113: Will dumping Israel backfire on the Democrats? A conversation with Hussein Mansour

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Ask Haviv Anything

Episode 113: Will dumping Israel backfire on the Democrats?
Host: Haviv Rettig Gur
Guest: Hussein Abu Bakr Mansour
Date: May 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Haviv Rettig Gur sits down with Hussein Abu Bakr Mansour—a fellow at JINSA and expert in Arab political thought—for a candid discussion on the shifting stance of the U.S. Democratic Party towards Israel. Drawing on Mansour’s recent article in "Abrahamic Metacritique," they examine whether the Democratic Party’s move to distance itself from Israel is a strategic concession or a structural surrender to leftist ideology. The discussion delves into historical analogies, the rise of anti-Zionism as a worldview within the party, and the broader implications for American politics, foreign policy, and Jewish communities in the U.S.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Democratic Party’s Strategic Concession to the Left

• Party Unity vs. Civil War:
  Mansour claims senior Democrats now see a stark choice: give ground on Israel to maintain party unity and electoral viability, even if this means internalizing leftist anti-Zionist ideology.

  • “They have decided that they have to choose currently between party unity and party civil war around the issue of Israel… They must, or that's how they view it, they must concede on Israel to the left.” (03:43, Mansour)

• Redefining ‘Pro-Israel’:
  The “new centrist Democratic position” claims to be pro-Israel, but supports cutting military aid, downgrading relations, and centering Palestinian human rights—a shift Mansour argues is essentially anti-Israel.

  • “We are pro Israel, but we're against all aid to Israel, all military aid… We will downgrade relationship from Israel from being this exceptional relationship to a normal relationship and centralize Palestinian human rights.” (05:30, Mansour)

2. From Policy to Ideological Surrender

• Normalization of Anti-Zionism:
  Mansour warns that conceding on Israel means not just one policy shift but the adoption of an entire anti-Zionist, intersectional, decolonial worldview:
  • “You’re not adopting one position. You're going to adopt the entire framework of anti-Zionism.” (07:42, Mansour)
• Parallel to DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion):
  The Democrats’ earlier incremental adoption of DEI language and ideology—originally thought to be limited and expedient—radically transformed the party’s institutions and discourse.
  • “They surrendered entirely to the DEI worldview and the ideology.” (11:17, Mansour)

3. Defending Israel within DEI Language

• Constrained Discourse:
  Defenders of Israel within the Democratic Party now resort to DEI frameworks, portraying Jews as oppressed indigenous people to fit the allowed narrative.

  • “They are native, indigenous people… They are also hurt by the same bigotry. That is even the question of Israel. That's how much surrender happened.” (11:17, Mansour)

• Irreversibility of Ideological Institutionalization:
  Once adopted, frameworks such as DEI and (soon) anti-Zionism are hard to reverse, even as they become electorally unpopular.

  • “Even after… the wind shifted, they are still stuck with [DEI]… So if you do that with anti-Zionism, it will be the same thing…” (13:25, Mansour)

4. Historical Analogies: The Fate of Leftist Parties

• Interwar Europe & the Jewish Question:
  Haviv and Mansour recall how European socialists’ concessions on antisemitism to court the right led to their own marginalization and paved the way for radicalism.

  • “They kept thinking, look, the Jewish question is this weird hang up of the right… In the end, the Jewish question cannibalized everything else…” (14:44, Haviv)

• British Labour and Corbynism:
  Similar slow adoption of anti-Zionist, anti-colonial language led to Corbynism and deep institutional radicalization, from which the party hasn’t recovered.

  • “Even after Corbyn, how deep this is now in the institutional infrastructure of the British left. And it's clear that there is no going back from this.” (20:57, Mansour)

• French Left Post-Algeria:
  The internalization of the “decolonial” worldview post-Algerian War—especially through intellectuals like Franz Fanon—pushed the French left into irrelevance and radicalism that spread globally.

  • “It actually produced an entire radical worldview that radicalized many components of the French left.” (22:36, Mansour)

5. Structural Consequences: What’s at Stake?

• Broader Ideological Shift:
  Conceding on Israel tricks the party into incremental surrender—eventually applying the same decolonial lens to broader foreign and domestic policy (alliances with Japan, military deployments, etc.).

  • “Gradually… every policy question has to be answered through the ideological framework.” (28:41, Haviv)

• Impact on Jewish Americans & Institutions:
  Once Jews in America no longer fit the DEI ‘oppressed’ box, similar pressures will target Jewish inclusion and safety.

  • “What applies to decoloniality in Israel… is going to be applied to Jews in America.” (29:52, Mansour)

6. The Inter-Elite Power Struggle

• Ideology as Power Tool:
  The rise of anti-Zionism is intertwined with a generational and cultural struggle among elite groups for control of the Democratic Party and society’s institutions.

  • “Anti-Zionism… as it rose… was primarily a tool for that new figure, the post colonial professor, to actually replace the Jewish professor as the central moral authority…” (33:01, Mansour)

• Acceleration of Change:
  These battles are not limited to academia, but quickly manifest in politics; rapid replacements are already visible among Democratic contenders and activists.

  • “You’re going to see it in this election cycle… even the squad is kind of old news.” (35:22, Mansour)

7. Is Change Irreversible?

• Absence of Resistance:
  Mansour expresses shock at the lack of internal resistance among Jewish Democrats as this ideological capture continues.
  • “I am shocked that there is no resistance… inside the party.” (39:58, Mansour)
• Potential for Dissent:
  Suggests only a charismatic figure could mount an effective fight, but sees little sign of this leadership emerging.
  • “Some charismatic figure that rises inside the party and tries to lead a dissenting view against this. And this is not happening.” (40:06, Mansour)

8. The Republican Parallel

• “Tucker Carlson War” on the Right:
  Haviv asks if similar populist and anti-establishment battles could push Israel out on the right—but Mansour maintains the Republican Party, while not immune, stands a better chance to resist.
  • “There is a much more fighting chance in the Republican Party than it is in the Democratic Party, and it’s not unavoidable.” (44:04, Mansour)
• American Distinctiveness:
  U.S. differs from Europe in its deep-rooted tolerant tradition and positive relations with Jews. Most Americans, he argues, view this extremism as entertainment rather than conviction.
  • “I think a lot of Americans really don’t actually care about this issue as they shouldn’t and it doesn’t really touch their life that much.” (44:07, Mansour)

