Syria before it happened. We would love it in Russia right now. But does that mean we should simply let Bibi, Netanyahu and President Trump decide who they like? IE, we like some bad guys, but we, we don’t like other bad guys. We’re going to topple Maduro and Venezuela, and now we’re going to topple the president of of Cuba, and we’re going to do Iran. Those are our bad guys. So we’re just going to go around and of course, we’re going to take over Greenland. You know, that’s okay, too, and now we want the same people who we were threatening to take over Greenland to come and protect us in the Strait of Hormuz. But let’s forget about that. So what I’m what? You can’t just pick and choose your international law, your international norms, you can’t say what Putin did in Ukraine is bad, and we’re going to sanction the Russians, and we’re going to put Putin before the International Criminal Court and then say, when the Americans are the Israelis do it, it’s fine because they’re, you know, they’re morally right, or, you know, they know better than we. Or because the people of Iran want this, those people in in Los Angeles and Toronto that were screaming for this to go ahead. I mean, do they now two weeks in, are they still screaming that it’s this has been a great idea, the economic infrastructure of Iran is going to be destroyed. They were already ecologically in horrible shape, nine years of drought, no water. What is going to be left for the 93 million people of Iran once this war is over, if the regime doesn’t change? And right, regime change doesn’t seem to be happening. So yeah, we all agree, get rid of these regimes, but do it in a way that you might actually you might have some success. Why do you think five presidents of the United States refused Bibi’s invitation to join them. They did it because they were told that this is not so easy that you may end up with worse consequences than you’re started with. So it’s it’s terrible, it’s tough, but I just am really loathe to be giving one or two people the right to decide who’s good, who’s bad, and when we’re going to intervene, right?

Maytal Kowalski
Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. And then the you know, so the other thing, okay, so we talked about, I think that’s a great answer, even if not not satisfying, but it is the reality of the world. So we talked about the people of Iran, and we talked about the people of Israel. Let’s also talk about the people, the Jews, of the diaspora. Now we know, and we’ve mentioned this before. JSpaceCanada doesn’t work on domestic antisemitism. Uh, you know, we don’t have any policies or any advocacy around issues of antisemitism or domestic safety. And we’re focused really just, not just on the conflict, but we see in times like these that the conflict, and by which I mean the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and pushing for a two state solution. And we see in time, probably in all times, but heightened in times like these, that these things do not stay separate from one another, and that’s the next thing that I want to talk about, which is we have also seen three synagogue shootings in Toronto. We saw the horrific attack on the synagogue Temple Israel in Michigan. We are seeing more and more discourse online, and that is just blatantly anti semitic and conspiratorial. And then, of course, we saw just yesterday the resignation of Joe Kent, who was up until yesterday, the director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned from his position and really went very heavy into kind of conspiratorial. Now he is known to be conspiratorial, MAGA, 9/11, truther, all these different things. So it’s not surprising. But you know this rhetoric of, you know, Israel, Israel pulling the strings with with the American administration, and forcing the us into this war, and forcing Trump into this war. First of all, it’s a narrative these, these kind of anti semitic conspiracy theories that we’ve known for a very long time that have existed in multiple forms in our history. We’re seeing them rearing their ugly heads once again at what is seemingly a fever pitch, and we are not seeing a real distinction between like we’re seeing a lot of the hard left, or maybe not even hard left, but a lot of the further left, ideological left, echoing the same things as the Maga on the right, and vice versa, where it’s leaving. I think Jews in the diaspora is really scared, and probably for, probably for good reason. You know, it’s, it’s been two years now, of, of very some, some very horrific antisemitic attacks directly related to the war in Gaza and other war in Iran, and they really show no signs of letting up. And I just, I guess, I just want to hear from you and we can talk about this, I guess a little bit more from our personal experience, maybe not our policy, not from a policy lens, but I think you and I maybe differ a little bit on how we’re viewing this situation, but I think that it is something that is really important for our communities to talk about so just broadly like, what are you what are you thinking about? What is happening now, and what you’re seeing and and how we how we restore some sense of not just safety, but clamp down on this really hateful, antisemitic, dangerous, violent rhetoric.

