Gahey, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. It's never been particularly

undangerous to try to hold a nuanced and sophisticated position about Middle Eastern politics.

But Ho Nellie, now is definitely not the time to try to straddle that fence.

Everyone seems to be pretty hunkered down in their opinions about exactly what's going on between Israel and Iran and Gaza,

and is the whole world sleepwalking into some conflagration that is going to end in World War III.

Tucker Carlson's worried.

I'll tell you that for nothing. I don't know if you've been keeping tabs on old tuck, but he ain't happy with Israel. As far as he's concerned, those

Zionists and the Ukrainians are just trying to drag the good God-fearing people of the United

States into World War III. And Tucker has quite a lot of allies on the left, the anti-Zionist left in this

concern. They tend to make an exception for Ukraine, but not for the Zionists who are beyond the

pale. I'm not going to spend a lot of time today talking about Iran, although I will give you my

brief reaction and my temporary downloads, but it's so provisional because things are moving so fast.

I want to pull back and reflect on where we are with Israel, with Zionism, with Gaza,

and now, of course, with the broader war with Iran, because I have been in the thick of it

for the past couple of weeks. I wrote a piece earlier this month

that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, which was the main

Saturday weekend newspaper Op Ed column. And it was basically calling for diaspora Jews to no longer make excuses for Israel, to not reflexively defend all of Israel's actions, to start thinking independently and constructing a view of Jewishness that was independent of whatever the state of Israel does.

I felt like we've gotten to a stage at which Jewishness is just too synonymous with the Israeli defense forces

and with the bombing of Gazan civilians to be tenable anymore. We have to construct a

version of Jewishness that is independent of the self-proclaimed Jewish state.

Now, you might wonder why I get myself into these little brouhahas, shall we say, but I just can't help

trying to make the more sophisticated position than simply Zionism is evil or Israel is always right.

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