9. Israel, Self-Reliance, and U.S. Disengagement

• Silver Lining for Israel?:
  Haviv posits that if America does withdraw support, Israel might prove its military competence and shatter the narrative that its successes are due solely to U.S. backing.
  • “I wish they would understand that we are actually inherently competent and powerful and they should not fight wars against us even when America wouldn’t back us.” (48:27, Haviv)
• Danger of a Post-American World Order:
  Both agree, however, that the collapse of American global leadership would usher in a more dangerous and unpredictable era for everyone, including Israel.
  • “A world in which America is not the dominant power is really… a terrifying idea…” (51:52, Mansour)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the new Democratic stance:
  “No, no, we’re still pro Israel, but no military aid, downgrading relationship, centralizing Palestinian human rights…” (05:30, Mansour)

• On the deep institutional shift:
  “They surrendered entirely to the DEI worldview and the ideology.” (11:17, Mansour)

• On the irreversibility of descent:
  “So if you do that with anti Zionism, it will be the same thing. You are going to be stuck with this and you are not going to be able to get that out.” (13:25, Mansour)

• Historical warning:
  “They think they are feeding Israel to that tiger that they want to ride, but they are actually ultimately feeding themselves to it as well.” (22:12, Mansour)

• Elite replacement in academia:
  “The postcolonial anti Zionist ideology… was primarily a tool for that new figure, the post colonial professor, to actually replace the Jewish professor as the central moral authority for higher education…” (33:01, Mansour)

• On lack of resistance:
  “I am shocked that there is no resistance. That’s honestly the thing that bothers me the most…” (39:58, Mansour)

• On the unique U.S. context:
  “Most people don’t have the level of grievance that really can feed a major ideological movement or mass movement…” (46:27, Mansour)

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Memorable Moments

• Debate over Hassan Piker’s symbolic rise:
  The hosts lampoon the “mainstreaming” of shallow influencers as thought leaders, highlighting the depth deficit in today's leftist icons.
  • “Surely communists can do better than that. I've met communists… they used to be the smartest people.” (37:33, Haviv)
• On the future of Jewish inclusion:
  “What's the alternative in the Democratic space? What other idea is there? Who's even talking about it?” (41:00, Haviv)
• Cautious optimism:
  Despite Mansour’s pessimism about reversal, both recognize the durability of American pluralism and Israel’s historic resilience.

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Key Timestamps

• 03:43: Mansour outlines his article’s core thesis on party strategy
• 08:08: Discussion on why the Democratic calculation is flawed
• 14:44: Historical analogies—Europe’s leftist parties and the Jewish question
• 27:43: Broader consequences for U.S. foreign policy
• 29:52: Inter-elite power struggle explained
• 35:22: Acceleration and generational change within the Democratic Party
• 39:58: Is resistance possible?
• 44:04: Republican Party parallels and differences
• 48:27: Haviv and Mansour on Israel’s self-reliance
• 51:52: Dangers of a post-American global order
• 54:40: Closing reflections

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Summary

This episode highlights a stark and potentially irreversible transformation in the Democratic Party’s approach to Israel, reframed as part of a broader ideological and institutional shift driven by radical leftist activism and historical patterns of party capture. Mansour, with Haviv as a probing interlocutor, weaves together U.S. political analysis, historical parallels, and philosophical reflection on power, identity, and world order. Their conversation warns of deep consequences—not just for American Jews and U.S.-Israel relations, but for the party's future and American democracy itself. Despite the somber tone, both note the peculiar resilience of the American system and Israel, leaving open—if faint—the possibility of a course correction.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Khaliv Anything. I'm very excited to tell you that my guest today is Hussein Abu Bakr Mansour. It's his third time on the podcast. Hussein, as listeners will know, is originally from Egypt. He is now a fellow at jinsa, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. He's an expert in Arab political thought, on shifts within Islamist movements and Islamist thoughts. His analyses, I have to tell you, run deep. They deal with fundamental things about how the west, especially the United States, needs to think about the Middle east and about the Muslim world. He has a new article on his substack called the Abrahamic Metacritique. That's the name of the substack. This is a short article and it's what we're going to talk about today, about the current state of the Democratic Party's stance on Israel, about how and why it chose to break with Israel. Totally. That is his argument. And he explains that the Democratic Party is breaking from Israel as a kind of structural surrender to a whole ideological movement coming in from the radical left, and that it won't stop there. We're going to talk about it. It's really, really fascinating. Before we do that, I just want to tell you a word from our sponsor. Very grateful to Sapir, both as a subscriber and also for their sponsorship. There are few, if any, publications like it. It's the quarterly journal of Jewish Ideas, edited by Bret Stephens from the New York Times. You might remember that we've hosted a number of people on the show to talk about topics they've written about. Force appear Coleman Hughes, for example, about anti Semitism in the African American community. Alana Newhouse about why Zionism is useful to everybody, why it's an interesting new way to frame the crises of modern life in the West. It's a beautiful publication, not just in content but also in physical appearance. If you live in the United States, you can get it in your hands in print absolutely free. And if you sign up now, you'll actually get the forthcoming issue on the theme of America. That's in honor of this year's semiquincentennial. How's that for a spelling bee championship? Word? That's America's 250th birthday, which happens this year. Lots of excellent stuff in this issue about the political crises on the left, on the right, and the Democratic and Republican parties, the decline of education, especially history education in the US And a lot of tangible suggestions for America as it turns 250. If you want to start getting this excellent publication? I highly recommend it. 100% free. Go to sapirjournal.org askhaviv anything that's S A P I R journal.org askhaviv anything. They won't even ask you for credit card information. Finally, I want to invite everyone to join our Patreon and or subscribe to our substack. We have a new substack if you want to ask the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about. That's where you do it in those communities. You also get to enjoy monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. Join us at www.patreon.com AskHaviv Anything or all of those links are going to be in the show Notes. Let's get to it. Hussein, how are you? I'm good.

[B]

Glad to be here.

[A]

Thank you. Habib, this was a fascinating piece and I want to tackle the core thesis. First I want you to lay it out for us. Anti Zionism isn't just another policy position, it's a worldview. You call it a keystone of the decolonial mentalite rather than a negotiable policy preference. What do you mean?