Jon Allen
Yeah, well, let me just point out a couple of things that you just said, because you talked about this surge in antisemitism starting two years ago with the war in Gaza post October 7 and I we’ve now seen a resurgence. It’s been continual, shots at synagogues, attacks on the governor in Pennsylvania. I mean, you the list goes on and on, and it’s not just North America. It’s not Toronto, it’s, it’s, it’s everywhere, yeah, yeah, I would say there are, you know, there’s, there’s a couple of sets of analysis. One set of analysis does not talk about the war in Gaza, does not talk about the war in Iran, does not talk about Lebanon. It’s all about the rise of antisemitism, of this ugly hatred that has been around for 1000s of years that has reared its ugly head now, and we have to do everything possible to stop it, as if this has happened in a vacuum. This is just, it’s all of a sudden happened, and we don’t know why, but it’s there, and we’ve got to deal with it, and we’ve got to nobody’s quite sure how to deal with it. We know that we want more attention to the subject, which is crucial so that parents are teaching their kids what’s right and wrong, and Muslim parents are doing it, and young people are learning it. We know that we want more law enforcement. We want more money given to synagogue. Dogs and community centers, because it’s costing them a fortune to protect themselves. They are, of course, in balance in a difficult situation, because they don’t want to become an armed center with police all over the place, on the one hand and on the other hand, they want to ensure that the students and their kids and their parents going to synagogue or going to school are safe. So it’s a horrible situation, there’s no question about it. And you know, blaming the Liberal government or blaming the Albanese government, as if the Albanese government could have prevented two lone shooters on a bridge from shooting. I mean, you you can only do so much you can to try and prevent this is a you need a whole coordinated approach. And I support those that that call for that, but I think you also got to be realistic about what you’re asking your governments to do. And But that said, on the other hand, that so one, one end, this is this is all happening, and on the other end, where I sit, to some extent, is this is happening in part because of what happened in Gaza and what is happening in Lebanon right now. I mean, there was a direct connection, unfortunately, in the Michigan incident, to the war in Lebanon, where the individual, a seems to have had connections to Hezbollah, but secondly, had his family killed in the latest Israeli invasion in Lebanon, and then responded, as he did so, to somehow suggest that this fellow was, you know, has had anti semitic feelings his whole life, and this came out of nowhere, is obviously not, not reality. So I, I think, I think we can’t keep our heads in the sand on this. There is a connection between what’s happened, what Israel is doing in the world and what we’re seeing now, as you and I would agree 100% there is no justification for attacking a synagogue, attacking a mosque, attacking a church, because of What either Israel is doing, or ISIS is doing, or you know what the Christians did 2000 years ago, etc, etc, absolutely no. Justification has to stop. Governments have to do what they can to prevent it. On the other hand, I do think that because of the conflation between Israel Jews, Israel the state of the Jews, synagogues who put up signs that say we stand by Israel people, the average Joe in the world, especially somebody that has been watching what’s been going on on television. He doesn’t understand all that, but what he does know is that it seems like a majority of Jews support what’s going support Israel and maybe support what the Israeli government’s policies are. Do the majority of people then attack a synagogue? Are those majority of people becoming antisemitic? Or are they confused? Were people protesting at universities antisemitic, or were they protesting the war in Gaza? Are people? Are people protesting now? Are the Al Quds demonstration, which has been going on for years and years that was held in Toronto. Are they protesting what’s happening in Iran or Lebanon? Or are they asking for self-determination of Palestinians? Or are they a bunch of anti Semites who should, whose protests should be shut down immediately? This is a very complex set of questions. It’s not easy to dissect and to figure out, but I don’t think that you can say, on the one hand that all of this antisemitism is because of the war in Gaza, or on the other hand, that the antisemitism has come. Come out of its its or dirty hole, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Israeli policies in the West Bank, in Gaza or in Iran and Lebanon. And so we’ve got to try and come to terms with this as Jews. Obviously the point that you raise the Marco Rubio allegation, and the allegation by this head of National Intelligence, that it’s Israel that is is wagging the US dog in foreign policy terms, is very dangerous. It’s dangerous for Jews. It’s dangerous for Israel. Frankly, it’s dangerous for us, foreign policy and policy vis a vis Israel going forward, because if politicians begin to believe this, or do believe it, or if it’s true, that’s very dangerous. Because people, when things go wrong, people are going to be blaming Israel, and they’re going to be blaming the people that support Israel. And this goes to the much larger question, which we can’t get into, about whether or not Jews in Canada and North America should be criticizing Israel when Israel is doing things that we would otherwise criticize any other country for doing, or whether, because criticizing Israel, A is verboten and B will only cause antisemitism. So we can’t criticize Israel. I obviously, you know, have a particular view, but we don’t have to get into that right this second.

