118: Is Israel a settler-colonial state? A historian’s honest answer, with Alex Yakobson
Ask Haviv Anything
Haviv Rettig Gur
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
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Summary
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Was the Zionist-Arab encounter always destined to end in displacement, war and suffering? That's what the settler-colonial theorists argue, and it's a claim that's moved from the fringes of academia into mainstream discourse on college campuses, op-ed pages and protest movements worldwide. It is a claim that has become almost definitional to left-wing politics in the West.
In this episode, we sit down with Professor Alexander Yakobson of the Hebrew University, a scholar of ancient democracy, national identity, and the modern Middle East, to take these arguments apart, piece by piece, with the one thing the debate usually lacks: actual history.
What really happened when the UN voted for partition in 1947? Why did the Jewish Agency beg both the Americans and the Soviets for an international enforcement force? How close was the IDF to losing the War of Independence, and what does that tell us about Zionist "inevitability?" Is the Nakba historically unique, or does it fit a painful pattern seen from Cyprus to British India to Greece and Turkey?
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This episode is sponsored by Howard and Darlene Wolf, a Jewish couple from Tampa, Florida. They want to dedicate it to “the millions of Americans who have an unbreakable bond with the Jewish state of Israel, including the millions of evangelicals whose beliefs and reasons may differ from our own, but who nevertheless stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish state. Regardless of our motivations, whether religious or secular, may we all act on the critical need to align ourselves with America’s most trustworthy ally and the Middle East’s only democracy.”
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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Khabi of Anything. Thank you so much for being here. |
| 0:09.5 | I am excited to tell you that my teacher, Professor Alexander Yacosun of Hebrew University, is back to the podcast. |
| 0:17.3 | He is the Research Fellow of the Kogode Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute, |
| 0:22.0 | Associate Professor of Ancient History at the Hebrew University, a scholar of democracy, |
| 0:26.7 | popular politics, public opinion and elections in the ancient world. |
| 0:30.3 | But he also is a very serious thinker on the modern state of Israel, on democracy, on national identity, on nation |
| 0:40.0 | states, on the rights of national minorities in Israel, in Western democracies, on all the great |
| 0:44.9 | problems and debates and discussions that we have on these issues. And today we're going to |
| 0:49.2 | discuss some of the big questions that I'm often asked and that I often have to answer. |
| 0:55.5 | And some of those answers have even been pretty popular online. |
| 0:58.8 | Today we're going to go right to the source. |
| 1:00.6 | Questions of, is Israel, you know, an ethno state? |
| 1:04.9 | Was Zionism determined to? |
| 1:08.0 | It could not have ended anyway but in the current impasse, in the current |
| 1:12.2 | violence, in the current war, and the current suffering of Palestinians, this is a favorite |
| 1:17.1 | thought and idea of the anti-Israel crowd, most recently articulated by Professor Omar |
| 1:22.6 | Bartov. Zionism could not have ended any other way, but in this war, in this moment. |
| 1:29.1 | We're going to ask that question. We're going to tackle it. We're going to talk about the Nukma |
| 1:32.9 | displacements, generally as empires fall. We're going to ask if it's unique. What makes it |
| 1:38.3 | unique if it is and whether it is or not? And we're going to get to two states, one state, all of those questions. So very excited |
| 1:46.8 | to get into it. These are fundamental foundational questions that worry a lot of us. Before we do, |
| 1:52.3 | let me tell you that this episode is sponsored by Howard and Darlene Wolf, who are a Jewish couple |
... |
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