[B]

So let me explain the article in a simple way. Basically, the Democratic establishment, or what sees itself as a moderate Democratic establishment that obviously has been in crisis since of course the loss of the election for the Harris Waltz ticket, have decided and it's a conscious decision. As a matter of fact, this article is not based entirely on my analysis. It's also based on this being explained to me explicitly in these terms by a Democratic figure who's actually privy and part of this decision making mechanism that they have decided that they have to choose currently between party unity and party civil war around the issue of Israel. And if they are to compete seriously in 2028 and try to get back to the White House, they must, or that's how they view it, they must concede on Israel to the left and that hopefully will allow the central establishment, the establishment, to proceed with a moderate agenda on everything else, economy, affordability and so on and AI, so on and so forth. And they think they can do this, that is they can manage the radical, the increasing power of the radical flank of the Democratic Party, that's not really a flat, you know, marginal anymore. You know, we have Madani now governing the largest city and the largest Democratic city and the largest city in the United States. And Mamdani is not just a leftist Democrat, he is a self identifying communist and you know, third worldist ideology and so on and so forth. So basically we'll concede this issue and that somehow will free us. Now, the concession is not seen. They don't think that they are going anti Israel. They wouldn't say that structurally, that's what they are doing. They don't know that this is basically just, this is actually what's happening. The entire party is turning anti Israel. But what they would say is that, no, no, no, they are pro Israel. Here is what the new centrist democratic position is. We are pro Israel, but we're against all aid to Israel, all military aid, whether for defensive or offensive weapon systems. We will downgrade relationship from Israel from being this exceptional relationship to a normal relationship and centralize Palestinian human rights. So this will become, in effect is actually becoming. It's already being voiced out by every single aspirant for the 2028, for all the major Democratic figures. You had Wendy Sherman on TV the other day basically saying this position like that after my article came out. But this is basically the new centrist democratic line. No, no, we're still pro Israel, but no military aid, downgrading relationship, centralizing Palestinian human rights. And of course, Palestinian human rights here doesn't really mean Palestinian human rights means the whole ghosology that Matthew Friedman so brilliantly wrote about in his latest essay on the Free Press. But this is structurally is basically moving. Anti Israel. They are going to say it's not anti Israel. But first of all, this, you're already normalized completely and accepted that anti Zionist position of the left. Then it's going to steamroll into all the institutions of the party. So you're really not adopting a one position. You're going to adopt the entire framework of anti Zionism. Now, when this comes to your second part of the question, that anti Zionism is really an ism. It's not a position on policy on the issue of Israel. It's really the core or the organizing principle of the entire intersectional decolonial worldview that's been actually brewing in the universities for a very long time, as everybody knows, and it has multiple components that went into it. That's another conversation or perhaps another long essay of how this intellectual roots of this. But you have postcoloniality from either side. You have third Waldism, but you have also postmodern and liberal components as well. But ultimately it is now a framework that determines a lot of questions about policy, about institutions, about the entire worldview that the Democratic Party is going to have.

[A]

Why are they wrong? In other words, it's political I don't like it. I happen to be Israeli. But why are they wrong in terms of the Democratic Party's own electoral prospects and future?

[B]

It's a great question. But very quickly, Rahm Emanuel is a great example, because Rahm Emanuel was an example, an embodiment of democratic establishment. Pro Israel. He was Obama's chief of staff. He overlooked the full funding of Iron Dome. He was very pro Israel. And then now he basically, he's voicing just that new centrist Democratic position that I just outlined. All right, now, whether they are wrong, this is not the first time the Democrats go through this. Actually this is the second step. And it's related to the first major step that they took. And already it made them slide. Like they didn't think that they were going to slide this far, but they already did. And that was the. Started happening a decade ago in the dry run. That was dei, the concession to dei. This is actually how this started. So dei, the same thing. And it's very similar to anti Zionist. They are somewhat, of course, related because we come from the same universities. Both of them started in the academy, that is DEI as well, started in the universities, the mainstream of the Democratic Party. It's not that they were enthusiastic ideologically about dei. No, they adopted it piecemeal by piecemeal. They didn't believe in it deeply because I don't think a lot of people believe it deeply. But it seemed politically expedient. It was very inexpensive and you had a carrot and stick tied to it. The carrot that this was actually was very popular. So there was a leftist populism that supported dei. And the stick, of course, was the whole cancellation regime that was starting to pull on people actually losing their jobs and so on and so forth. I don't think that anybody in the leadership level of the Democratic Party thought through that. Adopting DEI is going to completely transform the institutional structure within a decade of the Democratic Party and of liberal institutions. And that's actually what happened and where we are today. And again, that's related also to the second step that's happening with Anti Zionism. They thought, I think, that they were making concessions in very discrete, limited issues. Diversity hiring. We're going to use equity language, right? We're going to start, okay, we're going to increase diversity in hiring. Then, okay, now the language, all the language that we speak in has to be equity based language. Okay? And then, okay, inclusion. Inclusion has to be now the guiding principle of any institutional or any programming that we do. So they thought they would gradually piecemeal by, you know, piecemeal, discrete issues conceding. But they actually ended up adopting a whole framework of dei, which is also part of that decolonial, intersectional worldview. And ultimately. And once you did that, you couldn't retreat from it. And it became the only language that the party can speak to the extent that even today, in order to defend Israel, you have to put it in a DEI box inside the Democratic Party. And you see this happen, like they surrendered entirely to the DEI worldview and the ideology.

[A]

How do you mean? How do you see defending Israel within the DEI worldview?