Maytal Kowalski
Well, no, like, you know, I think, I think it’s interesting. I disagree with you, I think in just matters of degrees, but I do think it’s a really important conversation to be having, you know, I think where I where I continuously remain uncomfortable, or where I disagree with I think a lot of folks who are otherwise very ideologically aligned with me, such as yourself, is, you know, this idea of, look, it’s always really bad to do this and and not only really bad, but like, it is illegal to do this. You cannot go and shoot up a synagogue, no matter what. You cannot shoot up a church, a mosque. Really. You should not be shooting up anything ever. But, you know? And then there’s that second part that says, like, but you know, these, these, these institutions, these organizations, continuously talk about supporting Israel. We stand with Israel. They do fundraisers for the IDF. They have an Israeli flag on the Bima, et cetera, et cetera. So like we have to understand it. And you know where that where I think that that makes me really uncomfortable is the fact that you know when people, when there are protests outside of synagogues, specifically, when there is an event being hosted there that is like a real estate event for that is selling, selling land to Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and there’s protests, I actually, I mean full support of those. I think that oftentimes the protests are not done in a very strategic way. And people often end up, I think, shooting themselves in the foot, and not really being able to accomplish what they are trying to accomplish strategically. But like, you know, like, I am the first person to, like, I think that if my synagogue was hosting a real estate fair where, you know, they were selling, they were selling land in the occupied West Bank, like, I would protest that I would be saying something about that. And that’s very specific connection where someone is saying this very specific event is happening. This is what they are doing at the event. And I and that is against international law, and I am therefore going to peacefully protest it. When we say, oh, but all these synagogues say, I stand with Israel like this, I that, you know, I’ve asked a lot of people when we’ve talked specifically about Temple Israel in Michigan. I’ve said to people like, Do you know anything about that congregation? Did they have an Israeli flag on the Bema? Did they avoid talking about Gaza? And most people say like, No, I have no idea. And that’s kind of the issue is that there’s this assumption that all synagogues are supporting Israel, or when all synagogues say that they support Israel, it means necessarily supporting an Israeli government. Now, I also have never been to Temple Israel in Michigan, but I know from seeing a lot of people who I know and respect and admire who have been there or lectured there or visited there, that I imagine it to be probably a place where they did have these conversations, and where the suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza was discussed over the course of the war, and perhaps even we’re grappling with what does this mean for us as a Jewish people? And it’s not like this shooter in this in the in the same analogy of knowing that a specific event is happening and protesting this. Is not what happened for the shooter. They did not say, I know specifically the Temple Israel in Michigan has been X, Y and Z, or raised a certain amount of money for the IDF, and that money has gone specifically to this IDF unit who fights in Gaza or whatever like. That’s not what they were doing. They were saying, Jews are collectively responsible for Israel, and therefore, and they worship at synagogues, and therefore I am going to go and attack a synagogue. And so I think that, like I am very uncomfortable with this idea, that I agree that we have to be having conversations within our community about it, and we need to be being braver and in how we think about these issues intra communally. But I’m so uncomfortable. You and I were talking about the the Peter Beinart tweet. I’m going to pull it up, I’m going to read it, because I’m going to read the tweet, and I’m going to read kind of what, what I said in response. And you’re right. I think that, unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to get into it. But I think that it is interesting. Peter said people who dislike Israel should not conflate it with American Jews, just as people should not conflate the PRC with Chinese Americans or ISIS with American Muslims, and in parentheses, not. But synagogues should not stay. Should not say we stand with Israel, because it encourages that conflation. It makes congregants less safe, but more importantly, given what Israel is doing. It’s morally indefensible. It’s like a Russian Orthodox Church saying, we stand with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. I think that’s a bad example, but, but fine, fair enough. You’re looking at me inquisitively. And the reason that I think it’s a bad example is like the reality is Jews and Israel. It is a unique story that’s really hard to do a one to one comparison to everything’s hard to do a one to one comparison to but this one specifically because Israel is, at once the place where our faith began. It is the land to which we face when we pray. It is in our prayers. It is how we refer to ourselves, the people of Israel. It is also where now exists a modern day nation state, and like we can say that we like that, or we don’t like that, or agree with it, we disagree with it. But the fact of the matter is, those two things now exist as as a as as a reality in our world. You know, it is not the same for it is not the same for for Russia and for Russians, that is just nationalist. For us, it is about a nation, but it is also about our peoplehood and our faith and our religion and our tradition and our culture. I don’t think it’s the same for for anywhere else.

