Watching the Protests From Israel

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2024

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ultimately, the Gaza war protests sweeping campuses are about influencing Israeli politics. The protesters want to use economic divestment, American pressure and policy, and a broad sense of international outrage to change the decisions being made by Israeli leaders. So I wanted to know what it’s like to watch these protests from Israel. What are Israelis seeing? What do they make of them? Ari Shavit is an Israeli journalist and the author of “My Promised Land,” the best book I’ve read about Israeli identity and history. “Israelis are seeing a different war than the one that Americans see,” he tells me. “You see one war film, horror film, and we see at home another war film.” This is a conversation about trying to push divergent perspectives into relationship with each other: On the protests, on Israel, on Gaza, on Benjamin Netanyahu, on what it means to take societal trauma and fear seriously, on Jewish values, and more. Mentioned: “Building the Palestinian State with Salam Fayyad” by The Ezra Klein Show “To Save the Jewish Homeland” by Hannah Arendt Book Recommendations: Truman by David McCullough Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch Rosalind Franklin by Brenda Maddox Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Lydia Polgreen, Dalit Shalom and Sonia Herrero.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. I've been watching as I imagine so many of you have as the campus
0:28.4	protests over Israel over what's happening in Gaza have exploded across the news.
0:34.1	Clashes and arrests at colleges across the country.
0:37.6	Demonstrations are now coming to a head.
0:39.4	Tonight at University of Texas Austin, police one by one detaining pro-Palestinian
0:44.4	protesters in Oregon at Portland State University Atlanta's Emory University University
0:48.8	University University University University University's Manhattan campus Texas State University and the University Carolina, Chapel Hill, In Florida Universities, Manhattan Campus,
0:53.0	Texas State University, and the University of Washington.
0:56.0	And on Long Island, students in police clashed at a protest at Stony Brook University today.
1:01.2	An encampment was set up.
1:02.3	I've been watching police go in and clear encampments in the place I went to college at
1:07.4	UCLA.
1:08.4	I'm here in New York. What is happening in Columbia has been all over the news.
1:16.7	More than a hundred people were arrested after the school asked police to remove student
1:21.2	protesters. And I found it hard myself to know what to think.
1:26.0	One reason is that protests of this size are never one thing.
1:31.0	On the one hand, you really do hear at them people just shouting
1:36.4	anti-Semitic poison. And on the other hand you can go to one of them and attend a beautiful
1:46.2	Passover Sader inside the thing to cover, whether it is a distraction from the thing to cover. And I think the place I came to is that I wanted to keep an eye on power here.
2:10.0	Who has the power to change the reality in Israel and in Gaza right now?
2:15.0	I think there's an implicit default in people's thinking to some deus ex-Macona,
2:20.0	some outside player, maybe America or the UN, who can come impose some new reality.
	...

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