[B]

Oh, they are native, indigenous people. This is what they do. No, no, no. They are also hurt by the same bigotry. This is a big misunderstanding. They are not. And we heard this, for example, Van Jones spoke this way, right? Oh, the problem is black people are confused. They don't know that Jews are also like us. So they are also another DEI box who's been hurt by the same bigotry. That is even the question of Israel. That's how much surrender happened. They don't have any other language to talk about issues to defend Israel with. So even Israel has to be a dei. So this is an example of how this decision, thinking that you're strategically calculating to concede, is in these narrow, discrete issues for this radical leftist, the radical left that came out of the universities, ultimately overran all of your institutions. So basically, yeah, that Israel represents, like an oppressed minority. That antisemitism is really a form of the same structural bigotry that racism, the Bob Kraft advertisement basically tried to. To also do this. But the rights obligations, the old language of the Democratic Party that was available well in the Clinton administration somewhat till the Obama administration, all of this basically gone. So I want to say that this concession, the dei, transformed institutions also, that you can't really go back on them. And that's it. You've stuck with the language, you've stuck in the institutions. And this is what's happening again now with the second step. You think you're going to concede? I'm going to concede on discrete, isolated issues about Israel. Okay. No military aid. Okay, guys. Okay, we're with you on this. Then it's going to be all right. We can't have a special relationship. We're not going to veto in the UN Whenever, as you know, the resolutions come to condemn Israel because they are even worse than the Assad regime supposedly. Okay, we're not going to vee through this centralizing human rights. And now we're going to start tying our foreign policy to what we think is that's it. It's going to be a concrete. They will concede a little bit by bit and you will end up with anti Zionism becoming institutionalized the way DEI has been institutionalized. And there's one more thing about dei. DEI became unpopular at one point with the electoral base. It became unpopular. Obviously, Kamala Harris did not win for a reason. Even with the financial. Our financial systems turned against it. Now they're like, no, this was a mistake, esg, all this was bad. And so even after even the wind shifted, they are still stuck with the. That's what I'm saying. Their institutions still stuck in this. Their ideology is still stuck in this, Their language is still stuck in this. And so it's really hard to change once you let that flood your party. So if you do that with anti Zionism, it will be the same thing. You are going to be stuck with this and you are not going to be able to get that out. And this will truly become the identity, the new identity of the Democratic Party, this dei, anti Zionism, intersectional post decoloniality. And that's the direction in which it's heading. And I'm not sure, I'm actually almost positive that this is not going to be stopped.

[A]

I want to drill down into the really fascinating historical analogies that you drew. And you drew them very, very briefly. You talked about interwar European Socialist parties that conceded on the Jewish question to all kinds of right wingers and all kinds of nationalists. And they conceded and conceded and conceded. And they kept thinking, look, the Jewish question is this weird hang up of the right. We can build coalitions, we can do a lot on every other issue. In the end, the Jewish question cannibalized everything else, became the politics of the countries. And the socialists had already conceded that ground totally. You talk about British labor eroding under what anti colonial pressure. Explain to me that British Labor ARC and the French left after Algeria. So lay out for us those examples. There is a structural thing that you are identifying here that you're seeing happen in front of you that has happened before, that is particular to the left, maybe particularly to sort of the inner dynamic and logic of left wing ideas, maybe. And you think that that's happening now. So you're saying, dear Rahm Emanuel, dear Chuck Schumer, dear Wendy Sherman, we've done this before. There's only one way this ends, right?

[B]

To be fair to Schumer, by the way, Schumer was one of the very few Schumer is a minority. He's a minority of a caucus of seven in his Senate, minority of 47 in the ones, the seven who didn't vote to block the bulldozers military bulldozer sale to Israel. So in fairness to Schumer, Schumer now is a minority voice who's. I hope he's not going entirely.

[A]

Yeah, I realized I named all Jews. Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom has shifted on this. I mean, there's just, it's. The list is all of them basically right?

[B]

No, that. It's a. Kelly Booker Gallagher. You have, you have, you have a dramatic, you have some, some are really dramatic, like Ro Khanna, who was like only five years ago, gun ho pro Israel, signing letters for apac. And today it's a mistake. And this is very. He's not just, you know, military aid. No, he's straight, straight out anti Zionist. So. And this is happening everywhere. I mean, the. About the circle analogy. Yes, we've seen. Of course, every time has its own specificity. Also, I think America is very specific. So I don't want the darkness of the analogies, especially the first one, make people forget that this is also. This is the United States of America. We're not Europe. We're very unique in a lot of ways. And maybe I'll talk about this, but yes, in the interwar years. So you had exceptions from the story that I told and the story I told that basically you had steadily rising antisemitism, antisemitic populism in the interwar years, especially after World War I. Now, at the base of the socialist parties, this is a left wing story, specifically at the base of the socialist parties, which is basically the workers. The distinction between really left wing and right wing is not really clear. Right, socialism and nationalism really blur into each other and so on and so forth. So that the nationals, the radical nationalism that was very anti Semitic, that was rising at the time, especially in Germany and Austria and France, to some extent, it really could influence the base of the socialist parties as much as the rest of the countries. So you had a decision, a conscious decision. There were mainly two exceptions to the SPD in Germany, which is the Social Democrat, and that actually ruined them, that they didn't make that concession. They really did get destroyed. And the Austrian, also their Austrian counterpart, the Social Democrats, but the rest of the socialists in the communists actually decided, especially with the guidance of Moscow, that the Jewish question is very costly politically. You should just concede on it. That is, you marginalize or remove Jews from the leadership Entirely. And this often did happen and really leave antisemitism, the anti Semitic question, and focus on basically trying to get to parliamentary quotas and try to get to power. And that ultimately did not really allow them to reach power, but as a matter of fact made them lose power. And they basically allowed the radical anti Semitic nationalist factions to really steamroll through their political systems. That's the first. Now with Corbynism or what happened with the British, labor is similar, I think America basically we're having a condensed version of that, which is labor historically was actually sympathetic to Israel and it was sympathetic to Israel for very important, you know, and clear reason. Remember Israel, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s was mostly a socialist lift leaning state. It had a European socialist character. That was a major reason for sympathy. And also you have the moral weight of the Holocaust and the building, the institutionalization at the time of Holocaust memory and so on and so forth. So labor and the Jewish vote in England was mostly Labor. Zionism was really at home. Labor in the UK then gradually starting late 70s, but then 80s and 90s and the story picks up really post colonial activists as well as new kinds of radical leftist activism, the intergenerations, these start to promote anti Zionist, pro Palestinian decolonial framework that the party gradually, same thing piecemeal, adopts resolutions, adopts positions, condemns Israel here and there. And there's a story that gradually moves until it really culminates in Corbynism straight out, anti Zionism, sympathy with Hamas, Hezbollah, relationships with terrorist, anti Semitic terrorist organization. And even as that became a crisis in labor that ultimately led to the removal of Corbyn and the rise of Keir Starmer and so on. The party has not recovered. As a matter of fact, the change that happened in the party now seeped into all of its institutional network all over the uk. We're talking about unions, we're talking about activist base, we're talking about NGOs. That's how you hear the news today, especially from British Jews, about how deep this, even after Corbyn, how deep this is now in the institutional infrastructure of the British left. And it's clear that there is no going back from this. Now the Algerian analogy is very important. It's different in a lot of ways, but it's actually mostly relevant because that's actually the origin story of all of this. It was actually the Algerian war that actually produced Fanon, the primary decolonial. He's the primary justification, by the way, of the left for the acts of Hamas of October 7th. That's why murdering Jews in this way is a heroic act. It's actually because Franz Fanon and that came out of the French Algerian war. So what I want from that analogy is even the assumption, which I'm not going to give the anti Zionist a flank. But if the decision, if the position was right on merit, that is opposing France and Algeria was actually morally right on merit, the concession and the adoption of the leftist radicalism around that position did not end with the war. It actually produced an entire radical worldview that radicalized many components of the French left. It completely, by the way, it destroyed the popularity of the Communist Party. The Communist Party was over after this. The French left got radicalized before. There was a major pushback in the late 70s against that and a return of French conservatism in a way. But basically the legacy left actually completely got marginalized with this new radical left and he created a whole new radical worldview that ultimately got global. And now, by the way, what's happening here is related to it. So you have the story, the first story is much more explicit, specifically about Jews. This is something that really does repeat itself in modern times. And conceding on this never ends there. And also about Corbyn, the Algerian example, specifically about the attempt to manage radicalism that also fails. I think these are instructive analogies because I think that what's happening today is quite delusional. I understand the strategic calculus of the democrats of doing this. I just think it's a catastrophe. They are basically feeding themselves. They think they are feeding Israel to that tiger that they want to ride, but they are actually ultimately feeding themselves to it as well.

