Micah Goodman on Shrinking the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.6 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2019
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you follow Israeli politics, then you know that within the past year, the Jewish state has experienced two deadlocked elections. What explains this political stalemate?
According to Micah Goodman, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, Israeli politics is trapped in a Catch-67. Most Israelis have been persuaded by the Right that peace with the Palestinians isn’t feasible and that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would be a security nightmare. But they are also persuaded by the Left’s argument that Israel’s control over the West Bank poses a demographic time-bomb that threatens the nation’s character as a Jewish and democratic state. They think that establishing a Palestinian state right now would be a disaster and that remaining in the territories would be a disaster.
How can Israel get out of this impossible situation? By abandoning comprehensive peace plans and messianic solutions, argues Goodman. Rather than solving the conflict or ignoring it, Israel ought to focus on shrinking the conflict by improving the day-to-day lives of Palestinians while maintaining an unwavering commitment to national security. In his Atlantic essay, “Eight Steps to Shrink the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Goodman describes how Israel can do just that. And in this week’s podcast, he joins Tikvah to explore his vital book and thought-provoking essay.
Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble, as well as the original Broadway cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof and "Above the Ocean" by Evan MacDonald.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When the Israeli philosopher Mika Goodman published Ketch 67, his analysis of the debate inside of Israel, |
| 0:15.0 | but how the Jewish state should relate to the Palestinians, the book gripped the nation, |
| 0:20.0 | seeking to articulate the best versions |
| 0:22.6 | of political arguments on both the left and the right, Catch 67 proposes that in order to |
| 0:29.2 | truly understand the mysteries of Israeli politics, you have to understand that many Israelis are |
| 0:35.1 | persuaded by the moral and demographic premise of the left and the |
| 0:39.8 | security and Zionist premise of the right. In so doing, Goodman explains why comprehensive |
| 0:45.7 | solutions, solutions of the sort usually championed by American peace process proposals, |
| 0:52.0 | are prone to make matters between Israelis and Palestinians worse. |
| 0:56.8 | At once philosophical and practical, Catch 67 was one of the most creative and interesting |
| 1:02.5 | books about Israel and the Palestinians in many years. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your |
| 1:08.6 | host, Jonathan Silver. Today we're going to discuss some of the |
| 1:11.9 | arguments of the book with Mika Goodman, the book's author and our guest. But we'll focus our |
| 1:16.9 | conversation on a follow-up essay that Mika wrote in The Atlantic. That essay brings us into the |
| 1:23.2 | reaction to the book. And in our conversation, we discuss how it was received by representatives |
| 1:28.8 | from the Israeli military, security professionals, as well as the Israeli left, and even Palestinians |
| 1:34.1 | themselves. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on iTunes, |
| 1:39.9 | Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community |
| 1:45.1 | of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at |
| 1:51.3 | tikfafund.org. And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit |
| 1:56.3 | our website, Tikvafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now is my conversation with |
| 2:02.4 | Mika Goodman. Mika Goodman, welcome to the Tikva podcast. Thank you, John. It's great to be here. |
... |
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