Jon Allen
Yeah, yeah, sure. I want to respond first of all to your example, if a synagogue is hosting a real estate fair to sell land in the West Bank, you’re prepared to accept that. That’s protestable. But if a synagogue remains silent about the occupation in the West Bank, the violence that is going on in the West Bank right now, the murders of families that are is going on, the expulsion of people. You, you, you’ve just sort of implied that there is a certain element of conversation that remains amongst Jews, within synagogues, within the Jewish community. It’s okay we we have to talk about it ourselves. But we...

Maytal Kowalski
You’re misunderstanding, no, you’re misunderstanding my point. No, I want to correct you, because you’ve misunderstood my point. I’m not saying, I’m not saying that that that is also protestable. I think that that is also protestable If you know 100% that that is what is happening inside of that synagogue? My argument? No, we know, no, but we don’t know.

Jon Allen
We know…look, I’m not justifying any kind of attack on any synagogue. What I what we’re talking about now. And you and I are both talking about the same thing. All I am saying is, yes, this is more comfortable, more complex than Russia and the in the Russian Orthodox Church, but precisely because it’s more complex and be price, precisely because the world can’t figure it all out, there is a problem, and Jews in synagogues and Outside synagogues should be talking to the outside world, those who are anti Semites and those who are simply confused about just what do Jews think about what’s going on in Israel right now, and what do they support, and what don’t they support? Conversation that should be going on rather. In shutting the conversation down, and we can’t talk about it, because if we talk about this, it’s going to cause antisemitism.

Maytal Kowalski
And that part I agree with you, the part where I disagree, is that you’re saying, like, we know that the synagogue isn’t talking about it, but like, that’s not true. We don’t know that. We don’t know that at Temple Israel, they’re not bringing I just did an event at my synagogue on Monday night where we had a Palestinian peace activist talking to the congregation in conversation with me about the occupation and, like, very specifically, using words like Jewish supremacy and talking about what is happening in the West Bank and and people really appreciated hearing it, and I give much kudos to the rabbis for opening up the space for that, you know. So my question is, you know, if our if my synagogue was attacked and someone said, Well, we know that these synagogues aren’t talking about these things, and that’s the point that I’m trying to make. Trying to make. We keep saying, we keep making these blanket statements about our synagogues. We know that the synagogues are talking about this enough. We know that the synagogues are saying we stand with Israel.

Jon Allen
Maytal, we don’t keep talking about that. This is just being talked about now. This is not a conversation, a healthy conversation that has been going on. This is, this is just for the first time, beginning to be talked about. So I think it’s a healthy conversation, and I agree with you. There’s no justification for any tax, any attacks anywhere. But when Peter Beinhart says if you put up a sign that says, we stand by Israel, and he says that that is a potential threat to the congregants inside, all he’s saying is what he considers to be a fact that that is a potential threat to them. I’m not saying you should take down the sign necessarily, but you should acknowledge. You should acknowledge if there’s a nut outside, or an anti Semite outside, or somebody whose family has just been killed in Lebanon, that is a potential threat. So that’s one part of it, and his other part is potentially justified as well. Because what does we stand by Israel mean? Does it mean we stand by 70,000 dead in Gaza? Does it mean we stand by the occupation? Does it mean we stand by not only the actions of annexation, but the government’s intent? So what does it mean when a sign says we stand by Israel? Does it mean we stand by Israel’s right to exist 100% or does it mean we support any government in Israel, whatever they do, whatever their intentions are, and if it’s the law?