[A]

So Fanon's argument, the specific argument you're referring to, was that the oppressed don't. Violence is important to liberation because the oppressed are oppressed in many ways psychologically in addition to physically and politically. And violence is the therapeutic, is the right. And Fanon himself is a psychiatrist. Violence is the. The internalizing of agency.

[B]

Right.

[A]

If I become violent, I have become from history's object that other people, you know, used to history's subject. I'm the one deciding where this goes. I'm the one deciding. And so violence was the kind of redemptive. Now, Fanon also warned that regimes established after liberation by these kinds of violent people, these kinds of violent movements are not going to do well. And in fact, Algeria has done very, very poorly afterwards because these radicals who could only really do that and fought that way, couldn't then build a competent modern Algeria. Why does it matter, what could the left possibly take from me after I'd given them Israel? Why isn't this, what specifically, what is the warning that you're issuing? What are they going to lose other than Israel? Let's imagine that they say, yeah, I'm going to lose Israel. You know what? Rahm Emanuel, real soft spot in his heart for the other half of the Jews. I think it really feels bad for him. I think he really well, but getting America away from Trumpism is too important. I can sit with the guy and I can say, you know what? A, I think you're actually an ally. B, I get it, I get it. I'm not going to ask you to lose an election for Israel. So if that's what his calculation and of all the policy issues that he sees on the democratic agenda that he thinks, from, you know, tariffs to immigration to a thousand other things, you know, if I can concede Israel but preserve a democratic center that can still win elections, I can actually push back on universities over the long term in ways that I couldn't if I could never win an election ever again. I can see all the excuses. What, in practical terms, is he going to lose if, if you're, if your analysis is correct?

[B]

Well, first of all, I have, I have, I, I have many issues and, and, and even on the calculation itself, like, I'm not even sure that the calculation is right. Like, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to lose an election. I'm not going to lose an election if Israel. So I'm going to lose my entire party to not lose.

[A]

That's my next question. Let's talk about that next. What, in practical terms does he stand to lose other than the Israel issue?

[B]

No, it's going to be, as I said, the structure, power is di, you concede, you start the train of concessions and it's really not going to stop so gradually. It's going to start with all of your foreign policy decisions and your foreign policy establishment that now your foreign policy establishment is tied to an ideological commitment. And then you will have to concede one point after the other. Now, once you mean what the alliance with Japan, our relationship with South Korea, so on and so forth, how much of that will now have pressure because now, and the Chinese is going to play into this because now that's also a colonial endeavor. And what applies to Israel will also apply in the US Military presence. And how about our basis in the Middle east, especially in light of everybody protecting our Gulf allies from Iran? Now, this is also a Colonial endeavor. Just like the Israelis. Our we have America. Oh, you know, my progressive friend, you were angry about Israel, Israel's coloniality. Let me tell you about the American soldiers coloniality, who has a base in the Middle east and confronting terrorism in Iran or East Africa and so on and so forth. So even just American capacity for power projection abroad, you will find a lot of this ideology migrating to undermine our own power projection capabilities, our own capacity to defund themselves. Imam Dani, you know, not on our dime. Basically preventing taxpayer money for ultimately this will also translate to other frameworks or other policy questions in which you know what? Okay. I don't want my taxpaying money to go to fund American relationship with some regime that supposedly is colonial and things.

[A]

Just to clarify, you think the Democratic Party is capable of ever reaching a point where the United States Navy does not have the mission of protecting the oil shipping lanes of the world? Yes, I mean things that are foundationally in America's own.

[B]

Definitely. That's the opinion. That's the opinions of. That's what the left want. That's what the Mamdani flank. The Mamdani AOC flank of the left want. And they already are getting the senders of the party who are actually used to be much more reasonable in these issues, but they are now they are pulling those and those are pulling the mainstream establishment. And that's basically going to be the trickle down that you will actually get to. These discussions and this way of talking that was dominant for the activist space is actually going to gradually, first of all, it's going to be normalized inside the party itself. The establishment will not go with it immediately and will try, but it will placate it. And before you know it, just what happened with dei, this will be the way that the entire party talks. And once this is the way the party talks, every policy question has to

[A]

be answered through the ideological framework.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Right. You talk in the piece about a power struggle. Whether to understand the turn on Israel, the anti Zionist movement within the Democratic Party as a moral movement, a movement concerned primarily with a specific moral argument, or whether to understand it as a kind of rallying concept for what is essentially inter elite power struggle. I want you to walk us through your thesis that there's an inter elite power struggle for essentially institutional control within the left. And I just want to add to that. I completely agree that there's an inter elite power struggle. Maybe there's also an authentic debate on morality, especially among young people, young people I have met, maybe because they don't know all that much. They just think of it in simple moral terms. And so there's a complexity here. I don't think you're saying it's one or the other, but nevertheless, tell us about this elite interview. You know, inter. Elite war.

