Judge Dennis Davis
Revisiting the Zionism/Racism Debate in the Present Climate, Part 1
Judge Dennis Davis and Professor David Peimer | Revisiting the Zionism/Racism Debate in the Present Climate, Part 1 | 06.13.21
- I’ve gone live.
We should do it for ourselves here.
Oh, do you, definitely. With John Schlapobersky.
Yes, he’s very keen. I spoke to him interviewed him for the Daily Maverick one. And it’s an incredibly interesting interview.
Honestly, you know what, Dennis, I’ve had so much on my plate.
No, no, I appreciate that.
I just–
I did also contact Trudy about it. So I think Sheila read . Just need to know cause then I can get hold of him.
No, I, you know what you actually, John, John Schlapobersky, when I was growing up in Switzerland, we used to have our Pesach together.
Yeah. Exactly. And so maybe when you settled the date, when you settled the date, perhaps you could, you could contact him because I’m happy to do it anytime.
No, no, I have spoken to him. I’ve already spoken to him and I said that I would do it. But then once I, when when, when I got back to New York, I was suddenly absolutely overloaded with the, you know, with staff work.
No, no, no, no, I’m not rushing on my side. Just that it was quite a number of people who’d watched the interview I did for the Daily Maverick and then said, why can’t we do this for Lockdown? That was why. And it was very, very–
Yeah, I definitely, definitely, well I spoke to him, I spoke to him beforehand. He contacted me and actually it was lovely to reconnect with him to hear about the family.
It was very moving. It was a very, very moving interview.
Oh, okay, great, great. No, now that I’m back in LA, I’m going to have more time because I gained three hours.
Okay, well I’ll leave it to you because, because I did speak with him. He said he’d be very keen and very happy ‘cause he’s obviously trying to promote his book, and I would like to help that because I think people should read that book. And even if they’re not South Africans, the book has incredible resonances of all kinds.
Perfect. Alright. Very, very good.
Okay.
Wonderful.
Hello David, hi Judi and Alyssa. Good morning to everybody.
Wendy, hi, you okay?
Hi, how are you?
Very well, thanks. How are you?
Good, how are you enjoying the wonderful weather in London.
It’s nearly 30 degrees in England. Can you believe it?
That’s wonderful. And I believe that things are really rough in South Africa, Dennis.
Meaning?
With COVID and people being really ill and–
No, there’s a very bad COVID. But we had quite a good week last week because finally changed their attitude to electricity and they finally privatised SAA and those are two very, very big moves. Massive moves.
Excellent. And also–
A very important judgement .
There been a lot of load-shedding, Dennis?
There is David and it made them, I had interviewed Andre DEH-RAY-TEHR, the CEO for my television programme on the, but it was like last Tuesday. And he had made it absolutely clear unless we go the renewable route, South Africa cannot get out of the hole, and believe it or not, two and a half days later, basically did exactly what he asked for.
Huh, okay.
So we had a good day. We had a good week. And then they’ve privatised SAA, which is–
Okay, good.
Have you had your first jab Dennis.
Sorry.
You’ve had the first vaccine?
I’ve had my jab, yes. I’ve had my Johnson and Johnson jab.
And the second.
Yeah, I didn’t need a second, but I’ve had a Pfizer in addition, so I’m feeling quite–
Okay, great.
Pick up for about two weeks, I think on Thursday, thank God.
Yeah. Great.
All right everybody, I think that I need to hand over to you 'cause we’re well past the hour.
Oh, sorry.
Okay, no problem. I hope everybody’s vaccinated now everybody, all our, all our participants. And I just want to say thanks for joining us. We are looking forward to a very interesting debate on Zionism, the Zionism racism debate. Thanks, over to you.
Alright, thank you Wendy.
Thanks so much.
Visuals are displayed throughout the lecture.
- I come to this with a great deal of difficulty for a whole variety of reasons, and perhaps, I should lay my cards on the table right up front. Of course, at the end of the two week two sessions that David and I are going to do about this, I am going to argue and I suspect David, well I know, is going to argue that, no, you know, there is not necessarily equation, absolutely not, in racism and Zionism.
But just as, for example, I have, as it were, objected very strongly in South Africa to the notion that, the idea that no black person can be a racist, I also want to suggest that doesn’t mean because you have some conception of Zionism, I stress that word, some, that you too may not border on racism for a pretty obvious reason. And let me give a personal example of what I’m talking about. Between 1971 and 1975 when I was a student at the University of Cape Town, and if there are people who were at UCT during this period, they probably remember it, I ended up for those five years of participating, what used to be the annual debate about Zionism and about basically the right of Israel to exist as a society, as a national state.
Quite extraordinary all those years ago that we had those debates but not so extraordinary for reasons which I’m going to come to shortly. And during that particular period, my argument was of course, as it will be today, that Israel, that Zionism was the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and that it was absolutely essential to Jewish existence. But I remember at the time, as I say, that there were fringes already creeping in such as Meir Kahane. And I remember spending a lot of time suggesting to my opponents that they could not dump Meir Kahane and me, that the conception of Zionism as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people could not possibly be equated with Meir Kahane.
The reason I say that is because it’s perfectly obvious that there were views such as his, which to me were a complete abomination to the tradition, but to other people weren’t. But my conception and what I defended then, which I continued to defend, was of a particular kind. And I should, as I say, put that those on the table. And with that in mind, let me say a number of other aspects: It is an immensely difficult topic to discuss, not because, as I say, I can’t conclude my, my argument right now by saying, no, I do not believe that Zionism is per se, racist, not at all, for the reasons I think I’ve already advanced to you, but rather because, and here’s the point, that it has taken on so many shades subsequent to those debates that I used to have at UCT, and it becomes very, very difficult to have a rational debate about this, a debate where we can all actually think together about how best to respond to these accusations, accusations that are extraordinarily hurtful to any and all Jews, to be suggested given our history that we should be racist in any way.
Now I should then also say this, that the debate has become so much more complicated because of various new strains. Example, in 2014, President Rivlin gave a very well documented interview to David Remnick of the New Yorker, which you can certainly get even by just going on to Google, and which I shall come back to next week. And in that he made a number of points not dissimilar to my own now that there were strains within Israeli society which he considered to be racist, and most unfortunately, sir, to his great credit, he came out against those, defending, however, exactly the point that I’ve been defending now. For that he was really quite severely attacked, even though politically he had come from an early good movement.
