Episode 8: Prof. Alexander Yakobson on what it means to "decolonize Palestine"

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is Zionism colonialism? Are Jews an authentic people, or merely a religion? What about Palestinians? What are Zionism’s moral costs, and what are those of opposing Zionism?

I asked one of my teachers, Hebrew University historian Prof. Alexander Yakobson, some of the great questions now being advanced in Western academic and progressive discourses about Israel.

Alex has that special fearlessness of an intellectual who takes the other side's position seriously. It makes his answers all the more valuable.

This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor in honor of Battalion 363 of the Harel Brigade, which is an infantry brigade in the IDF where the sponsor’s loved one serves. May all our sons and daughters come home safely.

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A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, folks. Welcome to Ask Haviv Anything.
0:08.0	This is a bit of an odd episode, a fun episode, a bonus episode.
0:14.0	I sat down with a teacher of mine, Professor Alexander Jakobson of Hebrew University,
0:20.0	a scholar of Roman history. I learned how to do
0:23.2	history from Alex. And I wanted to bring his voice to this podcast. I've often recommended his book,
0:33.7	Israel and the Family of Nations, which I think is in the last 40 years, 50 years, maybe the best
0:39.3	single defense of Zionism out there. In Hebrew, you can buy it at any bookstore at regular
0:45.9	price. In English, it was classified as an academic book and it sells for $100 or $140,
0:52.4	which I don't know why that happened. I can't prove that there's a
0:55.7	conspiracy, but it's a shame. It's a shame because it's a book worth having. It takes on a lot of
1:01.4	the tropes. It's already two decades old almost, but it takes on a lot of the tropes that are
1:07.0	anti-Zionist academics use, that are sort of thrown at Israel, thrown in Zionism.
1:11.8	What's special about him is his superpower.
1:14.6	And you get that superpower when you learn, when you sit in his class, when you learn from him,
1:19.3	you get something of it.
1:20.5	You see it and therefore you know something about how to do it.
1:23.5	And it's desperately missing from so much of Western debates, discussions about this place,
1:30.5	but about many, many topics. It's the fearlessness of taking the other side's position seriously.
1:36.2	You go into a debate and someone like Alex actually helps the other side make their case.
1:41.8	I have seen him in debates on panels at think tanks, at the university, where the other side make their case. I have seen him in debates on panels at think tanks at the
1:46.1	university where the other side made an argument. And then Alex chimed in and said, you know,
1:50.8	if you actually said, you know, this version of the argument, it would actually be more convincing
	...

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