[B]

It is complex and both things are true at the same time. Like this is a real ideology, but also real ideologies become power because they are real, because they actually command real belief. That's why they attract power agents. I want to just add one thing to our last question that how this can migrate to other things. This will also migrate to the conditions of Jews inside the Dunkirk Party, inside American institutions. Once you have the oppressing oppression and the only way you can defend anything is to put it in a DEI box and say Jews are non white, ultimately this is also going to break down. And then what applies to decoloniality in Israel and oppressor, oppressor is going to be applied to Jews in America. That's also have to be put in perspective now about this question. So there are. The ideology, of course, of anti Zionism is an old ideology. It has a lot of different roots. You know, Soviet propaganda, Marxist, Leninist analysis of Zionism, Arab nationalism, of course, in the past. And a lot of different things that ultimately kind of were downstream from all of this, all of this today. Now because of how powerful it became, especially in the universities. That means that it's useful, a useful power, a useful instrument of power. This is true of any powerful idea. And that means that it can be used to delegitimize opponents, to consolidate positions, to make alliances and to acquire power. And it is exactly what's happening both within the right and the left, by the way, this elite competition is happening in multiple layers, in multiple layers and multiple places. I wrote about it extensively before, like one thing, one way to see what's happening with the whole Carlsen flank that's now indistinguishable in its position from the radical left. Like if Noam Chomsky was still active, he would be on the Carlson show every other day. Now it's indistinguishable. They are basically competing for positionality. Who's going to lead the MAGA after Trump? That's really what the competition, the war in the right, who's going to come? And this is the wage issue of Israel. And so that's a perfect foil for a new power composition in order to try to get there first. Now this has been happening actually for a longer time on the left and started even in the academy with the rise of the postcolonial professor, that is somebody with my profile, an intellectual from the third world who has to make his way into elite Western institution, elite Western institutions and elite Western culture. And one of the central, the central non white figure who occupied the central place in these institutions till the late 70s was the Jewish professor. Was the Jewish academic, the Jewish professor that was central to the post war liberal moral foundation that was based on the Holocaust and the Jewish experience, otherness, so on and so forth. I mean, who's the most important literary, if we talk about more conservative kinds of, not leftist kind of criticism. The most important literary critic in the United States in the last century or so was Harold Bloom, for instance, who was Jewish. And he's not the only one. So the postcolonial anti Zionist ideology as it rose specifically its min at the time that the emblem is Edward Said, was primarily a tool for that new figure, the post colonial professor, to actually replace the Jewish professor as the central moral authority for higher education or for liberal education in the American university. And that war has been happening. It started in the academy. All of this started in the university. DEI started in the university. Also started in the university. It happened in the university and then it started to migrate out into the civil society. And you saw that gradually by this kind of again, like new types of leftist activists. And now you have others too. It's not just post colonial people. You have minorities from the United States that joined in this new coalition. You have even white leftists from various, various parts of society now started to make that coalition that basically then acquired the name of the intersectional or woke or whatever and started to replace, either build new presence institutions, for example, the entire DEI bureaucratic infrastructure that acquired immense power and financial liquidity. Just they siphoned in a lot of resources, major universities, corporations and so on. That's a huge bureaucracy that was built with a lot of authority and power or replaced cores of power already in established institutions. And you see, this is actually what's happening within the democrats. So the Democrats, the establishment might, you know, those old establishment liberals think that we are conceding to a new moral constituency, some sort of a new moral position that the base developed. But that's not really what's going on. What you are actually doing is that you're handing the keys to a new ideological elite. No, it's a new elite really. I mean, they are using the ideology many times, I vow, if these people actually believe in anything, a new elite that's leading this new ideological movement that will ultimately replace and ultimately means actually much quicker than we think. I mean again, it's happening in many places already.

[A]

It's not generational in academia. It's two, three election cycles.

[B]

Yeah. And it's happening. You're going to see it in this election cycle. You can see it in a lot of races that are happening all over the country. I mean the squad was really the beginning of this. But now even the squad is kind of old news. Now we're talking about fast paced replacement of what would have been your old democratic type. And then what would that force? So forget about this alliance of the intersection of people. Why would that force the contenders that are running? They will force everyone else to become the same. And that's exactly what we're seeing. So you'd see what would be otherwise a typical Democratic runner. So maybe white man, white woman, coming from some sort of professional background running in the race, speaking in this that you already see it around the country speaking in the same decolonial language. Because that's now that ground on which the competition happens.

[A]

You end in the last paragraph on a pretty stark note. You aren't sure the situation admits of remedy. The leadership believes they are seeing a reality they can't change. Okay. Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, Obama himself have come out in rhetoric that tries to accommodate Zoran Mamdani and voices like that. Is it irreversible? And if it's irreversible, are the Jews going to be essentially are we going to see the kind of displacement from the Democratic Party and its institutions of Jews that we saw frankly in the Ivy Leagues over the last 20 years? Systematic, measurable.

[B]

And by the way it's happening in their mainstream liberal media too. Let's remember the episode of Hasan Piker. The ongoing episode of Hasan Piker, who used to be just this streamer had some following of a million people but nobody take him seriously. Especially the man is both inarticulate, really not that intelligent at all. He just spouses this ideological.

[A]

It's not that bright. I feel bad. Surely communists can do better than that. I've met communists.

[B]

They're people ever used to be the smartest people. You know. I'm glad I wasn't born 70 years ago. I likely would have been a communist because all the smartest people were communists at one point.

[A]

It's the best parties.

[B]

Yeah, it used to be. But now this is communism. This is Hasan Piker. Complete fraud. Just an influencer online. Inarticulate at all. I'm not sure actually he Read anything. He just spouses these things. And now he's being mainstreamed by. He got picked up basically, literally he just got picked up as the Joe Rogan off the lip because he don't have a Joe Rogan. So they need someone who looks masculine, which I guess that means to have some muscle and facial hair. I don't know.