There was an article in 2018 in AY-RITZ by Bradley Bernstein, Berstein basically saying that in 2018 on the 70th year anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, he said the headline was, and the article you can read too by simply Googling it, that the Zionism which he saw around him now in the year 2018 was racist and he wanted no part of it. He argues his particular case accordingly. But that was published in the AY-RITZ. Just a couple of weeks ago, two very distinguished ambassadors who had served Israel very diligently in South Africa, and Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch, came out suggesting in a long article suggesting that what was occurring on the West Bank was very much parallel to apartheid.
Again, I don’t want to get into the merits of these arguments because they seem to me to take us away from the central debate that we’re having. But I raise them, I raise them profoundly to say to you, this is a difficult topic, and that is why I prefer, prefer to essentially talk about Zionism of the kind that I have held constantly to from all of my life. and which I still believe is a complete answer to the heinous accusations which have been levelled against it. I want to make one other point if I may, because I, it is obvious just from my introduction to you, just how anxious I am not to upset people and to try to engage with everybody as rationally and as fairly and to embrace as many views as possible, even if they’re not my own, in order to respect them as I hope they’d respect mine coming from the position that I am. And I suspect David, I don’t want to speak for him, but I’m almost sure that we have pretty similar views about this.
Sorry Dennis, to interrupt. Can I just say that I absolutely do and I agree and thank you for laying it out so calmly and rationally and clearly.
Thank you, 'cause I know I didn’t tell you this, but I, other than in very telematic form, so that’s why I’ve been very careful, that if people want to follow me, they can. But okay, I wanted to, my inspiration for much of this came, as it always does in some strange way from the , from the portion of the Torah that we read on Shabbat. In preparing for my short little brochure that I give at my Zoom show every Friday night, every Shabbat, of course, I had about this week, it’s about the and it’s about the revolt of Korah. And as you know from that text, that of course Korah challenges Moses, our teacher, and he and his family are effectively swallowed up by the ground and they are all killed.
And of course , our great commentator, mediaeval commentator asks a question: Why would not just Korah but his family and the children and the wives and everybody who’s basically within his lineage be destroyed in this particular way, and at least metaphorically. And of course I think one has to look at this metaphorically. What the sources tell me in order to answer the question that RASH-EE poses is that what Korah was doing was ultimately setting himself up against the entire core of the Jewish tradition.
He was effectively saying that that which Moses taught, that which had been crafted as it were after it sat after the exodus of Egypt was not just up for grabs but was complete nonsense. And there’s a MED-RUSH, which of course is the way in which we sort of illustrate the text, which I’m not going to go into 'cause I don’t have time, which basically illustrates precisely the point I’m making.
Why do I tell you this? I tell you this because I think that within the tradition, there’s contestation and always will be, and it would be quite absurd to say, My view’s better than yours or yours is better than mine. When you’re outside of the tradition, when you’re not just outside, but when you’re, tradition, everything that it stands for, that’s entirely different. And what I want to suggest to you that what we are about to present you is fulsomely within the tradition, fulsomely within a whole range of thinkers, and I would want to suggest to Zionism when put in its best possible light.
And so let me give you what I don’t want to get into, but I’ve been sort of almost compelled to do so, because I was already asked this by a question that was put to me about the Judaism declaration, antisemitism, which by the way was signed by a huge amount of very distinguished people, including a couple who’ve actually spoken at Lockdown University, but they can tell you themselves. it was essentially to say that it was antisemitic to deny the right of Jews in the state of Israel to exist and flourish collectively and individually as Jews in accordance with the principles of equality.
But it was also suggested as supporting the Palestine demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil, and human rights as encapsulated in international law, and to suggest that criticising or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, likewise was not antisemitic. Now we can argue about that. We can really argue about all of those things, but what, and I don’t want to say more, but what I do want to say is that there is, I think, a profound argument to negate this particular proposition, and it requires negation now. 'Cause unfortunately for all sorts of reasons, it’s back in vogue under the woke culture and under a whole range of issues from both, if I could call it the populous left and the right. David will deal with some of this later.
So that’s by way of introduction, which I’ve, I think taken far too long to to give to you, but there we are. I want, if I may then to talk a little bit about the context of how on earth has all arrived onto our agenda. And so for the next few minutes, let me choose, bear with me as I just speech I found revisiting to be really interesting, quite informative. On the 10th of November, 1975, by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly passed the resolution to the effect that Zionism was effectively racist. Of course we know that on the 16th of December, 1991, by 88 votes to 25, with 13 abstentions, that resolution, that infamous resolution was effectively rejected by another resolution which essentially ensured that it was an annulled.
But how did that '75 resolution come about? And that’s what I want to talk to you about briefly. So effectively what occurred, and I’m really fast forwarding the history in the interest of time, in 1968 there was an international conference of human rights. The way did it take place in Tehran, which at that stage of course was ruled by the autocratic Shah, Reza Pahlavi, and at that particular conference, it was supposed to be a conference on human rights in which to a large degree, as one of the observers noted, there had been, it was a culmination of a shift from the western inflected concept of individual human rights to a model that emphasised economic development and the collective rights of the nation.
This decisively anti-western posture, he wrote, focused on the evils of apartheid and neo-colonialism and combined with the rage of Arab states still smarting from the decisive defeat in 1967 to create an atmosphere guaranteed to be hostile to Israel. And indeed it was. So according to at least one estimate of this 1968 conference, more than two thirds of the sessions at the conference pertain to Israel’s actions in newly acquired territory. Its first resolution blasted Israel for demolishing homes of Arab citizens in violation of the Geneva Convention, demanded the right to return to refugees displaced by all the hostilities, and called for the, in the General Assembly of the United Nations, to create a special committee to investigate human rights violations in the occupied territories.
It is interesting the atmosphere that took place there because Rene Cassin, I should tell you, an extraordinarily distinguished international human rights lawyer, co-author of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Nobel Prize winner, found himself in the unenviable position of seeking to counter what he considered to be gross excesses in the debate, whilst the French government’s foreign policy had now begun to turn against the Jewish state. The French foreign ministry had furnished him with instructions, which he found extraordinary to believe. Not only was he to abstain on all questions of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, in the Arab world, but he was to request instructions should a resolution on the territories reach the floor.
Aghast at the political expediency of his French government, Cassin scribbled at the bottom of his notes, “What about South Sudan? "What about the Kurds,” as if to ask aloud about the fate of those populations not directly related to French overseas interests, but which were actually crucial to the kind of broader discussion that was to take place. It therefore meant that by 1968 there was, which was significant cause it was after the Six Day War, that there was already the kind of atmosphere which one saw later of course in the 2001 Durban Conference. But that’s for a later date.
