All right, hello everybody. It's Monday, March 27th. This is Chapo Traphouse and let's get

right into it today because joining us this week is Norman Finkelstein who has a new

book out this year called, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it, which turns a withering

eye to the state of the contemporary left. Norman, thank you so much for joining us on

today's show.

Thank you for having me. I've heard a lot about your program. I honestly don't watch

the web very much, but I know that you guys are held in very high regard. So I'm glad

to be here and I hope this will be a substantive exchange of opinions.

Praise from Caesar. Yeah, pleasure as ours. I want to talk about the book, but I guess

I just want to begin with because it's been in the news all weekend. I just wanted to

get your take on the protests going on in Israel right now over the proposed reforms

to their judicial system. What do you make of these protests against Netanyahu's government?

For me to assess it right now, I haven't followed it closely. From my point of view, of

course, my interest has been the Israel Palestine conflict and the Palestinian dimension just

doesn't figure into the current protests. What you have now in Israel is it's not unlike

the United States. It's a kind of culture war and part of the culture war is being played

out in the status of the Supreme Court. And as you all know, in the United States, it's

not very different during the Roe v. Wade or the undoing the reverse of Roe v. Wade. There

were serious concerns raised and now that there are six solid conservatives on the Supreme Court,

that there was going to be a rollback of what's called, I'm not entirely wedded to the

description, but what's been called the progressive legislation of the last 50 or so years.

And in the same way, Israel, there is a culture war between what you might call a solid right

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