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CallZone Media.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen here. My name is Danelle Kurd, and I'm an associate

professor of political science and a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics

and authoritarianism more generally.

Today I have on the podcast, Ben Lorber. Ben is a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates.

He's worked as a journalist, organizer, and movement builder for over a decade and published on

right-wing social movements, Israel,

Palestine, Jewish culture, and other such topics for outlets such as The Nation, Salon, Jewish

currents, and more. He's the co-author of Safety Through Solidarity, a Radical Guide to Fighting

Antisemitism, book published in 2024. I'll link in the show notes for sure. Ben, welcome

to it could happen here.

Thanks for having me. So I thought we could get started with you just telling us about yourself and your research. Yeah, yeah. Well, I came to the topic of anti-Semitism, I guess. In some ways,

I mean, as an American Jew, you know, it's a part of my life, but in many ways, I came to it politically

through the Palestine Solidarity Movement. Over a decade ago, I spent a lot of time in the West Bank

doing solidarity work, and I worked for some years for Jewish Voice for Peace as their campus

organizer, and I saw, you know, kind of firsthand how charges of anti-Semitism are used to shut down

dissent to stop Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students from, you know, asking their university to

not use their tuition dollars to bomb Gaza, you know? So at the same time, you know, we all saw the

rise of the alt-right in the first Trump administration. And yeah, you know, like many, I started

digging into, you know, what do these folks believe? You know, the anti-Semitism in their rhetoric was

undeniable. And a long story short, since 2019, I work with political research associates to, yeah,

...