By the summer of 1968, it was clear that the climate was such that any kind of general policy which had been advocated by BLAZ-NEE, another one of the extinguished international, Jewish international lawyers, for a high commissioner for human rights, who could expose and air specific violations that were being bypassed at the United Nations, that had gone. That proposal was objected to by the Soviet Union who had been particularly important in the documentation of the climate which had taken place at the '68 Tehran Conference. It is interesting at the regime of the , the dictator Francois Duvalier, redirected the initiative of the Human Rights commissioner to cover only human rights violations in colonial territories and conveniently escaped any scrutiny that his brutal regime might otherwise have been subjected to.
Now by December '68, the General Assembly voted to establish a special committee to investigate the West Bank, prejudicing the inquiry’s outcome by basing its foundations and resolution that had already had proclaimed the existence of major human rights violations before the committee had even sat. I should tell you that the assembly then appointed, and I chuckled because here were these heroic nations, heroic human rights advocates, the three representatives of this committee, Somalia, Yugoslavia and the , who were effectively to be the committee to investigate these particular allegations.
In March '69, the Commissioner on Human Rights created a working group of experts charged with investigating Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions Civilian Protection Clause. Israel then joined South Africa as the only country to be made subject to specific investigations by United Nations and human rights organisations. I should say, just remember this is '69, Israel had a very, very significant African policy then. Israel’s attitude to South Africa that put time, very different to what it became later, was one which certainly given its Africa policy, was hardly, if you could call it anything else, hardly supportive of apartheid policy.
And I was reminded this particularly and hopefully when I, when I do the interview with John Schlapobersky, well known to Wendy because they both come from Swaziland and who was detained in South Africa in '69 was helped by then Consul General Una, by about just precisely how tense the relationships had been between the South African government and Israeli government at that point. But nonetheless, between 1968 and 1975, the Commission on Human Rights adopted nine different resolutions decrying Israeli practises in the territory.
By '72 it had adopted a resolution censoring Israel for committing war crimes. And so why I’m telling you all of this, by the way, it went even further. The Soviet Union ran a massive campaign against organisations such as the International Commission of Jewists and a whole lot of other organisations, NGOs, arguing that these organisations should be rejected by the United Nations cause they were ultimately effectively just arms of Jewish money. And so you could see the kind of climate that was taking place. And I should mention all of this because this was the, this was the backdrop finally to the 1975 resolution that Zion is racism. It was in short a culmination of a very long campaign waged to make Israel a pariah state.
One final observation, it is interesting that after '67, of course, the trajectory changed completely, but even before '67, in '65, before the Tehran conference, there were already news afoot which were in this particular direction. And it is interesting that two years after Israel fought a war which unquestionably constituted an existential threat to the society, unquestionably, here we were at the United Nations passing this resolution. And I think it’s important therefore to understand the context in which it is located because when I come to talk about it more broadly next week, it seems to me and in fact reinforcing some of the issues that David is going to talk about shortly, it seems to me that that history needs to be known whether, whatever your political view is.
'Cause if we are going to be Lockdown University in search for the truth, we need to actually have the background from which this is predicated. So that’s the background to that. Now all I want to do now is to say, I want to take you to the United Nations in 1975, because at that assembly, when that resolution was passed, it was subjected, not subjected to, that’s the wrong word, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, gave one of the great speeches at the United Nations. I’m going to read you some of this text and then I want to play it to you just the last five minutes of the Hertzog speech.
He opened his speech by saying this. “It is symbolic that this debate, which may well prove to be a turning point in the fortunes of the United Nations and in decisive factor in the possible continued existence of this organisation should take place on November 10. Tonight, 37 years ago has gone down in history as Kristallnacht, the Night of the Crystals. This was the 1938 when Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers launched a coordinated attack on the Jewish community in Germany, burnt the synagogues in all cities and made bonfires in the streets, the Holy Books and the scrolls of the holy law and Bible.
It was the night when Jewish homes were attacked and heads of families taken away, many of them never to return. It was a night when the windows of all Jewish businesses and stores were smashed, covering the streets in the cities of Germany with a film of broken glass which dissolved into the millions of crystals which gave that night its name. It was a night which led eventually to the crematoria and the gas chambers, Auschwitz, Birkenau and Dachau. The Reason Sutton others. It was a night which led to the most terrifying holocaust in the history of man.
It is indeed befitting, Mr. President, that this debate conceived in the desire to deflect the Middle East from its moves towards peace and born with a deep pervading feeling of anti-Semitism should take place on the anniversary of this day. It is indeed befitting, Mr. President, that the United Nations, which began its life as an anti-Nazi alliance, should 30 years later find himself in his way becoming the world centre of anti-Semitism. Hitler would’ve felt at home on a number of occasions during the past year listening to the proceedings in this forum, and above all, to the proceedings during the debate on Zionism.”
He continued, and this is the last paragraph I want to read. “The reestablishment of Jewish independence in Israel after centuries of struggle to overcome foreign conquest and exile is a vindication of the fundamental concepts of the equality of nations and of self-determination. To question the Jewish people’s rights to national existence and freedom is not only to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe, but is also to deny the central precepts of the United Nations.
As a former foreign minister of Israel, Abba Eban,” who I might add in parenthesis, I’m very proud to say, was born in Cape Town and was of course one of the most distinguished advocates for Jewish, the Jewish national Liberation Movement, both as ambassador and as foreign minister, “has written, ‘Zionism is nothing more, but also nothing less the Jewish people’s sense of origin and destination in the land linked eternally with its name. It’s all seen the instrument whereby the Jewish nation seeks an authentic fulfilment of itself. And the drama is enacted in 20 states comprising a 100 million people in 4.5 million square miles with vast resources.
The issue is not whether the world will come to terms with Arab nationalism. The question is at what point Arab nationalism with its prodigious glut of advantage, wealth and opportunity will come to terms with the modest but equal rights of another Middle East nation to pursue its life in in security and peace.’“ That was essentially the speech, but I can’t say it as well as Herzog. And so here is the last few minutes of that speech by Chaim Herzog.