[A]

I thought I was a contender, but.

[B]

I know, but you're Israeli, so that's also.

[A]

I obviously am not in the running. I'm just saying, I. It's really that pathetic?

[B]

It is, it is.

[A]

Ezra Klein mainstreaming Hassan Piker. There were the New York Times mainstreaming Hassan Pike. It's that empty. It's literally just a tactical. The current elite trying to co opt the up and coming elite with these people who are essentially symbols, cartoons, little puppets meant to. But they don't understand that these cartoons are actually serious. Hassan Piker is a terrible politician and economist.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But he is not bad at the kinds of campaigns that this new elite is trying to mount.

[B]

Right? That's.

[A]

I mean he's not actually an idiot. It's just his skill set is over here. Not in the place where we're looking for it for some kind of, you know, idea leadership. Right.

[B]

He should have been managing a marketing for some clothing brand for. For some cool hipster clothes. But yes, the, the. By the way, the essay of the New York New York Times about him, that's kind of pumping him up. Its old title that they changed was Woke Mind in a Maga Body. Like that's how pathetic it is. That's what they are looking for. It's all aesthetics, it's all appearance. It's just. It's pathetic. But to go back now to your question, is it irreversible? I believe it is. I sadly believe that this is not going to be stopped. It's gone. They have nothing. They already conceded. I mean, again, the only thing they can do is like try to say that. That Israel is like the Avatar people. It's really a Wakanda and they are native people just not going to work.

[A]

In other words, to frame it through dei.

[B]

They have to. They have nothing else. And that ultimately that's not your ground, really. That's the ground of the other ideology. They will just obliterate you easily and they will take over. Now having said that, I don't think it should happen without a fight. I know that there are a lot of Jewish Democrats who probably are extremely distressed hearing me. I am shocked that there is no resistance. That's honestly the thing that bothers me the most, other than us and other people talking about it inside the party, it doesn't seem the resistance the only positive thing that could happen. And I'm not sure that this will happen again. I think this is irreversible, but one last battle. Some charismatic figure that rises inside the party and tries to lead a dissenting view against this. And this is not happening. I mean, you have Josh Shapiro who has the potential, but I don't know if he's. Because he's really going to be sacrificing. I mean, I think it's really. He doesn't have that much of chance to begin with.

[A]

Sorry to interrupt you. I'm sorry. At this point, what would his ideology be? What would his. They don't come with an ideology so much as a kind of question organizing framework of human beings that that sort of lumps everybody into silos and then everything is the silos. And it's, you know, racist. But, you know, it comes from some good places in various times in history, but wow, has it kind of gone off the deep end. And, you know, the Jews are the first to experience that. Pretty soon it's going to get to the rest of you. But what's the alternative in the Democratic space? What other idea is there? What other magazine of ideas is there? Who's even talking about it? The anti DEI backlash, Is it expressed within the Democratic Party in any way? Is there anybody saying, guys, okay, we might win an election cycle or two, but this takeover, this is not going to deliver. Jobs, this is not going to deliver. This isn't even going to be recognizable to huge amounts of Americans. In the middle of the political space. Fewer and fewer Americans actually identify as Democrats or Republicans. Independents are growing. This is going to appeal to independence. This is a Democratic Party that is going to create, that's going to shrink itself into a corner. Israel's already been thrown to the dogs. It's been blown up by an Iranian nuke. It's gone. Ignore Israel. What the hell is the Democratic Party doing to itself? There's nobody who can even mount that intellectual campaign.

[B]

I don't know if there is anyone. I don't know if they want to because the cost will be. It's just things that they have already kind of undermined their chances of doing. I mean, they will have to sound somewhat like Republicans, like old Republicans talk about how American power is actually a good thing. Israel's actually our really good ally. They can add with this, of course, some Clinton centrism, New Deal the economic populism that's always been part of the Democratic Party. But they will have to sound, they will have to lid themselves and accept that these things are not a bad thing. And they can start sounding like Republicans. When are you talking about some patriotic liberalism, civic loyalty to the country, Republicanism whatsoever. But I'm not sure that this, that this is really truly will happen or where they are. As you said, it's very questionable if there is a possibility for any other ideological content at the moment that the party can offer itself or its base.

[A]

Will the Republican version of this, the Tucker Carlson war inside the Republican Party, the Candace Owens, the whatever the hell J.D. vance is, that'll he'll decide that based on polls in three years, will they push Israel out on the right while the Democrats are pushing Israel out on the left? And then the American Israeli alliance is gone and Israel should be preparing for it now, quickly and significantly, I think

[B]

Israel should be preparing for the potential. I, I don't think it's imminent. First of all, Trump, to his credit,

[A]

you think it's unavoidable.

[B]

What?

[A]

Sorry, but you think it's unavoidable? You think that's the thing.

[B]

