How Should Progressives Talk About Israel With 'It's Complicated' People

Discussing Israel can be a thorny subject, even with well-meaning people. Sam gives his take on how best to convince people that what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians is wrong and ultimately detrimental to Isreal's security.

Watch the Majority Report live MondayFriday at 12 p.m. EST on YouTube OR listen via daily podcast at

#MajorityReport #politics

SUPPORT the show by becoming a member

Download TMR's FREE app

OTHER LINKS:

Quebec labor report. I would love to hear how Sam navigates conversations about Israel within his family. how he deals with the pro-Israel perspective of some people close to him. as a secular jew I've struggled for a long time trying to understand how people in my family who are otherwise smart good people involved in their communities can endorse apartheid. I'm also getting tired of it being a complicated issue, an excuse a lot of Jewish people use to avoid taking a position. I mean I can tell you that I go in two different modes. one is I don't care about convincing them and I just argue hard at them and you know as a way of saying like I'm too like I can't be bothered with you. and so I'm going to just throw all this at you. but the other way the more the way that I turn that I try and turn people to accept the premise that there must be a state of Israel. and then say that the actual threat from Israel is American Jews who do not use their political power to constrain the actions of the Israeli government. and I put it on there like where we agree we want to avoid you know we want we have the same goal. and then I just start to argue with them that the way they're approaching that goal is actually detrimental. and in fact, Bibi Netanyahu would back me up on this in the sense that he knows that he tried to turn the right-wing government in Israel to basically appeal to the republicans and the Christian zionists. because they know 70 % of the Jewish population. maybe 75 percent of the Jewish population votes for democrats. and is far more ambivalent towards what Israel does than the Christian zionists. and I would argue that the remaining 25 American Jewry needs to come out and have America constrain the Israeli government's worst impulses. like if you know so you frame the like Israeli right as an existential threat to Israel itself. which is also true. yeah. I mean because what's gonna happen I believe is that in 10 years or so maybe less maybe a little bit more the democratic party is going to be in favor of not cutting funding to Israel making it contingent upon a set of requirements that increasingly will recognize Palestinian rights. Israel will become a pariah state. It will become like South Africa. but it may have and may perceive ways out of it that are far more destructive ultimately to Israel and involve a lot more I mean so that's basically it. I mean I don't know what else to say. That's a good question. and you know I think a helpful answer probably for a lot of people. Sometimes you gotta be a little strategic and hold back. you don't need to convince them of everything. and particularly in that first conversation.