[Clip plays]
Pride to the Arab ministers who have served in my government, to the Arab deputy speaker of my parliament, to Arab officers and men serving of their own volition in our defence border and police forces, frequently commanding Jewish troops, to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East, crowding the cities of Israel every year, to the thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East, coming for medical treatment to Israel, to the peaceful coexistence which has developed, to the fact that Arabic is an official language in Israel on par with Hebrew, to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in any Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them.
Is that racism? It is not. That, Mr. President, is Zionism. Mr. President, over the centuries it has fallen to the lot of my people to be the testing agent of human decency, the touchstone of civilization, the crucible in which enduring human values are to be tested. A nation’s level of humanity could invariably be judged by its behaviour towards its Jewish population. It always began with the Jews but never ended with them. The anti-Jewish pogroms in Czarist Russia were about the tip of the iceberg, which revealed the inherent rottenness of the regime, which was soon to disappear in the storm of revolution. The anti-Semitic excesses of the Nazis merely foreshadowed the catastrophe which was to befall mankind in Europe.
This wicked resolution must sound the alarm for all decent people in the world. The Jewish people as a testing agent has unfortunately never erred. The implications inherent in this shameful move are terrifying indeed. Mr. President on this issue, the world as represented in this hall, has divided itself into good and bad, decent and evil, human and debased. We, the Jewish people, will recall in history our gratitude to those nations who stood up and were counted and who refused to support this wicked proposition.
I know that this episode will have strengthened the forces of freedom and decency in this world and will have fortified them in their resolve to strengthen the ideals they so value. I know that this episode will have strengthened Zionism as it has weakened the United Nations. Mr. President, as I stand on this rostrum, the long and proud history of my people unravels itself before my inward eye. I see the oppressors of our people over the ages as they pass one after another in evil procession into oblivion.
I stand here before you as the representative of a strong and flourishing people, which has survived them all and which will survive this shameful exhibition and the proponents of this resolution. I stand here as the representative of a people, one of whose prophets gave to this world, the sublime prophecy which animated the founders of this world organisation and which graces the entrance to this building, Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more? T
hree verses before this: The prophet Isaiah proclaimed and I quoted in the Hebrew original . "And it shall come to pass in the end of the days, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Mr. President, as I stand on this rostrum, the more great moments of Jewish history come to mind as I face you once again outnumbered and the would be victim of hate, ignorance, and evil. I look back on those great moments. I recall the greatness of a nation which I have the honour to represent in this forum. I am mindful of this moment of the Jewish people throughout the world, wherever they may be, be it in freedom or in slavery, whose prayers and thoughts are with me at this moment.
Mr. President, I stand not here as a supplicant. Vote as your moral conscious dictates to you. For the issue is not Israel or Zionism. The issue is the continued existence of this organisation, which has been dragged to its lowest point of discredit by a coalition of despotism and racists. The vote of each delegation will record in history its country’s stand on antisemitic racism and anti-Judaism. You yourselves bear the responsibility for your stand before history for as…
Okay. Okay, Dennis.
Hey, just carry on, carry on. It’s almost ended.
[Clip continues]
Will you be viewed in history. But we, the Jewish people, will not forget. For us the Jewish people, this is but a passing episode in a rich and event filled history. We put our trust in our providence, in our faith and beliefs, in our time hallowed tradition, in our striving for social advance and human values, and in our people wherever they may be. For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such. Thank you Mr. President.
[Clip ends]
David, that’s it, David?
That’s it.
Yeah, thanks. Just, I noticed you would’ve seen that that also the face of Daniel Patrick Monaghan also made a quite remarkable speech at the same thing. I want to just make one of three very short final points on hand David before handing over to David. It seems to me, and this is a segue into much of the debate that we’ll continue to conduct today and next week, that that Chaim Herzog, yes, whose son, of course, just to remind you, has now become the president of Israel, and that itself is interesting to me, but let us leave that for the moment, that three points are made.
If I could put it, two positive and one negative. Chaim Herzog asserts here that effectively the idea Zionism racism is in negation of the fundamental belief. That is the fundamental belief that the Jewish nation are entitled to self-determination as is every other nation. He asserts effectively that that has been there since time immemorial, that we have always faced Jerusalem as we’ve prayed, that we’ve always said , pray that we shall return to Zion, compassion of God. So that’s the first point he makes.
The second is, if you listen carefully to the speech, I think he’s propagating a view of Zionism which rests on a very fundamental proposition, a proposition that we need to debate and we need to debate rationally and carefully because it’s terribly important to this entire conundrum if you wish, and it is this: That Israel must be both a democratic and a Jewish state with equal weight to democracy and identity, if I could put it that way. And that has significant obligations and that is why it seems to me that he invoked Isaiah as central to the idea of justice within the Jewish tradition.
Those are two issues and we need to talk about them. But we don’t have to do that now. The third is that much of the debate, and this is also predicated on the background that I sketched for you. I’m sorry for going through it so quickly, but in the interest of time, that’s why I did it, the background which led up to this 1975 assembly resolution, namely that Jews, as has happened throughout the vicissitudes of Jewish history, are singled out for special treatment. That one cannot, as it were abstract this particular resolution from that context, one cannot wrench out the debate that took place, particularly amongst our the nations.
And I’m not going to pain you with some of what was said at that assembly, cannot be wrenched out from the antisemitism and the stereotypes with which Jews have essentially been described and caricatured throughout that history. And that becomes equally important. And that particular latter aspect and the way that is dealt with seems to me to be so central to this particular debate that I know that David has much to say about that. And accordingly I hand over it to him to deal with this and some of the other matters that we want to canvas this evening.