Not necessarily that part. And that's what the uniqueness of the United States that I wanted to talk about that we're not really Europe. By the way, the Candace Owen stuff, for example, on the Tucker Carson stuff, I look at the views rates and it's just like terrifying. Millions are watching this. Really? All of these people believe. I think. No, I think it's just Americans. I think there was an exaggeration and there was a misunderstanding. A lot of this is entertainment for Americans like Candace Owen is actually that's American tv like reality show that you get crazy people, I don't know, prisoners who are dating. Like it's the stuff that America does on tv. I think a lot of Americans really don't actually care about this issue as they shouldn't and doesn't really touch their life that much. And a lot of them have still positive views towards Israel. And I think just like Candace and this was really TV entertainment. Moreover, to Trump's credit, no matter how you feel about Trump, no matter how you can have all the criticism you want, Trump went to his truth Social and he wrote long posts about how crazy and unreliable and stupid and all this stuff and he called him names Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen. I wish somebody in the Democrats Democratic establishment did this about Hassan Piker and, and that cabal. But in the right, of course, there is a battle. And this battle is about the future of US Foreign policy. And Israel is central to this. And you have this anti Semitic wave that's happening in the right. That's as I said, hopefully it will be stopped. Trump is very clear about his position from it. None of this, I think, makes the victory of Islam the right avoidable. I think the right as it stands, again, no matter how you feel, I truly believe it has a better chance than the Democratic Party to actually stop this movement. That is, there is a much more fighting chance in the Republican Party than it is in the Democratic Party, and it's not unavoidable. America is different. Ultimately, America is an extremely big country where remains we are in the strongest and most powerful and most prosperous country in the world. That really means a lot. That means that people don't have the level of grievance required. I mean, unless you're totally brainwashed ideologically and captured by these new hostile ideological forces. But most people don't have the level of grievance that really can feed a major ideological movement or mass movement like early 20th century antisemitic heroes. I mean, you talk this World War I had to happen. Massive economic downturns had to happen. God forbid, if we go into a confrontation China, we end up losing, then that changes everything, obviously. But as long as we are who we are, I actually trust that the American people are. Most of the people want to just take care of their lives. They want to go to their jobs, they watch Internet stuff as entertainment and so on and so forth. And they think we still need to talk about culture and try to give people better culture and better entertainment than a lot of the slop that we're now having. But I think that the United States is a unique country. Our relationship with Jews has been one of the characteristic and unique feature of American history and of American identity. No other nation in history, certainly no other mass of superpower like the United States, had such a positive relationship for so long with the Jewish people in which they prospered as much as they prospered, if not more, in their own homeland in Israel. To the extent that, you know, a lot of American Jews don't want to go to Israel because they really are comfortable and they really feel free. And this is a fundamental feature and part of the identity of the United States. And I think there are a lot of wise and smart people who are not Jews like me, but they recognize this and they know that they do not. Whatever that America that the left imagines or that the Tucker Carlson imagined That's not America. That's not. And we do not want to live in that place. We like this country the way it is.

[A]

I, I have a strong view about the Israeli capacity to go it alone. And I even see a silver lining if America does turn on Israel, which is that many of our enemies, as you well know, have been arguing that they have lost war after war to us only because we have America's backing. And I wish they would stop thinking that, and I wish they would understand that we are actually inherently competent and powerful and they should not fight wars against us even when America wouldn't back us. Like, fighting wars against us is bad. And maybe we should all make peace and then I become a super lefty and annoy everybody. But if America turns on us, that's the silver lining. I think our enemies will come for us in the Middle East. I think it'll be a bad time for Israel, and I think Israel will nevertheless come through, will nevertheless defeat any enemy that comes for it now that the great excuse of America's backing is no longer there. And they have to show that now they can defeat this Israel and they will not have that excuse. And I know that's a weird thing to say in English to an American audience, but if you're living in the whirlpool of Arab discourse on Israel for your entire life, basically the world looks very different. And so if the Democrats and the Republicans drop Israel like a lead balloon, Israel will thrive. It'll thrive differently. Our enemies will face a more desperate Israel and therefore a much more, I think, much more of Israeli firepower. But maybe that'll be the final war that will mean that we can stop with all the wars, because the ideas and the excuses that drive new dictators, new movements, new organizations into these endless wars will have to answer for all the destruction that they've wreaked.

[B]

Yeah, I agree with you. Israel has to prepare for, for the worst regardless. And I think Israel is, in many ways, they're spending now on their own defense, industry and so on and so forth. However, I think first of all, the priority is winning. Winning matters because winning for Israel has to do with survival. It's not winning. So it doesn't matter what the Iranian AI swap is going to say. What really matters is for the Israelis to win Israel. Winning matters for the United States immensely for the security of the United States, for the future of the United States. The world is becoming a dangerous place and we are turning a major corner with the development of AI. I went to some retreat that AI pilled me recently to kind of understood what actually kind of development and changes that are happening to the world economy and defense and security, medical research with with AI. The world is turning a major corner in AI. A lot of things are going to shuffle. A lot of things are going to shift. It's already happening to a lot of international institutions that we saw just things are changing profoundly. Europe already screwed itself on its energy policy on us. A lot of things we don't know what's going to happen with Europe. We saw their behavior during the Iran war. Israel is reliable. It's in an extremely strategic and crucial neighborhood. That's also, by the way, is going to be extremely strategic and crucial as we enter the era of the AI. Further, given the amount of Gulf investment in data center for American AI companies that will need security chips that Israel has a leading edge on Israel matters profoundly for American prosperity. Again, no values. I'm not going to talk about shared values. We're like Jews, none of that. For our prosperity and for our security and for our increasing grace in the AI field with China, Israel matters a lot. So I hope this is why turning against Israel for me, it's not just for me about it's a lot. I have a strong personal relationship with the Jewish people in Israel. So it matters to me, obviously personally, those who know me. But also this is about the country that I'm living in. It's going to be bad for everyone and even for Israelis. This is the last sentence. A world in which America is not the dominant power. Power is really an extreme, a terrifying idea in many ways.

[A]

Let me finish by agreeing with that. That is scarier for me. By far, Israel fought its most significant, most successful, most existentially important wars, 48, 67, the wars that decided whether it lives or dies without any American support and sometimes with literal American arms embargoes against it. The world that America built has been the most important thing. Even when America itself was set against Israel. The world it built of prosperity, of safe oceans and safe trade and the institutions and the protection of those institutions with American power, it has been the safest, the happiest, the most prosperous time in all of human history. Democracies have spread in places nobody ever expected. 30, 40 years ago. Everybody thinks about that one example in the Arab world that didn't pan out. All of Latin America is democratic today, practically with a couple exceptions. But it used to be that the exceptions were the democracies. If America is fundamentally changing, not to the point of an Israel alliance or non alliance. The beautiful thing that America is existed even when America and Israel were not friends. If America is no longer that beautiful thing, it's going to be a very dark world. And it's going to be a dark world for everyone on it. And we will be fairly well prepared for it. In the sense that when you go into the apocalypse, you want to be the guy with good training and good guns and competent management of your food supply. We're going to be okay, but everybody's going to suffer, including us. That is the scariest prospect. I don't want to decide American elections, but if. If Jews don't feel safe in your movement, then. Then, you know, you might not be the movement that should lead the global superpower. Hussein, thank you so much for joining me. This was a little bit scary. Absolutely fascinating, and it's classic you. I don't 100% know that. You're right. I will never be able not to see it. So thank you for that.

[B]

I don't know either, but thank you. I appreciate Khabib. It's always a pleasure to be here.