Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. My guest today is Gabor Matte. He is a physician, an author, and also my father. Dad, welcome back to Pushback.

Aaron, nice to be here again. So we are talking today about anti-Semitism, particularly posing it as a problem on the left. This is an issue that in some

ways tracks with your entire life. You were born into Nazi-occupied Hungary. You barely survived.

You've been an activist for a long time in your life, particularly around the Israel-Palestine conflict.

When you look at the issue today and how it is being discussed, what is your impression

and how do you think we should be approaching the issue of anti-Semitism today?

I think first of all, we have to acknowledge that there is such a thing as anti-Semitism,

that it's just not somebody's fantasy.

And particularly, there is powerful and very painful reasons why people should be concerned

about it.

I'm talking about our fellow Jews, but also others. So there's a, anyway, nobody has to be told that there's a

terrible, devastating history of it in the past century, particularly, but before then as well.

So that the issue needs to be taken seriously. And at the same time, the seriousness that the issue merits has to be looked at in a historical context.

And that context today is largely framed by the Israel-Palestine situation.

And very often the historical lessons and fears that people have absorbed around this issue

get infused into the Palestinian question and very much confused the question in the minds of a lot of people.

So that's the context in which we have to look at it.

In your own experience, how long has that been going on for?

Have you witnessed that dynamic where basically anti-Semitism is weaponized to silence criticism

of Israel and defense of Palestinian rights?

Well, I think we need to take a look at a longer view of the context than which all this has happened.

And Zionism in its earliest stages was definitely a response to some very vicious anti-Semitism.

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