Thanks so much Dennis. And to say that I agree with pretty much every notion and sentiment that you’ve outlined there so well. Just to preface a couple of ideas before going on to showing some examples of stereotypes, why look at them is because I think the fundamental to this debate is to understand what is Zionism, what is racism, and understanding those two, one can then easily see how this debate falls apart in the opening couple of sentences. As Dennis has outlined, Zionism, essentially a movement for nationhood, for accorded national liberation, accorded national expression of the desire for a nation. Well, nationalism that is linked to that, nothing wrong. Scottish nationalism, Irish nationalism, Zulu nationalism, whatever, anywhere in the world, French, et cetera, this is, you know, part of the history of the nation state. Zionism and racism is an entirely different story. So that is where for me, before I come onto what is racism, I want to just outline just a couple of points about, because so clearly linked to racism is the notion of the stereotype. We cannot have a racist attitude without seeing peoples as stereotype. And that’s why the expression of stereotypes over history in culture, in history, in law, in business, in wherever one is in the western world, certainly the notion of stereotypes is so powerful. Before that, let me just say it’s interesting that in 2020, so this is before the recent events happening in Israel, 2020, Israel. this idea of Zionism was, Israel was the most condemned nation at the United Nations. 2020, it had 17 resolutions against it compared with six against nations from the rest of the world. There was one resolution against North Korea, one against Syria, one against Iran, one against Myanmar, and 11, sorry, 17 against Israel. Just as one example. So to come back to a stereotype, there’s a reason why a small, tiny little nation, which as Herzog said, has gone through so many centuries, so many persecutions, conquest, wars, battles, laws, ideas and so on, a stereotype is really when you take the imagined characteristics of a group and you put those first. So all Jews have big noses, all Jews are rich, all Jews are dirty, deceitful, lying, conniving, all Jews rule the world, et cetera. All blacks are primitive, savage. All Irish are are disorganised, chaotic, et cetera. So we know the tropes, we know the phrases that get attached and we need them for humour, for irony, for satire. We play with them. But it’s in the context of satire, the context of irony or in personal conversations. But when it’s in a public forum, that’s a different story. So stereotype is precisely what is given birth from prejudice. Prejudice, you cannot have prejudice without stereotypes. And that means the imagined characteristics of a group are made, the clothing of the individuals that you may or may not meet or come into contact with. And that’s immediately when prejudice kicks in. So to say that Zionism, which is fundamentally the desire for nationhood is racist, has no logical or even really non-logical connection between the two. So then why has it become such a fundamental trope of our times? And this requires us to look at the stereotype of the Jew over centuries and in our own times now, from the right and from the left equally. Number one, the Jews as the scapegoat, the loathsome other. And of course we have the ancient biblical myth which goes through many, many cultures, not only western Bible of the sacrifice of the scapegoat is necessary because that is the group that one blames for all the ills and misfortunes and problems of one’s own world and one’s own society. You have to have a scapegoat. Convenient it’s given to the Jew, whether for religious or racial or national, whatever the reasons that is the trope in western culture, the sacrificial lamb bottom line, it’s easy to blame. From the left, the contemporary argument that Zionism is racism is that Zionism has become a settler colonising force in the Middle East. And one must understand the mind of the other in order to understand both sides of the contemporary attack, if you like, of this debate, that Zionism has become a nation of settlers who are colonisers. And that’s the fundamental premise underneath the left. From the right, it is that Zionism and the Jews rule the world through money, through being devious, conniving, and they rule primarily through money and influence and in like insidious, in their words, snakes or the octopus or the pig, as you’ll see in some of the images I give soon. So from the right Jews will rule us. This is from Charlottesville, 2017. The Nazi right arm, as you can see, a very big march, I think a fundamentally important moment in not only American, but human history is this moment here. Things had a fundamental shift in the world, not only in the States. Jews will not replace us. That was the slogan chanted at the time, which means that Jews have the power to replace, to rule, to control us, dominate us. That’s the attack from the right. From the left, it’s settler colonisation. That is the contemporary framing of the narrative of the debate, and therefore it is premised on seeing the Jew as a stereotype, as the stereotype of the world ruler through money and in nefarious, cunning ways to influence, and from the left, as I said, the coloniser and so on. So this is from the right as an example. Then in addition we have the idea which comes, which Hitler codified in a way, but has been that way before, the Jew is the parasite on the host nation. And of course I don’t have to make the obvious links to our times now, the virus, but the Jew is the parasite, is the rat, as you look at all these, some of these old films, Jud Süß and many others, the Jew is the rat or the fleas on the rat. The rat that, you know, poisons everywhere, the snake. The Jew is there and that the opposition, that hate and fear are incited, fear of the power and hate, because Jews control the banks, Hollywood, politics, the world, everything, the militaries, everything. That is the attack from the right, as I said. They are the hidden hand behind society’s contemporary problems in the global world. Hannah Arendt had an interesting phrase. For her, Jews were seen within a culture as either the parvenu, the upstart who makes good, or the pariah, the eternal outsider who can never belong and fit in. And I think we all probably feel, I do, you know, caught between something of those two ideas. So we come to the idea of religion first going back centuries and then in fairly recent times, the notion of race and the contemporary nation. So the Jew happens to tick all three boxes for the loathed other. First, religion, we all know about the blood libel, et cetera, and religious reasons and so on, the Christianity, et cetera, whatever other religion. Then it becomes race. And race is interesting because it’s primarily rarely takes root in the 19th century through pseudoscience, misunderstandings of Darwin, and many others. And linked to imperialism because the race is defined, you know, the black, colonised other who’s primitive, savage, et cetera by the colonial powers of Europe, England, France, Germany, you know, Portugal or Spain, you know, everywhere. And that becomes the trope really very powerful in the 19th century, as I said, with pseudoscience. And then of course becomes the huge thing in the early to mid 20th century with the Holocaust. And then afterwards with the state of Israel and Zionism, in addition to religion, then race, now nation as well. The three go together to form the sacrificial lamb, the Jew is to blame, the other. So with racism, one can only see it as, which is linked to this is when you have to establish a superiority and the inferiority of some groups. You cannot have everybody equal. That is naive. Racism requires superior, inferior, civilised, and primitive, you know, those fundamental divisions which are binary and give rise to racial and the stereotype and therefore the prejudice. What’s interesting is that in Roman times when you read Flavius Josephus and you read Caesar’s diaries and many of the others, anybody who isn’t Roman is really, except for the Greeks, is really not is seen as barbarian. They have one term for all, barbari, in Latin. So it’s interesting to see all of that. They put everyone together as barbarians of different kinds. They don’t really distinguish a kind of nationality. And of course they talk about the religions, and you know, other things as well. But fundamentally the overarching theme in Roman times is barbarians who must be put down, controlled, and civilised. And everyone is more or less an equal in the various