Jonathan Freedland On Anti-Semitism And The Left
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jonathan writes a column for The Guardian, hosts their “Politics Weekly America” podcast, and is the co-host of the “Unholy” podcast with Israeli journalist Yonit Levi. He’s also the author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, along with several thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.
For two clips of our convo — on “white supremacy” shifting to “Jewish supremacy,” and a character study of Keir Starmer — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Jonathan covering US politics since the 1992 election; how Hamas didn't expect the IDF failures on 10/7; the PR battle over Gaza; Israel in a “desperately bad place”; Hamas wanting the deaths of civilians on both sides; disturbing quotes from the settler movement; the impossibility of a two-state solution; the crude worldview of the woke left; how progressives have often been “on the wrong side of history” (e.g. eugenics); Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism; his meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah; the hooked-nose mural in East London Corbyn defended; Corbyn insidiously trashing a piece by Jonathan; the abuse hurled at Margaret Hodge as a child of Holocaust survivors; inherited trauma; Keir Starmer’s stand against the anti-Semitism in his party; his “Eliot Ness” persona as a chief prosecutor; the likelihood of him being the next PM; Tony Blair’s unflattering portrayal in The Crown; Brexit and migrants; the Rwanda Plan; how Biden is fatally weak on immigration; Iowa evangelicals deifying Trump; and Trump as the favorite for winning in the fall.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Justin Brierley on his book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief of God, Nate Silver on the 2024 race, Christian Wiman on resisting despair as a Christian, Jeffrey Rosen on the pursuit of happiness, George Will on Trump and conservatism, and Abigail Shrier on why the cult of therapy harms children. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hiya. Welcome to this cast. We've got another one coming at you. Happy New Year too, even though it's bloody fucking miserable. Really cold here in Washington. Not as cold as it was |
| 0:40.3 | and has been in Iowa or New Hampshire or all the wilds out there where we are finally |
| 0:47.3 | anointing Donald J. Trump to be the next president of the United States, which is the sort of |
| 0:53.4 | dreary backdrop to absolutely everything |
| 0:55.6 | we do. I fear we're beginning to come to grips with a reality I am not really happy about |
| 1:03.5 | or looking forward to, obviously. So let's change the subject a little bit today. Oh, I want to say |
| 1:08.6 | thank you very much for subscribing. And if you hit the 40, 50 minute |
| 1:15.0 | mark and we suddenly disappear, you can get the rest of it by actually subscribing to us. We've had |
| 1:20.0 | a huge boost in subscriptions last month or so. So we're heading towards 160,000 people. And heading towards 21,000 paid subscribers, which is a record. |
| 1:31.7 | So, however else the podcast and bloggy industry is going, we're thanks to you, we're hanging in. |
| 1:40.1 | We're doing great. |
| 1:41.2 | It's wonderful for me today to introduce to you, someone I thought about when I |
| 1:45.9 | was sick over Christmas, and he'll remember the text came in the middle of the night. I just smoked |
| 1:51.4 | a big fatty, and I was trying to sleep, and I'm like, who do I want to talk to you about Israel? |
| 1:55.5 | And the Middle East, and anti-Semitism, and all the rest of it and the left and everything and I thought what am I |
| 2:00.8 | my own friend Johnny Friedland he's the guy to talk to and he's the guy that's coming today. |
| 2:05.7 | I'm most grateful. |
| 2:06.4 | Jonathan Friedland is a journalist and he writes a column for The Guardian in Britain and he hosts |
| 2:11.6 | their Politics Weekly America podcast and he's the co-host of the Unholy podcast, |
| 2:18.4 | quote Unholy, with Israeli journalist Yonit Levi. |
| 2:22.5 | He's also the author of The Escape Artist, the Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to War in the World, |
| 2:29.0 | along with, and I don't know how he does this, but alongside all his journalism, |
... |
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