Where Does Anti-Zionism End and Anti-Semitism Begin?

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Society & Culture, Education, Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Self-improvement

4.5 • 905 Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2026

⏱️ 106 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is it possible to criticise Israel without being anti-Semitic? How do we even know if you cross that line? It’s a question that has divided dinner tables, ended friendships, and split the left in half since October 7th, and with recent events, is no longer a theoretical debate. The oldest hatred in human history is once again at the surface. Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres called David Harris “the foreign minister for the Jews”, having spent fifty years as one of the most prominent Jewish diplomats in the world. He served as CEO of the American Jewish Committee, has met with heads of state on every continent, and has just published Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know with Oxford University Press. He grew up in a family that lived through Soviet communism, Nazi-occupied France, and the expulsion of Jews from Libya. He knows what happens when the shapeshifting virus of anti-Semitism comes out of hibernation. He joined Josh in the Uncomfortable Conversations studio to discuss why anti-Semitism always ends in lethality, why Israel has become the Jew among nations, what the left gets catastrophically wrong about October seventh, and why, after fifty years of working for peace, he still considers the existence of Israel nothing short of a miracle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Antisemitism has a long history, and I already see that my grandchildren's lives as Jews will not be quite as simple and straightforward as mine was.
0:10.1	Maybe the long-sought vaccine on anti-Semitism is actually called liberal democracy.
0:19.9	How are we doing on anti-Semitism at the moment?
0:22.7	You've been looking at this for a long time.
0:26.5	Has it been this bad?
0:29.2	It's going in the wrong direction.
0:32.6	And I don't yet see when the reversal comes.
0:37.5	I think it's going to get worse before hopefully it begins to get better.
0:42.9	Do you see, do you notice a pattern in why it waxes and wanes?
0:48.7	Well, I'm not even sure I would say waxes and wanes because I think we had a good run in the post-war period.
0:56.8	I would say that I was born in 1949, and I cannot recall any significant or serious anti-Semitic
1:08.3	incident in my lifetime going back to my childhood.
1:13.3	My wife and I raised three children. I think if anything they had, if I didn't have any,
1:20.3	they had minus any. And now we are grandparents, and I already see that my grandchildren's lives as Jews will not be quite as simple and straightforward as either mine was in the United States or my kids.
1:37.9	And watching closely what's going on in places like Britain, Canada, and here in Australia, I think what's happening throughout these countries
1:46.9	is, as I said earlier, it's deteriorating.
1:52.4	Where's it coming from? How's it showing up?
1:55.7	It comes from multiple sources. It's hard to pinpoint and say, you know, here's the one source, so if we solve it.
2:02.5	I mean, first of all, we have to understand anti-Semitism has a long history.
2:08.7	I'm talking about thousands of years, and anti-Semitism has certain distinguishing factors.
2:16.1	Among them is its adaptability, its creativity, its ingenuity.
2:23.8	Some have called it a shape-shifting virus. So, you know, a statement, a conference, a study,
	...

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