provinces. And what of course changed over the centuries from Roman times, which we’ve spoken about from religion, race, to nation. There’s also the idea of the undue influence that is wielded by the Jews. The small little group wields such huge influence. This is primarily from the right, less from the left. On the left, however, it’s money that is linked with power together with settler colonialism, and the money and power are what the left and the right have in common in the attack. And both of them have the parasite, the dirty parasite of the host nation, et cetera, both left and right have that as part of their attack. So with all of this, can I just say that I guess what, in the end, what we have today, we have the reassertion, the rise again of nationalisms, but nationalisms moving, not just about statehood and self-determination, but when nationalism no longer serves the idea of democracy and freedom. Nationalism serves the idea of a fear of the other, the migrant or the other within, the migrant, the barbarian, the migrant at the gate or the other within who is the parasite within the nation or knocking on the door outside. And the Jew, of course is part of this, you know, as many others. So with that, I want to just show some of the images that are quite contemporary, very recent for our times, Ashkenazi Jews have a 66% higher chance of getting coronavirus due to larger than usual nasal cavities. And I say this with not entire seriousness ‘cause it’s a cartoon obviously, but this is just less than a year old and yet it is still so ripe and contemporary. You find these all over the web, you know, you just have a look. I mean, you’ll find so many proliferating. The Jew is blamed for money, for power, to control the world, for all the evils of the host nation, but also for the virus, even for that, because the nose. This is again linked to the virus and this is all the dead urns with the ashes in the front. There at the back is the classic cliched image of the religious Jew. And then of course the gold bars. Zionism’s aim to depopulate the world with the virus. Notice the link between race, religion, nation. The word Zionism comes in, the racism comes in immediately. If you have the bug, give a hug, spread the flu to every Jew. Holocough. It’s self-explanatory. But can you see again for me, the link is again to to analyse it and understand it, not just have an emotional reaction, but to analyse it intellectually is to say, this is again, there’s religion, there’s Zionism, there’s the Jew, and never Jewish, it’s the Jew, and there’s race. So it’s all of the tropes come together and a virus is the perfect image for the anti-Semite. You know, Jean-Paul Sartre said, “The anti-Semite has nothing to do with the Jew. "The anti-Semite is the person who looks at the Jew. "That’s all.” It’s a profound way of putting it, insights, brilliant essay about anti-Semitism. Again, COVID-19, a Zionist creation to take over the world. All the tropes that I’ve mentioned come into this. It’s Zionism, it’s religion, it’s Jew, it’s the virus, the parasite, the host nations, the blame, the scapegoat, the attack for all the contemporary ills of society. So all of it is cohered in this one little image. And this isn’t a cartoon, this is meant to be something else entirely, Biggest hoax in human history. So it can be a virus, it can be anything, and the Jew is the convenient, loathsome scapegoat to blame for what is going on in the society. And then to just, if I may, just show a couple of other images, which I have shown one or two couple of these before in October but I think it’s apt to refresh perhaps a little bit 'cause you can see then how this contemporary image from the last year or two originates from in our contemporary post-Holocaust post-Second World War times. Yes, the Jew of course is the snake, nevermind the old one going back to to the French. But, Do you want to survive America, kill the Jew snake. The Jew is the snake. Deceitful, cunning, untrustworthy, selfish, and very, very cruel. Okay, and there’s the Israeli flag, the Jewish flag always together with the star of David. Always. The tropes go together. Here, this is an old one from the Nazis on the left, which is the Jews seducing the Aryan female blonde in Nazi Germany. So we link race and religion and ethnic nationality in the classic cliched image of the Jew, the banker, the rich, the nose. And then on the right, contemporary. Jews explain why they bring the migrants, the problem, the reason for our problems that we are told is all the immigrants. If the immigrants didn’t come, you know, everything would be hunky dory, whatever western nation one lives in. Muslims, Africans, and look at the map of the world. The intelligent IQs at the top in blue and all the hordes coming through. Very contemporary image from the right here, put in linking those tropes to make, you know, one can’t win. There’s the superior and the inferior. The Jew on the one hand is capable of conquering the world, is capable of promulgating a virus, so therefore, so superior, but cannot be set up as so superior, got to make him inferior because he’s actually a poison coming, although he controls the world. It’s a bizarre link of superior, inferior. This here is the one from the left, the Jew, who controls capitalist America and Britain and controls Communist Russia, is from the Nazis. The Jew controls the world. And on the right, contemporary. Jews did this, this is blame for 9/11 and for everything else. Again, and there’s the classic images of the Jew. The Jews did this, Jews did this. And then interestingly now the Palestinian. Notice again the Jew of race, religion, and nation. The Jew now is recast as the Nazi and the Palestinian in the Holocaust clothing, and there’s the wall. Very powerful. And you can imagine how powerful this image and where it has gone. And we go on here, the Jew controls America, the octopus, the snake, and you’ll see the pig in a moment are the classic images together with the rat. And for obviously one can associate the meanings with those, these animals, these creatures. So here of course the octopus who controls America and controls the freedom of America and liberty. That’s what’s important there. The money again, Rothschild, the pig, the pig, the snake, the octopus, the tentacles control the world. Now the pig of money controls the world, okay? These are all the right and the left images that come. From Britain to Isis, to Al-Qaeda, to the CIA, to Israel, even Boko Haram, the Jew of money, the bank, everything, and the pig there. And then the classic final one, of course the ultimate trope, you know, for me, very contemporary times, from the right and from the left. And Shylock returns to haunt the world, not only the Jews of money and gold, the Jew, again, the nose image, you know, the classic, classic stereotypes if you like. Now I don’t want you to say that everybody in the world is this, of course not. But these are just some images to give you a tiny taste of some examples of the conflation between Zionism and racism of Jewish, Jewish people who may belong to a certain religion, may belong to a certain ethnic group, may belong to a certain race. But it’s the combination of all these things in our contemporary times that no other nation has been allocated this kind of remarkable position I think in human history. I mean it’s quite extraordinary because the most of the stereotype and therefore prejudiced attitudes to most groups is a couple of things. You know, one or two, this or that here and there, and they kind of stick until they can be shaken off through cultural evolution in history. But the Jew has maintained this all the way through from, possibly early Middle Ages all the way through to our times now, this tiny little group who, you know, have achieved many of the things that Herzog outlines, but at the same time has been framed in this narrative. And I want to end with this finally because I am a man of theatre and therefore storytelling. It’s the stories that are told, the myths that are taken, whether from wherever they come, the myths that actually create these images and create these attitudes in global consciousness and global memory and become and are so powerful that such a debate even can exist in people’s minds that Zionism is racism. Let’s hold it there, Dennis, over to you.
Right, I don’t think I’m going to take anything further, David, because we will continue to extend this discussion by way of looking at the whole debate about, I mean basically Zionism, I want to look and others and try to sketch up something so we can then engage you and I with the contemporary era.