Maytal Kowalski
Yeah. No, no. Look, I agree with that. But what I am saying is that I think that where you and I think the only place where you and I are diverging on it is that I agree with everything you are saying, but I still don’t see it as something that. And I’m not saying that you’re, you’re, you’re implying this. I don’t say I still don’t see it as something that should be should be used to not justify, but even to, like, explain. I don’t even think it’s something that should be used to explain why these attacks are happening. Like I think that that’s what happening. I think that that Peter, and maybe to a lesser extent, you are saying this is not justified, but this explains it. And I don’t even think that it explains it, because, I mean, or if it does explain it, it is a, it is a, it is a better explanation. And the answer should not be to take down your sign. Your answer should be to say, anti semitism is existing in the world, or attacks on Jews are happening. And look and let’s, again, going back to the Michigan example, though, I don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t know if you know, but, like, I don’t think they had a sign in front of their synagogue that says,

Jon Allen
I don’t know. That’s that’s beside the point. We all agree that there should be no attacks at any time, but

Maytal Kowalski
It’s to the point. Because the argument that I’m trying to make in the case of like, if we’re using that as a very specific example, the argument that I’m trying to make is it is one thing to protest because you know that something specific is happening in that place. It is another thing to protest without knowing that something specific is happening in that place. But you are making an assumption based on other assumptions that you make about the community?

Jon Allen
Well, you’re all I am saying is we’re talking about an outside element, a non Jewish element, that is looking at that. And if you’re simply saying that, you don’t expect. Except that it explains it. I think you’re wrong. I think it does explain it. You don’t like the explanation. You don’t want the explanation to be there. You, I you and I agree that the explanation shouldn’t be there, but it is there, and to simply ignore it is to is to do what I said right at the beginning, is to say that the anti semitism that is occurring today in North America and Europe has nothing to do with the world. It’s just the same old anti semitism, and just by chance, it happens to be happening at the same time that 70,000 Gazans were killed, and there’s a war in Iran and Lebanon, just by chance. And so it does explain it. You don’t like the explanation, and either do I, but it does explain it, in my view.

Maytal Kowalski
No, I agree. Again, though, I think where we’re differing is then what happens after that? What now that we know that that’s the explanation, and we don’t like it, and we don’t we don’t think that it’s justification. I think where we’re differing is like, then, how do we navigate that?

Jon Allen
Yeah, well, I don’t, I don’t really, I don’t, you know, I don’t have to follow Peter. You know, if a synagogue wants to say, we stand by Israel and we’re prepared to take the risks as a result of that, good on them, that’s fine, but they should be aware, as he said, that there are risks. You may not you may not agree with it, but there are risks. There are bad people.

Maytal Kowalski
for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure. I think that this was a great conversation, as always, as always it is. It is more fun when we disagree that it’s it’s old hat when we agree on stuff. Jon, I think, I think we can leave it there, because we’ve been talking for a while now. And also we can leave it there. And hopefully folks who listen to this or watch this or read the transcript can can weigh in and maybe send us an email and say, you know, where they land on the issue, or where they’re thinking about it. Because I think what you and I are agreeing on is that the fact that there is not enough conversation, even in our own community, about it, is not helping the situation at all. So let’s, let’s at the very least, I think the part that we can play is at the very least, open up a conversation and hear from people. So I want to thank you for your time today. We didn’t really, we touched a little bit on Lebanon and the West Bank, but not not enough. But I think that these topics were really important, and we can, unfortunately, there’s no signs of anything dying down. So in our coming weeks, we will have ample time, unfortunately, to continue to talk about those issues, but as long as we need to be talking about them, I am happy that you are here to talk with me about them.

Jon Allen
And I couldn’t agree more. And I really do welcome the views of the viewers. It would be important to hear what other people think about this, because it is so complicated and it is, it is so difficult, and it is so horrible when people living in Canada fear going to their synagogue or to their school or to their university and and that’s bad. And how do we deal with it in a, you know, in a way that is actually going to make a difference?

Maytal Kowalski
100% Yeah, totally agree. Okay, good chat, as always. We will talk soon.

Jon Allen
mui pronto. Ciao.

*This transcript has been automatically generated and lightly edited. Some grammar, spelling, and syntax errors may appear.