107: What does Ezra Klein get wrong?
Ask Haviv Anything
Haviv Rettig Gur
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Welcome to another installment of our short-form episodes that dive into often-asked questions about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.
Our current episode tackles the New York Times’ Ezra Klein’s recent video about the “one-state reality” of Israelis and Palestinians, which many listeners have asked us to respond to. We watched it and were disappointed. We ask the question:
What does Ezra Klein get wrong?
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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lots and lots of our followers, listeners, viewers have asked me to respond to the video |
| 0:11.0 | by Ezra Klein of the New York Times, the video that talks about a one-state reality in Israel |
| 0:16.1 | from the river to the sea in the West Bank in Gaza, apparently also in South Lebanon. And so many asked that I went and took a look, even though I don't like homework. I was hoping to find something that would justify the level of anxiety that it caused among people who love Israel and also challenge Israel, challenge Israel to actually have to respond seriously. |
| 0:37.9 | I'm somebody who thinks that Israel owes answers to people who live under its military rule for generations. |
| 0:44.4 | I talk about it all the time. |
| 0:45.9 | I talk about it to the point where I annoy a lot of my Israeli friends and neighbors. |
| 0:50.6 | And I didn't find that. |
| 0:52.2 | What did I find? |
| 0:53.4 | Ezra Klein makes the argument that from the river to |
| 0:56.5 | the sea was a chant, chanted by student protesters, anti-Israel protesters. And he said there was this |
| 1:03.7 | debate about what it means. And he quotes somebody screaming, it's genocidal. And he quotes another person |
| 1:07.8 | saying, no, it just means from the river to the sea, everybody will be free. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is a translation |
| 1:14.9 | of the Arabic which reads, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab, not Palestine |
| 1:19.7 | will be free. And it's essentially a quote of the Hamas Charter. But let's pretend like it has |
| 1:24.4 | no history and let's pretend like whatever an American college student is |
| 1:28.0 | told it means is the only thing it could possibly mean. But his point then goes on to say that from the |
| 1:33.7 | river to the sea, there is actually one reality, and that one reality is massive Israeli power. And then |
| 1:39.6 | I started paying attention, because from the river to the sea, there really is, by and large, |
| 1:44.9 | with the exception of the Hamas-controlled parts of Gaza, a single, serious power. The Palestinian |
| 1:50.9 | authority rules some pieces of the West Bank, but only a fraction of what it is even given to it |
| 1:56.1 | under the Oslo Accords. And Israel has to step into all those vacuums, and the argument is that Israel creates those |
| 2:02.7 | vacuums, deliberately undermines the Palestinian authority. There are forces in the Israeli government, |
... |
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