So let’s try to deal with the questions because I see it is already past. There are a whole series of questions, sorry, which come up at the beginning from my conversation with Wendy. And that is simply this, that I interviewed for a Daily Maverick webinar, a man called John Schlapobersky, who wrote a book called “When They Came for Me”. And it’s about his experience in 1969 being detained without trial in South Africa. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book, well worth reading, and I’m hopeful that we will have an interview with John on Lockdown University because it too will be worthwhile, which is, that’s what that was about, if I may.
The reference, Michael, to the Israeli ambassadors, that’s Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel. They wrote a piece which was published in Ground Up, which you can find on, it’s a South African electronic publication, which you can find by just Googling it. And it’s a fairly lengthy article in which they set out their experiences both in South Africa and what is going on on the West Bank at present, and you can judge for yourself about it.
Esther, yes, you can have your interpretation of Korah, but I prefer mine simply cause it’s sourced in RUSH-EE and also in the MID-RUSH, which goes far beyond selfishness into something far more profound. But we can debate the hermeneutics of that later.
Q: James, Do you not agree that the settlements are the most contentious issue facing Israel? What’ll happen to the 3 million if it annexes the West Bank? A: Absolutely, absolutely, it is the issue. It has always been the issue. I was struck by the fact that the other night watched the film Oslo, which has been I think HBO, which is well worth having a look at because it reflects perhaps a foregone history, history that might have gone forever, but certainly a history that is well worth thinking about in answer to that particular question, James.
Comment, clarify your comment, Michael. '68-'69, what I’m suggesting is that Israel had an extraordinarily developed policy with African countries in the late sixties and into the seventies until the '73 war actually, and it was a policy in which the economic development model that Israel basically essentially offered African states was incredibly productive to them. And as a result there were major tensions at various points between the labour government in Israel and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Can I just add in there, Dennis?
Yes, please, please.
Just one point, which is I think what’s really important about the UN debate as well which you and I spoke about, as we know, during the week, the context of course for all of this is the Cold War and the '67 and '73 wars, which were, as you said earlier, you know, wars of existential threat, very different to perhaps other wars. And the context of that together with the Cold War, I think is very important, you know, to add in for '75, 1975, when the debate happened in the UN.
Yes, absolutely. David,
Q: How was the resolution overturned in the early nineties? A: That’s really interesting and that links up to my earlier answer. George H.W. Bush put a lot of pressure on the United Nations at that particular point in time because there were, that was at the time, in the early nineties, '91, they were trying very hard under the Bush administration to coax Israel to the Madrid Conference, you may remember, which was the beginning of the process of a 10, which finally ultimately led up with the Oslo Accords, and Israel did quite rightly. If you’re going to have that United Nations resolution hanging over us, forget it. And it was basically a combination of an impetus towards peace together with massive pressure from the United States at that particular time that did the trick. I noticed by the way that South Africa was absent when that resolution was put to the general assembly.
And Anna, Amongst the many anti-Jewish, anti-Israel propaganda positions that the progressive left espouses is that the Jewish people are not indigenous to the Middle East and that Israel is an apartheid colonial state. I’ll make one point and hand over to David. The point I’m going to make is simply this, that you see, I think there is an argument about, of course the colonial state. South Africa’s complex because actually I don’t want to get into the ANC theory, but they struggled with the idea of what was called the theory of internal colonialism. Because whites had been there for 300 odd years, certainly different situation, and there was quite a lot of intricate theoretical egg dancing around the problem.
But in Israel, the thing about it, you see, and this is, I agree that that is a propaganda position, but as I try to indicate, and as this comes out of the Herzog speech, there has been a 2000 year link between that land and Jewish people, and it’s not the same and it can’t be equated the same. And if you obstruct Jewish history from the state of Israel completely, if you wipe, if you just literally obliterate it, well then you get to that conclusion. But that is a conclusion of propaganda, not of any kind of rational analysis of the facts. I dunno if you want to add to that, David.
No, I would only add that, I mean, I understand this debate very well, as Dennis you do, and everyone does, and it’s a very important one, a very point of view. But you know, you know, one great playwright once said, the history of the world is unfortunately the history of colonisation. And you know, there’s a fair amount of truth in that because you can argue, you know, when the Romans conquered England, when the Romans conquered North Africa, when the conquered, et cetera, et cetera, you know, when the whites, the native American, native, so-called Indians, one can go on and on throughout the world and human history, and yes, colonisation is one of the fundamental drives of human history and human existence. But the question is, you know, if we go back to this kind of origin state or the origin theory, I mean the Jews have been there for a couple of thousand years and what can I say that there is that, there’s the indigenous origin state, which I believe is perhaps a bit purest. It’s wonderful in hope, but it’s, I think it’s unrealistic in reality.
Okay, the Herzog speech, Harriet, I just found by simply going on to Google or to YouTube and simply putting Chaim Herzog, 1975 General Assembly Speech and the whole speech pops up.
Q: Basil, Is a nation state law, Zionist, is it racist? A: I think it is racist, I’m afraid to say, 'cause I think when you basically relegate the language of 22% of your population to second class in the manner in which it was done, that in fact is seriously problematic. And I want to add that there are of course many people in Israel who agree with me on this. So yes, we can debate this issue, but for me, I regard it, and by the way, that is exactly what I was trying to hint at, that Zionism is a mould which I’ve held dear my whole life. It’s not necessarily that of everybody, quite obviously, and that there have been massive changes. But when that law was passed, I had to scratch my head and say, well that’s not my cup of tea. I’m sorry. And I believe it’s not many people’s cup of tea right around the world. But that’s another matter. We can debate that.
Q: Are the Jews the only people with a name for their nationalism, Bev? A: I don’t think so. I don’t think that at all.
Edward, Zionism as an ideology, racism is a misguided prejudice. Well I think David has made that fairly clear, that that’s my point, that it’s not an ideology which promotes racism. It does do so, sorry, there are people who do so, but it doesn’t have to be that way and it shouldn’t be that way and it’s certainly not the way I want to argue. I’m not sure I understand the issue of the east. That would be a total, yes, Israel has the worst public relations policy. Let me just bluntly put that. Sorry, the next one I think is yours. Caroline, Does voicing ironic comments and stereotypes in private engender perpetrating beliefs, et cetera.
Well, I think Caroline, that’s great, but I don’t think it’s reality in human interactions and human discourse, and I would never want to go against humour, jokes, satire in a personal context amongst people who understand the irony. You know, I think that irony must have a voice, from a dramatic, from a literary and artistic point of view, so much comes through the ironic voice where you have the observation, which is reality. But the ironic is a deconstruction of that reality. And I think, you know, that is part of being human and a wonderful part. We couldn’t have remarkable literature, writing, thought, philosophy without the ironic opposite really. But it’s a different thing to stating it as a public policy. That’s really what what I want to get at.
Anna, and Israel progressives’ use of the vocabulary of social justice, picked Israel as the sole source of evil. Really, do we hear these progressives speak out against the many authoritarian regimes, repress their people and act violently. I agree, that’s true, and it’s one of my criticisms of critics of Israel, that you know, I would be much more comfortable if they, if they focused their attention in a consistent fashion against all basic human rights abuses, like I think I do myself as best I can. And I think that’s really very important. But I think we must be careful about what about us. Because the fact of the matter is that if there is injustice, and I for example, now criticise the national law, quite honestly, it doesn’t matter to me if there’s such a law, if there are other authoritarian regimes. I don’t want something which ultimately I think is so much better than that to pass laws like that. And so whilst I agree with you entirely, it’s not on its own a sufficient defence. You have to look, and that’s what I want to argue. I have argued as David’s argued, and we want to argue again next week on that point.
Q: Audrey, how do we use the positive aspects of Jewish Israeli, sorry, Jewish Israeli, Israeli positive contributions to the entire world in science, medicine as a buttress against antisemitism? A: I agree that Jews have positively contributed to the entire world since Sinai. Very important, and–
Can I say Audrey, that is also linked, what’s interesting, if one remembers the burning of the books in 1938 by the Nazis, it’s also linked to the contributions, but then it’s perceived, it can be by the right and the left as the octopus, the tentacles of control. So of course when I celebrate the remarkable contributions, I think it’s 20% of Nobel prizes, maybe more, 25%, have been won by Jews, and remarkable contributions for a tiny group in science, medicine, technology, et cetera. But I think one needs to be aware that the ironic happens, that it is used by right or left against as part of the octopus image, you know, the trope is to control.
Yeah, and that’s why it’s not so good to brag about these things, ‘cause it just fits into that stereotype.
Jonathan: Arafat speaks in the end with history. Yes, absolutely. It was at that particular time, and you know, the time when he spoke, he was invited to the United Nations prior to that '75 resolution. Exactly right, what you said. It was at that particular point that the context with which I’ve sketched must be located.
David, I think Margaret suggested it’s not an octopus, but a scorpion on the Statue of Liberty.
Okay, that’s great. But I see it as an octopus. You can see it as yeah, as the scorpion on it as well. Thank you.
Yeah. Michael Block says, Alon Liel is well known as an extreme leftist, I discount anything he writes. I’m sorry, I don’t do that. I have a great respect for Alon Liel, and I should tell you that he did remarkable work in promoting the interests of Israel at a time when the Israeli reputation in South Africa was not high, and he did incredible work with the Mandela government and he lives in Israel and he’s committed to it. Fact that he has these views, well, fine. But it seems to be unhelpful to use labels. Much better to actually analyse the argument.
How can, I think, yeah, The photograph again, David, I think that, yeah…
Yes, Esther, I think that’s an important point. The 800,000 Jews from Arab countries. Absolutely right. It was a point made by many at the time in the Zionism in racism debate. It’s a point well made that in fact, 800,000 were forced out under very egregiously moral circumstances. Of course they could never go back. They got nothing for it, and people forgot about them. And it’s exactly that lack of equality, equivalence, and moral equivalence, which is exactly what I’ve been complaining about. Absolutely right.
And that’s the same point that Jillian makes, and I quite agree. Now, the right of return, sorry, made available to Jews has not being made available to Arabs. It’s a very important point, really. It’s a very important point. And I want to think about how to respond to you best, but I’ll do that next week if I may.
- Yeah, very important.
Q: Judi, Had the Arab armies not attacked the fledging state the day after it was declared, would there have been ? A: Well, that’s a really interesting question, is it not, just like it’s an interesting question, if the Jordanians in 1967 had accepted the Israeli entreaties not to get involved in the war, what would’ve happened then?
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question, Judi.
Yeah. I’m just going to , we are learning about Zionism and racism to teach our Jewish students to get the myth they hear on campus, to get unstuck. Well, that’s an important question. It’s a question that I know that Trudy and myself, David, and others have been talking about. How do we actually deal with this? How can we possibly help to deal with the particular problem responses, which are both rational. Part of the reason that we try to do these two sessions is to try to do this as those rationalists, not good enough. Not good enough, just giving people kind of slogans. One has to actually educate people so that they can respond comfortably with confidence to the nonsense that gets perpetrated. It’s a hugely difficult problem, which I don’t have a a full answer, but you’re right to highlight it. Islamic colonialism. Well, yeah, I mean, you can’t dismiss this phenomenon. I accept that. I accept that readily, but I’m not sure that was the basis of our lecture and such. I think that’s it. Oh no, they aren’t. Yeah, there you are. Well, David, there’s a thing about, quite a number of people have asked David where your, where these images have been published that you had there.
Some of the images are found on the web. The ones about COVID and Corona, you know, one just has to look up on the web, on the internet and you’ll find them all over the other. Some of them are found in the US Holocaust Museum, which have been put there fairly recently. And it’s a collection really from just sources, you know, really looking through the web and the dark web and different parts of it. It’s all there on the internet, and I’m not trying to be a scare monger, but it’s pretty big.
Well, that really takes care of the questions. It just remains from my side, again, to thank David for, as I say, always this extraordinarily invigorating collaboration that the two of us have managed to do over this time, one of the great benefits to me of Lockdown University, and also to thank you all for questions which even I know you’re not agreeing with all, everything we say, have been done in a thoughtful and engaging way, and I think that’s terribly important. So next week we’ll continue this by trying to look a little more deeply into some of the Zionist questions, answer some of the points that you’ve asked, which don’t really admit easy answers and talk about the contemporary. So from my side, thank you–
Thank you so much. Yeah, Dennis, and also to thank you for an extraordinary collaboration that we always have during the week and then on the weekends. You know, I love it so much and I appreciate incredibly–
You’re a wonderful man for a Liverpool supporter.
For a Manchester United supporter, you’re okay. And thank you to everybody– and watchers, and listens and contributors, and you know, there’s no easy answer to any of these. We’re here to just try and analyse, understand really in the interest of, you know, deepening and enriching our lives. Thank you.
Thank you indeed.
[Judi] Thank you David. Thank you Dennis, and thank you to everyone who joined us. We’ll see you all next week. Take care everybody. Bye-bye, bye.